Surprising Tidbits About LinkedIn Content

Microsoft recently reported that LinkedIn has achieved record levels of engagement, with an increase of on-platform sessions that amounts to upwards of 24%. As the parent company of LinkedIn, Microsoft has a vested interest in the performance of the professional social network, and therefore monitors activity regularly. It has been generally known that engagement on the professional network has been steadily increasing for quite some time, but what has been less clear is where all that growth is coming from, and which kinds of posted content have been garnering the most interest on the platform.These were questions which were of keen interest to LinkedIn, so it began compiling statistics on all the content posted on the platform, relative to engagement and content types, which will give people an improved understanding of both those areas. This of course, would be of major interest to digital marketers, who have to plan their strategies based on such information, so that's why this information was all included in Microsoft's quarterly update.

Key takeaways from the report

Although the entire report was quite interesting in revealing the kind of content which engages users the most on LinkedIn, there were a few areas which seemed to be of relatively greater importance. The first of these is that there has been an increase in the number of messages exchanged on the platform, which is a full 35% higher than previous years. The type of content which triggers the most commentary and which engages users for a far greater period of time is video.This should come as no surprise, since video content pretty much rules the roost these days on all social media platforms, including LinkedIn. This just makes it official with regard to the professional social network. One other very important snippet of information included in the quarterly update provided by Microsoft, was that top publishers on LinkedIn have experienced an average growth of 120%, in terms of the number of Page followers, which of course is great for business accounts.

Other major trends on LinkedIn

As you might have expected, there are literally millions of articles, videos, and posts which go through the LinkedIn feed every day of the week, and these trigger thousands of comments during every hour of the day, with millions more likes and shares. The quarterly update has identified a trend which states that those weekly members who frequently engage with content, are five times more likely to come back every day, as opposed to users who are less heavily engaged.From one year to the next, the top publishers on LinkedIn have experienced a growth rate of approximately 120% in Page followers, with the top messaging markets being the United States, Brazil, India, and the United Kingdom. Of these, the fastest-growing markets for ongoing exchanges of messages are India and the UK.The volume of messages exchanged over LinkedIn has seen a whopping boost in the neighborhood of 35% from one year to the next. This is considered to be partly a function of the increased number of users on the platform, and partly an indication of heavier usage by members who are increasing their level of engagement. Both of these are seen as good signs by LinkedIn.There has been a huge increase in the number of mentors who have registered to provide career advice for those in need of it, and there has been a similar rise in the number of career-seekers who have registered for obtaining that type of guidance and advice from mentors. Numbers for both categories have risen into the millions, which means that professionals on LinkedIn are very serious about their careers, and about achieving a level of success through the social media platform. There are also now 30 million members who are participating in more than 120,000 EDU-related groups on LinkedIn.The importance of video on LinkedIn has been strongly emphasized in the most recent quarterly update, since it is known that millions of users have taken the time to create a video on LinkedIn, and that fact is largely responsible for video becoming the form of content which is most popular on the network. Video is also known to be the type of content which is likeliest to trigger conversations among users, and to encourage ongoing commentary by a number of other users.

Trends related to B2B marketing

While users may spend time on some of the other social media platforms, time is more of an investment on LinkedIn, because it helps users to solve a professional issue. Assuming your content is relevant and of high quality, you can achieve some remarkable results on LinkedIn. More than 80% of B2B leads are sourced from LinkedIn, and approximately 94% of all B2B marketers make use of the platform for the distribution of content.Having great content on LinkedIn can attract B2B decision-makers back to your site, and it is known that on average, about 46% of all social media traffic going to B2B websites was originally sourced from LinkedIn. The advanced audience-targeting strategies used by LinkedIn allows you to bring in only the most likely individuals whom can be converted into leads. A whopping 79% of all B2B marketers declare that LinkedIn is one of the most effective sources for the generation of leads and customers.The majority of digital marketers these days, a full 92%, make use of LinkedIn, as opposed to all others social media platforms combined. This is of course partly attributable to the fact that LinkedIn is recognized as the biggest professional and business network in the world, and also because the platform has gone out of its way to provide extremely useful tools which can be used by businesses, for the purpose of marketing and making sales. Nearly half of all marketers surveyed over the past year say that they have sourced at least one customer from LinkedIn, and many of these same marketers go on to say that they have sourced multiple customers from the platform.One final fact which may be surprising to most people is that LinkedIn SlideShare now reaches an estimated 70 million unique users every single month, and that has made the site so popular that it is currently ranked in the Top 100 of the most visited websites around the world.