In September 2008, Anderson Analytics conducted a study, on the profiles of LinkedIn users. The results reveal that on an average, users of LinkedIn are richer than the average users of other social sites such as Facebook and MySpace.
The study was conducted across 2,000 users of LinkedIn, approximately 50% of them being Americans, and the rest from other countries. The survey also studied about 52,000 of their first level connections.
A majority (about 66%) of LinkedIn’s users are decision makers or other senior executives in their organisations, which is a much higher percentage than that for users of other networks.
The study also established a correlation between income and the number of connections of each user. Users having an annual income of $200,000 to $350,000 were almost seven times more likely to have in excess of 150 connections, as compared to users with a lower range of income.
Users in the study were divided into four broad categories, namely “savvy networkers”, “senior executives”, “late adopters” and “exploring options”. About 30% of users or 9 million were classified as savvy networkers, 28% or 8.4 million as senior executives, 22% or 6.6% as late adopters, and the remaining 20% or 6.1 million as exploring options or those who are actively looking out for new jobs.
28% of LinkedIn’s users who get classified as executives have an average income of $104,000, while the 30% who called themselves savvy networkers have an average annual income of around $93,000. Even the new comers in the field have an income of upto $88,000.
Validity of these statistics does rely on user integrity, which is often questionable on most social sites, as has been noted before – a lot of men and women lie about age, salary, status and physical appearance.
It is nevertheless more likely that users of LinkedIn are better off, more influential and constantly receiving requests for new introductions. The network thus ends up being a great site for sales persons looking to boost their income and advertisers looking to target top-level executives.
About the Author
Farhad is the Group CEO of AccuraCast. With over 20 years of experience in digital, Farhad is one of the leading technical marketing experts in the world. His specialities include digital strategy, international business, product marketing, measurement, marketing with data, technical SEO, and growth analytics.
