LinkedIn Content Search – a new Opportunity for Marketers

Over recent years we’ve seen LinkedIn placing an ever greater focus on user-generated content. The trend deepened late last month, when the business-focused network announced the launch of a new set of search features, designed to improve the experience of browsing content on the platform.

The new features include:

1. Feed search function – enter keywords to search content previously featured on your feed. LinkedIn say this feature will help users to rediscover articles they have read and enjoyed in the past.
2. Topic search – search a topic keyword to find a wealth of articles relating to your industry. Features autocomplete search suggestions and options to refine your search. This feature’s focus on topics reminds us of the Chinese search engine, Baidu Tieba.
3. Hashtag search – add hashtags to your posts and other users will be able to use LinkedIn search to find them. You can restrict the audience for your hashtagged post to your circle of connections, using your privacy settings.

Why this is a great opportunity for marketers:

These new search features are going to transform LinkedIn – for those who wish to use it as such – into a vast archive of business content. In theory, the platform could provide a more focused alternative to Google search for online research into all things business-related.

This represents an opportunity for digital marketers. Using the well-worn skills of SEO and hashtagging, you could propel your content up the rankings on an entirely new platform, where the competition is limited to the more proactive users of a single social network, rather than the entire indexed internet.

At this stage it’s unclear how exactly LinkedIn’s search algorithm will compare to Google’s or Bing’s – but the first marketers to get a handle on the essentials will stand to attract plenty of traffic and engagements.

Here’s what we do know about LinkedIn content search:

• Default search ranking is by relevance – but users can also order results by most recent.
• Followers, author profile and previous posts are listed with each result – could these be ranking factors?
• Prolific authors are listed in the left-hand column, with the option to list results by a single author. Becoming a featured author would be a valuable reward for a dedicated user of the platform.
• Content engagements may also be ranking factors.
  We look forward to hearing your thoughts on LinkedIn content search. Could this be the new Google search for business content?