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LinkedIn is a powerful networking tool for professionals and businesses alike. As of 2022, the platform has more than 830 million members.
When you want to take your LinkedIn game to the next level, analytics will give you direction. LinkedIn has pretty robust analytics on its own, but many users use a third-party program to compare their LinkedIn data with other data sources.
We consulted 31 LinkedIn users about their preferred LinkedIn analytics tools to help you find the right choice for your strategy. While 54.84% work in business-to-consumer (B2C) industries, 25.81% represent agencies, and 19.35% represent business-to-business (B2B) companies.
The majority of respondents have an established history of using LinkedIn for business. Only 3.2% have less than a year of experience, while 65% have used LinkedIn for over three years. Just one respondent said they don’t use LinkedIn for business purposes.
The experts we polled also experiment with various analytics tools. They named 20 different tools that they use now or used previously.
When we asked what traits they prioritize, respondents valued full support of their business requirements, advanced analytics, and a clear interface.
Now that you know the profile of our survey participants, let’s see what tools they named as their must-haves for LinkedIn analytics. We’ll also highlight our top three picks at the end of the list.
Databox brings your most important data together in customizable dashboards. This marketing reporting software allows you to connect up to three data sources and build up to three dashboards for free, then pay at a scaling rate.
You can see a Databox LinkedIn databoard in action above. The LinkedIn Company Page Engagement dashboard template collects all the most commonly considered analytics when tracking page performance. But, if you want something a little different, you can customize this template or build one from scratch.
Explainerd’s Natasha Rei shares Databox’s strengths: “Databox is a great dashboard tool that can help you improve your LinkedIn analytics. By connecting Databox to your LinkedIn account, you can track key metrics and performance indicators in one place. This can help you identify areas where you need to improve your LinkedIn strategy and make sure that you’re using your time effectively.”
Rei continues, “Additionally, Databox can help you track the ROI of your LinkedIn activities, so you can see which parts of your strategy are working well and which could use some improvement. Overall, Databox is a great tool for powering up your LinkedIn analytics and making sure that you’re getting the most out of this important platform.”
Jeffrey Nelson explains how the NoLimitsTiming team uses Databox. Nelson says, “We use Databox for LinkedIn analytics for our business. Databox is useful to track the performance of our LinkedIn company pages with more than 20 out-of-the-box metrics. Its dashboard is user-friendly and displays the list of recent posts, the number of impressions, and the clicks they’ve each received.”
Nelson adds, “It also shows the geographic, seniority demographics of our followers, impression growth, followers growth, clicks, page engagement, etc. Databox provides us the data we need to improve our LinkedIn impression, ROI, and reach our goals. It provides valuable insights which are useful to evaluate our daily efforts and campaign performance.”
Personal branding is one thing, an important thing, but so is helping your company grow. You may not have direct control over who follows you, but you can influence them with your posts, comments, and other kinds of engagement. To do that, you need to know who they are and what their interests are. You can align yourself with your LinkedIn company page followers by analyzing:
and more…
Now you can benefit from the experience of our LinkedIn experts, who have put together a great Databox template showing all the most important demographics for your LinkedIn company page. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports, and best of all, it’s free!
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up this LinkedIn dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
Step 2: Connect your LinkedIn account with Databox.
Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.
SocialPilot is a social media management tool that lets you schedule, publish, and analyze posts on various platforms, including LinkedIn. Pricing starts at 25.50 USD a month.
“I would be nowhere without SocialPilot when it comes to my LinkedIn,” says Griddle King’s Michael East. “This tool has helped me evaluate the marketing strategies that are used on LinkedIn in a way that is easy for me to understand and digest. I can use this analysis to be able to tailor the way I engage with LinkedIn to best suit mine and my business’s needs.”
East continues, “The best thing about this tool is that it’s so in-depth, but not in a way that I find it difficult to understand, and trust me, it’s not that difficult for me to get lost when it comes to social media analytics. SocialPilot has been able to help me get better engagement from my LinkedIn posts as well as helping me understand what about those posts were so successful. I can even reshare the content that was most engaging for me using this tool without having to dig through months of content first!”
