LinkedIn is looking to improve their revenue from marketers by giving away public non-intrusive user data through DataSift (via Recode.)
The social data aggregator has been known in the past for working with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube to scrape sites and provide interests, links clicked, and topics to marketers. The result can be more accurately targeted ads on the website that are more likely be converted to revenue for marketers and ultimately, LinkedIn itself.
As explained by the DataSift announcement post, marketers and agencies can take advantage of the partnership in a few different ways:
- Discover new audiences for brands and products – Research the behavior of high value audiences on LinkedIn and validate assumptions. Confirm audience segments by analyzing the job titles, locations, and skills of audiences that are engaging with relevant content on the network. New audience segments can also be identified based on their engagement with content that intersects with a brand’s existing audience
- Learn what content works best with audiences – Gain a greater understanding of what topics, types of content and creative resonates most with key audiences. Use content insights to better shape and inform content marketing strategies, create more compelling content for target audiences and more effectively measure success
- Benchmark brand against the competition – Analyze brand awareness and perception. Understand how audiences engage with their brand, products or services on LinkedIn relative to industry competitors and peers.
It’s worth noting that LinkedIn isn’t even selling the general data to DataSift. Instead, they are handing it away as an effort to build ad revenue and up its income from marketers, even if currently ad sales are under 20% of the company’s overall revenue.