When you are thinking about data mining, don’t overlook the opportunities that involve mining the social web – especially LinkedIn. This premier social networking service was launched in 2003 and now has more than 300 million members throughout the world. In this overview, DataEntryOutsourced shows how business owners, managers, CMOs and CIOs can include LinkedIn in their daily data mining strategies.
Why Should You Use LinkedIn as a Data Mining Tool?
LinkedIn’s member profiles provide a rich source for mining data such as employment skills, business topics of interest and geographic information. Mining the social web can often help Chief Marketing Officers as much as Chief Information Officers – for example, a 2012 Gartner study conducted on LinkedIn revealed a prediction that CMOs will be spending more on technology than CIOs by 2017. Additionally, LinkedIn provides a wealth of opportunities to build professional relationships with data mining companies.
Limitations of Using LinkedIn as a Data Extraction Tool
With the proliferation of social media, you will periodically encounter “fake accounts” – this can happen on LinkedIn as well as other social networking sites. In some locations such as California, there are legal limitations on what business users such as education technology companies can do with student data. More recently in the United States, President Obama announced the intent to seek limits on student data mining. A practical and cost-effective strategy for overcoming both of these data mining limitations on LinkedIn is to work with an experienced data management company.
Who Benefits from Data Sourced From LinkedIn?
As reported in a 2014 study conducted by eBizMBA, in excess of 200 million users visit LinkedIn each month – the site is especially favored by professionals and continues to exhibit rapid growth. If you are seeking talented employees, want to display business content to qualified viewers or are looking for ways to interact with global professionals, LinkedIn is a “one-stop” social media site.
Performance Statistics of LinkedIn
LinkedIn continues to impress its users with performance results such as the following:
- New LinkedIn members each second = 2
- Percentage of mobile LinkedIn visits = 41 percent
- Current users = 300 million and counting
- Number of specialized groups on LinkedIn = 2.1 million
- LinkedIn employees = more than 5,000
- Percentage of LinkedIn members who check-in to the site on a daily basis = 40 percent
- Number of standard skills listed = 45,000
- LinkedIn endorsements = in excess of 1 billion
- Top 5 LinkedIn member countries = United States, India, Brazil, United Kingdom and Canada
Results and data like this show why LinkedIn can serve as an effective data mining tool for companies of all sizes.
How Data Is Mined Using LinkedIn
Social networking sites like LinkedIn use web crawlers. What does a web crawler do? It reads web pages and creates entries for search engine indexing. For example, one of the logics used by the LinkedIn crawler to provide recommendations is the likeliness that a person employed in a certain company should have one or more friends employed in the same company. Data mining efforts involve “trending events” can be difficult to carry out – however, LinkedIn now publishes content from a select group of influential people. This group features more than 500 contributors, and LinkedIn has quickly become “the place to be” for data mining of trending events. You should explore the opportunities for displaying content about your company. Don’t forget to include relevant links and images.
How to Use LinkedIn to Generate Leads
Here is a successful case study on how businesses use LinkedIn data mining tool to generate leads. Joining groups on LinkedIn is one of the best ways to generate business leads – you can join up to 50 groups. Choose discussion groups that allow you to make connections and provide helpful insights to other LinkedIn members.
Using LinkedIn ads is a practical way to help users find your landing page by clicking on an ad. These ads can generate leads from surprising sources – potential customers from among the diverse population of professional business users on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has a helpful built-in feature that allows you to see who has visited your profile. This information allows you to send a brief follow-up message to anyone who is a LinkedIn connection.
A final suggestion: staying active on LinkedIn with a weekly post is a smart way to keep yourself on the radar screen of your connections.
What Is Your Next Step?
Data mining is a constantly evolving field – especially when it comes to social media services. Don’t hesitate to ask for help from experienced experts like DataEntryOutsourced. Speaking of social media, don’t forget to leave a comment about your experiences with LinkedIn and data mining and then share your thoughts with social media buttons.
– DataEntryOutsourced
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