LinkedIn Analytics & Metrics To Watch

Or want to better use LinkedIn to grow your business, it really starts by understanding the metrics, the analytics of LinkedIn. And no better person to explain this to us today than Daniel Alphon, who's here today. He's been on LinkedIn for a long time, since 2004, and knows all the tricks around analytics. So, Daniel, so great to have you here on Cash In On Camera today to talk about LinkedIn. Do you think that most people are utilizing the LinkedIn analytics properly?

That's a great question, Sheryl. My short answer is no. And there, there are some, some variants. Some people have no metrics whatsoever, and other have the wrong metrics.

So there are— yes, there are analytics and metrics in LinkedIn, but between you and me, my opinion is that they don't seem that great. They don't seem that in-depth. Is that your opinion, or is it just me not understanding how to utilize them?

No, you understand it perfectly. The LinkedIn metrics, in fact, are not the most important metrics I would advise our audience to focus on. Because what are the LinkedIn metrics? The LinkedIn metrics are vanity metrics. And when you speak with business owners and coaches and entrepreneurs who want to grow a 6-figure, 7-figure business, they should not be interested in vanity metrics. Can I, can I try and explain what I mean by that?

Yes, please do.

Thank you. So let's imagine one scenario where you're just starting out and the only metric you, uh, that's important to you is sheer traffic to your website. And maybe you have only 5 visits, 5 new visits a week. So you try to use LinkedIn and you see whether LinkedIn drives traffic to to your website. And if your traffic doubled, you can translate that traffic into revenues, into a program, into working with you. So the short answer I would suggest is forget about the LinkedIn metrics and simply analyze your business process or your funnel, as others would say, and understand what metrics you can translate into business. A real-life metric. It could be downloads, it could be people reaching out to you, scheduling a call, and then you see, you run an A/B test and you see what works and what, how does your LinkedIn activity result in a spike in your business metric? Because at the end of the day, you don't say, wow, I have a gazillion new connections. You have, yes, my bank account has grown 30% this month thanks to activities I've run on LinkedIn.

But some— so the challenge of that is that the business metrics in and of themselves are not necessarily broken out into did this originate from LinkedIn, or did this originate from Facebook or Instagram, because the majority of people are on multiple platforms. So how can we delineate the business metrics that are actually being driven from LinkedIn.

Okay, you're the video queen, so maybe I will suggest something about video. Sure, you could, you could run a simple test and have, uh, perhaps one of your videos would, would be only used on LinkedIn, and you know that any visit to that video comes specifically just from that platform, and that enables you, Sheryl, to measure and to see what sort of traffic did you get to that specific video? And more importantly, has that resulted in business? Perhaps we can imagine two scenarios. You see, you see that on a weekly basis you have maybe 3 people reaching out to you and scheduling a discovery call. But if you run an A/B test and you use the LinkedIn system and you get 4 or 5 or 6 visits and people who want to schedule a call with you, then you're able to see that your revenues have grown 15 or 20 or 50%. And the most important thing to do for professionals would be to see how has the LinkedIn, um, um, conversion performed next to your regular conversion. If you have an unlisted video and you share it across your LinkedIn platform, Sheryl, you know that every single person who visited that video came from only one platform. That doesn't mean you, they have to do it all the time. You just test it and see whether that works. And if the quality of traffic from LinkedIn has resulted in more business, then you should focus more of your attention on LinkedIn.

Fair enough. I, I know what you're saying, that you could create a specific video that you know is only posted on LinkedIn in order to determine that that traffic actually came from it because it doesn't exist on any other platforms. Is there a way though to say take a video that you do want to publish on multiple platforms? And I know, and again, I hear about UTM links and things of this nature. Does that come into play where you could take a UTM link and you could associate it with that video on various destinations and track the LinkedIn traffic that way.

Yes, it could. And even it could be even simpler for some business owners. If your video is not time sensitive, then you could decide that for the next 30 days you would use, you know, Instagram and Twitter and TikTok, but next month you'll only promote that link through LinkedIn. And that's even without changing the URL. You would know the traffic resulted next month came from that source.

