Understand LinkedIn Analytics To Grow Your Company Page

LinkedIn has slowly but steadily crawled to the top and become the most preferred social platform for company growth.

The majority of Marketers, CMO’s and Managers are looking at LinkedIn as more than just a hiring platform. Thanks to its new features, LinkedIn has become a key piece when it comes to content marketing strategies, especially for B2B firms.

While a great company page is the first piece of the puzzle, utilizing the platform to your benefit can be a bit more challenging.

What many professionals miss out on is an essential part of the LinkedIn strategy i.e understanding the Analytics

LinkedIn has a great guide on understanding the basics of analytics. The details of all the metrics with their meaning and usage can be studied here to get insights into LinkedIn page performance.

Today we take it a step further and hunt what LinkedIn analytics means and how to use it to your firm’s benefit.

As an Admin you have complete access to the analytics section of the Linkedin Company page.

In this section, a few of the most important metrics to track are:

• Competitor data – To have a quick overview of how your firm stacks up against competitors
• Updates – Understand which posts are performing better
• Number of unique visitors and page views – If your content is good enough people might want to have a look at your company page and this is where you track it

If you notice I have not mentioned followers in the above metrics. Here’s why.

While a majority of firms obsess over the number of followers it is not the best way to measure how your firm is performing on LinkedIn

A greater chunk of followers for the company page is its employees. If a firm has 10k employees, it’s obvious that the firm will have a higher number of followers as compared to a firm with 3k followers.

Hmm, if follower count isn’t everything, then what do we analyze?

Understanding the numbers alone is not enough. The why and what of these numbers are of utmost importance.

Analyze the context behind the metrics

When you analyze a particular metric try to understand what works and why. The numbers alone do not present a complete picture. They can be misleading and result in incorrect analysis and hamper the overall strategy.

Let me ask you something.

Take a look at the below graph. It looks great right? We see a few spikes that mean we were doing well with the number of visitors on the page.

What do you think is the reason for the spike in the number of visitors?

If your answer is – the posts were performing well – you are in for a surprise.

Read along.

To analyze the graph completely here is what we did at Synclarity.

We inspected the reason for this spike and checked the date with the corresponding activity – recent posts around that date, company mentions as well as related posts from the leadership team. On analyzing the impressions and number of clicks we were sure that the posts engagement wasn’t the reason for the spike.

Well, then what was it?

The number of people visiting the page had gone up due to a job posting.

Lesson learned – a spike or higher numbers for that matter, does not necessarily translate into overall growth.

So the next time you check the numbers be sure to ask how and why these numbers grew. Your goal should be to increase the post engagement rather than running behind the number of followers.

Company post should be the catalyst that drives visitors and followers to your page in an ideal scenario.

How to increase LinkedIn Post Engagement

Let’s first understand what is trending on LinkedIn right now.

The easiest way to understand what works on LinkedIn is to scroll through your feed. Notice that apart from paid promotions the highest number of engagement is garnered by text-based posts, personal posts, polls, etc.

Creating engaging content might seem difficult but there are a few companies that have cracked the code and are performing extremely well.

These companies have a clear understanding of their audience base (personas) and accordingly deliver content that resonates with the audience. They also include trending post formats in their LinkedIn strategy.

Let’s analyze the Kissflow Inc LinkedIn page.

• While the post engagement looks low (36) notice that there are 1141 votes, which means 1141 people didn’t just view the post but also interacted with it. Keeping it light yet relevant surely worked here.

Analysis – Users today like to be engaged through polls. They want their voice to be heard in the form of their opinions (here selecting one of the poll options).  

Image credits: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kissflow/posts 

• The engagement is quite good with 93 reactions and 141 likes for posts that feature employees. Human-centric posts as we like to call them are LinkedIn favorites.

Analysis: Promoting a person/employee on LinkedIn is the best way to reach a wider audience. You don’t just tap into your followers but also reach the people following the said person.

Remember these posts have to be of your actual employee/ personal posts. A sales post would never work.

Image credits: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kissflow/posts 

• The video gathered good engagement with 72 and 239 likes. Targeted messaging through videos that resonate with the audience is a sure-shot way to win the hearts and the ‘likes’.

