It seems like these past few weeks LinkedIn got some media attention in a good way. The professional social network recently announced quarterly profits above forecasts and rolled out a campaign to make its users feel special.
LinkedIn had a net income of USD 40.2 million, while revenue was 81% higher than the 2011 revenue, reaching USD 303.6 million.
"You can pick out a lot of things that were great, from customer adds to accelerating revenue to growth in international," said Kerry Rice, an analyst at Needham & Co, quoted by Chicago Tribune. "On top of that, guidance is pretty outstanding. And from a historical perspective, they'll likely beat those numbers too."
Of course these figures are not pure chance, as LinkedIn launched some new and interesting features last year, which led to many visits to the network. The company launched its "Job Board" in November, and rolled out "Thought leaders" in 2012, introducing some sort of personal blogs by important people (influencers) from various fields. For example, businessman Sir Richard Branson is the most followed thought leader on LinkedIn. Also recently, the social network introduced "Endorsements" - a sort of one push testimonial based on tags - which, despite controversy, encouraged people to come back frequently to see who endorsed them and to endorse back.
This week LinkedIn started a campaign aimed at users, with the purpose to make them feel important. The social networks sent short emails announcing users that they are part of 1% most viewed profiles on LinkedIn, 2%, 5% and it got as far as 10% by now. As the network reached the 200 million users milestone in September, it means that LinkedIn made 20 million people feel special for the network.
The emails had a "read more" option which led people to the network's site, where they could read a thank you letter from LinkedIn. They could also share the information on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, thus encouraging others to access the website.
LinkedIn is definitely on the right track right now, as it proved to be a profitable business (while other social networks, such as Twitter for instance, still struggle to become) and managed to keep the initial positioning in place – a professional social network. Let's not forget the findings of the recent study conducted by The Wall Street Journal and Vistage International which revealed that LinkedIn is small businesses' favorite social network.
DKC PR is Linkedin's PR Agency.
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