And that was going to be one of my questions is about the timing. How much time is a good length of time, let's say, to do a test? Say we use your strategy of take one video, you know, put it on LinkedIn. How long is long enough test to be able to determine? Because as with any social platforms, you post content, but it's falling down the feed. I know that there are some advantages on LinkedIn where it does resurge and it comes back to the top. Depending on engagement, but how long is a good test?

Great. So your question was about when we share traffic, when we share videos or content through our feed, but the LinkedIn platform enables us to use video in multiple ways. For example, you could have a cover video. A cover video would mean that any person visiting your profile, Sheryl Plouffe, will see next to your profile photo a muted video for 30 seconds. And that means you can promote whatever you want. You can refer to your high, high-value clients and explain about the advantages that you have or a forthcoming program. And that could— if you can change that, you can keep that for, for weeks or for months. If it's not time sensitive, then it doesn't have to be necessarily through the feed. You're absolutely right, it will disappear. But traffic to your profile is a constant. People will check you out before a meeting, whenever they have, they listen to the podcast, they want to grow their business. So use your profile. If you look at my own profile, you see the video playing there. And that video is only on LinkedIn. So I know that anyone reaching out to me through that video has visited my LinkedIn profile. It doesn't have to involve a lot of work. It's really a 30-second video.

That video that's in the profile that I just showed, so the circle and then you put your video and you have to do that through mobile. You have to upload that video through mobile. It can't be done on website or on desktop. But when you upload that and you're saying something, it's called action. That's very specific in that profile video is your point that if people action the thing you said in that profile video, you can make the— you can deduce that that's where it came from.

Absolutely. And you could also use a specific link and change the content on that link. In other words, the video itself doesn't have to change, but if you have a hotlink, shall we say, Sheryl Plouffe backslash something, you would— you would— you could change it periodically when you have a new program, when you— when you have a new a TED Talk, when you have published a book, and the link would, would stay the same, but your content could change.

It's interesting because as we started this interview, I thought we were going to be talking about how to best utilize the analytics in LinkedIn. And what I'm really getting from you, Daniel, is that you're saying, honestly, let's not even really use them. It's interesting. You're saying look at the business metrics and how, and how they correlate to activities that you're doing on LinkedIn. Do you feel that there's room for improvement as far as the analytics are concerned on LinkedIn itself, on the platform itself?

Yes, I do, because some of them are not clear. For example, many, many of my clients are frustrated when they think about the numbers of impressions their post had. But the number of impressions is not a realistic metric. Anytime you visit your feed and you scroll down, that counts as an impression. And you say, hey, how come I have 20,000 impressions and only 3 people commented? I only had 5 likes. So the real analytics would be to only measure comments, shares, likes, or people reaching out to you, or traffic. The impression is a pure vanity metrics. Could I share my screen for a sec?

Sure.

So we discussed the LinkedIn metrics earlier on, and you're absolutely right. I think our audience as business owners should focus on the right side, and the right side is not LinkedIn metrics. It's not, it's not a vanity metric. It's not an SSI score. It's not the number of views. It's not the number of followers. It's dollars. It's revenues. And you should ask yourself, what should I do on LinkedIn in order to improve my top funnel revenues, what my revenues coming originating, sorry, from LinkedIn.

Yes, your point is a good one that at the end of the day, why are any of us even considering using any of these social platforms at all? It is to, from a business perspective, it is to get revenue and orders and downloads, subscribers, demos, and inquiries. But one can also argue that there's this sort of top of the funnel that it has to start with the baseline engagement impressions in order to get those business metrics to come to fruition. What say you about that?

We know, but the term impression is a misleading one. It's not really impressions. I agree. When people could take, for B2B, so it could be take up to 8 interactions with a client before they say, yes, Sheryl, I'd like to start working with you. You're absolutely right. But what LinkedIn calls impressions is not a true analogy. It could drive you nuts because you see thousands of impressions and that does not correlate with the actual engagement. And that's not because you have done something wrong. It's because the numbers of impressions are inflated for most of us. So if you do consider LinkedIn metrics, at least Try to look at ones that are real and not ones that are inflated.

