The Belgian LinkedIn Monitor: March 1 edition

LinkedIn is moving fast in the first two months of 2022. We are now March 1 and this is the 3rd update for the year of The Belgian LinkedIn Monitor and the use of LinkedIn in Belgium.?I do hope you enjoy the ?Newsletter format and the expanded content topics.?This month’s edition includes:

·???????The Belgian numbers updated on March 1

·???????The Advertising Monitor update

·???????New functions announced, introduced, or seen in February

As a reminder, the reason for this Newsletter remains:

• People attending my courses keep asking what a Belgian LinkedIn user looks like
• There are many contradicting numbers out there. I hope my continued updates can bring some order and continuity about the numbers and usage on the platform.

Note: The sources that I am using are LinkedIn website (news), Sales Navigator, LinkedIn Advertising, and the free/standard version of LinkedIn.?I am also using my peers who sometimes get access to features and functions as part of beta tests and 1st waves of roll-outs

So here we go for the 3rd ?edition of the BLM 2.0 version

Overall numbers

Since LinkedIn only reports the quarterly number the current number of members remains at 810M.?However, if and when you check LinkedIn (free version & Sales Navigator) the numbers might vary.?In my case, the free version tells me there are 804M profiles.?In Belgium we are within the view of the 4M mark with 3.97M members. The seems to have been stabilized at 3.97M members.

Switching to business criteria

There are over 101K company pages in Belgium.?2 out of 3 are companies that employ less than 10 people which makes sense in a country of SME.?If we add the 11- 50 companies we have covered 90% of all company pages.

LinkedIn Activity Levels

There has been an increase of content creators in the last 30 days!?We are now at 4.18% or nearly a full percent higher than last month.?Are we seeing the economic revival showing up in these numbers?

Job market

The job changer index went up by a tad too over 1.74% in the last 90 days which is another great sign of economic revival!

Jobs on LinkedIn have increased to over 90K or 10% increase vs last month.?More good signs that the LinkedIn activity is picking up.

Looking at some other websites, we see that both the VDAB and Indeed?have over 200K jobs ??The war for talent is now truly raging!

What is happening with ADVERTISING on LinkedIn?

I have now tracked 10 quarters of ad costs since 2020. Since the last update was in December, it is time to take another look here too. I have now integrated the Quarterly Advertising Monitor into this publication.

One conclusion I draw from my own feed is that the number of sponsored posts in my Home Feed dropped very much over the December & January timeframe.?The certainty was that the 2nd post in my feed was a Sponsored Content post but after that, ads were and are all over the place.?

Just as a reminder, I decided to keep track of a regular basis of the (suggested) advertising costs on LinkedIn. The goal is to track the trend in costs to advertise to specific groups (Sales, Marketing, and Finance) at 3 levels (Belgium, Europe, and the USA) and thus give some insights into the advertising trends.?Of course, as an experienced advertising space buyer you might be able to shave off some euros or cents but I want to continue to compare the same scenarios.?

The overall conclusion is that the cost to advertise have come to normal prices since being very high at the end of 2021:?

·?????The CPM cost has decreased in every scenario by 25%!

·?????The CPC cost decreased by roughly 20% overall in every scenario!

·?????While the Sponsored & Text ads are on the rise by about 10%

·?????The cost for the job ad remains stable

These decreases are great to see because more and more marketers will open their wallet in the next weeks and months to sponsor content or pay for other content boosting.

It will be interesting to follow if these costs will continue to drop or start rising now that the economic revival continues. More and more marketers are joining the advertising and bidding game on LinkedIn again.

NOTE: In January, LinkedIn has stopped EU Sponsored Messages and Conversation Ads.?These have currently been removed from the overview.

The 2020-2021-2022 evolution

I have taken a few simple scenarios to illustrate the evolution of the cost

If you are interested in more numbers or a more specific target group, do not hesitate to reach out to me.

As a reminder, LinkedIn offers a certification program (https://training.marketing.linkedin.com/).?This training gives you insights into the Advertising module of LinkedIn.??By tweaking different parameters you can certainly reduce the numbers and cost!

?Closing thought on Targeting on LinkedIn

From the?research?I did last year when you target in the ad module of LinkedIn or use Search in Sales Navigator/Recruiter, you will not reach or find everyone that you should be reached or found. This has nothing to do with LinkedIn but with members not completing their profiles.

What are your findings when it comes to LinkedIn ads?

?What’s new on LinkedIn?

Onwards to some of the new things on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is currently rolling out a new version of the Cover Story.?More details can be found via this link (https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/president_newlinkedinfeature-keeprockinglinkedin-linkedintips-activity-6897966546363191296-Av1p)

LinkedIn has just announced ?LinkedIn Podcast Network (More info: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/introducing-linkedin-podcast-network-newest-way-connect-your--1f).

it is going to be interesting to see how this will integrate with the LinkedIn Audio currently being tested by 3000 people around the world.

Conclusion

After some months of struggling, LinkedIn seems to be moving in the right direction (FORWARD) again in Belgium.?All the signs are green for LinkedIn to break the 4M marker in the next weeks/months and I am looking forward to publishing the next more in-depth version of the Belgian LinkedIn Monitor on April 1 (not an April Fool's joke)

Any suggestions about improvements or other numbers you want me to include, please do mention them in the comments.