LinkedIn Emerges as the #1 Source for Professional Content

4 minute read

Upland Admin

LinkedIn 2014 Professional Content Consumption Report

It’s finally happened. LinkedIn surpassed online news sources, Facebook, and Twitter as the go-to source for professional content consumption.

LinkedIn Emerges as the Top Source for Professional Content by @jeanwrites

The news comes from the 2014 Professional Content Consumption Report, delivering survey results from more than 2,700 LinkedIn members who actively consume content on the platform. LinkedIn dubs these high-content engagers “Content Revolutionaries,” and characterizes them as people who regularly consume content online, moving content from their original publication source into diverse channels.

Content Revolutionaries are the grassroots influencers and brand evangelists, the people who many marketers spend a lot of money trying to reach, spending eight hours per week consuming professional content. 91% of them turn to LinkedIn for professional content compared to 64% for online news sites, 29% for Twitter, and 27% for Facebook, according to the report.

To some content marketers, this news verifies claims that LinkedIn posts dwarf social sharing on other networks.

“We find that when it comes to eBook downloads, LinkedIn outperforms Facebook by a ratio of 75:1,” said Lauren Totin, Director of Operations at Teknicks, a leading digital inbound marketing agency. Totin leads strategy for clients including link-building, inbound marketing, outbound marketing, PPC campaigns, and content marketing.

“When it comes to eBook downloads, LinkedIn outperforms Facebook by a ratio of 75:1.”

To be blunt, these “content revolutionaries” are the distribution goldmines of peer-to-peer sharing.

Totin agrees.

“As a B2B company, LinkedIn has become our prime promotion channel for our premium content including eBooks, whitepapers, and infographics for two reasons,” Totin says. “LinkedIn makes it extremely simple to promote our content to our specific target audience, down to their job titles or specific job function. No other social network allows this precise level of targeting.”

Similarly, an internal analysis of Kapost’s referral traffic reveals LinkedIn has driven the most traffic to a single post on our blog, the Content Marketeer, than any other channel in the past six months, topping other notables including Facebook, SlideShare, Pinterest, and Business2Community.

This demonstrates that individual blogs or articles published on LinkedIn convert “impressions” into clicks more than any other single network.

The Grain of Salt

These metrics, though powerful, must be taken with a grain of salt, says Andrew J. Coate, Kapost’s Community and Content Manager, who watches and reports on social metrics traffic for Kapost. Kapost’s social metrics shows that though LinkedIn is the number one referrer when you break it down by individual blog posts, the overall traffic driven to the kapost.com domains (including the Content Marketeer) pales in comparison to that of Twitter.

“The key to social is finding what works for your business specifically, and to continually be ready to adjust,” Coate says. “For example, Twitter outperforms all other networks combined in nearly every relevant metric for us right now. But that might not always be the case.”

43% of LinkedIn members visited LinkedIn via a mobile device, up from 2% in 2008.

Nevertheless, the power of LinkedIn can’t be ignored. B2B marketers know LinkedIn is shaping up to be one of the most profound aggregators of professional content and attracting the people who can take your message and share it.

As Totin says: “If you are a B2B company and aren’t using LinkedIn to promote your content, you’re missing out on the biggest marketing opportunity out there today.”

How Can YOU Engage Content Revolutionaries?

Luckily, LinkedIn provides some answers to this question in their report. Specifically, there are “6 Insider Tips for Connecting with Content Revolutionaries” which come in the form of questions.

  1. Does it present new knowledge or assist in decision-making?
  2. Will is spark conversation?
  3. Would sharing it benefit their professional network?
  4. Would sharing it enhance their professional brand?
  5. Does it feed their desire for professional accomplishment?
  6. Is it formatted for mobile/tablet consumption? 

LinkedIn content revolutionary tips

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