User Personas for LinkedIn

Disclaimer - I have used AI (ChatGPT) as a key tool in the research and creation of these personas as part of my own learning and use of these tools. Part of the evaluation of the task is to see how I can use these tools and the output they generate.

Platform : LinkedIn

Device Type : Desktop

Research Methods : Interviews and Social Media Monitoring.

The Interview Questions I (ChatGPT) asked to generate for users :

Demographics & Background

• What is your current role and industry?
• How long have you been using LinkedIn?
• How often do you check LinkedIn (daily, weekly, occasionally)?
• What other professional platforms or communities do you use?

Goals & Motivations

• What do you primarily use LinkedIn for? (e.g. finding a job, networking, learning, hiring, personal branding)
• What would make LinkedIn a “success” for you?
• Have you ever achieved a career win thanks to LinkedIn? If so, what was it?

Challenges & Frustrations

• What frustrates or confuses you most about using LinkedIn?
• Is there anything you avoid doing on LinkedIn? Why?
• Have you ever deleted a post or hesitated to comment? What held you back?

Behaviors & Engagement

How often do you:

• Post updates?
• Like or comment on others’ content?
• Apply for jobs through the platform?
• Connect with new people?
• What kind of content do you enjoy seeing in your feed?
• How do you decide whether to accept a connection request?

Attitudes & Beliefs

• How do you feel about people promoting themselves or their work on LinkedIn?
• Do you trust what people share on LinkedIn? Why or why not?
• What does “authentic” or “professional” mean to you on a platform like this?

Platform Use & Decision-Making

• When researching a company or role, how do you use LinkedIn?
• Have you ever messaged someone you don’t know on LinkedIn? What happened?
• What makes you follow or unfollow someone?

I then asked ChatGPT to review social Media sites (including LinkedIn) to assess the key personas.

ChatGPT was then asked to respond to the interview questions above as the personas identified to generate the information used to put together the personas for this work.

Included in the full project is the validation and sources used by ChatGPT in this analysis.

Conclusion:

The range of information available to AI and the speed at which it can collect it means it is a valuable tool to begin this sort of desk research to generate the basis of representative personas.

However it is important that the personas generated by AI are validated by further manual research, and continue to evolve with real research and not used as a replacement for real research data.