FreshNetworks Blog

LinkedIn has changed the online landscape for employers and employees alike. The growth rate since LinkedIn launched eight years ago has been phenomenal and it now has a user base of over 100 million people.

Given that LinkedIn is now the world’s largest  online professional network, we thought it would be interesting to look at the growth, current use and future direction of LinkedIn, as well as how brands and business can, and are, using if effectively. So this  week is LinkedIn week here at FreshNetworks and over the next five days we’ll be blogging about all things LinkedIn in the run up to a free report which will be available to download on Friday.

LinkedIn’s growth to date

(A full, high resolution version of this chart will be available in the final report on Friday 12th August).

Since its launch back in May 2003, the exceptional increase in the number of users on LinkedIn has been largely due to continuous platform development and the roll out of new features.

According to its recent ‘Growth Filing Report’ released on 27th June 2011, LinkedIn had hit the 90 million user mark at the end of 2010; already by the end of Q1 2011, user numbers had gone beyond the 100 million mark.

Aside from the growth in users, LinkedIn has also recently announced a revenue increase – 120% up year on year to $121m (£74m) in the three months to June. Profit was also up to $4.5m (£2.8m), compared to $4.3m (£2.6m) in the previous year.

Our next post will look at the growth of LinkedIn in comparison to Facebook.

As shown in the infographic below produced by agency Get Satisfaction, there are some astonishing figures about where executives believe social business will take us over the next few years:

• Over half of the 900 US based executives believe that if their company does not adopt social business then they will fall behind compared to their competition.
• Over 450 of the executives of leading US companies believe that social business is key to keeping up with competition. An even greater proportion of those executives interviewed believe that by adopting social business they will see a rise in their profit margins.
• Of the 900 executives interviewed, 71% of them have downloaded at least one web based app for their work on either a mobile or a computer.
• If the majority of executives believe that their companies will fall behind if they do not use social business then this gives those 16% a massive head start in terms of profit margins.

A recent research paper conducted by comScore and Facebook shows that the reach of branded content among friends of fans significantly exceeds the reach among fans themselves.

The two potential audiences for branded content on Facebook are:
1. Fans of brands on Facebook (ie, those who have explicitly “liked” a brand).
2. Friends of these fans.

While those who have explicitly “liked” a brand are the easiest to reach with social media brand impressions, friends of those fans also constitute an important incremental audience. In fact, according to the research, they typically represent a much larger set of consumers – 34 times larger, on average, for the top 100 brand pages.

So when a brand is focused on acquiring and engaging fans it should also keep in mind that exposure among friends of fans can often surpasses reach among fans itself.

Now, these findings aren’t exactly rocket science, but it could help marketers to evaluate the earned media impact they get from their Facebook investment.

Other key findings of the report include:

• Facebook is the dominant social networking site with an audience of approximately 160 million U.S. visitors each month and accounts for 90 percent of all time spent on social networking sites.

• Facebook users spend more than a quarter of their time on the site consuming and interacting with the Facebook Newsfeed, and this activity represents 4 percent of all time spent online in the U.S. The Newsfeed is also the primary location where branded content is consumed.

• Facebook users are 40-150 times more likely to consume branded content in the Newsfeed section of Facebook rather than in branded fanpage.

• In the case of some brands, Facebook Fans may have different aggregate demographic and behavioral profiles than typical brand purchasers, indicating that social media may require different approaches to marketing strategy.

• The “Value of a Fan” can be assessed in three primary ways: increasing the depth of engagement and loyalty among Fans, generating incremental purchase behavior, and leveraging the ability to influence Friends of Fans.