LinkedIn has a treasure trove of data that you may be missing out on. Unfortunately, you can’t directly import this information into your CRM, but with some old-fashioned tracking, you can easily take advantage of everything LinkedIn is telling you about your personal posts.
For example, here’s a post I made for Thanksgiving:
As you can see, this post garnered:
- 20 Likes
- 4 Comments
- 2,903 Views
Let’s take a closer look at what these and other valuable touch points mean and how you can make decisions based on this data.
1. Post Interactions
Using the example above, I can take a closer look at who interacted with my post.
By clicking on the “20 Likes” button, you can see exactly who ‘Liked’ it. The same goes for people who ‘Commented’ on and ‘Shared’ the post.
These are customer touch points that you should be monitoring. It should prompt you to take a look at what company these people are with and what their titles are; you’ll want to keep an eye on them to see if they continue to interact with your posts. More importantly, it may be a telling sign of a customer who is interested in working with you.
2. Analytics
When you open your post analytics, you can see which companies are viewing your post. Please keep in mind that this data can change hourly, but it’s really insightful to see the reach of your post. It’s no different than measuring page views on your website. However, after two months, you’ll no longer have access to those analytics.
Below is an example of what my post’s analytics looks like. As you can see, 15 employees from one company viewed my post.
3. Article Analytics
Just like your personal LinkedIn posts, you can see who ‘Commented’ on, ‘Liked’, and ‘Shared’ your articles. Measuring engagement is key to knowing who to follow up with and what kind of reaction your thoughts stir–positive or negative.
As you can see below, this person found my LinkedIn article “helpful.” Now, I can keep this person in mind to see if they interact with any of my other posts and possibly reach out to them!
4. LinkedIn Messages
LinkedIn Messages should be treated the same way as emails or calls to measure engagement. In order to help keep track of this communication, you can download an archive of all of your LinkedIn Messages and import them into your CRM or manually enter each message as its own activity.
Below you’ll see an example of my Messaging history:
5. Who’s Viewing Your Profile
When you look at Who’s Viewing You, keep in mind this list is ever expanding; regardless, it’s interesting to browse through this data to see if a prospect, or a customer, has viewed your profile.
Below is an example of this data. You can see who has viewed me, where they found my profile, and how long ago they looked. In addition, LinkedIn tells you how your profile has been performing in the last 90 days.
6. First Degree Connections
When you’re measuring account coverage, it’s critical, from a sales perspective, that you’re connected with everyone that you want to do business with. One way to make sure you’re doing this is tracking to see who is a first degree connection versus who you still need to connect with.
It’s important to connect because your first degree connections have a much higher chance of seeing your post or comment than if they weren’t a connection.
7. LinkedIn Archive
You can download a lot of interesting data from your LinkedIn Archives that be loaded into your CRM. Here’s what most relevant:
- List of Comments: You can cross reference that list against prospects or contacts you’re targeting.
- Connection Invitations: You can see every LinkedIn invitation you’ve received and sent. Treat LinkedIn invitations sent the same way you would if you sent them a LinkedIn Message; it’s just like email.
- Messages: You can see every LinkedIn Message sent and received from a contact. Again, this data is just as valuable an email sent/received, so it’s important to have it in your CRM.
Below is an example of which metrics I track and how I track them:
7.5 Keep in Touch!
Lastly, LinkedIn sends you push notifications when it is your connection’s birthday. Although this information seems less important than some other data, you should never underestimate the value of a personal outreach–even when you’re just saying happy birthday or making a note to send a birthday card for next year.
As you can see, LinkedIn offers many valuable types of information! My advice to you is to make sure you’re taking full advantage of what this website is telling you; you don’t want to miss out.
Be sure to keep an eye out–I’ll be talking about more cool things you can track in LinkedIn, like how to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator better and data points you should be using to find commonality.
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