Analysis: Live videos and native videos ( videos posted directly on LinkedIn ) tend to perform better. LinkedIn promotes native content that makes users stick to the platform, that is why any posts with external links to youtube videos, forms, etc won’t get a higher engagement.

Image credits: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kissflow/posts 

Apart from delivering great content, Kissflow is killing it with the way they have optimized the company page.

The cover image is on point with award details mentioned and a clearly defined company profile.

The products tab showcases their two products with details.

The page has been optimized for the user to get a crystal clear vision of what Kissflow is all about.

Image credits: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kissflow

Things to avoid on LinkedIn 

Since we have talked about what works, let’s also discuss what doesn’t. Metrics talk and we definitely don’t want them to tell a story of failures.

Here are a few things to keep in mind to avoid low engagement on posts:

• Links in posts – The goal of any social network is to keep their audience engaged on its platforms. As a foundational principle then content that aids in people sticking to the platform is incentivized via reach. Higher reach leads to higher chances of engagement, shares, and amplification; in other words, your content shows up in more user feeds. This is the basis on which every social media platform functions and Linkedin is no different.  Therefore, as much as possible avoid external links in the main body of your caption.
  This means instead of posting a youtube video; post a video natively on Linkedin. Similarly, instead of sharing a blog post directly – you could take a small snippet of the blog, publish it as a post, and in the first comment – put in the link to the blog.
• External videos – Download a video snippet to upload as a LinkedIn post rather than sharing the link. Trust me it might seem unnecessary and time-consuming but it would surely move up those likes.
• Pushy content strategy – Posting content that is irrelevant to your audience or hard sell posts talking only about products isn’t a great fit for LinkedIn strategy. Analyze what works for your audience and post content that they want to consume.

Image source: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegerhardt; https://www.linkedin.com/in/stewarthillhouse/; https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshleyner/ 

Optimize Content Strategy for Linkedin

Since we now know what works and what does not, it’s time to bundle it up into a well-defined content marketing strategy that helps your business grow.

Track the post-performance in the updates section. See which posts are performing well and which are not.

Use the metrics to understand the post engagement. How many people are you able to reach? Are people engaging with your content? If yes, what do they like?

If the overall post-performance is not going up, try to experiment with newer pieces of content.

Since we now know that simple content drives engagement, move away from any excuse to not utilize LinkedIn to your advantage.

Embrace simple & relevant content, accordingly draft a content strategy that will help you grow.

Promote Thought Leadership

LinkedIn is all about networking and the best way to further strengthen your content marketing strategy is to hone in on company leaders as influencers.

Yes, you heard it right. Influencers need not only be famous individuals with a huge number of followers.

A company leader can also be an influencer in their field. A thought leader in the making who shares his/her expertise on current topics for a specific industry is sure to attract the right people.

Here’s how company members can utilize the platform to benefit the firm with personal branding:

• Strategic connections – Think of this as networking in any gathering. You connect and interact with people who either share the same interests as you or those who have similar goals.
  The same idea can be applied to LinkedIn connections as well, you just need to connect to the right people with the help of LinkedIn’s advanced search. This could be a great source of lead-generating connections, especially for B2B firms. You can connect with the decision-makers, indirect influencers, other industry experts, etc.

• Industry expert – Share thought-provoking posts that engage the audience. Your opinions on recent industry news and trends will help you be seen as a trusted source of information and eventually a thought leader in the industry.
• Be active – Share posts regularly, interact with other posts. Reshare your interviews, guest speaker sessions, etc on your feed to further establish trust.

Let’s take a look at Mr. Suresh Sambandam who has a whopping 75000+ followers. His activity feed is full of posts on leadership, public speaking events, inspirational entrepreneurship-related posts, etc.

Image source: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sureshsambandam/ 

If you are rethinking your Linkedin Strategy then definitely add building thought leadership to the agenda.

Regularly posting from personal accounts along with other company posts can further strengthen your brand presence.

To sum it up, LinkedIn is pushing more of what people like, and currently, people are fond of polls, human content, and thought-provoking insights.

These trends are hidden in plain sight on our feeds.

Posts that are simple and help people connect to your brand done consistently can be a great way to stay relevant and drive engagement.

If you find this piece of content relevant, then comment below and share it with fellow marketers, colleagues, and thought leaders in the making who can benefit from this read.