Metrics of Success

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This is the most difficult part of LinkedIn.

Each individual post, connection request, comment, and conversation isn’t really going to “move the needle” (except when a post does exceptionally well). It’s the gradual buildup, the gradual stacking of everything, that is really going to lead to long-term performance.

Metrics for individual success should be judged holistically, but we believe it’s best to start with what’s happening “in-platform.” What’s actually noticeable on LinkedIn? And, are you headed in the right direction?

Here’s the simple list we pay attention to:

Profile views are trackable from your profile with LinkedIn Premium or a Sales Navigator license.

Ratio of sent vs. accepted connection requests needs to be manually tracked if you want to know this ratio as described in Build Your Profile Funnel and Build Your Network.

30-day trend on content engagement can be done manually or you can use an analytics tool that integrated with LinkedIn.

Inbound connection requests per week should be done manually. This is a “gut check” figure and if you’re using outbound-for-inbound (described here) then it’s especially important you’re getting inbound from target ICP profiles.

# of meaningful conversations per week is a “gut check” metric. When scrolling through your DM inbox, how many great conversations did you have this week?

# of booked meetings per week is fairly straightforward.

These individual metrics are starting points for understanding whether you’re building momentum on LinkedIn.

These are likely metrics for company success. They are less related to the individual profile but are just as important for measuring the success of social.

If you’re the lone warrior at your company adopting social, you can ignore this section. But if you have manager or team or company support, the company should be considering broader metrics of success from social.

There are lots of options to explore. Here are the basics:

As you can see, some of these are traditional “sales” metrics and some are traditional “marketing” metrics. Given that social contributes to both, this is intentional. Better visibility from running Content 201 or Content 301 can save marketing thousands of dollars on ads. More engagement can drive inbound leads via the website with self-reported attribution.

Dreamdata logged an interesting story with Foundation about how their social selling program contributed to overall company success.

These “off-platform” metrics speak to broader sales and marketing goals for the organization. You’re simply mapping those goals back to the individual seller.

One of the questions we’re often asked is whether to track leads inside your CRM and how to accomplish that.

Our recommendation is don’t add anyone to your CRM unless you’ve had a meeting with them. Everything else is just social engagement.

This keeps your CRM list clean, correctly identifies leads as interested parties, and allows seamless integration with the rest of your sales tech stack.

If you’re interested in tracking leads who haven’t booked meetings, use Sales Navigator. It allows you to create native lead lists & account lists to track their profile shares, engagement trends, etc. It also keeps your CRM clean.

This way, you have a big pool of prospects who you’re regularly engaging with via Sales Navigator and the LinkedIn platform + a small pool of (qualified) leads who are in your CRM.

The biggest not-well-kept secret of social selling is this: It takes time.

Direct outreach programs like cold calling and cold emailing generate immediate feedback. You know how well they work within a few days or weeks based on your sequence.

Social selling doesn’t work like direct outreach. Your mental model has to shift from immediate feedback to long-term trends. As a rule of thumb, we recommend sticking with it for 90 days. Keep running experiments, try new kinds of content or comments, update your profile’s headline, connect with new people, etc. In 90 days time, you’ll have a great sense of “what worked” and “what definitely didn’t work.”

The above metrics of success are guardrails for your success. Don’t worry about the day-to-day success, just keep on it over time!