LinkedIn Rolls Out Tools To Measure Content Marketing Influence

LinkedIn is releasing content analytics tools Thursday that go beyond reporting by allowing brands to quantify and benchmark content posted to the brand's page on the social network.

One tool measures Trending Content, which ranks topics like leadership, entrepreneurship, cloud computing and mobile devices. It determines reach, frequency and engagement of how the content performs with a specific audience, how it compares with their competitors, and how it changes over time.

The Content Marketing Score, an analytics resource that provides insight into the impact of paid and organic content on LinkedIn, is another resource launching today. Performance metrics for content marketing allow brands to aggregate into one metric the scores from multiple pieces of content posted to the brand's LinkedIn page. This monitors how the content trends.

The Content Marketing Institute recently surveyed B2B marketers and found that 93% use content marketing, but only 42% consider themselves effective at it. These tools aim to help marketers better understand the influence of their content has with other members using the site by enabling them to mine insights that can improve their brand's score.

Similar to Google's search algorithm that ranks organic content in results from search engine queries, LinkedIn will calculate metrics from the content's performance to determine the score. Activity on a brand's page, sponsoring a piece of content or paying to have a piece reach a target audience, employee posts in aggregate, group activity, and posts from any of the 500 people in the site's influencer program all contribute to the score.

The tool also allows the brand to determine the percentage of people who took action against the content -- whether they like it, share it, comment on it, follow the company that posted it, or click and consume or extrapolate it. The score is a ratio of the unique members who engaged with the content divided by the brand's active target audience who must come to LinkedIn at least one monthly.

While the score addresses content on LinkedIn, marketers can "use some of the insights found in the content marketing score to make assessments about general industry trends across other platforms," per a LinkedIn spokesperson. "Not necessarily other social media platforms, but professional publishers like The Wall Street Journal."

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