How Effective Is Content Marketing On Linkedin?

LinkedIn is the #1 channel B2B marketers use to distribute content at 94%.

According to LinkedIn’s Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn, 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn as a content distribution channel, compared to Twitter at 89%, Facebook and YouTube both at 77%, and Google+ 61%. If you have content to distribute (which you definitely should), LinkedIn should be your first stop. It’s where most B2B marketers go first.

There are 9 billion content impressions in the LinkedIn feed every week.

Every single week, content in the LinkedIn feed is seen 9 billion times. That’s about 36 billion impressions per month and 468 billion per year. The opportunity to be seen most definitely exists if you share content consistently.

Only 3 million users share content weekly.

Your eyes should have just lit up… Of the 500 million total LinkedIn users and 250 million monthly active users, only 3 million share content on a weekly basis – just a touch over 1% of monthly users. That means 3 million users are getting 9 billion impressions each week. We don’t even have to tell you why you should start sharing content on LinkedIn each and every week.

LinkedIn makes up more than 50% of all social traffic to B2B websites & blogs.

Yes, more than half of all social traffic to B2B sites comes from LinkedIn. Collectively, LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter drive 90% of social traffic to B2B sites & blogs, with more than half of that traffic comes straight from LinkedIn. Facebook and Twitter may have more monthly active users, but LinkedIn clearly separates itself as the go-to for B2B content distribution.

91% of marketing executives list LinkedIn as the top place to find quality content.

When marketing executives were asked where the top places to find relevant, high-quality content was, the results weren’t even close. A massive 91% said LinkedIn, while only 29% said Twitter and 27% said Facebook. LinkedIn is the place decision-makers go to find valuable content. As a B2B marketer creating content, LinkedIn is the place to be.

92% of B2B marketers include LinkedIn in their digital marketing mix.

If you’re looking to follow what expert B2B marketers are doing, start with LinkedIn. In terms of what channels are included in their content marketing mix, 92% of B2B marketers listed LinkedIn. Twitter was next at 87%, then Facebook at 76%, YouTube at 67%, and Instagram at just 15%. The best B2B marketers have bought into LinkedIn’s potential.

 

LINKEDIN PUBLISHER STATS

Only 1 million users have published an article on LinkedIn.

500 million LinkedIn users and only 0.2% have published an article using LinkedIn’s publisher platform. Something as simple as republishing your content on LinkedIn can put you in a unique group of contributors boosting each piece of content you create. As far as the LinkedIn algorithm goes, native posts published through this platform seem to get more love than external links, making this an even greater opportunity.

If you’re looking for an even deeper dive into the LinkedIn algorithm: How Does The LinkedIn Algorithm Determine What Goes Viral?

About 45% of LinkedIn article readers are in upper-level positions (managers, VPs, Directors, C-level)

What makes LinkedIn articles even better for B2B marketers is the fact that most readers are high-level decision makers. Not only can you get your content boosted by using their publisher platform, you can get it boosted and read by the people you want reading it.

In 2016, there were 130,000 articles published monthly.

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.

Long-form content gets the most shares on LinkedIn.

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.

How-to & list posts perform the best on LinkedIn.

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.

Posts split into 5, 7, or 9 headings perform the best.

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.

Of the 500 most shared LinkedIn articles in 2016, 30 were small lists.

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.

Less than half of the 30 most shared articles of 2015 & 2016 were written by LinkedIn influencers.

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.

Of the 10,000 most shared articles of the last 5 years, only 6% were written by influencers.

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.

Articles with titles between 40-49 characters perform the best on LinkedIn.

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.

LinkedIn articles featuring exactly 8 images far outperform the rest.

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.

Articles without video perform better than those with video.

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.

Only 0.59% of posts from B2B marketers come from company pages, but over 10% of leads generated come from them.

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.

1 out of every 3 LinkedIn group posts that converted included a question mark in the subject line.

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.

The average length of a post that converts is 248 characters.

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.

Source: https://foundationinc.co/lab/b2b-marketing-linkedin-stats/