Today, LinkedIn has evolved from a platform for job seekers to a valuable resource for entrepreneurs, sales professionals, recruiters, and, yes, job candidates. Business owners use LinkedIn to foster a more engaged workforce, improve recruiting, build an employer brand, and network with prospective sales leads.
These myriad business goals can make it tricky to understand which key performance indicators (KPIs) are the most relevant to your company. LinkedIn provides data points that can show you details about your page, visitors, content, followers, and even your talent brand analytics.
In addition, LinkedIn made some changes to its algorithm in 2023 that might make some KPIs more relevant than others. As a result, consider using these indicators to get a clear picture of how your business is performing on LinkedIn.
[Read more: Understanding LinkedIn Stats and How to Measure Success]
LinkedIn KPIs for brand awareness
Brand awareness is a reflection of how many people recognize your company name and believe you’re a real business. It’s especially relevant for startups and new businesses. As a top-of-funnel metric, it helps your company build trust, identify sales leads, and attract potential applicants.
These indicators can help you determine if your brand awareness is increasing:
- Reach: How many unique users have seen your content?
- Video views: How many times have people watched your video?
- Page views: How many times have people visited your LinkedIn page?
- Engagement rate: How many people like, share, or comment on your post?
- Follower growth rate: How many new followers are you recruiting over a certain time period?
Monitoring the rate of growth among your followers holds greater significance than simply tallying the total number of followers. This indicator can demonstrate whether your outreach is working. For instance, an increase in follower growth implies that your content resonates with your intended audience.
[LinkedIn's Sales Navigator] is packed with analytics and reporting capabilities that can help you track sales-specific KPIs.
LinkedIn KPIs for sales
LinkedIn has become an essential tool for sales professionals. LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator is designed to give sales teams access to specific features that help them connect with potential customers. It’s packed with analytics and reporting capabilities that can help you track sales-specific KPIs, such as:
- Social selling index: How effective are your outreach efforts?
- Leads: Who is a potential candidate for your sales pitch?
- Cost per lead: How much does it cost to generate each new lead?
- Follower demographics: Who makes up your audience, and what do they care about?
- Visitors: Who is visiting your page but not following you?
LinkedIn’s audience insights dives beyond demographic data to show information such as your audience’s job titles, industries, interests, and skills. This information will help you craft more specific messaging that converts leads into sales.
[Read more: How to Build a Great LinkedIn Profile as an Entrepreneur]
LinkedIn KPIs for marketing
If you run a sponsored campaign on LinkedIn, you’ll want to see if it worked. LinkedIn provides a range of KPIs for any sponsored content you purchase on the platform, including:
- Impressions: How many people saw your sponsored content?
- Clicks and clickthrough rate: Was your content or messaging effective at driving users to your site?
- Cost per click: How much did the campaign cost per click?
- Cost per conversion: What was the percentage of users who complete a desired action?
In isolation, these numbers might not be that helpful. Fortunately, there are plenty of benchmarks that can help you understand the efficacy of your marketing campaign. “On average U.S. customers drive a 6.1% conversion rate from LinkedIn Ads, an impressive number,” wrote HubSpot.
LinkedIn KPIs for recruitment
Of course, LinkedIn is best known as a platform for hiring. As you design a recruitment strategy for LinkedIn, make sure you track these KPIs:
- Time to hire: How long does it take from start to finish to bring on a new employee?
- Qualified candidates per opening: Are your job ads attracting the right profiles?
- Quality of hiring resource: How does LinkedIn compare to other job boards and your company careers page?
- Offer acceptance rate: How many employees go through the process and say yes to your brand?
LinkedIn offers tons of other resources to recruiters. For instance, LinkedIn Talent Insights provides up-to-date industry trends and identifies potential candidates in high-demand fields.
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