LinkedIn has transcended from simply a job and networking website to become an active and lively social media channel. In fact, Microsoft revealed LinkedIn saw “record levels in engagement” in 2022.

If you’ve scrolled through your LinkedIn feed recently, you probably saw interesting discourse about work but also a variety of other topics, broadening the scope of the platform. Still, LinkedIn’s unique focus on careers makes it an opportune site to really grow the reach of your business.

Here’s an overview of how to use LinkedIn Analytics to grow your account.

What are LinkedIn analytics?

LinkedIn Analytics are built-in metrics on the platform that you can use to better understand how your page and content are performing. Below we’ll break down exactly what these metrics are, but they include engagement rate on your posts, information about your followers, and data on who visits your page.  

We will be talking about two different LinkedIn analytics in this article: LinkedIn analytics for your business page and for your personal page.

Why should you track LinkedIn analytics?

We recommend tracking your LinkedIn analytics to better inform your strategy and ensure you’re getting the most out of the social media site. If you don’t pay attention to these metrics, then you’ll be doing yourself and your business a disservice.

By understanding how your posts are performing – and who exactly your primary audience is – you can create content that really resonates. The more your followers are interested in your LinkedIn content, the likelier it is that they’ll engage with your posts, whether it be giving a reaction, commenting, or sharing it on their feed.

If you find through your LinkedIn analytics that your posts are not performing as well as you hoped, you can also reevaluate your strategy. This means you would brainstorm and create new content that hopefully better connects with your core audience. The great part about monitoring analytics means you’ll have real data to help you establish what's working on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn analytics for your business page

LinkedIn analytics offers detailed analytics on the following:

• Content
• Followers
• Visitors
• Leads
• Competitors

While all of these metrics can be useful, we’ll be highlighting the three most important ones below.

How to access LinkedIn analytics for your business page

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of what exactly LinkedIn analytics are for your business page, let’s go over how you can access them.

You must be a page admin or be assigned an “analyst” to see these metrics.

1. Log in to your LinkedIn account

2. Click on the Me icon at the top right of the page

3. Select Manage and then select  Company

4. You will then be taken to your business page

5.  Click on the “analytics” tab

Your business page comes with a ton of useful metrics on how your company’s account is performing. We’ll break down exactly what kind of data you can pull from LinkedIn.

Content analytics

LinkedIn content analytics allows you to gauge how well your LinkedIn posts are performing with your followers and visitors. Here are the various metrics under this category.

Highlights

To begin, on your dashboard, you will see a highlights section that provides you with a roundup of the total number of likes, comments, and shares you received in the last 30 days. This is a great way to quickly gauge the success of your LinkedIn posts.  

Metrics

The next section is metrics. Here, you’ll see a graph of the performance of both your organic and sponsored content on LinkedIn overtime. You can also filter specific time ranges you want to view data for.

You’ll be able to select several data points to view on the graph, including:

• Impressions: the number of times each post is visible
• Unique impressions: the number of times your posts were shown to signed-in members
• Clicks: the number of clicks on your content, company name, or logo by a signed-in member
• Reactions: the number of reactions your post received
• Comments: the number of comments on your post
• Reposts: the number of times your content was reposted
• Engagement rate: your engagement rate is the number of interactions you’ve received, along with the number of clicks and followers gained, divided by the number of impressions

Content engagement

Whereas the metrics section gives you an overview of all of your LinkedIn content performance, the content engagement tab breaks down the performance of each individual post and can also be filtered by dates.

Here is the data that you can see for every post:

• Post title: The first few words of your post
• Post author: Who created the post
• Post type: Whether the post was an image, video, or text
• Audience: Who your post is visible to
• Impressions: The number of times a post is visible
• Views: The number of times the post was viewed for at least 3 seconds
• Clicks: The number of times the post was clicked
• CTR (clickthrough rate): The number of clicks divided by impressions the post received
• Reactions: The number of reactions your post received
• Comments: How many comments the post received
• Repost: How many times the post was reposted
• Follows: How many follow clicks your post received (Only sponsored posts include follow buttons)
• Engagement rate: The total number of clicks, likes, comments, reposts, and follows divided by impressions

You'll be able to measure just how well your LinkedIn content is performing using these metrics.

Follower analytics

With follower analytics, you can get a better sense of who is already following your page. This will give you an idea of who is interested in your company and who resonates with your content.

On the flip side, if you find that you’re not reaching your targeted audience, you can strategize how to create content that is more compelling to that demographic.

Let's go over the various metrics you’ll see in this section.

Follower highlights and trends

Here, you’ll see your total number of followers along with the number of followers you gained and the percentage change of your followers in a given time range.

Follower metrics

In follower metrics, you’ll see a graph depicting how your number of followers has changed over time. You can also see the difference between organic followers versus sponsored followers.

Follower Demographics

Follower demographics provide a detailed look into who exactly is following your business page on LinkedIn. Here are the details you can view:

• Job function
• Company size
• Industry
• Location
• Seniority

All followers

This section provides a list of everyone who is following your page listed in order of recency, their current place of employment, and the month they followed you.

Visitor analytics

Similar to follower analytics, visitor analytics provides a deep dive into LinkedIn users who have visited your business page but have not yet become followers.

Here’s an overview of the analytics you’ll see in this section.

