LinkedIn turns 21 years old in 2024! The platform has made a place for itself in the world of social media networks. While it may not be as popular as other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, it’s unique in that it allows any professional to present their business activity while promoting their skills, values, and professionalism.
This digital CV is an ideal marketing lever to acquire traffic, engagement, and visibility but also to give a boost to the user’s career. The social media platform also offers users the ability to find their next job or their next collaborator.
What are LinkedIn's most important stats this year? What’s the added value of this social media platform for global professional networking? Keep reading to find out!
LinkedIn: Overview and key data
What's the value of LinkedIn?
Different from other social media platforms such as TikTok or Pinterest, LinkedIn is a professional social media network: it allows individuals and companies to build a career-based profile as a kind of digital CV.
Like all social media platforms, LinkedIn allows users to build a network: people can add other users to increase the number of their connections, here with the aim of developing their career.
As LinkedIn user profiles can be found on search engines, LinkedIn is also a way for users to build an online presence and easily control it. Company or personal profiles are available for organizations or employees and entrepreneurs.
LinkedIn makes it possible for you to stay up to date with the latest news of your business network but also to find or offer jobs, thanks to its job platform.
What year was LinkedIn created?
Linkedin was created in 2002 and launched in 2003 in the United States.
The social media network’s co-founders are Reid Hoffman and Allen Blue, both members of the so-called “PayPal Mafia” of payment platform creators who went on to create other international companies, along with three other entrepreneurs.
To be able to evolve its service for users over time, LinkedIn extended its network worldwide in 2008 with new countries such as Spain and France. Then, in 2014, a Chinese version adapted to the country’s restrictions. LinkedIn is now present in 200 countries.
Today, the global company counts over 18,500 employees and has offices in over 30 cities around the world.
What is LinkedIn’s business model?
The network is based on a business model consisting of three top sources of revenue, namely advertising (sponsorship), subscriptions (premium profiles), and its recruitment service (job search engine).
In 2008, the network created its own advertising platform.
In 2016, LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft for $26.2 billion.
Since June 2020, Ryan Roslansky has been the CEO of the network. LinkedIn's headquarters is located in Mountain View, California.
What are LinkedIn’s revenue sources?
LinkedIn’s goal is closely linked to the professional success of its subscribers. This goal is achieved on several levels, whether in the sharing of content or in the creation of professional relationships.
To do this, the platform offers to connect professionals with each other, as well as professionals with companies and vice versa. In addition, recruiters can post job offers on LinkedIn.
Advertising is also a source of revenue for LinkedIn. Thanks to its large database, ads on the social media network are ultra-targeted and very effective, which makes this service a popular acquisition lever.
LinkedIn has set up different offers to allow users and businesses to take advantage of the services according to their needs:
- Premium Career: to be able to be recruited and develop your career ($29.99 per month)
- Premium Business: for companies to develop their business ($59.99 per month)
- Sales Navigator Core: to increase your number of leads and grow your customer base ($99.99 per month)
- Recruiter Lite: for recruiters to find more talent ($170 per month)
- LinkedIn Learning: to train and improve your skills ($19.99 per month with a one-year commitment or $39.99 per month with no commitment)
According to Kinsta, 39% of LinkedIn users paid for a subscription in 2020.
What is LinkedIn’s annual revenue?
LinkedIn's sales exceeded $10 billion in 2021 and $13 billion in 2022, compared with $5 billion in 2018. Sales multiplied by five between 2015 and 2022 to reach nearly $14 billion, representing an increase of almost $6 billion from 2020.
Source: Statista
In 2023, LinkedIn's revenue reached approximately $15 billion.
Key global LinkedIn usage stats and user demographics
LinkedIn is one of the essential social networks for all professionals and businesses. Who makes up the network’s audience and what's the target of this career accelerator based on the data?
How many LinkedIn users are there?
In 2024, LinkedIn has more than 1 billion users worldwide in 200 countries.
Statista forecasts a 22% increase in the LinkedIn population between 2024 and 2028.
Studies estimate that monthly active users represent around 50% of LinkedIn members.