What about the engagement metrics? I know LinkedIn doesn't have a massive suite of analytics, but the engagement metric is not a bad one in my opinion. What do you think?

Absolutely. What, when you share something new, what would make you happy the most? Would you have more people comment or share or like, or what would you, what would make your shine?

I think any of those engagement metrics are valuable because if people are commenting, if they're liking, if they're sharing those, it's hard for me to determine which one I would prefer of those. I think they're all great because they all contribute to activity and interest.

Great. You're right. In our eyes as content producers, it could be the same, but the LinkedIn algorithm has a different view about that. So for example, instead of sharing 24/7, what you could do is commenting on other people's posts. And if people comment on your own post, then the LinkedIn algorithm gives that more weight. I see. And sharing and resharing is often seen as duplicate content. In other words, when I see that you've shared a blog post or or an interview, okay, say I listened to your interview with Steve Buscogani, or I understood about the Shook, Mike Capuzzi, the one you interviewed recently, then the idea of sharing that on LinkedIn and asking people, resharing it, is not highly valuable for LinkedIn. If people commented on that, and especially if you're not the first one to comment, that would show the same content to more and more people. So commenting on other people's posts will engage or boost their, their views. And if people comment on your own post, it could be worth more than 3 or 4 likes.

So when I comment on someone else's LinkedIn post, that is a powerful signal that we're sending to LinkedIn, but it isn't representative of the analytics of your own profile in LinkedIn. The analytics don't show anything that represents how many times I've commented on someone else's post. But yet from an algorithm perspective, it's really powerful, is what I'm hearing you say.

Yes, ma'am. And if you— when you comment on other people's posts, some of them, some of that person's network is likely to check out your own LinkedIn profile. And you would know that they came because you commented on that post, because you see that it happened simply 10 minutes after you commented on that post.

Right. It's interesting. I don't do that enough, I don't think. I don't think I comment on other people's posts as much. I like, I do watch and I read, But I think after this conversation, I will take a more concerted effort to, or make a more concerted effort to comment on other people's posts.

Well, and there's another way that will be even stronger. If you'd like to strengthen your relationship with that person, you could leave the LinkedIn platform and write and email them and say, hey, I read your post about A, B, and C, and this is what I wanted to say. 'Cause if you're only commenting for the sake of the LinkedIn algorithm, then your own connections are likely to disengage at one point because they see that you're doing the same thing. But it could be very worthwhile occasionally to leave the LinkedIn platform and to engage one-on-one with that VIP, with that person. And very few people do that. It will take you an extra minute, But you have— you can do this only once a week, and you would strengthen your relationship with important people. Why not?

Instead of messaging them directly in LinkedIn?

Instead of commenting publicly, because for example, I could spot a mistake they've made. So as a good friend, I could comment and say, hey, your, your link doesn't work, or there's a typo here. But if I leave the LinkedIn platform, I think most of them will appreciate the fact that you're reaching, reaching out to them and pointing it pointing them in the right direction.

Daniel, Lois is making a comment here that it's fun to comment. Yes, it's fun to comment, but can take a lot of time and energy and also keep us reactive versus proactive.

Do you agree? Um, yes, I think the— what I would say is, how much time do you think you can feel comfortable dedicating to the LinkedIn platform on a regular basis? And in my book, consistency is more important than frequency or size. In other words, if you can only spend 10 minutes a week on LinkedIn, make those 10 minutes count. If you binge LinkedIn for a week and then forget about it for a quarter, you'll find it very difficult to— but people do that.

I know, I'm laughing because it's true.

So consistent— consistency is the name of the game. If you're consistent, within 5 minutes you can make an impact. Simply go check your notifications and you would see that someone that's important to you has either started a new position or has their birthday coming up today. And that's another reason why you should do it on a regular basis, because if you only spend 5 minutes a day, you would see maybe 2 or 3 people. But if you binge LinkedIn, then on that particular weekend, it doesn't make sense to wish you a happy birthday in December if you're birthdays in July, right? Does it make sense? You don't have to work harder. You have to be consistent about it.