Josh Snead from Rainwalk Pet Insurance says, “The LinkedIn analytics tool I’ve had the most success with is SocialPilot. It’s intuitive and user-friendly, and the dashboard makes it easy to gather performance metrics at a glance. I also appreciate the ability to track the reach of individual posts, which has made it easier to craft content specifically targeted for reach and growth.”
Katie Lyon of Allegiance Flag Supply adds, “If you want an easy-to-use LinkedIn analytics tool, I suggest Social Pilot. You can get a quick snapshot of how your business is doing with its intuitive features and analyze your page growth. Also, you can look at your demographics, monitor updates, and measure your overall engagement rate. All of the information you’d be interested in is available in a simple, customizable reporting dashboard that can be shared with your whole team.”
Related: The Most Effective Linkedin Marketing Strategies According to 30 Marketers
Shield is a LinkedIn-specific analytics platform. It presents data on content performance and audience behavior to direct your strategy. Plans start at 8 USD per month.
Mindi Rosser of Mindi Rosser Marketing LLC explains, “Shield is the best LinkedIn analytics tool for personal LinkedIn profile metrics because it allows users to visually understand their numbers and provides enough customization without complexity. This allowed me to help my clients improve their content based on what’s working, what’s not, and which people were engaging with their content.”
Chris Mitchell from Intelus Agency names Shield as the top LinkedIn analytics tool “because you can quickly filter by format, keyword, most views, most engagement to create more of the content that performs well and less of the content that does not.” Mitchell adds, “Shield Analytics has helped us organically increase our engagement rate and views.”
Stallion Cognitive’s Aditya Raj Singh says, “I prefer Shield as the best LinkedIn analytics tool for several reasons. First, it provides detailed insights into your profile views, including the location, company size, and job title of the people who have viewed your profile. This information can be extremely valuable for networking and targeting specific groups of people. Second, Shield allows you to see which of your connections have recently changed jobs or had other major life events. This can be a great way to start a conversation or offer help to someone who may be struggling. Finally, Shield offers a free trial so that you can try out all of its features before making a commitment.”
Singh continues, “Overall, I believe that Shield is the best LinkedIn analytics tool because it provides in-depth insights, is easy to use, and offers a 10-day free trial. SHIELD Analytics has features like custom labels so you know exactly how people perceive your posts when they’re viewing them through different lenses (like before vs after seeing something online). You’ll get traction numbers too – which will let us figure out where our efforts need improvement and maybe give some insight about what might work better next time around. And so when you’re planning your strategy on LinkedIn, this data is very crucial.”
Related: How RevenueZen Uses LinkedIn to Generate a Third of Agency’s Sales Pipeline and Revenue
Hootsuite is a social media publishing and analytics app that supports multiple platforms, including LinkedIn. It also includes features for managing social media messages and ad campaigns. The Free plan allows for two accounts and five scheduled posts at a time, and paid plans start at 49 USD per month.
Scott Keever of Scott Keever SEO prefers Hootsuite because of its hybrid analytics and scheduling model: “According to my past and current experiences, I think Hootsuite is the best LinkedIn analytics tool currently available. This is mainly because it lets us streamline our flow of work and enhance our KPI reporting processes. The major benefit that Hootsuite brings to my business is that it lets us draft and schedule posts in advance. This feature has proven to be advantageous for us, as it allows us to create a solid LinkedIn strategy that fringes upon crucial times when our posts are most often read, in order to get more people to notice our content. We simply have to pick the day and time that suits our needs and schedule our posts accordingly, in an easy-to-read calendar format, and the rest is done by Hootsuite.”
Related: 14 Ways to Make Your LinkedIn Company Page More Engaging
Google Data Studio is Google’s free data analytics platform. You can use it to connect various data sources and analyze them in dashboards and reports. You’ll need to use a connector through a third party to add LinkedIn analytics data to your Google Data Studio.
Anthony Blatner of Speedwork Social prefers to use Google Data Studio with a combination of CRM and LinkedIn connectors. Blatner says, “LinkedIn marketing for B2B businesses is typically a much longer sales cycle, so tracking leads through the pipeline is important. GDS with data connectors allows you to blend LinkedIn data with CRM data and any other sources you may be using. Data connectors are usually paid, but GDS is free and allows for a lot of flexibility. We have been able to see more granular tracking on a campaign and ad level basis. It becomes very powerful when you can associate LinkedIn demographics with campaign performance and sales.”
