On Tuesday, February 20, Metricool, a company specializing in social network analysis and management, unveiled its latest study on the professional social network LinkedIn. The study aims to "provide answers to questions frequently asked by corporate accounts, content creators, and social media managers," says the solutions provider, particularly in terms of publication frequencies, formats, and preferred times of day.
To compile this report, Metricool analyzed over 41,000 company pages and 1.5 million publications of all types (carousels, posts incorporating images or image galleries, publications with videos, and text-only posts that may contain polls or links) over a 122-day period, between October 2023 and January 2024. To simplify the analysis, the pages studied were grouped into several categories according to the number of subscribers:
- Tiny (24,928 pages): between 0 and 500 followers,
- Small (10,196 pages): between 500 and 2,000 followers,
- Medium (5,880 pages): between 2,000 and 10,000 followers,
- Big (1,777 pages): between 10,000 and 50,000 followers,
- Huge (490 pages): between 50,000 and 55 million followers.
"This approach makes it possible to compare performance with similar accounts and to analyze the evolution of data as a function of follower growth," explains Metricool.
Which format is best on LinkedIn?
The carousel: the king of formats
While establishing a direct link between the number of impressions and frequency of publication seemed more complex, Metricool easily identified the most popular format on the platform. As expected, it's the carousel, which generates an average of 1,387 impressions in the sample analyzed. It is ahead of publications including images (703), videos (672), and text-only (589).
Better still, it's the format that generates, on average, the most engagement (32%), clicks (427), shares (1.79), likes (14.5), and comments (0.49) on LinkedIn. On the other end of the spectrum, purely text-based posts receive the fewest interactions, with an average of 7.6 likes, 16.9 clicks, and 0.2 comments per publication.
The carousel format and publications incorporating images stand out on LinkedIn. Metricool
But what explains this craze for carousels? Rarer on the platform, carousels have the advantage of "telling the story of the content (...) in addition to their visual appeal," explains Metricool. With more resources allocated to social media, accounts in the Huge category (between 50,000 and 55 million subscribers) rely more regularly on this content format, with an average of 3.88 carousels per month. However, Metricool observes that the dissemination of carousels is a widespread strategy on LinkedIn, regardless of page size.
Video: an underestimated format?
Metricool's analysis offers some interesting data on video, a traditionally neglected format with an engagement rate only slightly higher than purely text-based publications (4.39% vs. 4.35%). Paradoxically, however, it generates "a high rate of comments, similar to that of carousel or image formats," says the study. In addition, the company notes a pronounced interest in short videos: on average, viewing time on LinkedIn oscillates between 13 and 15 seconds, "suggesting that users lose interest when a video is longer," adds Metricool.
Should hashtags be added to LinkedIn publications?
Metricool identified over 7.3 million hashtags in the sample of publications examined and, most importantly, noted a trend: it is recommended to associate 1 to 3 hashtags with your publications rather than none at all. so highly inadvisable to saturate your publication with hashtags, as this will strongly affect the average number of clicks, impressions, likes, or shares.
For proof, on average, a publication incorporating between 1 and 3 hashtags gets 927 impressions, 76.7 clicks, or 14.7 "likes," whereas a post containing 7 hashtags generates just 408 impressions, 41 clicks, and 8.4 likes. However, engagement is higher with 7 hashtags (12.4% engagement vs. 10.1%).
According to Metricool, it's better to choose no hashtags at all rather than include more than seven. © Metricool
When should you publish on LinkedIn?
When it comes to the day of publication, Metricool notes, "considering both the total number of impressions and the day we see the most publications," that it's best to publish content during the week on LinkedIn. On average, more impressions are generated by posts published, in order, on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. As the graph below shows, impression statistics are much less favorable on Saturdays and Sundays.
We strongly advise against publishing on Saturdays and Sundays on LinkedIn. © Metricool
At the same time, Metricool observes a peak in activity on LinkedIn at 10 a.m. "worldwide and regardless of time zone." According to the company, this is "the most favorable and frequent time to publish.".