This morning, I received an email from LinkedIn. I get a few of these. Sometimes I open them. Sometimes I don’t.
This one had a subject line that was intriguing. Apparently, I was in the top 5% most viewed profiles on LinkedIn last year.
Really?
“Wow,” I thought. I read on.
The email went on to tell me that there are now 200 million LinkedIn members worldwide.
So, once I did the math, I felt a little less special because that puts me in the top 10 million most viewed profiles. Then, I realised that this was the essence of good marketing; knowing which story to tell.
Being in the top 5% is a good story; being in the top 10 million isn’t. The facts are the same but it’s how you position them.
I’m more than happy to say that I’m in the top 5% of LinkedIn profiles viewed last year; that’s a good story for me to tell.
What can we learn from this LinkedIn PR stunt?
Firstly, it doesn’t take much to make a customer feel special. The email header was personalised, as was the email itself.
Secondly, a good email headline is hard to ignore. I opened the email because of the subject line about me being really, really, ridiculously good looking, I mean popular. I was wanted; wanted for my business skills. I was being actively searched for on LinkedIn. In short, I rocked! To hell with the math, I rock!
Lastly, it’s how you tell the story that matters. The same facts positioned in an interesting way can tell vastly different stories. Look at your facts from different angles and, find the right story to tell.
What about LinkedIn?
Well, the announcement that there are 200 million members worldwide is certainly a milestone for the company. The infographic provided reveals a few other interesting snippets of information, including:
- Australia has three million LinkedIn members.
- Two new members join LinkedIn every second.
- John and Sarah are the two most common names of Australian LinkedIn members.
- Barak Obama was the most viewed LinkedIn profile in 2012. (I bet he got an email that was even more special than mine!)
- There were 5.7 billion searches performed in 2012.
