What LinkedIn Is Doing to Remain a Competitive Social Network

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LinkedIn has been gradually making it easier for brands to utilize its professional network as a marketing tool. Its latest effort includes a redesigned and expanded analytics platform for Company Pages.

At first glance, it’s clear that LinkedIn has taken some tips from Facebook. The layout is similar in terms of what “insights” it offers. But, it does provide a wealth of information. For each post, the analytics show the impressions, clicks, interactions, whether or not followers were gained, and the percentage of engagement.

Beyond this, marketers can see their total reach, their follower demographics, their follower trends, and how they compare to their competitors. Some of these areas, such as follower demographics can be further adjusted according to seniority, industry, company size, function, and employee. The overall product defaults to show data from the past 15 days, but this can be adjusted as well.

Basically, LinkedIn has gone out of its way to try to fill the needs of marketers.

Just before LinkedIn announced its analytics platform, the company rolled out Sponsored Updates, again similar to that of Facebook. The two new products, however, work in conjunction with each other. On LinkedIn’s blog, Aviad Pinkovezky, the company’s Monetization Product Manager, wrote:

“The new LinkedIn Company Page analytics and the recently launched Sponsored Updates empower companies, organizations, and institutions to reach the world’s professionals and engage them in rich and meaningful conversations.”

LinkedIn has previously included analytics, but the company has never had such a robust platform as its most recent release.

Last month, LinkedIn also gave Company Page administrators the ability to act as a brand. For instance, this capability allows brands to like, comment, and share, although the feature is not available to all Company Pages yet.

The Impact

While all these new features are exciting, what is the real impact? For starters, LinkedIn is clearly showing that it belongs in the social marketing mix. No, it may not be as big as Facebook or Twitter, but it definitely doesn’t have all the noise the others have. Also, while Facebook and Twitter have both demonstrated maturity in recent years, LinkedIn has always been on a different level. Even with its IPO, the network never received the deafening press that Facebook did. And now, as a publicly traded company, it has demonstrated strength and stability in ways that other tech companies simply cannot do.

Meena Krishnamsetty, the Editor and Co-founder of Insider Monkey, expressed her confidence in the platform over on Market Watch saying LinkedIn would rule Web 3.0.

“It is positioned to be the dominant social-media investment over the next decade, when Web 3.0 — the next iteration of the Internet — finally takes hold,” she wrote.

According to her, one of the strongest indicators regarding LinkedIn is its revenue diversification. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn doesn’t depend on its ad revenue. In addition to its ad program, it has premium subscriptions and job listings with which to pull in revenue. Now, it has Sponsored Updates to include in its profitability pool as well.

Krishnamsetty makes a good case for LinkedIn. It’s almost as if the network has risen quietly in the shadows of Facebook and Twitter. The question is, do marketers recognize the value of it?

About author:

Although Abby Johnson’s education and early career are based in traditional broadcast media, her most recent experience has taken her into the world of “new media.” Abby served as a reporter for more 6 years covering topics ranging from highlighting the latest gadgets and applications to the more serious news of online consumer privacy concerns and the potential of cyberwarfare. She has also secured and conducted interviews with Vint Cerf, the Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google and who is recognized as one of the “fathers of the Internet;” Matt Cutts, Senior Software Engineer for Google; actor Jake Gyllenhaal (Jarhead, Love and Other Drugs, Prince of Persia, etc.) at the movie premiere of Source Code; comedian and radio personality Adam Carolla; former NBA star and actor Rick Fox; as well as other known personalities and Internet industry experts. By being actively involved in the Internet industry during the social media boom and working directly with many of the social media "early adopters," Abby's transition into social marketing came naturally. She now serves as the Social Media Coordinator for SugarSpun Marketing as well as Manager of Communications at design-build firm Gray. In these roles, Abby creates original content, produces digital strategies, handles media relations and blogger outreach, implements social media campaigns, and more. Through her consistent high standards and driven approach, these campaigns have resulted in meaningful conversations, relevant brand positioning, and achieved goals.

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