What Linkedin Does?

In 2014, only 1000 articles were published monthly. In 2015, that number jumped up to 80,000 per month, then jumped again in 2016 to 130,000 articles being published each month. That means the 1,000,000 LinkedIn publishers are sharing 130,000 articles each month. That shows that the people who publish LinkedIn articles are seeing enough value in them and good enough results to keep going back to the well and publishing more. Further proof LinkedIn articles are a tool you need to factor into your content distribution checklist.

24) Long

Noah Kagan of OkDork.com dug into viral LinkedIn posts to hunt for trends on what type content performs the best. His findings are game-changing. As for the sweet spot when it comes to content length, you should be aiming for long-form but not too long-form. His results showed 1900 word articles got the most shares, so aiming for between 1700 & 2100 words should give your content a boost.

OkDork also found that how-to posts get almost 2x as many views as question posts. When you’re creating content with LinkedIn views in mind, you should focus on how-to posts and list style posts and steer clear of question posts.

There’s a longstanding belief that content consumers subconsciously prefer odd numbers. OkDork’s findings pretty clearly support that belief. Whether you’re creating a list-style post or not, keep it to 5, 7, or 9 headings.

People on LinkedIn really like lists, and they like their lists short and easy to digest. Content Marketing Institute found that 30 of the 500 most shared posts on LinkedIn were lists of 5-10 items. We’re breaking the rules with this post, but sometimes you just have too much valuable info to deliver. Whenever you can, aim for those quick lists and try to go with an odd number.

Obviously, LinkedIn influencers like Richard Branson, Guy Kawasaki, and Gary Vaynerchuk have a much better shot at going viral than the rest of us. They’ve built up massive followings that greatly increase their organic reach. That said, of the top 30 LinkedIn articles shared in 2015 and 2016, only 12 and 13 respectively were written by influencers. Some of the viral authors had only published a single post on the platform. It’s not easy, but you don’t have to be Neil Patel or Jason Lemkin to go viral on LinkedIn.

Further proof that you don’t need to be labelled as an influencer with a massive following to go viral on LinkedIn. Only 669 of the top 10,000 posts since 2012 were written by LinkedIn Influencers. If you can use these article creation best practices, you’ve got a good chance of seeing success. Factor in how few people are currently publishing articles and your chances are that much greater.

While the difference here isn’t as significant as some of his other findings, OkDork’s research shows that titles in the 30-50 character range are ideal, with 40 being the best and the target you should aim for.

When you’re creating a post for LinkedIn, use exactly 8 images. Any more or less and your potential post views will drop significantly. The reasoning is a toss-up here. Perhaps the LinkedIn algorithm favours posts with exactly 8 images the most, or maybe readers are just subconsciously more likely to share if they see 8 images. Either way, these results are pretty clear-cut.

Video is trending big time pretty much across the board right now. That said, LinkedIn articles are not one of the spots to include them. OkDork found that articles with 0 videos performed the best, with a steady decline as you increase the amount of video included.

If you’re not familiar with Moz’s domain authority, it’s the score a website gets out of 100 to reflect how a search engine ranks them. LinkedIn has a perfect 100, which pretty much means Google loves them. The benefit for you as a B2B marketer and content creator is that every article you publish on LinkedIn is indexed and will show up in Google searches, with that domain authority giving you the best over other native content ranking for the same keywords.

This one stat alone should be enough to convince you to start investing your time in LinkedIn as a B2B marketer. Of all B2B leads coming from social media, LinkedIn is responsible for 80%. That’s 4 out of every 5 leads coming from LinkedIn. All other platforms combined make up less than 20%, including Facebook and Twitter. Fewer users definitely does not mean less B2B leads.

Given that 80% of all B2B leads come from LinkedIn, this number probably seems quite low. Still, the majority of B2B marketers look at LinkedIn as a great place to generate quality leads for their business. You should too.

Of a group of B2B marketers surveyed, 59% were able to confidently say LinkedIn is generating leads for them. That number would quite likely be even higher if not for the 33% who were unsure on where their leads were coming from. Regardless, LinkedIn is still twice as effective than Facebook and Twitter both.

More than 1 in 3 B2B marketers say LinkedIn generates revenue for their business. That’s 3x more than Twitter, 4x more than Facebook & 19x more than Instagram. Although the majority aren’t able to identify where revenue is coming from, LinkedIn is the clear leader amongst those who could.

This ties back to the number of decision-makers using LinkedIn. When targeting B2B customers and clients, LinkedIn is the preferred destination over all other social platforms, including Facebook. While Facebook has a larger user base, the fact that LinkedIn users are more willing to do business on the platform than they would be on Facebook drives this number up.

SaaS company Replicon used sponsored InMail to reach specific decision-makers. This is not to say email is dying. It most definitely is not. What this shows is that targeting decision-makers directly in LinkedIn can be effective. Fortune 500 executives most likely have an email inbox crowded with emails they’ll never even see, let alone read. LinkedIn’s sponsored InMail (their messaging platform) offers a unique channel of getting your message in front of the big-time executives.

LinkedIn is the leader in driving traffic back to your business’ website and blog. If you’re using content to drive traffic, conversions, and sales, you need to be sharing it on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn lead gen forms are an advertising option provided by the platform. While it’s by no means a requirement for generating leads and driving traffic and sales, advertising on LinkedIn has proven to be profitable for the majority of B2B marketers allocating a portion of their ad spend there. Again, this is driven by the number of decision makers using the platform on daily basis.

In a HubSpot study, LinkedIn generated the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.74%, almost 3x higher than Twitter at 0.69% and Facebook at 0.77%. Not only do more potential leads land on your website through LinkedIn, they’re also more qualified and willing to buy.

With LinkedIn users more likely to do business with someone they encounter on the platform, the fact that 65% of B2B companies have acquired a customer through LinkedIn should not come as a surprise. It’s the place to go for B2B marketers looking to generate more leads and build up their customer or client list.

Company pages on LinkedIn aren’t being given as much love as they deserve. While it’s true a personal connection is typically better to have in business, the company page can be key to generating leads. Of all posts from B2B marketers, only 0.59% come from company pages, even though over 10% of all leads are coming from those posts. We wouldn’t recommend abandoning all B2B lead generation efforts from your personal account, but this statistic definitely says you should be putting more eggs in the company page’s basket.

Want to increase conversions? When posting to any B2B group on LinkedIn, create your subject line as a question as often as possible. Business 2 Community found that of all posts that converted, roughly 33% included a question mark.

You don’t need to go overboard on the word count when posting to LinkedIn for lead generation purposes. According to Oktopost.com, the ideal character count is 248. That’s about 40 words. Short and sweet can get the job done if you provide enough value in those 40 words.

From 2015 to 2016, the use of company pages more than doubled. B2B marketers are quickly realizing the potential a company page brings to the lead generation side of things. If you’re looking to reach new customers or clients on LinkedIn, having a company page with an updated description is a major difference-maker.