According to Statista's LinkedIn data for January 2024, in terms of gender demographics, 56.4% of members are male and 43.6% are female.
Who uses LinkedIn the most worldwide?
LinkedIn reports that the Asia-Pacific region has the most people using the platform, with over 286 million users. This is followed by Europe (over 267 million users), North America (over 238 million users), Latin America (over 162 million users), and the Middle East and Africa (over 62 million users).
Based on March 2024 data from Statista, the Top 10 countries with the greatest number of registered LinkedIn users are as follows:
- United States: 220 million members
- India: 120 million members
- Brazil: 68 million members
- China: 57 million members
- United Kingdom: 39 million members
- France: 29 million members
- Indonesia: 26 million members
- Canada: 24 million members
- Mexico: 22 million members
- Italy: 20 million members
Taking a closer look at users based in the United States, where the greatest distribution of LinkedIn users can be found, it seems that the social media platform is particularly popular among Americans who have attained a higher level of formal education, based on data from Pew Research. For example, 53% of Americans who have obtained a bachelor's degree or higher report using the platform, which is significantly greater compared to 28% of those falling into the group with some college education and just 10% of those with a high school diploma or less.
Which generation uses LinkedIn the most? What age group is most present?
When it comes to LinkedIn users worldwide, Gen Z and millennials make up the largest groups of people on the platform. As of January 2024, Statista gives the following distribution of users per age range:
- Users 18–24 years old: 24.7%
- Users 25–34 years old: 51.6%
- Users 35–54 years old: 20%
- Users 55+: 3.7%
Nearly 77% of LinkedIn members are under the age of 35.
What type of audience is LinkedIn geared to in terms of profession?
Here’s the breakdown of the social media platform's audience of users by professional status according to LinkedIn in 2019:
- Influencers: 180 million
- Decision-makers: 63 million
- Students: 46 million
- Opinion leaders: 17 million
- Executives: 10 million
- IT decision-makers: 6 million
- Master’s graduates: 3 million
How many people use LinkedIn to search for jobs?
If your business is in the process of recruiting, leveraging your LinkedIn company page could be a vital tool for attracting new talent. LinkedIn's own stats reveal that each week, 61 million individuals use the platform to explore job opportunities.
What's more, based on Statista data, 16.2% of users in the United States access the platform every day, while 48.5% of them log in at least once a month, as of March 2021.
In addition, with 41,000+ skills cataloged on LinkedIn, it serves as an outstanding platform for employers seeking the ideal candidate for a job post.
How many users have activated creator mode on LinkedIn?
Introduced in 2021, LinkedIn's creator mode has gradually been gathering momentum, with more than 11 million members turning on this feature.
This mode enables users to highlight their content and boost their profile visibility on the platform, proving to be an essential asset for individuals aiming to enhance their brand or professional standing.
How to use LinkedIn effectively as a business
In order for your company to have the greatest possible visibility and the best performance on the social network, let’s take a look at how businesses can create top content and track the results of their posts in an optimal way.
What’s a good engagement rate on LinkedIn?
This is the key statistic that will help you to know if your posts will perform well: reactions, likes, comments, and shares are compared to the number of an account’s subscribers to evaluate this rate.
A good engagement rate for people to aim for with their posts on LinkedIn is 3% or higher. It's interesting to note that this figure has increased by 44% from 2023 to 2024, according to SocialInsider.
What type of content should you create on LinkedIn?
First of all, before delving into the key content to create, it's important to bear in mind the following statistic: 57% of users consult LinkedIn on a mobile device, according to LinkedIn Business.
What's also important to consider is that over 52 million users use the tool to search for work every week.
The trend on this platform is different from other social networks in terms of the formats to prioritize. At a time when video content is emphasized and favored, as evidenced by statistics on other social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, LinkedIn is moving away from this format, according to Ok Dork. Aim to share content like articles, article links, and text posts instead on this social media platform.
LinkedIn states that posts including a link record 45% more engagement.
According to Omnicore, how-to and advice articles work best with the audience on LinkedIn.