Mm-hmm. What is, what is the biggest mistake that you see business owners making on LinkedIn? We could probably have an hour conversation on that alone. But what is, is there one glaring mistake that really annoys you that you see people making? A, I don't want to make that mistake myself. But B, I think it would be beneficial to our viewership and listeners to understand what the big mistake is.

That's a great question. I think the, probably the single most important mistake is a misalignment between their business objective and what their LinkedIn presence says. In other words, when I visit your own LinkedIn profile, I see that you tweaked your headline and now it says advisors to six-figure entrepreneurs. Who want to implement scalable systems. If I'm not a six-figure entrepreneur, then I would move on. But if I am, or if I'm interested in becoming one, then you've got my attention. In other words, your profile has to speak for itself. If you need to explain, if you say, no, my profile says A, but actually what I wanted you to know is B, then you're leaving money on the table and you're underutilizing the platform. And occasionally, Sheryl Plouffe, because your own business pivots, it makes sense to revisit your LinkedIn presence every 6 months or every quarter, or at least every year. Otherwise, you would promote something that you're no longer interested in. Just align your business objective with your presence on the platform.

Absolutely. And I've changed it many times, I think, over the years as I've been doing this. I, um, oh, sorry, I think I just brought up the wrong thing. Um, over the years, I have definitely tweaked it because I've become more clear about about who it is I work with. And I think that's just part of entrepreneurship, is just that clarity comes over the course of, of time as, as you do it. And it's really beneficial to review it on a periodic basis. Absolutely. So I would love for you to share with us what is a, a tip, a tool, tactic, or technique that's really helping you to market yourself right now that's working effectively for you?

Can I say ChatGPT?

Absolutely.

Cool. So the question I would, I would ask is this, um, I don't think ChatGPT or AI or Bard will replace it, will replace us very soon, but I think that people who won't use it are likelier to, to run a risk of not being relevant. And one reason, one way I use it is simply to to, to ask why would you need a LinkedIn consultant? And the answer is, I could run the same search, why would you need a video coach? And because you need to focus on something that can't be automated, because you've run a news organization, because you have more than any AI will have in our lifetime, then it helps you to to identify the value-added services that you can offer even when AI becomes more mature. So this is one simple tactic anyone could use: leave the, the basics to, to AI and find the services that AI cannot reproduce, um, today.

I think that is fantastic advice. I am learning about ChatGPT and AI. I'm very entrenched in it right now. I just read a book on it this past weekend. It's not a train that we can stop. It is on the tracks. It's gaining steam. We can't stop it. It's going to happen. And I think the advice that you just shared is really great, especially for service-based entrepreneurs who are doing services, you know, that we have to understand how that can integrate into what we do. It's not a threat. I don't think we need to be fearful. I think we need to use it as a tool. So very good advice indeed, Daniel. Thank you so much. I want to give people an opportunity to learn more about your website, and please share with us the free download that you're offering.

Thank you very much, Sheryl. Download focuses on the headline. I, we had a look at your own profile headline, and the headline is the most important real estate because that's something that LinkedIn shows people even before they visited your profile. So instead of saying CEO XYZ, try to make it count. The cheat sheet has a simple formula and examples and screenshots that would help people improve their headline within minutes and make it almost as good as yours.

Fantastic. This has been really insightful. I really appreciate you coming on the show today to discuss this because LinkedIn is a fantastic tool. I think it's obviously, if you're in B2B, I mean, you have to be on LinkedIn. The analytics are not as robust as other places online. But to your point, and what you've shared today, is that the real analytics are the business analytics, not necessarily the analytics that are provided through LinkedIn. And I think you've given us some really good food for thought on how we can really best focus our attention on the actual business analytics, which is the whole point at the end of the day anyway.

Thank you very much. And thank you for, for your help to entrepreneurs with Cashin' on Camera show.

You're so welcome. Thank you so much, Daniel, for being here.