Posted on
7/3/2022

How to evaluate your performance on Linkedin: the key KPIs

A dense LinkedIn network allows you to improve the efficiency of your prospecting and to significantly develop the reputation of your company. The more attention you pay to your connections, the higher the engagement rate of your publications and your conversion rate. To do this, you need to get to know the characteristics of your target audience and the content that will engage them. By regularly monitoring your KPIs on LinkedIn, you can refine the parameters you have control over and get better results. In this article, we focus on the KPIs to follow to optimize your performance on Linkedin according to your objectives.

open tablet and computer with graphics
open tablet and computer with graphics

1. Qualify et quantify your followers on LinkedIn

Qualify your audience

The different types of followers on your company page can be broken down as a percentage of the total number of followers according to their: company, sector, seniority, company size, function, etc.

These LinkedIn metrics are important to consider if you want to connect with people in your industry or target others in similar industries. This gives you a better understanding of your company’s influence.

The demographic KPI is important because it allows you to quickly learn about the different types of followers of your business page, and tailor your content to their interests.

To increase the number of subscribers to your company page, you can also directly invite your connections to follow it.

Each month you receive 100 new credits. One invitation equals one credit, and credits are returned if invitations are accepted.

With just a few clicks, it is therefore very easy to suggest to people in your personal network that they follow your company to access its news directly. This close network is also very often the easiest to activate and allows you to obtain a high rate of engagement.

To take this a step further, you can offer your customers coupons or even gift cards in competitions, for example, to encourage them to follow your business page. This allows you to extend your reach to your customers’ relationships when they interact with your posts.

Quantify your audience

Number of views of your LinkedIn profile

If you have « optimised » your profile, added keywords and are active, you should be more « visible ». But how do you measure your improvements on LinkedIn?

First and foremost by measuring the number of people who view your profile! If you have a premium account, you can track exactly who is viewing your profile.

Appearances in search

Add descriptive words in the sections: Title, About, Groups, Experiences, Job Description, Skills and Mentions. These additions help your profile appear in search results on LinkedIn. This normally increases the number of views of your LinkedIn profile.

Visibility of your company page

The visibility of your company on Linkedin can be measured by your number of followers, which is shown in this image. You can compare your results over a period of time, see if you are satisfied or if you need to adapt your content.

Track your total number of followers: identify the weeks when you gained the most followers, look at what worked and figure out how to repeat that recipe.

You can also compare your influencer marketing with that of your competitors, which allows you to know if you stand out or if you need to adapt your content again.

New contacts created

One of the most important KPIs on LinkedIn is how you create and maintain the growth of your network. The number of people you have connected with in the last 7 or 30 days can define your strategy in terms of what content to share and how many invitations to send.

In this example of a visual KPI, you have a clear and quick overview of the growth of your first and second level connections over time.

By comparing these figures, you get an overview of your overall growth. All that’s left to do is to define specific goals and actions to improve the richness of your network and the connections in your sector.

2. Measuring the performance of your content on LinkedIn

Impression and reach on LinkedIn

Another important KPI is the number of views of your page and the number of unique visitors who have visited your business page.

In the LinkedIn interface, you can access these statistics called « range views » and « unique visitors ».

The higher the numbers, the greater the number of people who have seen your page, and the greater the likelihood of interaction.

If you compare your performance over a period of time, you can see how your page is doing and trigger additional actions to improve your performance. The more people who have seen your page, the more likely you are to increase awareness and establish yourself as a leader in your industry.

Measuring engagement: the crux of LinkedIn

One of the KPIs to watch closely is the engagement rate of your publications.

If the algorithm notices that your audience is interested in your posts, it will have no choice but to show your content to more of your audience, but also to new people.

Engagement includes reactions, comments, clicks, shares and posts. A large influx of ‘reactions’ and comments can mean that you have produced interesting or innovative content. Look closely at your posts that are generating a lot of buzz to see what kind of content your audience is interested in.

To maximise your brand’s influencer marketing b2b, some software allows you to respond to comments directly from a Dashboard. This allows you to encourage interaction and build relationships with people who are engaged with your content.

Track clicks and interactions on your website

While engagement, such as shares and comments, is a positive sign that your audience is engaging with the content you are offering, what ultimately matters is that they take the next step by clicking ‘read more’.

LinkedIn Analytics allows you to measure your click-through rate in two different places:

  1. The number of clicks on the custom button on your company page, and you can calculate the click-through rate by dividing this number by the total number of visitors.
  2. The click-through rate of your publications. In this case, clicks include both links included in your publication and clicks to your LinkedIn page (via your company name or logo). This rate is calculated as a percentage of the total number of views of that publication.

By tracking which publications get the best click-through rate, you can identify the content that your audience finds most engaging or interesting.

If you entrust your promotions to a facebook ads or linkedin ads only agency, this is one of the key KPIs to work on with the agency.

Several studies, such as the one by GrowthWorks, show that the number of impressions of posts with a link in the comments is much higher than those with the link embedded directly in the post.

