In today’s digital era, social and professional networking has become important to social, career, and business growth. Platforms like LinkedIn have given a new way of connecting with professionals, sharing insights, and collaborating globally with professionals and businesses.
LinkedIn has enabled users to list their professional profiles and helped them connect with other professionals and companies. Connections provide a way to learn more skills, get new job opportunities, and work.
LinkedIn is very popular among professionals, so many entrepreneurs prefer to create their own websites, providing similar looks and services. The similar look, feel and services help the niche audience to easily use the new professional community. Once the audience gets well-versed with the website and mobile applications, slight changes can be made according to the requirements.
With the blog below, we want to walk you through the process of creating a LinkedIn clone website and mobile apps, providing details on why and how to create a website using PHP, MYSQL, readymade scripts, and the benefits of using platforms like SocialEngine.
Table of Contents
2. Why Should One Use a LinkedIn Clone?
3. Who All Are Using LinkedIn Clones?
4. How to Create Your Own LinkedIn Clone?
5. Ready-Made Scripts Available to Create a LinkedIn Clone
6. Benefits of Choosing SocialEngine to Create a LinkedIn Clone
7. Plugins, Themes & Apps You Can Use to Create LinkedIn Clone
What is a LinkedIn Clone?
It’s a platform that provides duplicate functionality of core features of LinkedIn like status updates posting, business pages, job posting, professional networking via connections and following, content sharing, group discussions, and ads.
Clone scripts have all the core functionalities and scripts with white-lable codes can also be customized as per the requirements and concept of the niche communities.
Why Should One Use a LinkedIn Clone?
Creating a LinkedIn clone allows businesses and developers to:
- Cater to Specific Audiences: You can use the clone to address niche markets by providing features and UX with which your audience is already familiar.
- Monetization Opportunities: You can earn revenue through membership subscriptions, advertisements, and premium features.
- Brand Building: You can use a LinkedIn clone to create your website to establish a unique platform to promote professional growth within a particular community.
- Customizability: You can customize features according to your users’ requirements, specific industries, or demographics that cater to the unique needs of your audience, beyond what LinkedIn offers.
Who All Are Using LinkedIn Clones?
Several developers, organizations, and entrepreneurs have leveraged LinkedIn clones to build thriving communities. Common examples include:
- Industry-Specific Networks: The platforms that are dedicated to healthcare professionals, engineers, artists, etc use clone websites.
- Educational Institutions: Educational sections like alumni networks, professional development communities for students, etc are using clone websites.
- Corporate Networks: Many organizations use clone scripts for their internal professional platforms for large organizations.
- Freelancers: Businesses that are focused on connecting freelancers with potential clients use clone websites.
How to Create Your Own LinkedIn Clone?
Building a LinkedIn clone involves several steps. Let’s take a look at a few of them below:
1. Define Your Niche and Objectives
The very first step of developing a LinkedIn website is to first identify your niche and target audience. You should also do thorough research on some unique features you can provide you with that they lack in any other social media site. At the start only you should clarify the purpose and motto of your platform and its key differentiators.
2. Choose the Right Technology Stack
The next step is the time to decide on the tools, frameworks, and technologies you will use to develop your website.
3. Design the User Interface (UI)
Focusing on creating an intuitive and user-friendly design is equally important. The design of your website should be such that it aligns with your audience’s expectations.
4. Develop Core Features
You must focus on including essential functionalities such as:
- Profile creation, including Multiple Profile Types if required.
- Profile management
- Connections and networking
- Messaging and notifications
- Job postings
- Content sharing and groups
5. Testing
Once you are done with completing the development of your website, you should conduct rigorous testing to identify and fix any issues.
6. Launch
As soon as you are done with testing, you should select a suitable server launch the platform, and gather user feedback for continuous improvement.
7. Maintenance
As more and more users join your platform, new feature requirements and changes will be required by them. There would be some technology upgrades as well which will require your attention for continuous maintenance of your clone social networking site.
Ready-Made Scripts Available to Create a LinkedIn Clone
Various pre-built script options can save time and resources. Some popular options include:
- SocialEngine: A highly customizable and feature-rich platform for building social networking websites. With the Drag and Drop feature in the Layout Editor of the admin panel, you can easily set up your website yourself.
- BuddyPress: A WordPress plugin that can turn your site into a social network with a restricted feature set.
- PeepSo: Another WordPress plugin is known for providing features to help you set up social networking sites.
Benefits of Choosing SocialEngine to Create a LinkedIn Clone
Among all the available alternatives, SocialEngine stands out as an excellent choice for creating a LinkedIn clone due to:
- Monetization Opportunities: With paid memberships, paid user verification, ads, etc you can easily monetize from your clone website.
- Ease of Customization: SocialEngine is a robust social networking PHP script that is easy to customize. You can easily tailor the features and designs to meet your specific requirements.
- Scalability: SocialEngine and an appropriate server can seamlessly handle growing user bases and increasing demands. SocialEngine does not limit the number of users or content on your website.
- Extensive Plugins: Using SocialEnigne you can enhance the functionality of your website with a wide range of plugins, extensions, themes, and mobile apps.
- Community Support: As SocialEngine provides access to a supportive community of developers and users, you can take advantage of the same.
- Cost-Effectiveness: SocialEngine comes in 2 types of pricing models – Self-hosted and cloud-based subscription. You can save on development costs with affordable pricing.
Plugins, Themes & Apps You Can Use to Create LinkedIn Clone
1. LinkedIn Clone Theme: You can use LinkedIn Clone Theme to build your social network for connecting professionals.
2. Advanced Job Plugin: It’s the best-suited plugin to help you set up a website that will help you hire as many professional employees as you want. For the Jobs, Job Owners can add Company Information, Job Information, Job Details, and Custom dates while posting jobs over which other interested candidates can apply by filling in their details and uploading the resume to the job owner.
3. Resume Builder Plugin: You can use the resume builder plugin to enable your users to effortlessly create professional resumes on your website.
4. Advanced iOS and Android Mobile Apps: You can use advanced iOS and Android Mobile apps that have more features and job integrations for better user experience helping more traffic on your website.
Or, you can purchase the LinkedIn Clone Package. It is a full-fledged bumper package that enables you to give a complete look just like Linkedin to your SE-based website. It consists of 26+ highly configurable products that help you to create Jobs, Groups, Events, Blogs, Members, News, Ads, Q&A, Videos & Channels, etc. on your professional social network.
Start building your Online Community Platform with SocialEngine and enhance your social engagements.
Conclusion
Creating a LinkedIn clone is an exciting venture that can help you build a professional networking platform tailored to specific needs. Whether you’re targeting a niche audience or creating a broad-based professional community, platforms like SocialEngine offer the tools and flexibility to turn your vision into reality. By following the steps outlined above, you can successfully launch a website and mobile app that fosters meaningful connections and growth.
Are you ready to create your LinkedIn clone? Start today and make a difference in the world of professional networking!
