As one of the most popular platforms for professionals, LinkedIn makes finding jobs or finding people to do those jobs a simple and hassle-free process. In addition to job searching, LinkedIn, which is used by almost 875 million people worldwide, can be helpful with developing and marketing your brand among its heavy user base. This opens up massive potential for employers, organizations, and employees if they utilize the power of social media apps like LinkedIn in achieving their professional goals.
LinkedIn generates diverse traffic from different parts of the world, with most users hailing from the Asia Pacific region. Still, not every organization has tapped into the pool of resources that LinkedIn provides. Stats show that only about 5 percent of LinkedIn users are from Africa and the Middle East, revealing a need for an app similar to LinkedIn to plug this gap.
In this article, we’ll discuss how you can tap into this potential by creating a social media platform that reaches the millions of people who remain out of LinkedIn’s reach. We’ll also guide you through the entire process of developing and branding your professional social network app so it can achieve the same success. Keep reading to learn more.
What You’ll Learn In This Post
- What is LinkedIn?
- The current market overview of LinkedIn
- Popular features in a professional social network
- Step-by-step guide on how to build an app like LinkedIn
- Effective marketing techniques for your application
What Is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a social media platform that’s designed to connect people specifically in relation to their professional needs and goals. On LinkedIn, users can register and find jobs for themselves, or post ads to fill positions available in their organization.
This works by creating connections – essentially the Facebook equivalent of friends – that allow you to interact with posts, chat, and exchange ideas with the person, just like any other social media.
Proven to be highly successful in connecting human resources across the world, LinkedIn has provided a platform for professionals to build their careers. On top of that, LinkedIn enables a means of advertising your business brand to attract investors, workers, and customers alike.
LinkedIn Market Overview
Founded in 2003, LinkedIn is one of the oldest social networking platforms. It has consistently grown over the years due to its work model and overall efficiency Its growth can also be attributed to the fact that the majority of its user base are from the United States, as well as other large countries like Brazil, India and China.
After LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft for $26.2 billion in 2016, the platform went on to achieve $11.5 billion in 2021, representing a significant increase compared to previous years.
LinkedIn Events
LinkedIn Events offer a way to engage with your connections on LinkedIn, by hosting and attending online events. This is a great way for professionals to interact with and learn new things from industry experts. They also help people stay updated on the latest happenings in their relevant industries. Invitations can be sent out to all your connections with one click, and you can even post about the event you’re hosting on your profile, attracting more interested participants.
Newsletters
Newsletters are another great way to keep track of your relevant industry and stay up-to-date on the latest happenings, trends and job openings. LinkedIn users can subscribe to these newsletters according to their needs and the field of work they are involved in. Newsletters also allow businesses to let their customers and investors know about their latest projects. Subscribing to these newsletters is easy; you just search for the newsletter you are interested in and click on the “follow” button to start receiving regular updates directly through your email.
LinkedIn Live
LinkedIn Live is another valuable way of utilizing LinkedIn’s potential for your professional growth. The platform allows users to host and attend live, interactive video events to exchange ideas and provide coaching and skill development lessons. Users can host events such as webinars, Q&As and panel discussions, and even give product demonstrations with LinkedIn live. These live events can be viewed on LinkedIn and can also be shared on multiple social media platforms for widespread reach, which adds to the power of LinkedIn tools.
Popular LinkedIn Features
LinkedIn has many attractive features that make it so popular among professionals. Job seekers and recruiters can both utilize these features to make their work easier and more effective. These features ultimately make LinkedIn the number one choice of career-oriented people to help land them their next big placement. We have listed a few of such features here that you must include if you plan to build an app like LinkedIn yourself.
LinkedIn Creator Mode
LinekdIn’s Creator Mode, which allows you to create digital content for your audience, is one of the most powerful and popular tools available. When you enable Creator Mode, the LinkedIn algorithm will automatically highlight your original content on your profile. Also, the “connect” button changes to “follow” to provide access to additional LinkedIn tools like Newsletter, LinkedIn Live, Creator Analysis and Video Editor.
Carousel Images
LinkedIn now allows users to upload a series of pictures on a single post to create an image carousel. This helps you paint a picture for your audience with the help of some visually appealing slides and infographics. Not only does this make your informative posts more attractive, image carousels also grab the audience’s attention and help them gain insights and knowledge about new concepts through easy-to-understand slides.
Video Meetings
LinkedIn provides a video meetings feature in which you can host one-on-one video calls with your connections. While this feature was originally brought forward to allow easier interview sessions between employers and potential recruits, it has now become popular among members of the same organization, as well as between professionals who want to discuss ideas. LinkedIn has also announced that they will soon release a one-to-many video conference feature that will enable people to host group meetings, company meeting sessions, and webinars from within the app.
Open to Work Profile Frames
LinkedIn provides profile picture frames to people who are actively looking for new career opportunities. By enabling these “Open to work” frames on your profile, you let your connections and potential employers know that you are on the lookout for a new job. This helps draw attention and could serve well in the job search. Similarly, the platform lets recruiters put up a “Hiring” frame on their profile, which can act as an advert for people looking for jobs. So, in a way, this feature also helps employers, as they can receive relevant inquiries and applications naturally and fulfill job vacancies quicker.
