LinkedIn just did something really cool this week with their most recent “Top Percent-ers” email campaign. They made 20 million users really happy by letting them know their profiles were the most viewed on all of LinkedIn. That’s no small feat and I’m sure was incredibly hard to pull together across departments internally. Telling users that they are the top 1%, 5%, or 10% makes them feel pretty damn special, and it either reignites their love for the product, or reaffirms it. I know for a minute I was excited that I fell into any of those categories since they have 200 million users.
They stroked a few egos with a well executed email campaign that had the perfect balance of message, design, and ease that resulted in a firestorm of shareable activity. But what did they do wrong? Two big things.
1) What about the other 90%?
They missed a serious opportunity to reactivate the “bottom” 90%. They missed out on a teachable moment. Everyone on the internet loves bragging rights almost as much, if not more than, they love memes and cats. Getting someone to share a big achievement isn’t necessarily a hard thing to do if they’re already some of your most active users. But if you’re trying to bolster site numbers, empower/reactivate a community, market through word of mouth what are you doing for mass majority? Excluding them runs the risk of more negativity than positivity.
The easy answer is at the same time you were sending your 1, 5, 10% emails – you should have also had a similar campaign ready to go to the rest of your userbase. The message could have been quite different and it could have been something to the effect of “We released the numbers of most viewed profiles today. What can you do in the future to improve how often your profile gets viewed?” Then include a link to blog post about most optimized and successful profiles. Or connect them to some of the most influential people doing it right. This way, you wouldn’t have ignored your users, and you would have provided them a resource to be better. Instead there were a few bruised egos out there…
2) Where’s the context?
There’s a serious possibility that the one, five, and ten percent-ers may know each other. The active online community in social media and professional circles is mind numbingly small. The level of interconnectedness is actually even pointed out by LinkedIn Labs own map that shows how everyone basically knows everyone.
Quite a few of my friends and colleagues were in my 5% bracket, but one of my coworkers was in the elusive 1% bracket. She’s our VP of Business Development, so it’s no surprise why she is the 1%. What exactly sets her profile apart from mine? Is it purely number of connections so that they’re viewing her profile more? Does it come to down to keyword usage? Post updates? Profile modifications? What exactly gets your profile viewed on a more consistent basis? A little context would have brought me to my profile to make a few enhancements to try and be better.
An argument can be made for keeping it simple like they did. But as someone in the 5%… I kind of want to know what I have to do to get into the top 1%. That just could be my competitive nature speaking though…
Either way, while there’s no doubt Linked In’s Top Percentage campaign was successful, you can’t help but think, “Could it have been better?”
Jenn is a Co-Founder of The Community Manager and the Editor-In-Chief. She’s also an adjunct professor at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies. You can find her almost anywhere online, but specifically on #CmgrChat every Wednesday from 2-3pm ET.
@christuttle @askdebra @TheCMgr Interesting! I had wondered about that campaign when I saw it.
@DFigurito @Jmodio Thanks! 🙂
@mcdirk It was a clever campaign, although as the post wrote, missed some great opportunities to engage the majority.
I’m in exactly NO brackets…i.e., I received nothing from LinkedIn. Nothing.
I’m rather meh about the whole thing, anyway; but you’re right that they didn’t do much for that other 90%.
davevandewalle Ditto.
Good points. I had no idea why I was getting that email “@Daily_Pinch: 2 Things LinkedIn Did Wrong http://t.co/xmC0u9GP via @TheCMgrâ€
@EButtsCPAÂ Thanks! Â Would have been better with a little more clarification, right?
@EButtsCPA You’re welcome! Lots of value in great community management that most don’t see.
davevandewalle Yea.  I really did think it was great.  But with such a social community, the risk for the vocal majority to be vocal was too high to exclude them.
@christuttle Thanks Chris.  As email campaigns go, it was one of the better ones.
@amvlad discutabil, e flatant pana pe la 60%, iar restul care nu-s active users probabil au primit alt tip de mesaj @andrazaharia
@LigiaAdam @AndraZaharia tocmai asta e ideea: ceilalti nu au primit nimic.
@ligiaadam @amvlad L-am pus in pocket si revin cu impresii. 🙂
@culturevultures @karenstrunks The only ones who look at yr linkd profile are people wanting to sell u something. The adcampaign is v silly.
@mcdirk You know, it did make me wonder what I was doing wrong…and if I cared.
@lmendersby haha sorry to ruin the fun for you!
@JoeGinese I kind of feel like the LinkedIn % thing is another version of Who’s Who
@clconzen EXACTLY! I couldn’t fit that into a tweet so commenting on the post now.
All this reminds me of is the letters I’m sure some of us got in college that said, “Congratulations! You’ve been nominated for the National Who’s Who in Colleges & Universities. Please send a check for $49.99 to receive your plaque and yearbook for this great honor.”Â
It would have been better to take those who they are recognizing for being active (see: actually using the site regularly) and hitting those who haven’t logged in in months. An e-mail saying, “Hey Joe, We miss you. Did you know your friend Lisa has had over 10,000 people view her bio? That over 100 people have endorsed your buddy Ed? Come on back, here are a few articles that can show highlight how others have used LinkedIn to reconnect, launch business, and land jobs.”
@Leedsprinter I really liked the campaign. Confirmed I must be doing something right. Haven’t found that re sales on #li @culturevultures
@karenstrunks @culturevulturesAh,yr a social media bod.I’m a printer and I’m in the top 10% but I’ve never sold anything through Linkedin
@Leedsprinter I don’t see #li as a direct selling tool. For me it’s a place to keep connected & grow professional profile @culturevultures
@Leedsprinter People can check out my work, experience, recommendations etc. If they then want to hire me, great. I don’t push ‘sales’ tho.
