Over the last couple of weeks, I've been looking at data from across LinkedIn to try and figure out how to grow a LinkedIn page. In professional services marketing, LinkedIn is probably the most relevant platform and where buyers are likely active most.

To do this, I took a sample of the LinkedIn usage data of 50 firms across a range of industries, the majority of which were Professional Services firms. I looked at their total number of followers, their new followers each week, the number of times they posted and how many times the posts were engaged with as a proportion.

LinkedIn actually supplies this data to company page administrators through the analytics interface. It provides a cross-section of firms that compete with you or are at least in a similar space with their LinkedIn account.

Once the data was gathered, it was easy enough to see the correlation between the different data points with the most interesting being "new followers".

In the table above, numbers closer to 1 imply a stronger positive relationship between the data points. Ie- more of one usually corresponds with more of another. 

A number closer to -1 means a stronger negative relationship between the data points. Ie- more of one usually corresponds with less of another.

Being big is better than being small

So the obvious standout here is that strong correlation between total followers and new followers. Simply put, bigger pages with better-known brands are likely to attract more followers.

There's not much to be learned from that. If you are a small brand, focus on what you can control to grow and if you are a large brand you need to do the same.

Regular updates are better than high engagement

The correlation between updates and new followers (0.52) is much stronger than between engagement and new followers (-0.10). That suggests that its more important to post regularly and often, rather than infrequently with higher engagement.

We're programmed in marketing to think of the "hero piece", that one slick piece of content that will build the brand and gain us new leads or followers. While these large content pieces definitely have their place in the marketing mix, a once-off or short term release is not the ideal for capturing attention.

My research is by no means scientifically rigorous or representative of all firms. What it does do is suggest that regular content is more sought after by followers on LinkedIn.

*full table included for reference