Elementary Analytics integrates with website performance, ad, and social media platforms to display cross-platform analytics. It keeps its list of available integrations low in exchange for simplified and clear reporting. The lowest plan starts at £19 a month.
Respondents named Elementary Analytics as a top LinkedIn analytics tool thanks to features like weekly email reports and reports you can download in one click. They also highlighted its mobile compatibility and customizable KPIs.
SocialInsider is a social media analytics platform that supports six different social sites, including LinkedIn. Unlike the major social media analytics platforms, it also has competitor analysis and content ideation features. Plans start at 83 USD a month.
This analytics tool lets you scope in and out of your brand and social media strategies. It tracks your brand’s overall social media performance as well as individual campaigns.
Klipfolio is a cross-platform data analytics tool that integrates with LinkedIn. It markets itself as a “metrics-first approach to analytics.” The free plan covers up to a two-month date range of data, and paid plans start at 99 USD per month.
“Personally, I think Klipfolio is the best LinkedIn analytics tool,” says Ben Michael from Michael & Associates. “There is a wide selection of data that can be tracked, and you can build your own dashboard to reflect exactly the type of data you want to pay attention to and manage. It is really easy to see how many LinkedIn interactions and shares your page is receiving, and with just a simple click you can quickly compare the current statistics with previous months, making it really easy to visualize and analyze your page’s growth. You can also easily share data with others.”
Urban Dare’s John Hubbard states, “According to me, the best LinkedIn analytics tool is Klipfolio. This is my primary choice as it’s backed by the cloud, which makes my company’s confidential data secure. We can create high-tech dashboards incorporated with visuals to help our stakeholders make informed decisions. We used the metrics gathered through our research to make our reports comprehensive. Klipfolio then collects data from various channels, allowing us to view data history over time. We then use this as a guide to making decisions in the future. It makes sure that only relevant data is displayed.”
Hubbard adds, “We used this tool to help improve LinkedIn analytics by creating streamlined reporting. Only the relevant metrics are selected, and then the reports are created. We can see the performance of our ads and ensure that it’s reaching the right audience on LinkedIn. This ensured that your funds weren’t going to waste allowing us to maximize our profits.”
Analytics go beyond followers and likes. Talkwalker generates data based on social listening — monitoring social media conversations about your brand. It doesn’t make its pricing public, but it offers a free demo.
Daniel Foley from Daniel Foley SEO Consultancy explains, “Talkwalker is a social insights provider that works with the most influential businesses in the world. It combines the analysis of online, social, print, and TV/radio content.”
These analyses that Foley points out are split into different products. Talkwalker has separate products for social listening and social intelligence (converting social listening into data). It also has apps for analyzing customer and market data.
Whatagraph pulls data from sources like LinkedIn to build custom reports. It integrates with platforms related to website performance, social media, ecommerce, advertising, and other areas. Pricing starts at 199 USD per month billed annually.
“Many business owners are not tech experts, and thus having a user-friendly analytics tool is of paramount importance and is why Whatagraph is one of the best available,” says Bounce’s Cody Candee. “though some business owners may have more data analytics proficiency, it is safe to say that nearly all have great demands on their time, which means having the ability to quickly and easily create a personalized report that can be delivered seamlessly into a client’s inbox is of immense value. Whatagraph has both of these features, and couples it with great visual data options, color coding report qualities, and pre-made templates to easily highlight specific information.”
Candee adds, “In addition, it easily tracks performance and shares marketing and engagement data. If your needs are straightforward and don’t require a great deal of intricacy, then Whatagraph can provide a useful ergonomic platform as your LinkedIn analytics tool.”
Patrick Wilson of Skill Courses says, “Whatagraph is one of the best LinkedIn tools. It has helped me streamline my marketing campaigns by using different metrics to see my target audience’s current engagement and interaction. As a result, I can track and compare the results of past marketing strategies to go the extra mile. Also, I tend to use the premade widgets available to monitor my LinkedIn profile by creating a weekly summary.”
