As more people look to work during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is a bit surprising that LinkedIn has seen an increase in its use, as the parent company Microsoft reported that LinkedIn saw ‘record levels of engagement’ with more than 31%, in the past few months.
The results are listed in the FY21 Q1 report of Microsoft that the company has shared a few days ago, highlighting its major performance in the period.
As you can see in the image above, LinkedIn’s profit is also increasing up to 16% that is mostly driven by maximized ad spend.
According to Microsoft:
“Advertiser demand on LinkedIn returned to near pre-COVID levels, up 40% year over year, as marketers use our tools to connect with professionals ready to do business. And organizations continue to tap into the combination of LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Dynamics 365 to ensure salespeople have the context they need to sell remotely.”
It’s worth stating that in July LinkedIn decreased 6% of the global workforce or about 960 roles in the Global Sales and Talent Acquisition companies thanks to the decrease in activity after the COVID-19. LinkedIn clarified at the time that fewer companies in the past are able to employ at the same amount. The demand was just not enough to endure normal operations in this part.
This movement was foremost concentrated on Talent Solutions after the slowdown in hiring. So, LinkedIn may as well have made the call in decreasing its staff burden in this matter. However, these figures recommend that it can have overrated the influence on ad sales with more organizations planning to have new means to preserve the sales rate amid the pandemic.
More than that, Microsoft has reported that LinkedIn is currently up to 722 million members all over the world, more than 675 it is stated in January this year.
It’s worth explaining that active users and members are, as always, not the same thing. LinkedIn does not share daily or monthly active users counts, it makes it hard to measure the current comparative use of the application. We have just to take Microsoft at its word that it’s seeing record levels of engagement, which means that we don’t exactly now.
Former estimations have recommended that LinkedIn’s active users are about half of the total audience in general, which would place it at around 361 MAU. Comparing to that, Twitter has reported having about 330 million MAU before it switched to its mDAU stat early in the past year.
Microsoft has stated that in this period, LinkedIn started its new redesign and has added stories for almost all users.
However, again, no insights of usage on Stories, or how much is the new feature has been popular. LinkedIn took some time to expand the new release of the feature, with Brazilian users getting Stories in June, months before the broader launch in September. That would recommend that the feature was not getting significant traction in the previous test markets. However, maybe it was just broad testing to make sure everything was in the right place.
Actually, we do not know as we do not have any insights for the usage, yet hopefully, LinkedIn will share further insights about the Stories use and trends in the near future.
Additionally, Microsoft has also noted that LinedIn Learning also saw a great increase in use in 2020 due to the global lockdown.
“More professionals are turning to LinkedIn Learning to increase their knowledge capital, watching more than a million hours of content each week, more than double the amount a year ago. Three people are hired every minute on LinkedIn, and new features make it easier for nearly 40 million job seekers to indicate they’re looking for their next opportunity.”
Moreover, that may seem a bit surprising yet it is another strong point for the platform, this has to help it to keep going to grow as we are into the last quarter of the year.
Microsoft stated that it is expecting that LinkedIn’s profit growth to keep going, with the developing ad market and remaining strong engagement set to hold it in a good position for the next stage.
That may offer new chances for ad campaigns if you are planning to reach professionals, the numbers here show that LinkedIn may indeed be worth considering in your move.
