LinkedIn is one of the most popular professional social media platforms, with over 800 million users worldwide. For businesses and professionals, LinkedIn can be a powerful tool to build brand awareness, generate leads, and drive engagement. But how do you know if your LinkedIn strategy is working? Measuring LinkedIn engagement rates is key.
LinkedIn engagement rate refers to the percentage of people engaging with your LinkedIn page and content, through actions like likes, comments, shares, and clicks. Calculating your engagement rates helps you understand how well your content resonates with your target audience. It also helps you optimize your approach to improve engagement over time.
Why Calculate LinkedIn Engagement Rates?
Here are some of the key reasons to measure LinkedIn engagement rates for your brand or business:
- Understand content performance: Engagement rates help you identify which types of content generate the most interest. This allows you to create more of what works.
- Benchmark goals: Engagement rates provide benchmarks to aim for and try to improve over time.
- Compare to competitors: See how your engagement stacks up to competitors in your industry.
- Inform your strategy: Discover what your audience cares about to inform content creation and promotion.
- Allocate resources: Focus time and effort on content or campaigns that drive the most engagement.
How to Calculate LinkedIn Engagement Rate
There are a few key metrics needed to calculate LinkedIn engagement rates:
- Impressions: The number of times your content is displayed.
- Engagements: The total number of reactions, comments, shares, and clicks.
The basic formula is:
Engagement Rate = (Engagements / Impressions) x 100
Let’s walk through an example. Say you published a LinkedIn post that received:
- 500 impressions
- 20 likes
- 5 comments
- 10 shares
- 100 clicks
The total engagements would be 20 + 5 + 10 + 100 = 135
Using the formula:
Engagement Rate = (135 engagements / 500 impressions) x 100 = 27%
This means your post achieved a 27% LinkedIn engagement rate, which is quite strong. The average post engagement rate tends to be around 1-3%.
Engagement Rate Benchmarks on LinkedIn
As a baseline, here are some typical LinkedIn engagement rate benchmarks for companies:
| Content Type | Good Engagement Rate | Great Engagement Rate |
|---|---|---|
| LinkedIn Company Page Post | 3-5% | 10%+ |
| Sponsored Content | 0.5-1% | 2%+ |
| LinkedIn Company Page Update | 20-30% | 50%+ |
However, engagement rates vary widely depending on your industry, audience size, and content type. The best way is to look at historical rates to identify engagement rate goals specific to your company.
How to Improve Your LinkedIn Engagement Rates
Once you know your current LinkedIn engagement rates, here are some tips to help improve them:
Post at Optimal Times
Pay attention to when your followers are most active on LinkedIn and post content during those high traffic windows. For most brands, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday tend to see the highest engagement.
Analyze Your Audience
Look at follower demographics like job role, industry, location, age group, gender, etc. Use this info to create content tailored to their preferences and needs.
Encourage Engagement in Your Posts
Ask questions, run polls, invite comments, and otherwise prompt your audience to engage with your content.
Reply to Comments and Messages
Being responsive shows followers you value them. This helps drive further engagement.
Use Visual Content Strategically
Posts with images, infographics, and videos tend to gain more engagement on LinkedIn. But ensure they are professional and relevant.
Partner With Influencers
Work with LinkedIn thought leaders to help expand your reach and credibility.
Run LinkedIn Ads and Sponsored Content
Paid promotions allow you to target the most relevant audiences to drive post engagement.
Diversify Your Content Mix
Post a variety of content types like articles, videos, discussions, images, etc. to provide value in different formats.
Integrate With Other Channels
Cross-promote your LinkedIn content on your other social media, website, email, and more.
Refine Based on Performance
Analyze your top and bottom performing content regularly. Double down on what works and improve weak areas.
Tools to Measure LinkedIn Engagement
Manually tracking engagements and calculating rates for all of your LinkedIn content can be tedious. Luckily, there are tools to help:
LinkedIn Analytics
LinkedIn’s built-in analytics provide engagement data for your company page, posts, articles, and more. You can access basic analytics for free with a LinkedIn Marketing account.
Sprout Social
This social media management tool offers comprehensive LinkedIn analytics and reporting. It has a native LinkedIn integration making it easy to manage your content and track performance in one place.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite also integrates LinkedIn so you can schedule content, monitor notifications, and track engagement rates.
Google Analytics
Track visitors to your LinkedIn page from Google Analytics. Connect your LinkedIn profile to GA to monitor page traffic, top landing pages, and more.
SentiOne
This social listening platform provides analytics on brand mentions, sentiment, keywords, and competitors across social channels including LinkedIn.
Socialinsider
Socialinsider’s AI-powered platform performs in-depth analysis on your LinkedIn activity such as best posting times, top performing content, follower demographics, and more.
BuzzSumo
Enter any LinkedIn URL into BuzzSumo to analyze engagement data like total shares, top sharers, and share rates over time.
Rival IQ
Rival IQ offers robust LinkedIn performance analytics to help benchmark your metrics against competitors.
Tips for Tracking Engagement Data
To make the most of measuring LinkedIn engagement rates, here are a few best practices:
- Monitor rates weekly or monthly to spot trends over time.
- Break down performance by content type, topic, format, author, etc.
- Compare rates across your business pages, employee accounts, groups, ads, and more.
- Set benchmarks for each channel and content category.
- Track rates on both organic and paid content.
- Document what works to inform future content creation.
- Share results with your marketing team to identify improvement areas.
Conclusion
Calculating LinkedIn engagement rates provides tangible metrics to benchmark the performance and ROI of your LinkedIn presence. While rates vary greatly, the strategies above can help boost your engagement over time. Consistently monitoring LinkedIn analytics will enable you to refine your approach to better connect with audiences.
Focus on quality over quantity by developing trusted relationships with your followers. With the right mix of content and community building, your LinkedIn engagement rates will become an invaluable asset.