For articles, the best-performing titles are 40 to 49 characters long (Ok Dork). For better reach on posts, count on 16 to 25 words for B2B and 21 to 25 words for B2C (Buffer).
It's also possible to create your own LinkedIn marketing newsletter to improve your reach and grow your audience: according to Hootsuite, there were over 150 million email subscriptions in the first quarter of 2023.
How often should your business post on LinkedIn?
Many companies and marketers are beginning to understand the importance of interacting with consumers on the internet, particularly via social media platforms. Based on LinkedIn data, 2.7 million business pages on LinkedIn share posts at least once a week.
If you're currently posting on the platform much less frequently, the following statistic may be an incentive to boost your content marketing efforts and post more often to reach your goals on the platform more quickly: LinkedIn Pages that update weekly attract 5.6x more followers compared to those that update monthly, and their follower count increases 7x quicker than Pages updating on a monthly basis!
Why should a company be on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn’s research has counted over 67 million companies on the platform and more than 134,000 schools.
According to Social Media Examiner, B2B businesses have a much larger presence than B2C businesses, with 81% using the platform vs. 53%.
Where can you find your company statistics on LinkedIn?
To access your LinkedIn Page's essential weekly, daily, or monthly business reporting statistics, you must first be designated as a Page "admin."
As a LinkedIn Page admin, exploring your Page's performance is made easier by analyzing it.
To view your Page statistics:
- Go to your Page administrator interface.
- Select "Analytics" from the left-hand menu.
- Choose from the options (visitors, subscribers, prospects, etc.).
How do you make your B2B profile stand out on LinkedIn?
To reach as many people as possible, the 2024 strategy for B2B marketers to undertake is that of massive information sharing through their brand page but also and especially through their collaborators’ accounts.
Omnicore states that 50% of all traffic to B2B websites and blogs is generated by sharing links on LinkedIn.
In order to get the most user reactions possible to your LinkedIn posts, the top marketing strategy you should have for your organic posts is to share captivating, informative, and well-adapted content with the users in your target audience. The more time users spend on your posts, the more your profile will be highlighted on the platform: this is called “dwell time.”
In addition, as a professional, you may need new collaborators or solutions adapted to your needs: by highlighting your content and your values on LinkedIn, you’ll allow your business to shine and attract the attention of entities that’ll be able to help you develop your business on a global scale.
You can also tag third-party accounts to encourage them to share your posts and therefore gain visibility with other people on the LinkedIn social media platform.
Once you have your native content strategy in place, why not consider advertising to users?
How can marketers advertise well on LinkedIn?
According to Hootsuite in 2023, LinkedIn ads can reach up to 14.6% of the global population.
In addition, Hootsuite notes the most effective ad formats for marketers to implement into their social media marketing strategy concerning LinkedIn ads:
- Live Stream: This format can get you 7x more reactions and 24x more comments than regular video posts.
- Images: Posts with images receive 2x more engagement.
- Sponsored posts: A favorite with marketers, who have noted a 33% increase in purchase intent thanks to ads, at the start of the sales funnel.
- Lead-generation ads: 19% of marketers believe these lead generators that allow you to expand your database to be the best ad format on the platform.
- Sponsored inMail ads: 5% of marketers have a preference for sponsored direct messages, which have an open rate of 52% on average
- Text ads and Dynamic ads: 4% of marketers think text-based inserts are the best format for advertising on LinkedIn, while only 1% of them think that dynamic ads are an effective way to help grow your subscriber base.
Conclusion
LinkedIn continues to stand out as a pivotal platform in the professional world, demonstrating substantial growth and engagement among users globally. The statistics presented underscore its value not only for networking but also for branding, recruitment, and marketing strategies.
As LinkedIn evolves, understanding these trends is crucial for professionals and companies aiming to maximize their presence and opportunities in this dynamic professional landscape. Embracing these insights can lead to enhanced connectivity, visibility, and success in the professional realm.
It’s more critical than ever to invest in the LinkedIn social media platform to legitimize your business or professional activity, grow your network, strengthen customer relationships, and open doors and new horizons for the future!
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