Home to 850M members, 59M companies, 128K schools, and 39K skills, LinkedIn is a networking necessity for all companies and professionals – if you’re not a member, you should be. However, joining LinkedIn and becoming a member is not all it takes to gain some traction. Whether the goal is growth, leads, connectivity, or establishing credibility, dissecting analytics should be a key part of your social strategy. But how do you do this? Follow our guide to LinkedIn analytics below.

How to Access Analytics

LinkedIn analytics are only accessible for those who are admins of company accounts. Navigate to the company page you manage, and you will notice the Analytics dropdown.

LinkedIn Metrics

Within the Analytics dropdown, you will notice 5 metrics:

• Visitors
• Updates
• Followers
• Competitors
• Leads

Let’s take a closer look at each metric.

Visitors

When managing a LinkedIn page, it is important to understand what demographics you ideally want to cater to. Within the Visitors page, you can discover your company’s LinkedIn audience. Is this your ideal audience? Are there strategies you can take to reach a different audience if necessary? 

Updates

Updates refers to posts from your company’s page. In this section, you can specify any timeframe that you would like to discover analytics. Within the Updates section are additional metrics:

• Impressions: # of times the update was shown to a user (including repeat views from individual users)
• Unique Impressions: # of unique users that saw the update (does not include repeat views)
• Clicks: # of times users click the link in bio
• Reactions: total # of reactions on each individual update
• Comments: total # of comments on each individual update
• Shares: total # of shares on each individual update
• Engagement Rate: calculated as: (clicks + likes + comments + shares + follows) / impressions
• Update Title: title of the post
• Posted By: who on your team posted the update
• CTR (Click Through Rate): calculated as: clicks / impressions

Analyzing these metrics allows you to optimize your company’s future feed according to what posts are/are not successful (specific to your company’s LinkedIn social strategy).

Followers

Follower growth on LinkedIn is essential for community growth. In this section of analytics, you will notice the following metrics:

• Total Followers: the amount of followers your company page has
• New Followers: the amount of new followers within the time frame selected
• Organic Followers: followers gained without ad spend
• Sponsored Followers: followers gained through paid ads
• Job Function: jobs of your company’s followers
• Company Size: size of company your follower works in
• Industry: industry your follower works in
• Location: where your followers are living
• Seniority: job level of followers

Understanding these metrics, can you adjust your posts to target a more specific audience?

Competitors

The Competitors metric analyzes your company’s performance in comparison to your competitors. This feature is only accessible via desktop. The following metrics are provided within this page:

• Follower metrics: provides a count of all time followers and new followers gained within the specified time range
• Organic content metrics: provides organic content metrics within the specified time range

Leads

This metric is specific for companies who introduce Lead Generation Campaigns. Once a Lead Gen is established on your page, this page will show the status of the forms and provide the number of leads collected from your page. 

Important LinkedIn Metrics to Track

As seen above, LinkedIn provides an ample amount of metrics available for company pages. However, is routinely measuring and reporting these analytics manageable? For a lot of companies, the answer is probably no. Here are some basic metrics to track:

Impressions

If you are ready to monitor page performance, you should be interested in monitoring post performance. How much are your posts getting noticed? How many peoples’ feeds are your posts making an appearance? What trends are you seeing within your posts impressions, and how can you adapt to optimize future posts?

Engagement Rate

Engagement rate helps you note which posts are performing well. Posts with a high engagement rate are important to track as they resonated with users, or users showed interest. Why did people want to engage with your post? What can consistent engagement lead to?

CTR

Click through rate is the next step from engagement. Who took their time to take in and click on your content? A great way to motivate users to click through is by including a call to action in your post.

Reactions, Comments, & Shares

If your post is receiving reactions, comments, or shares, it is a motivator for feedback. These factors all fall within engagement rate, and are significantly important when aiming to keep your engagement rate high.

Applying this Guide to Your LinkedIn Practices

LinkedIn Analytics is a great resource for any company’s social strategy. Following and auditing your metrics allows you to optimize your company’s future feed, which can eventually help reach your marketing goals.