Visitor highlights

This section will showcase the number of total page views, unique visitors, and Custom button clicks in the last 30 days. You will also see the percentage of change in your followers over the last month.

Visitor metrics

Visitor metrics show two key metrics: page views and unique visitors. You can also filter the data by specific page sections and time ranges.

Traffic from both mobile and desktop are displayed.

Visitor demographics

Here you’ll get a breakdown of the users who have visited your LinkedIn page and view this data:

• Job function
• Company size
• Industry
• Location
• Seniority

With this information, you can have a better idea of who is interested in your page, and figure out how you can convert these individuals into actual followers.

LinkedIn analytics for your personal page

If you have a personal LinkedIn account, you can view basic metrics on your profile and individual posts you create.

How to access LinkedIn analytics for your personal page.

Accessing LinkedIn analytics for your personal page is simple.

1. Click the Me icon at the top of your LinkedIn Homepage

2. Click View Profile

3. Scroll until you find “Analytics”

Once there, you will see basic data for your page, including:

• Profile views: how often your profile was viewed in the previous 90 days
• Overall post impressions: the overall number of impressions you’ve received on all of your posts
• Search appearances: how often your profile appeared in search results for the previous seven days

How to access LinkedIn Analytics for your individual posts

LinkedIn also provides analytics for each of your individual posts.

1. Log in to your LinkedIn account.

2. Click on the Me icon at the top right of the page.

3. Select Manage and then Posts & Activity

4. Then click the posts tab

Here, you’ll be able to see a detailed breakdown of the performance of each one of your posts. Let’s take this post I created on my LinkedIn account, sharing a recent article I wrote about feeling conflicted about  AI.

Clicking this provides a few additional metrics, including:

• Discovery: shows the total number of impressions of a post
• Engagements: shows how many reactions, comments, and repost your post received
• Top demographics of people reached: you can see the job titles, locations, companies, industries, and company size of the individuals who viewed your post.

Not only can these metrics help you gauge the performance of your content, but they also give you some insight into who is interacting most with your posts.

LinkedIn Creator mode analytics

If you are looking for more detailed metrics for your personal LinkedIn page, this is where LinkedIn Creator mode comes in. A relatively new feature, LinkedIn advertises Creator mode as a way for individuals to “grow your reach and influence on LinkedIn.”

Once enabled, LinkedIn creator mode has a few different changes and benefits, including:

• The connect button on  your LinkedIn profile switches to a follow button, and instead of your “connections,” become your “followers.”
• You can display topics you post about as hashtags in your profile intro
• Your profile layout will change. The Featured and Activity sections will be the first displayed sections of your profile.
• You will also be eligible to be featured as a suggested creator to follow
• Members who meet a set of criteria can get access to content creation tools, including LinkedIn Live, audio events, newsletters, and a follow link.

Another benefit of LinkedIn creator mode is that it comes with its own set of analytics. However, this feature is currently being rolled out, and not everyone may have access to them. Here’s a screenshot from LinkedIn that depicts some of the analytics and tools those who’ve enabled creator mode can view.

How to turn on LinkedIn Creator mode

1. Click the Me icon at the top of your LinkedIn Homepage
2. Click View Profile
3. Scroll until you find “Resources,” and clock on “Creator mode: Off.”
4. A creator mode box will pop up on your screen. Click next.
5. Follow the instructions and click “turn on.”

Using Buffer to supercharge your LinkedIn analytics

We recommend connecting your LinkedIn account to Buffer to really enhance the way you analyze your content. Using Buffer to track your LinkedIn analytics is a simple but effective way to see your most important metrics. And you can also schedule all of your LinkedIn posts ahead of time, be given suggestions for when’s the best time to post and see which type of content is performing the best.

Here’s a quick rundown of LinkedIn analytics in Buffer.

Overview

Within the Overview tab, you will be shown key metrics that help to assess how your LinkedIn content is performing. These metrics can be filtered by specific time ranges, including weekly or monthly.

• Performance: in the performance tab, you will see the following data points: total followers, new followers, posts, impressions, clicks, and engagement rate.
• Average performance: in this section, you can see a bar graph with the following metrics: total followers, clicks, comments, engagements, engagement rate, and impressions.
• Metric insights: metrics insights are charts that can be shown for the following data: total followers, clicks, comments, engagements, engagement rate, and impressions per post.

Posts

The posts tab looks specifically at important metrics on your posts in a specific time range.

• Post summary: Posts summary looks at the total number of posts in a given time period and provides a rundown of key metrics.
• Hashtag performance: Buffer’s hashtag performance section ranks the performance of hashtags used in your LinkedIn posts and provides the average impressions and engagement rate of each one.
• Post insights: Post insights provides the following data for individual posts: impressions, likes, comments, clicks, and engagement rate. You can sort by whichever metric is the most important to you, whether it’s likes, impressions, clicks, or engagement rate.

Answers

Our answers tab is an informative section that analyzes your LinkedIn content to provide suggestions to help elevate your LinkedIn performance. You’ll receive suggestions on the best days to post, the best type of content to post, and how frequently you should post. We’ll also provide data showing how your posts perform at other times and days.

We hope this guide has helped you get a better understanding of how exactly to leverage LinkedIn Analytics.

Get started with Buffer for free today and grow your LinkedIn following!