LinkedIn is the #1 channel for B2B marketers to distribute content. And it makes sense, considering 80% of all B2B social media leads come from the professional platform.
But planning and posting content is just one half of your LinkedIn marketing strategy. You also need to track the right metrics and analyze the performance of your posts to win on the platform.
In this article, you’ll learn about LinkedIn analytics, which metrics to track and how to make the most of this data when it comes to improving your LinkedIn strategy.
- What are LinkedIn analytics?
- LinkedIn analytics metrics to know
- How to make the most of LinkedIn analytics
- LinkedIn analytics tools
- Use LinkedIn analytics to create a data-drive strategy
What are LinkedIn analytics?
LinkedIn analytics is a collection of metrics that helps you measure the effectiveness of your posts, updates and strategy on the platform.
It’s statistical data that provides valuable insight into who your audience is, and how they’re responding to your company page and its content.
How to access LinkedIn analytics
You can easily access the native LinkedIn analytics tool from your dashboard. Follow the steps below to start tracking data on the platform:
- Sign in to your LinkedIn account
- Head over to your company page
- Click on the Analytics drop-down from the menu
- Click on the tab you want to view metrics for
Note: You must be a page admin or have “analyst” access to track analytics.
Why track LinkedIn analytics
Tracking LinkedIn analytics helps you learn about your page’s overall performance, your audience and the kind of content people want to see more of.
For example, you can find out where your audience is located, which posts they’re interacting the most with and what type of content is driving the most traffic to your website.
This information allows you to shape your marketing strategy in a way that it delivers maximum ROI and helps you achieve your goals.
Analytics also help you understand how you stack up against the competition. This lets you set realistic benchmarks and plan better content in the future.
LinkedIn analytics metrics to know
Having access to so much data can get overwhelming. But you don’t have to fixate on each metric you see.
Depending on your goals, you must know which metrics need your attention and what they mean for your business.
Here are some key LinkedIn metrics marketers should know about:
Visitor analytics
LinkedIn visitor analytics help you learn about the people viewing your company page on the platform. These people are not necessarily followers or customers of your business, but they’ve shown some level of interest in your LinkedIn presence.
- Page views: The total number of times your page was viewed during a specified date range. This metric includes multiple views from the same user.
- Unique visitors: The total number of unique users that have viewed your company page. This number excludes multiple visits from the same user, which makes it a good indicator of how many people have shown interest in your profile.
- Visitor demographics: This section shows who’s viewing your company page. You can filter this information by location, industry, job, company size and seniority.
Keep track of profile impressions using tools like Sprout Social, measuring day-to-day changes in addition to averages over time.
Follower analytics
Followers represent people who have actively subscribed to your company page and content. In a way, they make up your brand’s community on LinkedIn.
Understanding who your followers are and where they’re coming from helps you create more engaging content. Plus, you’re able to assess the popularity of your brand on the platform.
- Total followers: The total number of users following your company page. Depending on your goals and industry, the follower count reflects your brand’s popularity and trust.
- Follower trends: You can track the number of new followers within any given date range. Are your followers increasing or decreasing over time? The follower metrics graph also shows whether there’s a sudden drop or spike in followers.
- Organic followers: The number of followers you gained without spending money on advertising. These users found you through search engines, shares or feeds, and have shown genuine interest in your brand or content.
- Sponsored followers: The number of followers you gained through advertising. This metric helps you gauge the success of sponsored posts and campaigns.
- Follower demographics: This section helps you learn about who your followers are. You can filter this data by location, seniority, industry, company size and job function. Use demographics to create more targeted content followers resonate with.
Here’s what audience demographics look like in Sprout Social, broken up clearly by seniority and job function.
Engagement analytics
LinkedIn engagement analytics help you learn about the performance of your campaigns, posts and videos. Specifically, you can find out whether your content is resonating with the target audience and how they’re responding to it.
- Impressions: The number of times your post was shown to LinkedIn users.
- Video views: The number of times your video content was watched by users.
- Reactions: The number of people who reacted to your post. LinkedIn reactions include Like, Celebrate, Support, Funny, Love, Insightful and Curious. Getting a reaction means your content has elicited a response (read: engagement).
