• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Social Media Examiner

Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

  • 🔥 Free Newsletter
  • ⭐ FREE Web3 Course
  • 💡 Society
  • 🗓️ Our Events
    • Social Media Marketing Workshops
    • Social Media Marketing World 2024
    • Marketing Events
    • Web3 Events
  • ⚙️ Tools
  • 🎙️ Podcasts
    • Social Media Marketing Podcast
    • Social Media Marketing Talk Show
    • Marketing Agency Show
    • Web3 Business Podcast
    • Our YouTube Channel
  • 🎯 Partner With Us
    • Podcast Sponsorship
    • Email Sponsorship
      • Email Newsletter
      • Dedicated Email Blast
    • Event Sponsorship
      • Social Media Marketing World
    • Tools Sponsorship
  • 👋 About Us
    • Our Story
    • Articles
      • Web3
      • Instagram Marketing
      • Facebook Marketing
      • YouTube Marketing
      • LinkedIn Marketing
      • TikTok Marketing
      • Expert Interviews
  • Search
  • Online WorkshopsIn-Depth Social Marketing TrainingLEARN MORE NOW

    How to Measure Your LinkedIn Activities

    by Chris Raulf / May 17, 2016

    social media how toIs social selling part of your LinkedIn marketing strategy?

    Do you know how to measure and track your efforts?

    LinkedIn gives businesses a number of metrics for tracking the effectiveness of their marketing throughout the selling process.

    In this article, you'll discover how to measure and track the effectiveness of your social selling on LinkedIn.

    track linkedin effectiveness
    Discover how to measure and track your activities on LinkedIn.

    Listen to this article:

    Where to subscribe: Apple Podcast | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS

    What Is Social Selling?

    Social selling is the process of developing and building relationships via social networks by providing valuable content to your target audience. Ideally, this occurs at each stage of the buyer's journey, which are specific points buyers go through to make a purchasing decision. Those three stages are awareness, consideration, and decision-making.

    Here's how you can measure your success at reaching prospects at each of these stages.

    #1: Monitor Awareness Metrics

    With LinkedIn, you can monitor several short-term results of your social selling efforts, such as an increase in your number of personal connections, content shares and likes, and follower engagement with your company page and showcase pages. These indicate increased awareness and visibility of your business.

    A great strategy is to include employees in your social selling process, which will increase the likelihood that potential customers will learn about you and eventually follow your LinkedIn company and showcase pages.

    Number of Connections

    It's easy to track the number of LinkedIn connections you and your employees have, which provides a meaningful data point for your long-term social selling efforts.

    Why does this data point matter? Let's say that 30 of your employees are part of your LinkedIn employee engagement program, and they actively share and promote company-related content and information. Assuming that each employee has an average of 200 connections, this means you could potentially have 6,000 people viewing and engaging with content related to your company.

    number of linkedin connections
    Click on My Network in the main navigation of your LinkedIn profile to see the number of connections you have.

    If you can get your employees to share content authentically, it'll have a bigger impact because humans want to connect with humans within their trusted networks. By leveraging this human network, you can harness the ripple effect.

    Content Shares and Likes

    🌟 Ready to Supercharge Your Social Marketing Strategy? 🌟

    Social Media Marketing Workshops

    Struggling with your social marketing? You’re not alone. The solution? The Social Media Marketing Workshops!

    During these live 2 hour deep-dive workshops, you'll discover what's working now on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Skyrocket your engagement, broaden your reach, and amplify your sales.

    Become the marketing hero your company and clients need—without leaving your home!

    🔥 Save $650 on an All-Access Ticket! Sale Ends Friday! 🔥

    GET YOUR TICKETS NOW

    Implementing a sophisticated content marketing plan is a huge component of your social selling strategy. You need to develop a focused content roadmap around your target audience.

    A great way to get started is to do a content gap analysis to see what pieces are currently missing from your existing content.

    Develop a team-based content calendar to ensure that your team shares high-quality content on a regular basis, either by publishing articles or sharing status updates. Eventually, that content gets served to their personal connections. In return, your employees' connections may end up following your LinkedIn company and showcase pages. You can then monitor and track the number of times people share, like, or comment on company-related status updates. This will give you a clear picture of which content resonates with them.

    As an administrator of your company's LinkedIn page, you can access your page's analytics to see which topics people gravitate towards and what topics you can phase out. In the example below, the last status update reached 529 people. Five people clicked on the post and also interacted with it, resulting in an overall engagement level of 1.89%.

    view linkedin page engagement metrics
    Click on any status update to see engagement metrics.

    To boost your inbound marketing efforts, feed this information back into your search engine optimization strategy.

    Number of Followers Who Find and Engage With Your LinkedIn Company and Showcase Pages

    One of the goals of having your employees share company-related content via their personal LinkedIn profiles is to grow the follower base of your LinkedIn company page and showcase pages. This strategy boosts the visibility of your digital assets, and you'll be able to reach entirely new audiences you didn't have access to as a company. Now that your follower base is growing, serve your followers high-quality content regularly to keep them engaged.

    The built-in analytics of your LinkedIn company and showcase pages allow you to monitor metrics such as the overall reach and engagement of your posts.

    track linkedin engagement and reach
    Measure overall reach and engagement post by post.

    You can also monitor and track the increase in followers, their demographics, and much more.

    Tools Resource Guide

    Looking for something to make your life easier?