4 Steps to Build an App Like LinkedIn
If you followed this article from the first line, you now have a working understanding of LinkedIn, why it is so popular and how its features serve as amazing tools for professionals to help strengthen their careers. Now, it is time you learned how you can build an app like LinkedIn yourself so you, too, can own a business that helps people in achieving their business goals. Here are some important steps to follow while coming up with your own app like LinkedIn.
1. Determine Niche
The first step in creating an app like LinkedIn is to study the targeted customer demographic and determine what features are necessary to ensure the app stands out in the market. One must understand that going head-to-head with a multi-billion dollar platform like LinkedIn is no easy task, but if done concisely, it is possible to swim in the same tank.
That’s why determining a specific audience, coming up with a solution to their professional needs and providing assistance in finding jobs and workers for this group are critical. For example, as we mentioned before, only around 5 percent of LinkedIn users are from Africa and the Middle East, so finding out the reason behind this appalling stat and coming up with a fix could serve you wonders.
2. Conceptualize Functionality
After determining your target demographic and the features required to make your app appealing to that group of people, you should then come up with some basic functionality for your application. Deciding on the working principles of the app, and the features and tools to be included is necessary.
After drawing up this basic framework, your application should be designed by a UI/UX designer who will incorporate the functions and features into a sleek and appealing front-end of your LinkedIn-like app that will be loved by the users.
3. Develop Your App
The next step in making a social network app like LinkedIn is to develop your application. After agreeing upon the features and the outlook or front-end of the LinkedIn-like application, you should work on developing the actual backbone of the app.
If you do not have coding skills, this can be done by a team of professionals who will take your plans and ideas and make a functioning application that works just like you imagined. However, you must make sure the team you are investing in is skilled and has some relevant experience in making similar applications. You should also make sure to check their portfolio to better understand their caliber and the quality of their work before hiring an agency.
4. Deliver Your LinkedIn-Like App
After completing the development phase, your application should be ready for testing and delivery to app stores. It’s also important to monitor for bugs even after delivery and collect user feedback to make changes and improvements accordingly.
Nobody likes a faulty application, so if you find any issues with your app after launching, make sure to contact your development team and roll out an update to fix those problems.
Marketing Your App Like LinkedIn
Only developing and launching your LinkedIn-like application is not enough to make it popular among users and help grow your business. It is very important to market the application using various techniques to ensure the knowledge about your social networking application reaches the people you designed it for. Here are some highly effective marketing techniques that you can take advantage of to make your app popular among users.
App Store Optimization
App Store Optimization, as the name suggests, is the process of optimizing your social network app to make it appear on top of app store search results. This is done by plugging in keywords, using alt-tags, emphasizing on features, and using positive reviews and ratings to your advantage.
Similar to Search Engine Optimization of websites to make them appear on top of Google search results, this strategy helps create a trustworthy brand and boosts app traffic because people are likely to click on results that appear at the top of searches.
Google Search Ads
Using Google Search Ads is another way of advertising your app that’s built like LinkedIn. This is a paid form of advertisement and has proven to be highly effective among businesses of various industries. Google uses targeted ads to show your application on top of search results to people you choose based on geo-location, age and other demographic data. This helps you attract businesses, as well as young people looking for work.
Social Media Marketing
Pay-per-click ads can also be placed on social media just like Google search results. Both these ads work in similar ways in helping you increase brand exposure and download count for your app like LinkedIn. Additionally, merely posting on your own social media page is a free marketing option that offers a huge potential of reaching people worldwide through organic means.
It must be said that people are more likely to trust organic social media posts that they interact with rather than sponsored content. However, both still remain extremely powerful marketing tools in 2022 for your social networking application.
Mobile App Development Experience from Idea Maker
For more than half a decade, Idea Maker has excelled in helping businesses come up with creative solutions for their enterprise needs. Whether it’s a web application, a mobile application, or ERP and CMS software, we are experienced in carving your digital business solution that could grow your business to new avenues.
Recently, Idea Maker successfully came up with some social media applications that set an example as feature-packed platforms designed thoughtfully to target a niche.
One of these applications is Quick Friends, which is aimed at helping people connect with like-minded people via events and gatherings that are happening around them. With an integrated map feature that lets users see and host local events, workshops and gatherings, anyone interested could follow directions and join people who also enjoy doing things that they do. Quick Friends serves the purpose of connecting people with matching interests in real life. It also makes them more social and interactive. Rather than just sitting behind a computer screen, Quick Friends makes you go out and say “Hi” to that person who loves fishing or foraging for mushrooms as you do.
Another interesting application that we came up with is I Am Available. Just like the name suggests, this social media application lets users who are free and available to make new friends. Based on the concept of time and availability, I Am Available users can see other users who are available to talk at any hour of the day. This allows people to connect with others when they feel lonely, when they are awake at unnatural hours like the middle of the night or when they are just bored sitting in their room during the day. Helping maintain privacy and boundaries, this app makes sure people can connect or contact you only when you mark yourself “Available” within the app and are open to conversations.
Idea Maker prides itself in being one of the most innovative enterprises with a group of energetic and creative talent that can help you design, develop and implement your business solution. Whether you need to build an app like LinkedIn or an e-commerce website, we provide the best solutions and ideas that will take your business to new heights.
If you’re interested in taking the next step toward your financial growth, make sure to book a free appointment. We will make sure to reach out to you as soon as we can and work with you in turning your ideas into success.
