LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 722 million users worldwide. As a social media platform focused on career networking and opportunities, LinkedIn provides users with the ability to create professional profiles, connect with other professionals, join groups, follow companies, and apply for jobs.
With such a massive user base, brands and marketers are increasingly leveraging LinkedIn for social media marketing and advertising. As a result, understanding LinkedIn analytics is becoming more and more important for optimizing LinkedIn pages and ad campaigns. But does LinkedIn actually have built-in analytics?
Overview of LinkedIn Analytics
Yes, LinkedIn does have built-in analytics that allow page admins and advertisers to track the performance of their LinkedIn presence and ad campaigns. Here is an overview of the main LinkedIn analytics offerings:
LinkedIn Page Insights
LinkedIn Page Insights provide metrics and analytics for company, showcases, school, and nonprofit LinkedIn pages. With Page Insights, page admins can view data on:
- Page followers
- Page update reach and engagement
- Follower demographics
- Content topic performance
This allows page admins to understand what types of content and topics resonate best with their followers on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn Ad Analytics
LinkedIn also provides in-depth advertising analytics for all LinkedIn ad campaigns through Campaign Manager. LinkedIn ad analytics include:
- Impressions
- Clicks
- Engagement rate
- Cost per click (CPC)
- Cost per thousand impressions (CPM)
- Conversions
- Return on ad spend (ROAS)
These metrics allow advertisers to optimize their LinkedIn ads and improve performance over time. More advanced analytics are also available through LinkedIn’s Marketing Analytics and Sales Analytics products.
LinkedIn Matched Audiences
Matched Audiences is LinkedIn’s targeting offering that allows advertisers to create custom audience segments based on LinkedIn profile data and website visitors. The performance dashboard for Matched Audiences provides insight into audience size, audience optimization opportunities, and metrics like impression share and CTR for targeted vs. untargeted audiences.
Accessing LinkedIn Analytics
So LinkedIn definitely provides a robust analytics platform, but how do you actually access LinkedIn analytics? Here are the main ways page admins and advertisers can access LinkedIn data:
LinkedIn Page Insights
To view analytics for your LinkedIn Showcase Page, Company Page, School Page, or Nonprofit Page, navigate to the page and click “Insights” on the admin toolbar. This will display the Page Insights overview with follower demographics, update analytics, and more. You can dive deeper into specific content analytics by clicking on any post made by the page.
LinkedIn Campaign Manager
For LinkedIn ad analytics, first make sure you are using LinkedIn Campaign Manager to set up and manage your ad campaigns. LinkedIn Campaign Manager provides reporting on ad performance including metrics like clicks, conversions, CPM, and ROAS. Access Campaign Manager from the “Campaigns” tab when logged into LinkedIn Ads.
LinkedIn Audience APIs
Developers can also directly access LinkedIn analytics data through APIs like the Marketing Developers Platform for LinkedIn ad analytics and the Pages API for LinkedIn Page Insights. LinkedIn provides API documentation to guide technical users through setup and integration.
LinkedIn Analytics Exports
For more flexibility with the underlying LinkedIn data, page admins and advertisers can export Page Insights and Campaign Manager data into spreadsheets. On the Overview pages in both tools, click the “Export” button to download CSV files containing the analytics.
Key LinkedIn Analytics Reports
Now that we’ve covered how to access LinkedIn analytics, let’s look at some of the key reports page admins and advertisers should be monitoring and analyzing on a regular basis:
Follower Demographics
The Follower Demographics report in Page Insights shows the breakdown of your followers by industry, seniority, job function, company size, location, and more. Reviewing this regularly can help optimize your content strategy and messaging.
Update Performance
Analyze the reach, engagement, clicks, comments, shares, and likes for your page’s updates over time in Page Insights. Look for trends across different update types and topics.
Content Analytics
Dive into the performance analytics for specific pieces of content published on your LinkedIn page. Monitor engagement rates, clicks, likes, comments, and shares.
Ad Campaign Performance
Frequently check your LinkedIn ad campaign metrics like clicks, CTR, conversions, CPC, and ROAS in Campaign Manager. Compare performance across campaigns and audiences.
Audience Optimization
Review audience data for your LinkedIn target segments including size, optimization opportunities, and engagement rates. Continuously refine your audiences.
Tips for Using LinkedIn Analytics
Here are some top tips for putting LinkedIn analytics to work:
- Set clear goals and KPIs before analyzing LinkedIn data so you know what to focus on.
- Consult LinkedIn analytics before creating any new content or campaigns to identify your best-performing areas.
- Segment your data to understand differences across regions, audiences, content types, etc.
- Watch LinkedIn analytics trends over a significant time period, not just day-to-day.
- Use LinkedIn’s audience suggestions to expand your targeting with similar profiles.
- Tie LinkedIn data back to business goals like website traffic, conversions, and revenue.
Limitations of LinkedIn Analytics
While LinkedIn analytics provides a wealth of valuable data, it’s important to keep these limitations in mind:
- LinkedIn Page Insights only shows a portion of profile views and follower demographics.
- Company Page analytics do not include employees who follow the page.
- Full analytics require a Company Page, not a Personal Page.
- Some data like video metrics requires a premium account.
- Conversions and sales from LinkedIn activity is limited.
- Third-party demographic data beyond LinkedIn is not available.
Combining LinkedIn analytics with Google Analytics, social listening, and marketing automation can provide deeper insight. But overall, LinkedIn’s built-in analytics still offers an invaluable look at your LinkedIn marketing performance.
Conclusion
In summary, yes – LinkedIn does have robust built-in analytics through offerings like Page Insights, Campaign Manager, Matched Audiences, and exportable data. Page admins and advertisers should regularly access and analyze LinkedIn analytics reports to inform content strategies, audience targeting, ad optimization, and overall marketing effectiveness on the platform. While LinkedIn analytics has some limitations, it remains a critical source of data for maximizing success on the world’s top professional network.
