Top Tips for Measuring and Improving Engagement on LinkedIn

Editor's note: Please enjoy an encore of one of our most popular posts from the past year. It was originally published on Jan. 12, 2023.

The internet is a huge, sprawling universe filled with endless places and people. For anyone creating content and sharing a message, it’s easy to feel like you’re speaking into the void. 

That is unless you can measurably prove otherwise. 

Engagement metrics are the primary indicator that people are actually consuming and interacting with your content and ads. There are many different ways to track and analyze it, depending on the channel and source. Here, we’ll provide a simplified guide for getting a clear read on your brand’s LinkedIn engagement … and then taking it to the next level.

How to Measure LinkedIn Engagement

According to the latest B2B content marketing research, 89% of practitioners say LinkedIn is effective for organic social media content, far exceeding any other platform. This is because LinkedIn’s audience and environment are inherently primed for productive and lively business-focused conversations.

The LinkedIn Page is your brand’s hub on the platform and will be your best source for tracking and optimizing engagement within this community. Specifically, Page Analytics provides a wealth of data and insights around your organization’s imprint, resonance, and growth on LinkedIn.

There are three primary ways to measure brand engagement on LinkedIn:

• Updates: Learn how people are interacting with the content you share by reviewing metrics such as Impressions, Clicks, Comments, and Social Engagement Percentage. 
• Visitors: Learn how many people are stopping by your LinkedIn Page, along with device type, aggregated demographic trends, and more. 
• Followers: Learn how your Page’s audience is growing, which types of professionals make it up, and what else they engage with on LinkedIn.

Measuring Engagement With LinkedIn Ads

For LinkedIn Ads, you can access a variety of engagement metrics including: 

• Average CTR: Percentage of chargeable clicks relative to impressions (clicks divided by impressions)
• Reactions: Number of positive reactions your ad received
• Comments: Number of comments your ad received
• Shares: Number of times your ad was shared
• Follows: Number of additional clicks to follow your LinkedIn Page

You can keep track of not only paid engagements with your ads but also “viral” metrics (resulting from members sharing your Sponsored Content in their own networks). There is no cap to your brand’s reach through this method, adding further incentive for must-share content.

One of the most critical things to recognize about effective social media engagement is that it’s not about how much, but who. A million clicks from people who aren’t likely to be interested in your brand won’t do much good. That’s why we encourage LinkedIn marketers to dig deeper and gain a full view of who is engaging with their content – what are their job titles, seniorities, locations, etc.? – and what other actions they are taking.

Using Company Engagement Reports on LinkedIn

For organizations running an account-based marketing strategy, the Company Engagement Report is an awesome tool.  You can take your own company list, upload it via Matched Audiences, and track how specific buyers at your target accounts are engaging with your brand. 

Once built, the Company Engagement Report provides a simple view of total engagement levels across these select high-value accounts, so you can continually monitor the health and strength of your relationships based on LinkedIn activity such as ad engagement, organic engagement, and website visits. 

How to Boost LinkedIn Engagement

Now that we know how to measure engagement on LinkedIn, the obvious question is: how can we raise it? There are a number of tried-and-true best practices for increasing LinkedIn engagement. Use these tips to keep moving in the right direction.

Activate Your Employees 

People follow brands on LinkedIn, but they engage with the people behind those brands. Encourage your employees to become advocates and ambassadors for your LinkedIn presence – when an admin posts on their Page, 30% of the engagement comes from their employees, who are 14x more likely to share that content vs. other content types. 

Celebrate your people and their accomplishments. Tag them in posts and feature them in your images and videos. It will make your brand more authentic, relatable, and interactive. 

Incorporate Big, Bold Imagery

Feed scrollers are naturally drawn to striking visuals. Posts with images typically average twice the comments of those that don’t, and a series or collage of unique custom images can be especially engaging. Large, clear, high-res images will get the best results: we recommend 1200 x 627 pixels as a standard.

Use Video (and Stream Live!)

There’s a reason video is cited as the #1 area of planned B2B content marketing investment for 2023: it’s very engaging! We certainly see this on LinkedIn, where video drives 5x more engagement than other types of content. Live-streaming specifically has been a hit, with Live Video generating 24x more engagement.

Publish Frequently

Posting content more often not only provides more opportunities for people to engage with your brand and its point of view, but also helps you develop a consistent and familiar presence on LinkedIn. We find those organizations that post at least weekly get 2x more engagement than those that don’t.

Need some inspiration to fuel your content calendar? Check out these 15 ideas to get you rolling.

Speak to All of Your Different Audiences

One of the core directives for brands that want to drive social media engagement is to talk not about what you want to talk about, but what your audience wants to hear from you. And keep in mind: the audience you want to influence on LinkedIn goes well beyond current and future customers.

Create content that speaks to other important stakeholders, such as current and future employees, investors, partners, influencers, and more. Plainly product-centric messaging is unlikely to resonate with more than a few of these stakeholders – instead, make your brand something bigger that can appeal to more people.

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