Interesting Stats from my LinkedIn Account. 2017

About this time last year, I wrote an article sharing the statistics for a LinkedIn experience. Specifically, it was on the number of people who reached out and congratulated me on a work anniversary with OTrain.

The general point of the post was how little people were using LinkedIn to grow and leverage their business and I used the actual numbers of my very public, LinkedIn Company event as the source.

I got a good response to the first post, so I thought I’d run the numbers again and see if anything has changed in 2017.

So to rehash, on October 10 I celebrated 6 years with OTrain. LinkedIn reminded me when I started to see messages appearing in my feed.

Again, this year a number of people took time out of their day to send a congratulation message. I am very humbled and appreciative of the thought. Not just because of the marketing experiment its become, but because people took the time to acknowledge our company and the anniversary.

So now, 36 hours or so after I received the first notification, here are this years numbers and how they compare:

• I now have over 5000 contacts – an increase of approximately 100% on last year (2016 = 2500+)
• Approximately 1 % of the people I’m connected with in total, have sent me a message via LinkedIn to celebrate my anniversary. – a decrease of 50% (2016 = 2%)
• 84% of this years contacts were the default message – a slight increase on last year (2016 = 78%)
• 16% of people that messaged, typed something specific or a customised note – down slightly on last year (2016 = 17%)
• 0.015% of my total contacts took the time to write a personal note. – approximately half of last year (2016 = 0.03%)
• There was also approximately 0.8% of my contacts ‘like’ the post on the LinkedIn page (I forgot to measure this last year ☹)

So in short, despite doubling my contacts and connections over the past 12 months, I received about the same number of messages.

Now again, as I said last year this is not a post about me and my anniversary. I appreciate every message I received (via LinkedIn and elsewhere). I truly am grateful that people took the time.

Its simply a reflection of the results, and more specifically what I see as the lost opportunity using one of the most powerful (and underutilised) marketing tools available.

With competition increasing and businesses spending more and more on sales and marketing, it again in 2017 surprises me the number of people who connect but never make contact. Not just to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, but NEVER make contact using LinkedIn.

After 6 years with OTrain, LinkedIn remains one of our best sources for lead generation (we more than doubled our business again last year) and yet we see virtually no suppliers (the SEO people and Indian call centres exempt) using it to market or promote their services.

With so few people using it, it is so easy to standout and position you and your business above the competition.

What are your statistics? I’d love to know if you’re experience is similar or what you’re doing to improve your connections, relationships and results when using LinkedIn.

See last years article here