Building the Network
Create, engage and extend network community
OVERVIEW
I led the LinkedIn (LI) Network Growth design team. The team in collaborations with partners drove marketplace growth by leveraging experimentation, research, data insights along with member feedback.
One design strategy that I led during my tenure was for our Member “Follow” engagement, which was part of a broader LI program called Power Up. This strategy played a significant role in how our members created, engaged and extended their network community.
The Network Growth design team worked across 12-15 LI pillars aligning with core LinkedIn products and business solutions.
USER PROBLEMS
LinkedIn Member key pain points:
Members unsure of when to Follow or Connect to build community.
Frustration for both recipient and sender on connection request.
Members not understanding the benefits to simply following a member.
GOALS & OBJECTIVES
Implement a cross pillar strategy for Follows:
Allow Follow to be a Hero button on Profile to be adjusted by members.
Nudge members on Next Best Actions to take and reminders on interactions to take.
Focus on JTBD and quality of information.
Showcase members, LinkedIn products and business solutions more prominently upon Follow to build community.
BUILDING COMMUNITY
This project focuses on involving members in the growth process. Community principles done well:
Encourage and showcase SuperUsers
Foster Engagement and Interaction
User generated content
Reward contributors
Designs - Settings
“Follow” Button As The Main CTA
LinkedIn’s Rationale:
"When members follow you, they are more likely to see your content in their feed. This allows members to stay up to date with topics they care about and join your conversation.
We've heard from you that it can be overwhelming to receive a large volume of connection requests from people you do not know. This option makes it easy to establish a relationship and share your insights with people who are interested in what you have to say."
Jobs To Be Done
Feed
As a member I want to browse my feed to:
Spark ideas for professional growth
Feel like a part of a professional community
Stay current on topics, industries and companies of interest
Tia’s Story:
Tia is browsing her feed and discovers an out of network post by Jeff on a topic she cares about. When she reacts to the post, she is nudged to follow Jeff. Once she follows Jeff, she sees more content first recommendation from other creators similar to Jeff. Tia is interested in the post by Aarti and taps to read more about this post. Every piece of content and engagement are opportunities for Tia to grow her professional community and follow thought leaders.
Profile
As a member I visit a creator’s profile to:
Find the right people to get inspiration from
Access resources, practices shared by experts
Amala’s Story:
Amala is interested in the topic “workplace diversity.” She finds a post in her feed related to the topic and likes it. She is nudged to follow Leticia who speaks about a topic Amala cares about. Amala also discovers on Leticia’s profile that she publishes a newsletter on Diversity at Work. Amala subscribes to the newsletter and sees further relevant recommendations of newsletters that she can subscribe to.
Amala finds her feed enriched with information on topics that are relevant to her.
Search
As a member I want to search for topics that:
Sharpen my skills to stay relevant
Access experts on certain topics
Stay current on topics, industries and companies of interest
Estela’s Story:
Estela is searching for UX design, a topic that is relevant to her industry. She sees recommendations of creators who talk about UX design. She decides to follow Virgie and check other creators who speak about the topic. Her feed now contains content relevant to her interests from creators like Virgie.
Topic first recommendations
ASSUMPTION:
We will know the topics a member is interested in based on their activity on LinkedIn (i.e. interacting with posts).
EXAMPLES:
Feed - A content first carousel for a jobseeker “product design leaders who are hiring” and recommendations of creators to follow “recommended educators to follow”
My Network - “Top voices in psychology”
Profile - Recommending creators to follow “Top voices in industrial engineering” and strategic recommendations based on interest “newsletters recommended for you”
Search - Using hashtags “people who talk about #uxdesign”.
Approach
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Addressing Risk Factors
RISK: OVERCOMPLICATING
The risk involved working across 12-15 design teams, each with its own ideas on implementing the strategy. Additionally, teams faced resource constraints for design and engineering.
SOLUTION
To address this, we quickly engaged with our product team and mapped out a roadmap for the pillar teams to follow. We created use cases for each pillar team in Figma and organized our designs for easy review. My team took the lead for certain pillar teams to fully design the flow when there were limited design resources.
I, along with the product manager, worked with engineering to find opportunities for crossover work to address engineering resource challenges. During design jams, we collaborated with design leaders and product managers to ensure alignment and successfully complete the work.
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Overcoming Obstacles
OBSTACLE: LACK OF DETAIL AND TIME FOR EXPLORATION
One obstacle our design team faced was the pace at which the product team wanted to gain approved designs and move to the next pillar. The design team felt there wasn't enough detail in the use cases nor enough time to do explorations, especially with pillars we didn't have ownership over and needed to collaborate with the respective design team.
SOLUTION
To overcome this, I met with the product manager to discuss our design process. We reorganized the design sprints to allow for adequate exploration time and ensured that the product team provided detailed use cases in a timely manner to start each pillar. This approach facilitated better collaboration and more thorough design outcomes.
OUTCOMES & METRICS
10% Total Follows Increase
Follow creators upon sending a connection request led to a net 10% increase in total follows on the platform. This led to members having better feed experience and higher engaged sessions.
8% Increased Visibility
We experimented with a larger follow recommendation card design that led to an overall increase in follows and provided more visibility to creators on the platform. Followable moments on feed and profile when members interact with content or similar people that they are interested in led to an overall increase in member follows.
11.4% Member to Member
All these initiatives were bundled within the PowerUp program, which led to an overall 11.4% in member to member follow and boosted engaged feed sessions by 5%.