LinkedIn is one of the most popular professional social networking sites, with over 740 million members worldwide as of April 2022. Many people use LinkedIn to build their professional brand, network, and promote themselves or their businesses. An important metric on LinkedIn is the number of followers you have, as this can signify your influence and reach on the platform.
A common question is whether you can track your LinkedIn followers – who they are, insights about them, and whether you can tell if they follow you. The short answer is yes, LinkedIn provides some tools and options to track and analyze your followers. However, the ability to track followers is limited compared to some other social platforms.
LinkedIn Follower Count
The most basic way to track your LinkedIn followers is by monitoring your overall follower count. You can see your current follower count displayed on your profile.
To view your followers:
- Go to your LinkedIn profile
- Scroll down to the “Connections” section
- Your number of followers will be listed under “Followers”
Watching this number over time can give you an idea of how fast you are accumulating followers. You may also spot occasional drops in your follower count, which likely indicates you lost some followers.
Follower Growth Over Time
In addition to your overall follower count, you can view a graph of your follower growth over time. This can give you insight into how consistent your follower growth is, and help identify any particularly successful times when your followers spiked up.
To see your follower growth graph:
- Go to your LinkedIn profile
- Click on the “See analytics” link below your follower count
- This will bring you to the LinkedIn Follower Analytics page
- Toggle to the “Followers” tab
- You will see a graph of your cumulative follower count over time
Who Your Followers Are
Beyond just the number of followers, you may want to know more specifics about who your followers are on LinkedIn. There are a few ways to gather some high-level insights:
Follower Demographics
LinkedIn provides follower demographic data based on industry, seniority, location, and more. To see this information:
- Go to your LinkedIn Analytics page
- Click on the “Followers” tab
- Scroll down to the “Follower Demographics” section
This can help you understand the makeup of your audience and who you are reaching. For example, if most of your followers are in the software industry, you can tailor your content appropriately.
Follower Companies
You can also see a list of the top companies your followers work for. This can give you insight into which organizations you have the most reach at.
To view your follower companies:
- Go to your LinkedIn Analytics page
- Click the “Followers” tab
- Scroll down to the “Follower Companies” section
This displays the top 5 companies you have the most followers from. You can click “See All” to see the full list.
Exporting Your Followers List
For a more detailed view, LinkedIn allows you to export a list of your followers which includes additional data fields. To export your followers:
- Go to your LinkedIn profile
- Click on the “More” dropdown menu
- Select “Manage my network”
- Choose the option to “Export connections”
This will prompt you to download a CSV file containing information on all of your LinkedIn connections, including your followers. The file contains data such as location, industry, job title and more for each connection.
Identifying New Followers
When you accumulate new LinkedIn followers, there are a couple ways to identify who those new followers are:
Email Notifications
LinkedIn can send you email alerts when you gain new followers. To enable this:
- Go to your LinkedIn Settings
- Select “Communications”
- Under “followers”, check the box next to “New followers”
You will then get an email notification any time someone new follows you, identifying who the new follower is.
Your Connections List
You can also manually check your Connections list to identify new followers:
- Go to your profile and view your Connections
- Sort your Connections by “Most recent”
- Look for new profiles at the top of the list – these are likely new followers
This allows you to see the handful of your most recent new followers.
Tracking Follower Engagement
In addition to tracking the number and details of your followers, you may also want to track how engaged your followers are. This can give you a sense of how interested they are in your content.
Content Engagement
You can track how many of your followers are engaging with the content you share. For example, when you post an update you can monitor:
- Likes
- Comments
- Reshares
- Link clicks
A higher percentage of your followers engaging with your posts indicates they are more active and interested in your content.
Profile Views
You can also track how many of your followers have viewed your LinkedIn profile. To see this:
- Go to your LinkedIn Analytics page
- Click on the “Followers” tab
- Scroll down to the “Follower Profile Views” chart
This shows the percentage of your followers who have viewed your profile in the last 90 days. More profile views indicates followers are more engaged learning about you and your work.
Can You See If Someone Unfollows You?
A common question is whether you can tell if someone who previously followed you has unfollowed your account. Unfortunately, LinkedIn does not send notifications or provide an easy way to identify who has unfollowed you.
The best indication that someone may have unfollowed you is if you notice a drop in your overall follower count. However, you will not get specifics on which connections unfollowed you.
Some potential ways to infer if someone may have unfollowed you include:
- Check if they have interacted with your recent content – if they liked past posts but have not engaged recently, they may have unfollowed
- See if they still show up as a 2nd degree connection – if someone unfollows you, they may no longer show up as a 2nd degree connection
- Use a 3rd party tool or Chrome extension (discussed more below) to identify followers who have unfollowed you
But LinkedIn does not directly notify you or identify who unfollows your account.
Third Party Tools
There are some third party tools and browser extensions that can enhance your ability to track LinkedIn followers. Some of the options include:
LinkedSnooper
- Browser extension for Chrome and Firefox
- Notifies you when someone views your LinkedIn profile
- Lets you monitor profile views from specific connections
- Tracks when someone unfollows you
Social Animal
- Chrome extension
- Tracks followers and new followers
- Notifies you of new profile views
- Filters connections by criteria like industry, company etc.
FollowUpThen
- Chrome extension
- Tracks your new LinkedIn followers
- Sends you reports on follower changes
- Lets you segment and filter your followers
These tools provide added functionality for monitoring your followers and tracking engagement beyond what LinkedIn’s built-in analytics offer.
Limitations of LinkedIn Follower Tracking
While LinkedIn provides some helpfulfollower analytics, there are also some limitations to be aware of:
- No notifications for who unfollows you
- Limited demographic data on followers
- No tracking of how long someone has been following you
- No information on which content resulted in a new follower
- No filters to segment followers by criteria like industry, seniority etc.
Due to these limitations, you may need to rely on paid 3rd party tools or manual tracking to gain additional follower insights.
Follower Tracking Best Practices
Here are some tips for effectively tracking your LinkedIn followers:
- Monitor your overall follower count consistently to spot trends and spikes
- Review follower demographics and companies to understand your audience
- Export your followers list periodically to identify new followers
- Leverage email notifications for new followers
- Track follower engagement metrics on your posts and profile
- Use LinkedIn Analytics to inform your content strategy
- Consider 3rd party tools for more advanced follower tracking
Conclusion
In summary, LinkedIn provides basic options for tracking your followers and high-level insights on who they are. You can monitor your overall follower growth, view demographic data, identify new followers, and track content engagement. However, the platform lacks more advanced follower tracking functionality offered by some third-party tools. By combining LinkedIn’s analytics with consistent manual tracking and potentially third-party extensions, you can get a clear picture of your follower base and how it is changing over time.