Make sure you use a link reducer (or URL shortener) like bit.ly to make it simpler and more readable. Also remember to use UTM parameters to identify the post as a traffic source and the exact number of clicks on the link.

3. Measuring the performance of your LinkedIn prospecting

The idea here is to reproduce a sales funnel model from your Linkedin statistics.

1. The number of invitations sent

Sending out new invitations every day is the only way to get a steady stream of new leads every week.

The aim is to send out between 70 and 100 invitations each week. You can choose to send them manually or automatically with a specialised prospecting tool. The most important thing is consistency in your prospecting.

Do the math. Sending 100 invitations per week is 400 invitations per month, or 48,000 invitations per year. That’s the maximum capacity of a single LinkedIn profile, and you can use multiple profiles.

At one time, up to 100 invitations could be sent per day. In order to limit this over-prospecting and to ensure that only quality invitations are generated on the platform, this feature has been removed.

Track the number of invitations sent out each week and spot when your pace slows down. Also note that LinkedIn limits the maximum number of pending invitations. This means that you must delete old pending invitations at least once a month, in order to make new ones.

2. The rate of positive responses

The number of successful connection requests is the first metric you can really analyse. How many people have accepted your request on a weekly or monthly basis?

On average, the acceptance rate of an invitation is between 30 and 50%. This means that one in two or three invitations will get you a prospect. By refining certain parameters, the acceptance rate can rise to more than 75%.

This benchmark allows you to situate yourself in relation to other prospecting campaigns, but don’t give it too much importance either, as it varies greatly depending on the target, the solution, the profile, etc. Some parameters can be adjusted to improve your acceptance rate. If you are getting below average results, you need to look carefully at the 3 parameters you control:

  1. The invitation message: if you have a low acceptance rate, the first thing to review is your invitation message. Does it look like spam? If so, even a little bit, you should definitely change it to a less intrusive, shorter and relatively generic invitation message.
  2. The LinkedIn profile: does your profile convey the right message? Remember that an average person who receives your invitation will spend a maximum of five to ten seconds deciding whether or not to accept you. In this small window, if your profile seems racy, or spammy, the probability of being accepted is low.
  3. Your target: even if your profile and invitation message are perfect, they are useless if you are not addressing the right target. If you have a low acceptance rate, perhaps you need to look at a different target? Or maybe you should narrow down your target filter – for example by focusing on Tier 2 profiles and people who have been active in the last 30 days. The xray search linkedin also allows you to combine words and phrases to refine your target profile.

Once this relationship is established, a simple A/B test allows you to measure these two parameters, the reactions for each, and to understand what gives a better result in the end. You can do A/B tests on target, profile, messages, maturation, etc.

By measuring your opt-in rate, you are looking at your improvements in target definition, your invitation message and your profile – because improving your opt-in rate improves the overall success of your prospecting campaign.

The response rate will tell you whether you need to change the sequence of messages or the target. But the quality of the responses received is also essential. The aim is to get as many positive responses as possible, and to turn neutral responses into positive ones.

Appointments are your last KPI. You can work on how to get more appointments through your prospecting and how to refine your process to get better appointments.

3. The number of opportunities created

It is also important to measure the number of « hot » prospects you get further down the sales funnel. Prospects who read your emails and agree to move forward in discussions are potential future customers. It is therefore necessary to understand what it was that sparked their interest.

Being accepted and getting appointments is a good indicator of an effective sales technique. It takes talent to improve recall of an advertising message and convert prospects into customers.

Track your appointment rate by measuring the percentage of responses versus the number of messages opened.

4. Sectors that convert best

If your sales team is sending emails to different industries, it is also crucial to know which ones have the best conversion rates.

For example, if you are sending cold emails to people in SaaS, tech, start-ups, etc. and the SME vertical gets better results, you need to understand why.

Analysing the intent, the quality of your message and the way you send it in depth helps you to discover what makes this sector stand out from others. You can then apply the same approach to other areas to get better results.

About Kolsquare

Kolsquare is Europe’s leading Influencer Marketing platform, a data-driven solution that allows brands to scale their KOL Marketing strategies and implement authentic partnerships with KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders). Kolsquare’s technology enables marketing professionals to easily identify the best Content Creators profiles by filtering their content and audience, and to build and manage their campaigns from A to Z, including measuring results and benchmarking performance against competitors. Kolsquare has built the largest community of influencer marketing experts in the world, and offers hundreds of customers (Coca-Cola, Netflix, Sony Music, Publicis, Sézane, Sephora, El Corte Inglés, Lacoste, …) the latest Big Data, AI and Machine Learning technologies to drive inspiring partnerships, tapping into an exhaustive network covering 100% of  KOLs with more than 5,000 followers in 180 countries on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. As a Benefit Company, Kolsquare has been pioneering Responsible Influence by championing transparency, ethical practices, and meaningful collaborations to inspire change.

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