LinkedIn - Are we linked with businesses or buddies?

It is common knowledge that LinkedIn is a professional platform with the aim of connecting people and businesses, meaning it has always been business orientated. Back in 2017 LinkedIn introduced the ability for users to post video on the platform. This broadened the scope for content creation and allowed us to see that video content received around three times more impressions than posts without.

This is not surprising considering the growth in video content across all social media platforms with the likes of instagram introducing IGTV in 2018 and recently video central app TikTok offering the highest engagement rate per post of any social platform.

Video posts result in more engagement however on average 30% of that engagement comes from the company's employees, suggesting a fairly large portion of engagement are those who are already familiar with the business. 

You are also most likely to connect with current colleagues which makes sense but it can lead to a more friendship and social platform rather than creating new business connections. This has been highlighted in recent times with COVID-19. More people have moved to posting content that can be seen as more suited to facebook such as airing political opinions. This would usually not be encouraged as political views can affect business and LinkedIn’s core is all about promoting business. 

 However engagement is still high (perhaps even higher) with non business related posts. With our director receiving around five times more engagement on a post about his dog! Understandable however as she is one cute dog! 

Despite these changes in content moving towards more facebook style posts LinkedIn is still proving to be the platform that provides businesses with most engagement. While business is changing due to COVID-19 it only seems fitting that LinkedIn may not be running business as usual either! 

How do you think linkedin will evolve in the near future?