    Discover the tools we recommend to drive engagement, save you time, and boost sales across your entire marketing funnel or business.

    Whether you need help planning content, organizing social posts, or developing your strategy, you’ll find something for every situation.

    FIND YOUR NEXT FAVORITE TOOL
    track linkedin follower growth
    Track follower increases and vital demographic data.

    When people engage with a company on LinkedIn, they've moved into the interested phase of the buying cycle. Ideally, they'll interact with your content by sharing or commenting on it. To gain even more followers, make sure to cross-promote your LinkedIn company and showcase pages through other social media channels.

    #2: Track Consideration Data

    Gauge the success of raising awareness and visibility by measuring longer-term results. Track buying consideration data such as the number of people who visit your website and engage with it.

    Referral Traffic From LinkedIn to Your Website

    Compelling, high-quality content should encourage interested buyers to follow a link in your status updates that will send them over to your website.

    Make sure you have clear calls to action in the content you're sharing via LinkedIn. You can, for example, share a link to a newly published case study, white paper, webinar recording, best practices blog post, or anything that's of real value to your audience.

    You can use Google Analytics to track the number of people who made their way over from LinkedIn to your website. Access your Google Analytics, and click on Acquisition > All Traffic > Referrals. You'll see which websites send referral traffic your way. If LinkedIn is displayed as a referral source, click on LinkedIn to analyze how much referral traffic you're already receiving.

    track referral traffic in google analytics
    Google Analytics is a great tool for tracking referral traffic.

    Number of Customers Who Engage With Your Website Content

    Realistically, your website is the place where most conversions happen, so make sure it's optimized. Also, ensure that your website is easy to navigate and provides rich, helpful content to retain people's interest.

    Use Google Analytics' Social Users Flow feature to monitor how people interact with your content. Access your Google Analytics and click on Acquisition > Social > User Flow. It's a fun, easy way to see which social networks work best for you.

    view google analytics social users flow report
    Google Analytics allow you to specifically examine user flow referral traffic from social media networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and others.

    #3: Measure Conversion Rates

    Ultimately, you want to convert your LinkedIn referral traffic into customers. Here are some measurement ideas to gauge the number of sales opportunities and sales generated from your LinkedIn social selling efforts.

    Number of Connections / Sales Opportunities

    If your product or service requires educating your potential buyer in person, then at some point you need to get out from behind the computer and turn the connections into interactions. This might be as simple as making a phone call or scheduling a face-to-face meeting.

    Nothing beats a human connection. Potential customers want to make that connection. Track how many sales opportunities your team generates through calls and meetings from their LinkedIn connections.

    Number of Sales Conversions

    Obviously, you want to convert as many connections into sales as possible. Google Analytics tracks goals and purchases completed from any website referral traffic, including social networks such as LinkedIn.

    track sales with google analytics
    This is the true measure of your LinkedIn social selling success.

    When you set up goals in Google Analytics, it's crucial to link accurate numbers and dollar amounts generated to your social selling strategy. In the example below, a goal was set up in Google Analytics to track online sales directly related to referral traffic from LinkedIn. In this particular case, 310 referral visits resulted in four online transactions worth $597.97.
    Want more like this? Explore our LinkedIn for Business guide!
    .
    Conclusion

    Selling on social is no small undertaking. This article only covered the tip of the iceberg. Management consultant, educator, and author Peter Drucker said, “If you can't measure it, you can't manage it.” There are many ways to track and measure your efforts, so find the ways that work best for you.

    What do you think? Are you a pro in tracking and measuring your social selling efforts? Please share your ideas in the comments below!

    measure and track linkedin marketing
    Tips on how to track and measure your LinkedIn marketing efforts.

    Get Your FREE Course: Web3 for Beginners

    Web 3 for Beginners

    Curious about Web3, but don't know where to start or who to trust?

    Introducing Web3 for Beginners, a course taught by Michael Stelzner, the founder of Social Media Examiner.

    Learn the basics of Web3 and apply it to your business with this FREE comprehensive course.


    CLICK HERE TO GET FREE ACCESS

    Tags: LinkedIn

    About the authorChris Raulf

    Chris Raulf is a digital marketing enthusiast and admits that he spends too much time on LinkedIn. When not on LinkedIn, he runs his boutique SEO agency in Boulder, Colorado.
    Other posts by Chris Raulf »

    Get Social Media Examiner’s Future Articles in Your Inbox!

    Get our latest articles delivered to your email inbox and get the FREE Social Media Marketing Industry Report (37 pages, 50+ charts)!

    Industry Report Cover

    Worth Exploring:

    Facebook

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Instagram

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    YouTube

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Linkedin

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Web3

    Next Frontier Explore More →

    Social Media Marketing Industry Report

    Get Free Report →

    Social Marketing Trends

    The data you've been missing!

    Need a new plan? Discover how marketers plan to change their social activities in the 15th annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report. It reveals what marketers have planned for their social activities, content marketing, and more! Get this free report now and never miss another great article from us. Join more than 400,000 marketers!

    Enter your email to get
    our free report:


    Footer

    Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
    Copyright © 2023 Social Media Examiner®
    All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy.

    Helpful Links

    • About us
    • Our content via email
    • Our podcasts
    • Our YouTube channel
    • Our live show
    • Our industry report
    • Sponsorship opportunities
    • RSS
    • Accessibility