LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform with over 800 million users worldwide. With its massive user base, LinkedIn is a goldmine for gathering insights into your target audience through social listening. But does LinkedIn actually allow users to leverage its platform for social listening? Let’s take a closer look.
What is Social Listening?
Social listening refers to the practice of monitoring social media conversations to gain insights into what people are saying about a company, brand, product, or topic. It involves tracking mentions, hashtags, keywords, and more across social platforms in order to understand customer sentiment, identify potential opportunities or crises, and gauge reactions to campaigns and content.
Some of the key benefits of social listening include:
- Understanding your target audience and what resonates with them
- Monitoring brand reputation and sentiment
- Identifying brand advocates and influencers
- Gaining real-time feedback on products and services
- Spotting trends and opportunities early on
- Tracking performance of campaigns and content
- Listening to customer service issues and complaints
- Benchmarking against competitors
- Informing product development cycles
- Identifying possible PR crises and issues
Many organizations invest in social listening tools and software to streamline the process of monitoring conversations happening across social networks. This allows them to turn social data into actionable insights.
Does LinkedIn Allow Social Listening?
The short answer – yes, LinkedIn does allow users to leverage their platform for social listening activities. However, LinkedIn does place some restrictions in terms of data access and functionality.
Here are a few key things to note about social listening on LinkedIn:
- LinkedIn provides social listening APIs and data streams that can be used by developers to build listening tools and integrate LinkedIn data.
- LinkedIn’s API terms of service prohibit using their APIs for surveillance purposes.
- You cannot listen into private conversations or messages between connections.
- Access to LinkedIn’s APIs and most social data is limited to paid premium accounts.
- Keyword tracking and Boolean search operators are restricted compared to other social platforms.
- Main social data points accessible are user posts, comments and sponsored content.
- Profile information and Groups content offer additional monitoring opportunities.
While more restricted than other social networks, LinkedIn does provide official endpoints for tracking publicly available data posted on their platform. Partners like SocialBakers, Synthesio, Brandwatch, Sprout Social and others leverage these APIs so brands can incorporate LinkedIn data into their social listening feeds.
LinkedIn’s Social Listening APIs and Product Features
LinkedIn provides several specific products and APIs for gathering social data:
LinkedIn Listen API
LinkedIn’s Listen API allows you to stream LinkedIn posts and comments containing specified keywords. This lets developers build applications that can monitor LinkedIn conversations in real-time.
LinkedIn Audience Insights
LinkedIn Audience Insights is a social media analytics tool accessible to Company Page admins. It provides data on followers including demographics, interests, engagement levels and more. These insights can be used to tailor content and messaging to your target audience.
LinkedIn Matched Audiences
Matched Audiences allows advertisers to create targeted customer audiences for ad campaigns based on email lists and website traffic. This leverages LinkedIn’s data on its users. While not social listening per se, it does provide some visibility into your customers and audience on LinkedIn based on known data.
LinkedIn Ad Analytics
LinkedIn Campaign Manager provides analytics on your LinkedIn ad performance including demographic data, engagement and clicks. This can offer useful insights into how your LinkedIn audience responds to specific ad campaigns and messages.
LinkedIn Groups
Monitoring LinkedIn Groups related to your industry, products or brand can provide useful insights into discussions and sentiment from professionals and communities. Group administrators can utilize third-party social listening tools for tracking Group content.
How Brands Can Use LinkedIn for Social Listening
Brands invest in social listening on LinkedIn for many of the same reasons as other social networks – to identify opportunities, track reputation, understand audiences and more. Here are some specific ways brands leverage LinkedIn for social listening and monitoring:
- Monitor industry discussions – Track LinkedIn Groups and discussions relevant to your business, competitors and industry trends.
- Listen to your audience – Analyze follower demographics, interests and feedback on your Company Page for audience insights.
- Track brand mentions – Set up alerts and streams for your brand name, products, campaigns and relevant keywords.
- Customer research – Use tools like Matched Audiences to glean social insights on existing customers and website visitors.
- Influencer analysis – Identify relevant influencers posting about your industry and optimize engagement strategies.
- Jump on viral content – Monitor trending content related to your brand and industry that you can piggyback on.
- Track competitors – Keep tabs on competitors’ follower growth, engagement levels, content performance and more.
- Crisis monitoring – Use real-time streams to listen for PR issues or negative sentiment that need addressing.
- Event tracking – Use LinkedIn feeds and hashtag monitoring to measure engagement and discover insights from events.
- Campaign analysis – Leverage Company Page analytics to ascertain effectiveness of campaigns and engagement levels.
Tips for Social Listening on LinkedIn
Here are some best practices for tapping into LinkedIn conversations for actionable social intelligence:
- Use both LinkedIn’s native analytics and third-party social listening tools for a comprehensive view.
