At first glance, it might seem like LinkedIn offers very few features to help you gather data about the success (or failure) of your efforts. However, with a bit of digging (and knowing where to look), you can unearth a mountain of metrics and statistics.
At the same time, you can enhance that data with information and metrics available through third-party tools and websites. Some of these tools are free and others have price tags attached to them. It’s up to you to determine how serious you are about reaching your goals through LinkedIn and how much you want to track and spend to get that data. Several popular and affordable third-party metrics tools are discussed at the end of this chapter.
Of course, the metrics you track to measure your LinkedIn performance will vary depending on your LinkedIn goals. For example, if your LinkedIn goal is to land a new job, tracking ad performance would be completely irrelevant to you. It’s not that common for LinkedIn members to publish ads as part of their job search plan. On the other hand, if you’re a business trying to sell more products, a LinkedIn ad might be a perfect marketing tactic, and tracking the performance of that ad is critical to your overall business success.
Following are ten of the most common metrics that LinkedIn members can track using both internal LinkedIn features and external tools. You don’t have to track all of these, and it’s very likely that you’ll track more or different metrics. That’s perfectly fine. Remember, no two LinkedIn members have the exact same goals.
• Number of first-degree connections.
• Number of people in your extended network.
• Regional breakdown of where the people in your network are from.
• Breakdown of the top industries represented by people in your network.
• Number of times your profile shows up in LinkedIn searches.
• How many times people have looked at your profile (with a premium account, you can also see who looked at your profile along with the keywords they used that led them to it).
• Trends related to who has viewed your profile to track popularity (for premium account holders only).
• Who is sharing your updates and how frequently your LinkedIn updates are shared on LinkedIn and outside of LinkedIn (through external tools).
• How frequently your name or brand name is mentioned on LinkedIn and across the internet (through external tools).
• Trends related to connections, sharing content, activities, influence, and more (through external tools).
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Remember, LinkedIn is a powerful brand-building tool for both individuals and organizations of all kinds. Its strength comes from its ability to enable people and organizations to establish their expertise and credibility while developing relationships with people who share their content, talk about them, and build a brand buzz. This is a powerful form of word-of-mouth marketing! Those relationships and conversations typically lead to organic personal, career, or business growth.