Unearthing Article Stats in the LinkedIn Mobile App

Please note: The following post describes features and functions of the LinkedIn Mobile App for Android.

I am someone who publishes regularly on LinkedIn and who uses the Mobile App more than the desktop version of LinkedIn. And there has been one thing that has been bothering me about the LinkedIn Mobile App and publishing: Not being able to see readership stats right in my LinkedIn article. Honestly, this lack of readily available analytics functionality bothered me almost as much as the inability to publish articles in the app in the first place. Well, not anymore!

Now LinkedIn makes it much easier for authors who use the LinkedIn publishing platform to view readership statistics in the LinkedIn Mobile App. Yes, analytics data on your long-form posts have been available in the app for some time, but now it is easier than ever for authors to access this information!

Fig. 1: The page you see after long-tapping the stats popup for an article.

In fact, you don’t even have to look for readership stats for your articles in the Mobile App: Every time you open one of your long-form posts, the app automatically displays a popup with the numbers of views, likes and comments your article received. It can't get any easier than that. So in terms of user friendliness, the Mobile App even beats the desktop version when it comes to accessing article stats!

You will see that the popup disappears when you flick down, but you can call up your stats overview any time by simply tapping your article. By long-tapping the stats popup, on the other hand, you can see who gave you a like (and, if you wish, you can tap on the photo of each of those contacts and send them a thank-you message right from within the app) and read and respond to the comments people left in response to your article. But that’s just the beginning! 

Going beyond the basic stats

As in the desktop version, the LinkedIn Mobile App provides authors who are interested in more detailed information about their readership with just that: Geolocation and demographics information for each article!

To get to the more detailed article analytics in the app, you have to do a little bit of digging:

1. Launch the LinkedIn Mobile App;
2. Tap the Me tab on the far right side of the navigation bar;
3. Tap the Views of your post field;
4. Tap the ARTICLES tab;
5. Flick to the article you want to view detailed stats for;
6. Tap the N views of this article field.

Fig. 2: The page that will get you to the detailed readership stats in the Mobile App.

Now you have access to four pages that provide the following readership information for the selected article:

• The top four organizations views of the article originated from;
• The top four job titles readers of the article carried;
• The top four cities/regions views of the article originated from;
• The top four sources the article was found through.

To move from one stats page to another, simply flick left or right.

Fig. 3: One of the four pages with more detailed demographics data for an article

What the LinkedIn Mobile App doesn't tell you

While the mobile app gives writers analytics information about individual articles that goes beyond the number of views, likes and shares, there are several sets of readership stats the desktop version of LinkedIn makes available that the mobile app doesn't.

The one piece of analytics that I miss the most in the LinkedIn app is how an article is doing over time. In the desktop version, writers can see how many views a post got over a user-selectable period of time (last 7, 15, 30 days, last 6 months, last year). Plus you can hover over each individual data point in the diagram, and see the number of page views for that data point. This is a very useful feature to find out how long an article 'stayed fresh' and how promoting a LinkedIn post on Twitter (which is something I always do) or another channel affected your readership.

Fig. 4: Number of views over a user-selectable period of time. This valuable feature is available in the desktop version but not in the Mobile App.

Also, the Mobile App doesn't provide the level of detail regarding the demographics of your readers the desktop version of LinkedIn does: Top ten for industries, job titles, locations and traffic sources with the desktop versus top four with the mobile app. But for me, that's a compromise I can live with.

Conclusion

Readership analytics have been available in the LinkedIn Mobile App for some time, but authors of long-form posts needed to do some digging to take advantage of this undocumented feature. Now a popup gives writers automatic access to basic stats every time they open one of their articles in the app. And while more detailed readership information is still buried deep within the mobile app, it is there for the writers on the go who want to better understand their audience without having to use an external service. So good job, LinkedIn! Oh, and one more thing: Can you enable writing long-form posts in the Mobile App? Please LinkedIn, please LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, please!

If you are in the translation/localization field, you might be interested in reading some of my articles on tools, technology, and standardization. Just click the following link to my SelectedWorks bibliography page.

Please stay in touch!

Follow me on Twitter: @UweMuegge

Follow me on Facebook: @UweMuegge

Follow me on Google+: Uwe Muegge

If you liked this post, please click the Like and Follow buttons on this page so that I can continue sharing excellent content with you!