Growth managers don’t post enough on LinkedIn

There’s little doubt that LinkedIn is THE social network to use when you’re active in B2B. Everyone is trying to understand the secrets of LinkedIn’s algorithm to be the most visible. Yet our research into the LinkedIn activity of 503 B2B growth managers shows that 43% have not posted anything in the last 3 months. Therefore, the results we reveal in this article are surprising coming from professionals who are supposed to be responsible for their company’s growth.

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Why is LinkedIn THE essential B2B social network?

LinkedIn is a networking club for professionals. As I showed in this article on LinkedIn statistics, some members have understood this and multiplied their connections to have the widest possible network. 8.84% of LinkedIn members have more than 10,000 connections.

LinkedIn sees itself as a networking tool and monetizes its lead-generating features:

• Direct contacts via InMail
• Advanced search engine for finding leads

The growth hacking trend is no exception. Its rise has been based on the data available on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a professional network, so it’s an ideal playground for those seeking B2B customers. With over a billion users, your prospects are bound to be on LinkedIn. So, it’s only logical to expect those responsible for a company’s growth (the “growth managers”) to have a presence on LinkedIn.

Our research on 503 of them revealed a few surprises.

Methodology

We extracted a random sample of 503 LinkedIn profiles active in B2B companies whose job title was “growth manager.” We then researched the profiles of these 503 people individually and encoded:

• The date of the last post (post (beyond 1 week LinkedIn indicates an approximate date: the precision then becomes less precise and is counted in weeks, then months, then years).
• The number of posts written in the last 3 months

By “post,” we mean a publication containing at least one word written by the person in question. Sharing content without adding text was therefore not counted as a post.

43% of growth managers don’t create content on LinkedIn

In the first analysis, we looked at the number of posts published in the last 3 months. As a reminder, we only counted “posts” in the strict sense of the term, i.e., a publication made under the person’s name that contained at least 1 word. Comments, shares without adding text, and likes were excluded from this count.

First, 43.2% of growth managers have not created content in the last 3 months. Furthermore, during this period:

• 9% created just one post
• 3% published 2 posts
• 7% published 3

In other words, on average, 60.4% of growth managers created less than one monthly post. That’s extraordinarily little for professionals responsible for conducting B2B business growth.

But is it surprising? Content creators remain rare, whatever the medium. Creating content remains an exceptional activity, whether via a blog, podcast, or video. I’m used to saying that for every 99 people who consume content, only 1 produces it. In the end, this truth also applies to growth managers.

Growth managers should post more often on LinkedIn

In the second analysis, we researched the date growth managers last posted on LinkedIn. This analysis allows us to refine the results obtained previously, as we are no longer limiting ourselves to the last 3 months. Some growth managers were so inactive on LinkedIn that we had to go back 10 years to trace their last activity.

The analysis shows that 71% of growth managers have been active on LinkedIn in the last 12 months. In other words, 29% of growth managers posted nothing on LinkedIn in the last 12 months. This result is extremely surprising. 12% haven’t even posted anything in the last 2 years. They need help understanding the dynamics of LinkedIn.

Conclusion

This research on 503 growth hackers registered on LinkedIn shows that content creation remains rare even among these professionals. Growth managers working for B2B companies are under-exploiting LinkedIn’s visibility and lead generation potential. Should they consider changing their profession?

By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab Dr. Pierre-Nicolas Schwab is the founder of IntoTheMinds. He specializes in e-commerce, retail and logistics. He is also a research fellow in the marketing department of the Free University of Brussels and acts as a coach for several startups and public organizations. He holds a PhD in Marketing, a MBA in Finance, and a MSc in Chemistry. He can be contacted by email, Linkedin or by phone (+32 486 42 79 42)