In an age of constantly changing business resources, LinkedIn has remained one of the quintessential platforms for lead generation. Things change quickly in the digital marketplace, however. Last year’s statistics are not indicative of this year’s performance - just ask Snapchat. Let’s take a look at the forward moving statistics that matter in determining LinkedIn’s viability as a lead generation tool for the coming years rather than in years past.

The Fortune 500 Hangout

Startup business platforms usually begin with the SMB market. Eventually, the enterprise market moves into the space. After the Fortune 500 begin to call the space home, future viability rests in the Fortune 500’s assessment of the space as a resource of value.

LinkedIn continues to stay ahead of its competition in providing valuable resources to the international business community. The platform has expanded into dynamic content and is one of the best at enticing its members to blog and groupthink. This means a consistently growing pool of free information for industry decision makers. If they support the platform, piggybackers and copycatters will maintain the platform’s viability through volume traffic.

LinkedIn has not made the mistake of trying to cater to a commercial audience. You will not find quirky lead-ins meant to appeal to anyone outside of the serious business community. Because LinkedIn has not marketed to any of the riff raff, business people feel confident in coming there. This should be music to the ears of the B2B community.

No Loss in Numbers

Why hasn’t LinkedIn tried to “expand” beyond the borders of business like some other social media platforms? For one, there is plenty of business inside the B2B community. LinkedIn officially grew to 500 million profiles, in 2017 and hasn’t looked back since.

The active userbase of LinkedIn seems more like a pop social media outlet. The business community of platforms such as YouTube and Facebook can’t boast a 50% engagement rate of its total userbase per month, but LinkedIn can. Apptopia found that 260 million users log in on LinkedIn every month. 40% of these users are daily users, according to Omnicore Agency. This huge turnout is full of decision makers, with 61 million of them positioned at a senior level and 40 million in final decision making positions.

LinkedIn and Millennials

The Millennial generation is the decision making generation of the future. As long as they make the decision to gather around LinkedIn as their business platform, it will remain a great place to generate leads.

There are 87 million Millennial users and growing on LinkedIn. 11 million of this 87 million is in a position to make final decision on spend.

Millennials are using mobile. If LinkedIn is to be the B2B platform of the future, it must appeal to mobile users. It does. 63 million users on LinkedIn come from mobile, and the fully responsive platform makes it easy to navigate the robust interface.

Millennial decision makers are going to be women more often than in any previous business generation. If LinkedIn is going to be the platform of the future, then it will appeal to women. It does. 44% of LinkedIn’s total base is women, according to Expanded Ramblings.

Features for the Future

Full featured, accessible communication is the number one reason any modern social media platform works. LinkedIn has invested heavily in providing communications based on an expansive set of accessible tools. Most notably, AI smart replies, better analytics, native video and updated search features help users find, organize and rework the sales funnel at will. Another great move by the company is the pivot away from LinkedIn Pulse as the native blogging tool. The modern LinkedIn blogging UI is much more intuitive and inviting. If you are creating great content, LinkedIn is ensuring you are more likely to be found. The platform is moving towards a more streamlined and niche oriented user experience. This helps to create tighter communities of people who are most likely to be interested in your lead generation efforts.

The Trends

B2B marketers use LinkedIn more than any other major social media platform for content distribution. Content on the platform is seen 9 billion times per week, which translates to 468 billion unique impressions per annum. Your content will definitely get looked at if you bring it here, but the opportunity is even more exciting considering that only 0.6% of LinkedIn’s userbase actually shares content on a weekly basis.

Only 0.2% of total LinkedIn users have published an article with the native publishing platform on LinkedIn. It is worth noting that native posts get much more attention from the native search engine. You may also get more love from Google’s search algorithm considering that LinkedIn probably has more trust than an individual business blog.

LinkedIn is holding B2B market share. As a B2B marketer looking for leads, you want to go with the herd. LinkedIn is showing no signs of giving up its huge market share in B2B social traffic, which now stands at 50%. Facebook and Twitter both have more active users, but those two sites combined drive less traffic to business blogs than LinkedIn.

Smart marketers pay attention to peer trends when determining their next move. LinkedIn is at the forefront of marketing executives’ lists for quality content and overall digital marketing. 91% of marketers said LinkedIn was the #1 choice for great content, while 92% of them said that LinkedIn was and will be a significant part of their marketing mix in the next year.

LinkedIn is the Lead Gen Platform for the Future (and the Present)

In short, LinkedIn isn’t going anywhere. If you are a B2B marketer looking to generate leads over the next few years, LinkedIn should be your platform of choice. Look to the company to build even more standing within the business community and provide even better resources for communicating with colleagues and potential clients.