5 Graphs that Show LinkedIn as the Sleeping Giant of Marketing
October 20, 2015
New Social Media platforms seem to be popping up with every click of a webpage as hyper-niching is being used as a vehicle to cut through all the noise generated by the morass of media on the average feed. There is always a temptation to jump on to anything new if it seems useful and creditable, but that may not be wise. If you are already registered with other platforms, usually your best course of action is to see how you can leverage those who already have a huge following, rather than something that is unkown and untested.
LinkedIn is one platform in question. It seems to be overlooked in many ways as a B2B (business to business) platform that can effectively
market a product. By not taking the time to analyse what it can do for you may mean that are you missing out on reaching the right audience for your product.
Below are 5 graphs that show the real marketing power of LinkedIn.
Entrepreneur magazine took a look at the audiences of LinkedIn and their typical behaviour when logged in.
It’s really interested to note that the biggest difference in behaviour between the three levels of management is the way they viewed company promotion on LinkedIn. All the other categories are fairly even, but top level management saw promotion only second to industry networking as the main functions of having a LinkedIn account. If you want to reach top level executives, then LinkedIn is your medium.
When you look at the last four years by popular media tools you can see how many social networks have sprung up. Hyper-niching has provided a rich bed of opportunity for each aspect of industry to make the contacts they need to promote their businesses, and this list of tools ranks LinkedIn publishing as the number two intimating at how useful it is. If you’re not using it – you should!
Do you know how to use
LinkedIn publishing? It’s a great tool for leveraging LinkedIn to raise your credibility and gain a following. Gain enough of an audience and LinkedIn’s own app, Pulse, will automatically push it out for you.
According to
Contender Content, 83% of B2B content marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content which seems to be one of the reasons top level management appear to be amongst its highest users. LinkedIn, if it’s done well, not only sells your product to the right people, it also increases your credibility in the industry as you do it.
This is an excellent graph to show how much of an influence LinkedIn has in the B2B (business to business) marketing arena. As a marketing platform LinkedIn is only secondary to Facebook by 1%, and ahead of Twitter 2%. When you consider the traction that Facebook and Twitter have with their paid advertising, LinkedIn competes on an even playing field with them with no paid advertising at all. It may be that LinkedIn is considered a more reliable source of marketing because it is not paid for and still seems unpartisan.
Hubspot did some research on how effective at lead generation LinkedIn was and the results were surprising. Again, it may be because of the fact the marketing is unpaid that people are less suspicious of it and are more receptive to networking or reaching out. The research bears out that Linkedin is over three times more effective than Twitter and Facebook and generating leads.
If you view LinkedIn only as a place to find a new job or keep up with the news, then maybe it’s a time to take a fresh look. There is much you can achieve by using its strengths to your marketing advantage.
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