LinkedIn is one of the most popular professional social networking platforms, with over 810 million members worldwide as of 2023. With such a large user base, LinkedIn offers great potential for lead generation, brand awareness, and traffic growth for businesses. However, tracking LinkedIn’s impact and performance in Google Analytics is not straightforward. In this article, we will explore if and how you can track LinkedIn data in Google Analytics.
Does LinkedIn integrate with Google Analytics?
Unfortunately, LinkedIn does not have a direct integration with Google Analytics. This means you cannot easily connect your LinkedIn profile or page analytics to Google Analytics to view LinkedIn data alongside your other website and marketing data.
The main reason for this is that LinkedIn is a closed social media platform that does not allow third-party services to access user data via APIs or embed tracking codes on LinkedIn pages. All of the data within LinkedIn belongs to LinkedIn.
Some key differences between LinkedIn and other social platforms regarding analytics integration include:
- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. allow pixels/tracking code to be added to track conversions
- YouTube allows channel integration with Google Analytics
- LinkedIn has no tracking pixel and does not allow access to analytics via API
So in summary, there is no direct way to connect LinkedIn profile or page analytics with Google Analytics. LinkedIn intentionally keeps its platform closed and proprietary when it comes to data tracking.
What LinkedIn analytics can you see natively?
Although you cannot connect LinkedIn with Google Analytics, LinkedIn does provide some native analytics within platform that can give you useful insights.
Here are some of the key metrics you can view for your LinkedIn company page:
- Followers – Total page followers
- Post reach – Number of impressions your page posts received
- Engagement – Likes, comments, shares etc. on your page posts
- Visits – Number of visits to your LinkedIn page
- Unique visitors – Number of unique members who visited your page
- Follower demographics – Job role, industry, location etc. of your followers
For your personal LinkedIn profile you can see profile views, connection requests, post engagement and demographic data on your followers.
These native LinkedIn analytics provide some useful insight into the performance of your brand and content. However, it lacks more advanced reporting and segmentation available in Google Analytics.
Indirect tracking options for LinkedIn in Google Analytics
While you cannot directly track LinkedIn data in Google Analytics, there are some workarounds and options to indirectly connect data from LinkedIn to GA.
1. Track website traffic referred from LinkedIn
One simple option is to view traffic in Google Analytics that is referred from LinkedIn. This can give you an understanding of:
- Number of visitors coming from LinkedIn to your website
- LinkedIn content driving traffic such as posts, articles etc.
- Engagement on your website from LinkedIn referrals e.g. time on page, clicks etc.
To view this data in Google Analytics, go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels and look at the LinkedIn rows. This can give you helpful aggregates but doesn’t link to specific LinkedIn content.
2. Track clicks on specific LinkedIn links with UTMs
A better level of tracking is to add UTM parameters to links within your LinkedIn content pointing back to your website. For example:
https://www.yourwebsite.com/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=examplepost
This allows you to see in Google Analytics the traffic, engagement, conversions etc. for links included in specific LinkedIn posts or content. Make sure to use descriptive campaign names to know what LinkedIn content is driving action.
3. Integrate LinkedIn Matched Audiences with Google Ads
If you run Google Ads campaigns, you can connect your LinkedIn account and enable LinkedIn Matched Audiences. This allows Google to anonymously match your ad audience to actual LinkedIn members.
You can then build LinkedIn-specific audiences in Google Ads to target your ads and view LinkedIn audience data in Google Analytics integrated with your ad metrics.
4. Import LinkedIn campaign data into Google Analytics
Google Analytics supports importing offline cost and campaign data through its import functions. You could compile your LinkedIn ad spend and campaign metrics manually on a regular basis, and import it into Google Analytics.
This allows you to view basic LinkedIn campaign performance alongside your other data, although without deeper integration and segmentation.
5. Use Google Tag Manager to trigger events
For advanced users, you could utilize Google Tag Manager to manually trigger events when certain actions occur on LinkedIn e.g. when a form is submitted. You can then send these events to Google Analytics as custom events or goals.
This requires technical expertise but allows recording specific LinkedIn actions in GA without direct integration.
Pros and cons of tracking LinkedIn in Google Analytics
Here is a summary of some of the key pros and cons to consider when deciding whether to put effort into tracking LinkedIn data in Google Analytics:
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Conclusion
In summary, while LinkedIn does not directly integrate with Google Analytics, there are ways to indirectly connect and import LinkedIn data through techniques like UTM tracking codes, audience integration, and manual imports.
This can provide a helpful – albeit limited – view of LinkedIn performance and attribution alongside your other digital data.
However, privacy restrictions prevent deep integration, so LinkedIn analytics within the native platform still provides the most detailed insights for optimizing your LinkedIn marketing and content strategy.
Often a combination of monitoring native LinkedIn metrics along with bringing in key LinkedIn segments into Google Analytics via UTMs can deliver valuable insights cost-effectively.
As LinkedIn and Google Analytics platforms evolve, we may see deeper integration options emerge. But for now tracking requires a hybrid approach combining the strengths of each platform.
The good news is that by following some of the techniques outlined above, marketers can bring LinkedIn data into the fold for better attribution across channels and more strategic decision making.
With large visitor numbers accessing LinkedIn on mobile, you can use Google Analytics to better understand the visitor journey across devices and channels. This allows you to optimize both platforms for an omni-channel approach.
So in summary – yes you can track LinkedIn data in Google Analytics to some extent through workarounds – but limitations exist due to the closed nature of the LinkedIn platform.