In our last post, I talked about the power of LinkedIn publishing. To harness that power to its full potential, you want to be sure your posts reach the right audience: your target market. LinkedIn post analytics allows you to do just that.
The post analytics tool is available for free with a LinkedIn Basic account (here’s a quick refresher on the differences between LinkedIn Basic and Premium accounts), and you can navigate to the post analytics page by clicking the “View stats” button under your Profile Updates tab, or directly from a LinkedIn post.
How Your Post is Doing
The traffic timeline lets you see how many views your posts received over the last 7, 15, or 30 days; the last 6 months; or the last year. Viewing traffic over the last month can help you identify which days of the week your posts see the most traffic. Use this to inform your content strategy: for example, if more people tend to read your posts on Tuesdays, that is the best time to publish and promote your content to maximize audience reach.
Conveniently, the timeline also shows whether your promotional efforts are paying off. If you share your post to a LinkedIn Group, you should see a spike in views. If you don’t, that may be a sign that this particular Group is not be the best way to reach your target audience with that type of content. (See our post on how to use LinkedIn Groups effectively for how to pick the right Groups to promote your business.)
Demographics of Your Readers
The Demographics section breaks down your audience by industry, job title, and location, letting you know exactly who reads your content. This section also summarizes Top Traffic Sources to your posts, such as Google Search, LinkedIn Pulse, Groups, and so on. Depending on what source drives the most readers, you can tailor future posts to either capture more of that traffic or to stimulate traffic from other sources. For example, if most of your traffic comes from Groups, that proves the time you’ve invested into actively posting in Groups has paid off. Or if you don’t see as much traffic from Google as you would like, it may be time to look into optimizing your content for search engines with SEO.
Most importantly, the Demographics section clearly answers the question: are your posts are reaching their intended audience? If you are trying to reach a certain group, say, founders and business owners in the Health, Wellness, and Fitness industry, LinkedIn post analytics let you see at a glance if your content resonates with that group.
Who’s Responding to Your Post
LinkedIn post analytics also displays the specific individuals who like, comment, and share your posts, and lets you send them a thank you message directly from the analytics page. I recommend utilizing this tool to nurture leads and build your LinkedIn network by reaching out to those members who regularly interact with your content. The context of a post provides a natural platform to interact with your target audience and familiarize them with your business, building a foundation of trust that helps create future clients.
Posting on LinkedIn is one of the best ways to reach your target audience, generate leads, and grow your network — but without knowing who your readers are, you may as well be going in blind. LinkedIn post analytics tell you what you need to know to target your posts to reach the right readers and drive maximum results.
For any questions about LinkedIn Publishing or post analytics, you are welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn or email me at: jabraham@abraham-global-marketing.websitepro.hosting
