As professionals, we can find ourselves stuck in a constant cycle of growing our connections and attempting to reach prospective clients. Thanks to technology, networking is just as easy to do while sitting on the couch as chatting up someone at a happy hour.
Networking through your phone or computer may seem more challenging or even less personal, but that’s far from the truth.
In reality, we have an entire platform dedicated to increasing our reach and new connections with ease — no mixers required. Globally, over 700 million people use LinkedIn to make connections, interact and share opinions.
Internal LinkedIn Analytics
LinkedIn has a neat dashboard that offers some useful statistics. This dashboard is private to you— no one else taking a peek at your profile can see this information.
Your dashboard can easily be spotted near the top of your profile page. In this dashboard, you will find three main areas to track and focus on: profile visits, post views and search appearances.
For reference, your dashboard should look something like this.
Profile visits
This number shows you the total number of LinkedIn users who viewed your profile over the past 90 days. If you subscribe to LinkedIn Premium (whether it’s Career, Business or Sales Navigator), you’ll be able to see a list of everyone who visited your profile unless they activated Incognito Mode. Without Premium, you’ll only see the last 1-2 people with names.
LinkedIn Premium also allows you to see the “trends” over the past 90 days. Let us note, you do not need Premium to improve your networking and social selling abilities. However, if you do have access to this graph on Premium — use it!
Look back at the past 3 months and note the curves. If your percentage takes a dip after a period of inactivity, that’s expected. If the curve skyrockets, then what you’re doing is working and you’re getting great exposure. Look at you go!
Post Views
Your dashboard will only show the views for your most recent posts. If you’re interested to see how certain posts performed (which you should be), there is a simple way to get some insights. Navigate to the post you wish to view the stats on and click on the number below the post. It should look something like this—
After clicking on the number of views below the post, you will get a pop-up window with more details, showing you the top companies your post viewers work at, a top list of job titles and the top geographical locations of your post viewers.
- Top Companies. This analytic will tell you where your post viewers work.
If the top company of your post viewers is consistent through several posts, that might indicate that the company is getting to know you and you’re in the critical phase of the purchase cycle. Keep building trust and being helpful. You’re halfway there! - Top list of job titles. This is a good indication of how well you cater to your target audience. If the titles here match the niche you’re out after, you’re doing great.
- Top geographical locations. This analytic tool will give us insights as to where people are viewing your post from.
Search appearances
This is a weekly statistic of how many times your profile appeared in LinkedIn searches. This will largely depend on your tagline and your “About” section. If you have a nice keyword-rich write-up in your “About” section that speaks to the audience you’re targeting, you’ll get important results here.
By scrolling down, you’ll find more insights on the titles and companies your searchers work for. It should look something like this—
A third “keywords your searchers used” section will also appear once your profile gets a large number of hits from LinkedIn search.
Why do these analytics matter?
At this point, it should be obvious why monitoring your LinkedIn analytics matters. As you optimize and tailor your profile with keywords and proper (even fun) information, you’ll begin to create meaningful connections. Meaningful connections will open the door to a whole new world. Not only will you notice an increase in post engagement and profile visibility eventually establishing you as a thought leader, but you will also find the best way to sustainably generate leads is by selling through your connections. Missed opportunities are a thing of the past.
For more in-depth information and guaranteed results — check out our Social Influence course.
