Impressions on LinkedIn: Everything you need to know about them

If you're using LinkedIn as part of your social selling strategy, you need to understand how LinkedIn pushes your content in front of other LinkedIn users. This is where understanding your LinkedIn impressions becomes crucial. In this blog post, we'll go through what a LinkedIn impression is, share three types of unique impressions you can get and things that can affect your post impressions.

What are LinkedIn impressions?

LinkedIn impressions refer to the number of times your content, such as posts, articles, or advertisements, is displayed on someone’s screen. Each appearance of your content on a user's feed counts as an impression. It's a measure of visibility, indicating how often your content is being shown to users, but it does not account for whether the user interacted with it or not.  Impressions are different from other engagement metrics such as likes, comments, and shares; they simply measure the exposure of your content.

Why are LinkedIn impressions important?

Impressions are a important to understand because it can give you insight into how strong your LinkedIn posts are. They're also a great way to gauge your LinkedIn presence and how well your LinkedIn post preformed.

1. Visibility and reach: High impression counts indicate that your content is being seen by a broad audience, which is the first step towards building awareness and recognition within your industry.
2. Brand awareness: Frequent exposure to your content helps in establishing and reinforcing your personal or company brand in the minds of your audience.
3. Content effectiveness: By tracking impressions, you can gauge which types of content resonate most with your audience, allowing you to refine your content strategy for better results.
4. Social selling: For social sellers, impressions are vital as they represent opportunities to make an impact, share valuable insights, and engage potential leads.

3 types of LinkedIn impressions you need to know

In general, there are three types of impressions. The data points in your post analytics you see will depend on the type post which we go into more detail later.

But if you're just getting started – you'll need to understand organic impressions. For those a little further along the personal brand journey who promote their content through an ad, you'll need to understand paid impressions. Viral impressions are rare and might apply more to LinkedIn influencers.

1. Organic impressions

Organic impressions are the views your content receives without any paid promotion. These are generated naturally through the activity of your network and the broader LinkedIn community. Organic impressions can be influenced by your content's relevance, engagement rates, and how effectively you leverage LinkedIn's algorithm through strategic posting times and hashtag usage.

2. Paid impressions

You get paid impressions when you promote your content through LinkedIn’s advertising platform. These impressions are part of a targeted campaign aimed at reaching specific audiences beyond your organic network. Paid impressions can provide a significant boost as to your visibility and are often used to accelerate brand awareness and lead generation efforts. They only work if your original post had high impressions.

3. Viral impressions

Viral impressions on LinkedIn refer to the number of times your content is displayed to users beyond your immediate network as a result of interactions such as shares. When your content is engaged with by your connections, it can appear in the feeds of their connections, leading to a wider reach and increased visibility. This type of impression occurs organically and can significantly amplify the exposure of your content, contributing to its potential to go viral.

Post analytics for your content

Let's take a closer look of impressions in the context of the type of content you post on LinkedIn and what this means.

Impressions in your post performance

In this context, impressions refers to the number of times your post was displayed on screen. This number is an estimate and may not be precise.

Impressions in your article performance

In this context, impressions refers to the number of times the post containing your article was displayed on the page. This number is an estimate and may not be precise.

Impressions in your video performance

In this context, impressions refers to the number of times the post containing your video was displayed on screen. This number is an estimate and may not be precise.

Impressions in your newsletter performance

In this context, impressions refers to the number of times your newsletter articles were displayed on screen within the date range selected at the top of the newsletter analytics page.

Noticed a spike in the increase of your impressions? That's because a change was made from April 2024. So that the impression count you see on your posts will include the impressions on your post on top of the impression count on any reposts of your content by another member. If you want to do a deeper dive into post analytics for your content on LinkedIn, they have more information here.

Things that can affect your LinkedIn impressions

Whether you're looking to boost your viral, organic or paid LinkedIn impressions, it's good to be aware of things that can affect your engagement rate and impressions.

• Content quality: High-quality, valuable content that resonates with your audience is more likely to be shared and engaged with, leading to higher impressions.
• Posting frequency: Regular posting keeps you visible in your network’s feeds, but it’s essential to find a balance to avoid overwhelming your audience.
• Engagement rates: Content that receives a lot of likes, comments, and shares is favored by LinkedIn’s algorithm, resulting in higher impressions.
• Network size: A larger and more active network increases the potential for your content to be seen, leading to more impressions.
• Hashtags and keywords: Effective use of relevant hashtags and keywords can enhance the discoverability of your content, leading to higher impressions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Below are a few frequently asked questions about impressions and unique views to help you nail your LinkedIn strategy and boost your LinkedIn marketing efforts.

What is an example of an impression?

Sprout suggests thinking of impressions as the number of times someone saw a post three times. In this case, if someone saw a post three times this equals three impressions. In other words, impressions are the number of times your content was shown, regardless of whether or not someone clicked it or not.

Why won't my LinkedIn views show my reach?

If you use another social media platform, you might be wondering what your reach versus impressions look like on LinkedIn. However, you won't be able to use LinkedIn analytics to track your reach because they focus more on impressions.

What is a unique view on LinkedIn?

A unique view on LinkedIn refers to the number of distinct individuals who have viewed your content. Unlike total views, which count every instance of your content being displayed regardless of who sees it, unique views measure how many different users have interacted with your post, article, or LinkedIn profile. This metric helps in understanding the breadth of your audience, indicating how many separate people are engaging with your content rather than counting multiple views by the same individual.

Conclusion

LinkedIn is a great platform that can help you grow your professional network and build meaningful connections. It's also a great place to grow your personal brand. Understanding impressions and leveraging it with the knowledge of other engagement metrics in LinkedIn is a great way to engage more effectively with your audience. However, to get an overall idea of how well your content is performing, there are other analytics you need to pay attention to that might provide a more accurate picture. You should also experiment with your post type, from short form posts to sharing industry news. The one thing these all have in common? The need for quality content.

More resources

• How to leverage social selling on LinkedIn to drive new business
• 3 easy ways to download LinkedIn contacts and build your own CRM system
• LinkedIn scraping: Everything you need to know

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