- Comments: The total number of comments on your post. Getting the conversation started is a prime indicator of engaging content. Tracking comments also tells you which topics resonate most with your target audience.
- Shares: The number of times your post was shared by LinkedIn users. Posting shareable content helps you increase reach, visibility and brand awareness.
- CTR: The click-through rate (CTR) is a percentage of the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions on a post. This metric shows the extent to which your content is inspiring the audience to click on your company name, content or logo.
- Follows: The total number of Follow clicks on your sponsored content.
- Engagement rate: LinkedIn calculates the engagement rate using a standard formula: Clicks + Likes + Comments + Shares + Follows / Impressions. This metric is expressed as a percentage and sums up the average engagement level of a post.
Here’s an example of how you can track visual engagement data for LinkedIn in Sprout’s dashboard.
How to make the most of LinkedIn analytics
Knowing what each metric means is not enough.
To win on the platform, you need to analyze and leverage this data to create strategic content that clicks with your target audience.
Here are four ways to use LinkedIn analytics to boost your marketing strategy:
1. Know who your audience is
Understand your audience by looking at your visitor and follower demographics.
- Where are most of your followers located?
- What industries or departments do they work in?
- Are they entry-level employees or do they hold senior positions?
Doing so will help you create more relevant content that’s more likely to attract leads and drive conversions.
You can also find out whether there’s a discrepancy between your visitor demographics and your followers. This could indicate a disconnect between the content you’re sharing and the information on your page.
2. Understand your audience’s behavior
Use LinkedIn analytics to learn about how your audience interacts with your posts and content from other brands in your industry.
- What motivates your audience to engage with your content?
- Are they more receptive to certain topics or formats?
- How much does your audience like to share content?
Every audience is different. Understanding how yours behaves will help you set realistic goals, spark engagement, schedule posts and create better content.
3. Understand what type of content works best
Some content types get more engagement over others. This could be due to audience preferences, the nature of your business, your brand voice or the LinkedIn algorithm.
Track the performance of your posts to understand what content gets you the most engagement, traffic and overall results.
For example, you might find videos get more views and comments than written or image-only posts. You may also realize that asking thought-provoking questions or running polls gets you more engagement.
Whatever it is, learning about what works well requires both experimentation and analysis. Try different content types and formats, but also continuously track analytics to learn what works and what doesn’t. Then, replicate your success to grow on the platform.
4. Reveal new topics and trends
Tracking LinkedIn analytics can help you stay on top of trending topics in your industry.
For example, you can see which posts are getting more engagement and whether there are certain topics your audience is showing more interest in.
You can also look at competitor analytics to see if they’re getting more engagement all of a sudden. Check out their pages to analyze the topics they’re posting about.
LinkedIn analytics tools
LinkedIn’s native analytics lets you track metrics related to overall page performance, visitor and follower demographics and individual post engagement.
But if you want to dig deeper, you might want to use a more robust social media analytics tool to extract in-depth data.
Below are two popular LinkedIn analytics tools for professional marketers:
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management platform that lets you track in-depth analytics for LinkedIn and other social media networks — all from a single dashboard.
Track metrics for organic and sponsored posts, learn about your audience, and keep tabs on growth and engagement for multiple company pages.
Generate comprehensive reports or customize them based on chosen metrics. You can also compare your performance with competitors to benchmark KPIs.
Additionally, Sprout offers LinkedIn management tools for easily planning and publishing content as well as engaging with your audience.
Inlytics
Inlytics is a specialized LinkedIn analytics platform that lets you monitor performance, optimize your profile, and keep track of engagement and audience data.
Its clean, visual dashboard displays real-time and historical analytics to help you understand your content’s effectiveness.
You can also collaborate with team members, schedule your posts and publish better content with data-driven recommendations and insights.
Use LinkedIn analytics to create a data-driven strategy
Tracking LinkedIn analytics is key to growing on the platform.
Learning about your audience and campaigns helps you create more effective strategies and spend money where it matters.
More importantly, you’re able to connect with your followers, build brand awareness, expand your network and generate a loyal following with the help of data-driven content.
Check out our latest social media trends report to find out how you can succeed on LinkedIn and other platforms in 2022 and beyond.
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