Wilson continues, “The thorough yet easy-to-understand performance reports with visuals (graphs and charts) help me create a captivating campaign. Additionally, these visuals in the report further allow my team to make insightful decisions without constantly reviewing the gathered data. Hence, ever since I have used the engagement insights and stayed up to date with audience likes, I have had a higher conversion rate. Due to this, my brand has reached a wider target niche, which has translated positively into my sales.”
Inlytics is a LinkedIn-dedicated analytics tool featuring performance tracking and profile improvement recommendations. It also has scheduling and publishing capabilities for private profiles. This tool has a free plan with basic capabilities, and its plans start at 12.50 USD per month.
“I use Inlytics,” says Cornelius Fichtner from OSP International. “It specializes in LinkedIn analytics and provides me with insights into impressions, reactions and comments, and engagement for all of my posts. It also includes profile statistics like recommendations, scoring, and views, which help me to better understand my performance and how to improve it.
The reason I really like Inlytics is that it’s LI-first, with beautiful data visualizations and reports. Since we share data internally to tinker with what we do on the platform, this is immensely helpful. We can easily send each other screenshots to explain dense data easily. We can also add screenshots to presentations and other media types thanks to Inlytics.”
Ian Kane from COSLR.com adds, “It lets you analyze the quality of content and also schedule posts. It’s ideal for individuals or brands looking to build their following and engagement on LinkedIn with the goal of generating leads and new business. Our customers have seen success using COSLR to automate connection requests and personalizing invite messages on LinkedIn. Then they use Inlytics to see how their new connections are responding to their freshly published content.”
Related: LinkedIn Outreach: Get a Response to Your Cold Messages with These 16 Proven Tips
Sometimes, the best solution comes from the source. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is LinkedIn’s premium prospecting tool with prices starting at 79.99 USD per user per month. While it focuses on finding leads, it also comes with audience analytics features.
“I think that the best LinkedIn analytics tool is the one that provides the most accurate and actionable data. For me, that would be Sales Navigator,” Checkr’s Linda Shaffer explains. “It gives you detailed information about your target audience, including their job title, location, and industry. This allows you to create targeted content that is more likely to resonate with your audience. It provides insights into how your sales team is performing. You can see which reps are making the most connections, and which ones are generating the most leads. This information can help you optimize your sales strategies and ensure that your team is performing at its best.”
Related: 11 Tips for Using LinkedIn Sales Navigator to Improve Your Prospecting
Rank Ranger bills itself as an SEO software, but it supports social media analytics for platforms like LinkedIn. Its LinkedIn reports include details on KPIs, audience demographics, and post performance. Pricing starts at 79 USD per month.
“This is probably the best LinkedIn tool we’ve used, and we’ve used many, believe me,” says Eyal Pasternak from Liberty House Buying Group. “The interface is user-friendly but not too simplistic. The best part is the fact that it is a full suite you can use to access analytics across the board since you have results from different search engines, apps and videos, and so on, making the results accurate and comprehensive. It’s made optimization easier while also helping us track our competitors’ progress which is crucial in the real estate market.”
Pasternak adds, “Previously, we were using Hootsuite and Unmetric, but we ran into different problems. Unmetric stopped working altogether at times, and we had to re-do all our work. We only faced a problem with Rank Ranger once, and that was when we got stuck while managing a report, but the customer service was immaculate! They were courteous and responded almost immediately and guided us through the process with ease. They even followed up later without us asking, which is something I asked my team to do for our company too.”
Based on the information from the experts we polled, we chose our three top LinkedInAnalytics tools:
We made these choices based on pricing, features, and flexibility. Your company’s priorities will affect how well each tool will work for you. Many of the tools in this blog post have free trials, so don’t be afraid to try different apps before you make a final decision.
Keep an eye on your LinkedIn performance with a pre-made or custom Databox dashboard. Choose the metrics important to your campaign and let Databox update your data automatically. Scale your plan and pricing with your business’s needs.
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Melissa King is a freelance writer who helps B2B SaaS companies spread the word about their products through engaging content. Outside of the content marketing world, she writes about video games. Check out her work at melissakingfreelance.com.
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