2022 was overall a good year on LinkedIn for me, and my 12th year being on the platform. I spend a decent amount of time there in the interest of community engagement and building my business. My goal is to engage in conversations in an intentional and genuine way, guided by a set of principles so that what I say and do is interesting, relevant, timely, relatable, actionable, inviting, and valuable (sounds like I used to work in user experience!)
I pulled together a quick wrap up of my LinkedIn stats from Shield. It's interesting to see what's changed year-to-year, some things for the better, and some not so great (the latter isn't too bothersome). We all know that metrics aren't everything and should be viewed within context (qualitative data and the why), seen for what they are and are not, and incorporated into decisions in an appropriate way. This is just some basic analysis. I don't regularly use Shield because I am generally not driven by social media metrics enough to want to check them regularly, but I like to sign up once or twice a year to see what's up.
Ultimately, if I'm having a good time and so are you, then that's all that matters. 🎉
Hanging out on LinkedIn provides me with the community connection I want and need as someone who works solo on the internet. And it benefits my coaching practice as a place where clients find me, get to know me, and decide to get in touch. Being on LinkedIn is part of my strategy, but you will never, ever see me selling. I don't talk about my services or outcomes because I don't find it necessary. No shade on people who use this tactic to grow their business, of course. I want to speak to a larger group of people who may have no interest in coaching, on a variety of topics. I don't want to limit my audience, my community, just to people in UX, people who are looking for a job, or any other one narrow category. My business is niche, but my social media is not.
Thanks to everyone for engaging and connecting with me this year. I don't have a plan for LinkedIn in 2023. Just gonna keep doing what I do and go with the flow as usual.
The Stats
Note: Dark blue graph trend line is 2022, light blue trend line is 2021 (for comparison)
Number of posts: 82 (-21%)
There are three forces that drove this decrease: 1) my goal of quality over quantity to spark conversation and have impact; 2) several short periods of LinkedIn burnout (I occasionally get irritated at what I see there, and need a break from posting); and 3) avoiding doing any posting at all because I put too much pressure on myself to outperform previous posts. I really hope to let go of that last one so it doesn't stand in the way.
Post views: 2,062,027 (+178%)
The big jump in January was from a viral post with almost a million impressions. Yep, that's right - post views are actually page impressions; i.e., the post loads on a person's screen, but it doesn't mean that someones eyeballs actually see it. They might gloss over it, might decide not to interact with it, or they may not scroll far down enough. So, grain of salt metric.
Post shares: 370 (-17%)
The interesting thing about re-sharing a post is that most of the time it doesn't work. I know this based on plenty of experimenting and from other LinkedIn nerds who have done the same. It's actually more helpful to comment on the original post to indicate its value (comments take time and effort, which indicates post quality), and it keeps the conversation going where it began, which the author surely appreciates.
Likes/reactions: 25,019 (+106%)
Reactions (E.G., like, heart, support, etc.) are obviously a better indicator of interest than page impressions. When someone "likes" or "reacts" your post, the algorithm may show it their network. Funny though, if I remove the January viral post from the equation, my total number of reactions drops by 53% to 11,869, which is less than last year's total.
Comments: 1,212 (-38%)
This is the one metric I don't want decreasing. Comments are queen because someone takes time out of their day to be part of the conversation, and that's a big reason why I spend time on LinkedIn. The decrease from 2021 likely relates to doing 20% fewer posts and probably some other factors. I think that some posts can provide value without needing a conversation. But I will continue to aim to be inviting and engaging.
Followers: 15,040 (+164%)
The followers trend line on the Shield graph is messed up for some reason. I am just happy to know that people are interested in what I have to say!
Engagement rate: 1.29% (-34%)
Average engagement (views to like/comment/share ratio, as calculated by Shield) is down more than I would have guessed. I did a quick calculation and if I account for the viral post with almost 1 million views (impressions), it goes down even lower! Anyway, apparently 2% is a good engagement rate on LinkedIn. Who the hell really knows.
Posting frequency: Fairly distributed across the work week
I have a typical preference for Mondays & Tuesdays. That's when I'm most likely to have a new idea to talk about that's been simmering over the weekend, and when I am refreshed from taking a break from the platform. I almost never post on the weekends, when people are much less active. Having a break from social is important!
Post themes: Human-centered
The word cloud produced by Shield captures what I like to talk about most: user experience careers, career strategy, professional development, work, compensation, accountability, capitalism, and LinkedIn.
My Top Post of 2022
In the categories of Comments, Reactions, Page Impressions, and Shares
View the original here. This post garnered 989,709 page impressions and landed me an interview with a journalist from The Wall Street Journal who saw it in his feed, but he ended up taking the piece in a different direction. How's that for an unexpected outcome!