- Take advantage of LinkedIn’s access to professional demographics not available on other platforms.
- Combine LinkedIn listening with monitoring of other social networks and online sources.
- Go beyond keywords and hashtags to analyze connections, Groups, alumni data and other information.
- Leverage real-time streams to monitor events, product launches, issues and trending topics.
- Focus on quality conversations taking place among professionals versus just volume of mentions.
- Look not just at individual posts but patterns and conversations between multiple people.
- Verify findings against other data sources and don’t rely solely on social data.
- Make sure to listen to both external conversations as well as internal employee advocacy.
- Tie monitoring initiatives to specific business goals and objectives.
LinkedIn’s Restrictions on Social Listening
While LinkedIn provides a wealth of professional social data, they do impose some limits and restrictions on social listening activities compared to other social platforms. These include:
- Restricted keyword targeting and Boolean search operators for API streams.
- No access to private user messages or closed Groups.
- Limited historical and conversational search compared to Twitter or Reddit.
- More limited free data requiring paid licenses or premium accounts for robust access.
- Prohibitions against collecting data for surveillance or tracking individuals without consent.
- No resources for assessing sentiment, influence or demographics beyond followers.
- Inability to thoroughly track competitors’ overall employee advocacy programs.
- No straightforward way to filter out company-sponsored posts from organic conversations.
These restrictions point to the need to use LinkedIn social data thoughtfully as part of a broader monitoring strategy. LinkedIn listening should focus more on quality conversations between professionals rather than overall volume of mentions.
Third-Party Social Listening Tools for LinkedIn
LinkedIn’s first-party analytics and APIs provide a starting point for social listening on their platform. However, most brands choose to augment these native options with third-party social media monitoring tools. Some popular tools with LinkedIn capabilities include:
Tool | Key LinkedIn Capabilities |
---|---|
Sprout Social | – Monitor keywords, brands, Groups – Analyze follower demographics – Track Company Page metrics |
mention | – Real-time streams and alerts – Analyze brand mentions, keywords – Export LinkedIn data |
Sysomos | – Listen into LinkedIn public posts – Audience analysis tools – Paid media analytics |
Awario | – Track keywords and URLs – Daily summary reports – Real-time alerts |
Talkwalker | – Boolean search options – Exports to Excel, Google Sheets – Sentiment and metrics analysis |
Brand24 | – Unlimited searches and keywords – Manage multiple LinkedIn profiles – Engagement and influencer analysis |
The crucial factor is choosing a tool that provides the breadth of listening needed while offering intuitive analysis tools to turn LinkedIn data into insights.
Key Takeaways
- LinkedIn does allow users and partners to leverage their platform for social listening through official APIs and product features.
- However, LinkedIn places certain restrictions on social data access and surveillance of private conversations.
- Brands can use LinkedIn listening to research audiences, monitor brands, track campaigns and more.
- Focus on quality conversations on LinkedIn rather than simply volume of mentions.
- Combine LinkedIn data with other sources as part of a comprehensive monitoring strategy.
- Choose social listening software that meets your specific LinkedIn and overall monitoring needs.
In summary, tap into LinkedIn’s professional social data prudently as a complement to other listening sources. This can provide powerful insights into industry trends, audience interests, professional opinions and brand reputation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I listen to any public LinkedIn conversation?
No, LinkedIn places certain limits on social listening functionality. You cannot monitor private messages or closed Groups. Public posts from individuals and open Groups can be tracked with the proper data access and tools.
Is social listening on LinkedIn free?
LinkedIn provides limited free social data to regular users. To leverage LinkedIn’s APIs and get broad access for social listening, you need a premium paid account and/or third-party software.
What are LinkedIn’s main social listening tools?
LinkedIn’s main native options are the Listen API, Audience Insights, Matched Audiences and Company Page analytics. Most brands also use third-party software tools like Sprout Social, Sysomos and Awario to access LinkedIn data.
Can I track competitors on LinkedIn?
You can monitor public competitor posts, Company Pages and metrics to a certain extent. However, tracking a competitor’s overall employee advocacy program is not possible through LinkedIn’s current tools.
Is LinkedIn good for social listening compared to Twitter?
LinkedIn can provide more targeted professional insights but with more limits on functionality. It is best used as part of a broader listening strategy encompassing other social platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Conclusion
LinkedIn is an important social platform for brands to tap into as part of an integrated social listening strategy. While requiring a more nuanced approach, LinkedIn conversations can offer powerful audience and competitive insights unavailable elsewhere. The key is using LinkedIn’s APIs judiciously combined with the right tools to extract meaningful data from the platform.
By monitoring LinkedIn’s professional dialog strategically, brands can keep a pulse on industry trends, reputation, and audience interests to make data-driven decisions.