{"id":3767,"date":"2022-08-31T09:30:17","date_gmt":"2022-08-31T09:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/?p=3767"},"modified":"2022-09-07T11:41:00","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T11:41:00","slug":"why-your-linkedin-social-media-deserves-more-attention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.echobox.com\/resources\/blog\/why-your-linkedin-social-media-deserves-more-attention\/","title":{"rendered":"Why your LinkedIn social media strategy deserves more attention"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why do brands use LinkedIn as a social media platform?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Traditionally, most businesses viewed LinkedIn as simply a convenient way to recruit prospective employees. Increasingly, though, many social media teams are coming round to the idea that LinkedIn is a social media platform as essential for brand-building and content distribution as Facebook, Twitter and others. In fact it has certain important advantages over its social platform peers.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to a 2020 survey by Business Insider, LinkedIn was the <\/span>most trusted social media platform<\/span><\/a> for US-based respondents. And with a user base standing at a none-too-shabby <\/span>850 million members<\/span><\/a> across the world, LinkedIn offers businesses a respectable platform with significant reach.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Each social platform has its own niche \u2014 uses and content types to which it is uniquely suited. Clearly users aren\u2019t browsing LinkedIn for cat videos or sports highlights. They are consuming news and content from a business and educational perspective, making LinkedIn a perfect channel for your social media strategy, whether you\u2019re B2C or B2B.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why LinkedIn should be part of your social media strategy<\/span><\/h2>\n

It\u2019ll come as no surprise that LinkedIn\u2019s core audience is different to other social media platforms. How? Its users are overwhelmingly professionals. Not only that, a good proportion of those professionals are <\/span>high-level<\/span><\/i> professionals, the kinds of decision makers that are a social media marketer\u2019s dream.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to LinkedIn\u2019s own figures from a few years back, <\/span>40 million corporate decision makers use the platform<\/span><\/a>, meaning that with a solid LinkedIn marketing plan, you can make sure that your content is getting in front of the right people to really accelerate sales and lead generation. With such a high proportion of users in management positions, it\u2019s no surprise that as per <\/span>this 2021 report by eMarketer<\/span><\/a>, LinkedIn dominates the market for B2B ad spending, taking in about a third of the $5bn spent by businesses on display ads in the US last year.<\/span><\/p>\n

And finally, those aforementioned 850 million users are split across the globe, <\/span>with over 190 million of them based in the US and more than 100 million based in Europe<\/span><\/a>. Aside from these, the biggest proportion of LinkedIn users comes from the Asia Pacific region (over 100 million users in emerging markets India and China), with millions more in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East. This worldwide reach provides the opportunity for significant audience growth in a range of diverse markets \u2013 yet another reason to prioritize a LinkedIn marketing plan in your overall strategy.<\/span><\/p>\n

How well does LinkedIn social media drive referral traffic?<\/span><\/h2>\n

At Echobox, we have a uniquely robust amount of social media data at our disposal. We took a look at how LinkedIn performs as a source of referral traffic for businesses, and what we found was pretty surprising: at present, only an average of 0.20% of referral traffic comes from LinkedIn across the businesses we sampled.<\/span><\/p>\n

What does this show? Well, as we saw before, LinkedIn is a social media platform with a high number of users across the globe, and what\u2019s more, it\u2019s a user base that is potentially already interested in what businesses have to offer. So why is this number so low? It shows that for a significant number of businesses, LinkedIn marketing is not being used to its full potential. If we put this into perspective, Twitter generates around 0.90% of a business\u2019 pageviews from social media, with a user base almost half that of LinkedIn.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is massive scope for businesses to optimize their LinkedIn marketing and use the platform to drive referral traffic as well as direct sales. But knowing how to maximize performance on LinkedIn means knowing how your users behave and understanding how LinkedIn\u2019s algorithms work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The LinkedIn algorithm and what it means for your marketing plan<\/span><\/h2>\n

Just <\/span>like any other social media platform<\/span><\/a>, LinkedIn uses algorithms to promote content to users. This is both good and bad news.<\/span><\/p>\n