@cindymeltz thanks
I have also seen a lot of people post this pic, how many 5%’ers can there be???
JoeGinese totally agree there haha I remember those
@karenstrunks Fair enough. I’m in B2B and I have to sell stuff to survive.Nobody cares a damn for my professional profile.
@Leedsprinter Does the connecting you network side not appeal? Keep up to date with peeps developments, getting introductions, interacting?
@karenstrunks I’m on Twitter, Li, Fb, but no use for biz. Good for some types of biz, but not mine. Fun tho’
But to some extent, did this email not make the 90% want to improve their linkedin presence? When they see the 10% bragging about how awesome they are, they get jealous and probably went to linkedin to see how many views their getting, and maybe update their profile.
I totally agree that LinkedIn could have done more to educate the 90% in that case, to understand how they can get more views on their profile.
I think one of the things missing from that email is information on how many people there are in each category and how many views are we talking about? Â If the top 1% get 10,000 average views, and the next 5% range from 150 to 9,999 how is this relevant? Â I would imagine that 90% of all LinkedIn profiles get exactly ZERO views. Â And I’m not telling where I fall on that continuum…
Ok, skip the first question. Â Math is not my strong suit.
DavidSpinks This is true but don’t you catch more bees with honey rather than vinegar.Â
Hey let’s recognize our users while hoping that jealousy drives their friends to join. I suppose it could work and guessing by the amount of conversation happening around this, they are plenty happy with it. It has people talking about LinkedIn that others may not have talked about it.
@JPedde Not at all! I’ll admit it’s an exciting email but I’d rather be in the top 5% of awesome conversations and connections. 🙂
@askdebra @christuttle same here, but then I realized I didn’t care! 🙂
@BloggerKrista what about they also lied? i’d like to see the actual data, i think that whole 5% thing was complete bullshit.
@usujason you’re just jealous you’re not the 1% 😉 LOL. jk…
@BloggerKrista riiiiiiiiiiiiiight 🙂
JoeGinese DavidSpinks the prospect of becoming a popular linkedin user is the honey.
@DavidSpinks far enough. I just see it under the veil of “this person is better than you, don’t you want to be as good or better than them? Update your profile today!”
@usujason @BloggerKrista I just think like every social network their membership is 50% (or more) dead wood. Makes it easy to rank.
@JPedde Sweet. I’ll read it at the airport tonight. Well, @mercedesbook got the email about 1 week ago & I just got mine today.
@stephawie @mercedesbook Yea, I imagine to roll out 20 million emails it was something happening over time. haha
@JPedde Yup! Would you say being the Top 1% is an accomplishment? Will you be discussing this in #cmgrclass?
@stephawie Haha we might. Though I think this is more about networking/brand building than community building.
@JPedde Definitely, but it’s good to have that credential. When is the #cmgrclass chat btw? I’d love to lurk.
@stephawie There isnt #cmgrclass chat. Just an active tag for goings on in the class. Students are always posting on http://t.co/4U7WFmI9
@JPedde Oh! Alright, I’ll lurk there to look for your top students to be a part of the @hootcampus program then 😉
@stephawie Cool. Would love to hear more about Hootcampus. Can you send me an email? jmpedde@syr.edu
@JPedde I sent an email to @KellyLux about it last wk, but I’ll definitely shoot you an email too! @DR4WARD class is already all over it too
JoeGinese perhaps that’s why they didn’t explicitly send anything to the people that weren’t in the top 10%.  This way, they never actually say “these people are better than you”.  They just counted ont he ego of the top 10% to share their great news.  Linkedin isn’t saying it.  Your friends said it.
@JPedde http://t.co/4icFjYey
Quite Catchy! RT@TheCMgr Linked In had an email campaign this week for their top users. Did you get one? Thoughts? http://t.co/m7yBBzTT
@JPedde Just finished reading your post. I agree with your point 2, which bewildered me so much. I don’t post updates and I have a normal #
@JPedde of connections and have never actively promoted my LinkedIn profile. As for your other point, I think they’re missing out on the 90%
@JPedde but I think by celebrating the 10%, it’ll motivate the keeners of the 90% to be more active and keep the rest pretty much the same.
@JPedde It will be great if @LinkedIn can follow the email with an infographic and tips to provide context and interestingness. Otherwise,
@JPedde it’s just a trophy on the shelf with no meaning and therefore the story wouldnt get shared as widely.
I dont put much weight into Linkedins messaging for this. Almost everyone I know, including myself got one of those emails. It’s sort of like the “endorsing” push. Everyone gets it so its not that genuine.
davevandewalle Actually guess what? I got the mail today. Top 5%. Ha ha ha. Hardly any accomplishment 😀
Re 5/10% profiles “@markosuomi: no but @jpruohisto found this: http://t.co/YLRjsWVr†cc @jannehansen @sandstromj
@rodicka Thanks Natalie! Congrats on broken open media btw!! Been meaning to catch up with you on that 🙂
@AdobeSocial Thanks for the share! 🙂
@mycmgr I wouldn’t give too much value to the % Emails from #Linkedin many got them.
@JPedde Absolutely! Great observation, we have to agree it was a lost opportunity.
@jpedde thanks, Jenn! Been building BOM for a little while, but client work had me so busy I neglected my own marketing. The time has come.
@rodicka very very cool. Let me know how I can help!
@pushingvision @chefkatelyn not yet but at a glance @JPedde wrote it, so now it’s a MUST read.
@cusecomm @pushingvision @chefkatelyn Thanks guys 😉
@cusecomm @pushingvision @JPedde thank you! Will read.