LinkedIn is the undisputed outright go-to professional networking platform for lead generation in FMCG. One of the most important features of LinkedIn is its search capabilities, however, due to the vast number of people on the platform, narrowing down searches can be quite the task.

To help you with your day to day searches we have put together a list of handy tips and tricks to help you refine your LinkedIn searches.

For those of you still wondering, a Boolean search, is a type of search allowing users to combine keywords with operators (or modifiers) such as AND, NOT and OR to produce more specific results.

When running searches, the options open to you, to run the perfect search are:

“” – Quotation Marks go a long way in refining your search to meet your exact inquiry. Yes, your results will be fewer in number but more relevant.

Eg- “Head of Digital”

[( )] – Parentheses help clarify your search to the search engine without creating any confusion in the process. This also helps the search engine in handling the order of importance.

NOT– This is your go-to tool when trying to exclude certain results.

Eg- “Marketing” NOT Director

AND – The most useful command to be used to get a match for 2 or more different searches. This also helps narrow down your search. Eg- Head of Digital AND Marketing

OR – This is useful when looking for larger results within a single search. It can help to lengthen your list without limiting your options. People may also use different keywords to describe their job positions or company name so in cases like that, the use of OR can help refine your search.

Eg- “Marketing Directors” OR “Customer Marketing Managers”

Things to Avoid

A common search mistake we often see is the mixing of OR and AND operators without parentheses, or, OR and NOT operators without parentheses. Since OR and AND, or OR and NOT have different precedence, it is important to put parentheses to make sure your intent is absolutely clear to the search engine.

Still following?

Great, make sure to have a go yourself when you are next seeking out some ideal prospects to target for lead generation!