With Facebook putting the squeeze on organic reach for Pages yet again, more businesses are looking to alternate platforms to augment their traffic losses.
LinkedIn is one of the platforms many are giving a second look, and that consideration has been given a boost by recent stats on content activity on the platform. According to LinkedIn’s data, comments, likes and shares on the platform are up more than 60% year-on-year, while mobile referral traffic from LinkedIn has more than doubled for many sites.
Definitely, if you’re looking to reach a professional audience, LinkedIn's worth a look – but what about for other topics outside of B2B discussion? What topics have been gaining momentum on the platform and generating interest?
To provide some perspective on this, LinkedIn has this week released its ‘Content Insights Annual’ for 2017, which looks at the top performing content and topics on the platform over the past 12 months.
First up, on the overall top topics – as you would expect, LinkedIn’s key topic listing is dominated by professional-focused subjects.
LinkedIn notes that ‘Start-Ups’, ‘Entrepreneurship’, ‘Retail’ and ‘Artificial Intelligence’ also saw significant increases in discussion volume in 2017, reflecting the key topics of the time, which is largely in line with overall business trends. ‘Security’ also saw more focus, following on from the discussion around foreign interference in the 2016 US Presidential Election.
Given this list, it’s safe to assume that professional-focused content remains key on the platform, and that there’s not a lot of room outside of this. In terms of additional trends, LinkedIn also notes that ‘Funding’ and ‘Angel Investing’ were also fast growing topics, as was ‘Electric Vehicles’.
Given these insights, there wouldn't appear to be a lot of scope outside of professional discussion on the platform - which is important to consider if you are looking to LinkedIn as a possible option to help drive more traffic. LinkedIn's audience is looking for business-related material, posts that inform and educate them on relevant professional trends. LinkedIn is not Facebook, it’s not the place for your latest promotion – but it is the place to showcase your industry expertize and professional knowledge.
Definitely, LinkedIn content sharing, and LinkedIn’s own publishing platform, offer potential, but it is worth looking over the above list and considering where your content fits. LinkedIn has also made various changes to their content sharing and discovery algorithms in the past year to ensure users see more of the content they’re most interested in, and these updates are also important to note when looking to publish on the platform.
Overall, LinkedIn definitely offers opportunity, but it would be a mistake to simply cross-post your latest updates from Instagram or Twitter to the professional social network. As with all social platforms, you need to take a measured, dedicated approach, and ensure you understand what users on each are looking for.
The latest content trends listing from LinkedIn doesn’t give you all the answers, but it does provide a much better idea of what you should be focused on when publishing on the platform.