A post gets 5,000 impressions and everyone on the team feels good. A month later, nobody can say what it did for the business.
Impressions and likes are easy to count, which is why they end up in reports. They tell you people saw the post. They don’t tell you whether the right people saw it, or whether it moved anyone closer to a conversation.
For a B2B company, LinkedIn has one job: getting the right buyers to know you, trust you and contact you. So measure those three things. Here are the five numbers I use with clients.
Number 1, profile and page visits
A visit means someone was curious enough to click through. It is the first sign a post did more than pass by in the feed. Track the monthly total, and note which posts caused the spikes.
Number 2, who is engaging
Ten reactions from people in your target industry are worth more than two hundred from strangers. Once a month, look at the job titles and companies of the people who reacted and commented.
If they don’t look like your buyers, change the topics, not the posting frequency. Your content pillars are usually the place to fix it.
Number 3, follower quality
Follower growth matters only if the new followers fit. LinkedIn shows follower demographics by industry, seniority and location. Check that the mix is moving towards your market, month by month.
Number 4, conversations started
Count the direct messages, the comments with real questions, and the connection requests from relevant people. This number is small, and it is the one closest to revenue.
Number 5, enquiries that mention LinkedIn
Ask every new lead how they found you, and write the answer down. Many buyers read for months without ever liking a post, so this is often the only place LinkedIn’s effect becomes visible.
A simple monthly review
Put the five numbers in one table and add a row for each month. Then answer three questions:
- Which posts brought visits?
- Which posts started conversations?
- What should we stop doing?
It takes about 20 minutes. After three months you will see a pattern that impressions alone would never show you.
Where impressions still help
Impressions are not useless. They tell you whether a hook worked and the post got seen at all. If a post has low impressions, look at the opening line first, these 7 hooks for technical content can help. Just treat impressions as a means to the other five numbers, not the goal.
Want help reading your numbers?
Tidea Marketing runs LinkedIn for technical B2B companies and reports on the numbers that matter. See our LinkedIn content management service, get a free LinkedIn audit, or book a free strategy call.