LinkedIn Sticks To Business, And That's Good For Marketers

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LinkedIn last week further cemented its go-to position for professionals by acquiring professional content sharing platform SlideShare for $119 million in cash and stock.

Chief Executive Officer Jeff Weiner is pushing mobile technology to woo more professionals to its subscription services: Also to attract advertisers who want to reach the growing user base.

LinkedIn is working hard to stay business-like while going more social. "The company has in recent years done quite a few amazing things to its portal including allowing for twitter feeds to be sent via LinkedIn and that itself has brought about a lot of discussion amongst professionals," said Audrey William, Head of ICT Research for Frost & Sullivan Australia & New Zealand.

What About BranchOut On Facebook?

BranchOut is a rising professional-networking site, built on the Facebook platform. BranchOut in March announced a $25 million led by the Mayfield Fund, who joined such venture capital luminaries as Norwest Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures for a total of $49 million in capital.

Perhaps: But some recent findings by NetPop revealed that among social networks, LinkedIn is offering a special edition of its LinkedIn Today social news curator geared toward professional women. Knowing that, LinkedIn on April 30 launched the Connect Professional Women’s Network, sponsored by Citi, which is a branded discussion board to which members can post and comment on articles. And as AdWeek reported last week, LinkedIn is offering a special edition of its LinkedIn Today social news curator geared toward professional women.

(He named cashiers as a group in the Forbes story.) But Frost & Sullivan expects that LinkedIn's revenue model via various areas such as premium membership, recruitment fees, and advertising, will make it an attractive platform for advertising and recruitment: "The 'Facebook' of the professional networking world," as William described.

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In mid April, it launched its self-service ad platform, LinkedIn Ads, with which marketers can target audiences based on job title, job function, industry, geography, age, gender, company name, company size, or LinkedIn Group, via a tool called Targeted Updates.

The SlideShare acquisition may appear incidental to advertisers, but it will drives traffic to LinkedIn as surely as social gaming does to Facebook. Users expect to enjoy themselves on Facebook, they expect to work (or find work) on LinkedIn. The uptake is that LinkedIn appears to understand that it is in the business of business.

Twitter Leads Social Media Sharing Growth over Facebook

Twitter Leads Social Media Sharing Growth

According to an info-graphic released in October 2011 by Unruly Media indicates that from its inception until now, shares on Twitter grew an astounding 35,356%. This was more than six times the 5,809% growth in Facebook Likes.

Other social media networks with substantial increases in shares since their launch include LinkedIn (3,226%), StumbleUpon (2,912%) and Tumblr (1,142%).

Social Media Sharing Growth

Facebook Send Tops Sharing Growth Since 2010

Looking at growth in social network sharing in the past year, Facebook Send leads all types of sharing with a 756% increase. Tumblr follows with 532% growth in shares, with Google +1 coming in third (418%). PingFM (272%) and LinkedIn (243%) round out the top five social networks ranked by sharing growth.

iGoogle Trends Down in Sharing

Conversely, iGoogle had the largest decrease (68%) in sharing by members since 2010, followed by AOL Lifestream (63%) and MySpace (53%). Delicious and Digg tied for the fourth-highest year-over-year decline in shares (46%).

Sharing Takes Processing Power

Each day, global social network shares generate 2.56 billion page views. In an average week, social network shares use 70 terabytes of data, or more data than the Hubble Telescope processed in its first 20 years. During the past five years, there have been 1.78 trillion page views generated by social network shares.

Wed. Morning Prime Sharing Time

Peak sharing occurs at 9:30 AM ET every day, with the most shares occurring on Wednesday. Three-quarters of all clicks occur the same day as a share, and most users click two minutes after content in shared.

Other Findings

• The US has the highest sharing density worldwide, while Chad and the Central African Republic have the lowest sharing density.
• Sharing by copying URLs directly from the address bar to emails, IMs and other social channels can be up to 10 times more than other sharing channels.

WaveMetrix: Fan Involvement Aids SocNet Rebranding

Brands should consider their existing fan base when rebranding or launching new goods via social media, according to an October 2011 report from WaveMetrix. Results from “Q3 2011 Benefits and Limits of a Social Media Fanbase” indicate successful brands involve fans in social media rebranding efforts rather than trying to force a positive response.