LinkedIn Analytics & Metrics To Watch with Daniel Alfon
Feb 24, 2023
Daniel Alfon joined LinkedIn in early 2004, which means he's made all the mistakes and lives to tell about it! He is the author of Build a LinkedIn Profile for Business Success and joins Cash In On Camera to share what metrics to measure in LinkedIn analytics and how to use them to make informed decisions in your business.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll hear…
▶️ [1:29] Thank you. So let's imagine in one scenario where you're just starting out and the only metric, that's important to you is sheer traffic to your website. And maybe you have only five new visits a week. So you try to use LinkedIn and you see whether LinkedIn drives traffic to your website. And if your traffic doubles, you can translate that traffic into revenues, into a program, and into working with you. So the short answer I would suggest is to 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, people reaching out to you, scheduling a call, and then you run an AB test and you see what works and 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."
▶️ [4:16] 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 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.
▶️ [6:17] Great. So your question was about 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 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-value clients and explain the advantages that you have or a forthcoming program, and that could if you can change that, you can keep that for four weeks or four months if it's not time-sensitive, then it doesn't have to be necessary through the feed. You're absolutely right. It would disappear, but traffic to your profile is constant. People will check you out before a meeting. Whenever they listen to the podcast. They want you to grow their business. So, use your profile. If you look at my own profile, you see the video playing there. Yeah. 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.
▶️ [8:27] 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 to look at the business metrics 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?
▶️ [10:07] 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 download 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, and impressions in order to get those business metrics to come to fruition. What, say you about that?
▶️ [12:04] Great. So you're right. In our eyes, as content producers, it could be the same, but the LinkedIn algorithms have a different view about that. So for example, instead of sharing 24/7, what you could do is comment on other people's posts. And if people comment on your own post, then the links in the algorithm give that more weight. I see. And sharing and re-sharing are often seen as duplicate content. In other words, when I see that you've shared a blog post Or an interview. Okay. So I listened to your interview with Steve Buzogany, or I understood about The Shook, Mike Capuzzi, the one you interviewed recently. Then the idea of sharing that on LinkedIn and asking people, re-sharing 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 would engage or boost the reviews. And if people comment on your own post, it could be worth more than three or four likes.
▶️ [14:31] Well, and there's another way that it 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." Cuz 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 are 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'll take you an extra minute, but you can do this only once a week and you will strengthen your relationship with important people. Why not?
▶️ [16:32] So consistent consistency is the name of the game. If you are consistent within five 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 five minutes a day, you would see maybe two or three people. But if you're bingeing LinkedIn, then on that particular weekend, it doesn't make sense to wish you a happy birthday in December if your birthday is in July. Right? That doesn't make sense. You don't have to work harder. You have to be consistent.
▶️ [19:18] So the question I would ask is this, I don't think G P T or AI or Bar will replace it. We will replace us very soon. But I think that people who won't use it are likely to run a risk of not being relevant. And one way I use it is simply 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 your lifetime. Then it helps you 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 basics to AI and find the services that AI cannot reproduce.
▶️ [21:14] 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 obvious if you're in B2B, I mean you have to be on LinkedIn. The analytics are not as robust as in 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 is 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.