🏔️ LinkedIn Ecosystem

Hey there,

Welcome to the SaaS Hill, a newsletter that tries to predict the future of SaaS.

Let's discuss LinkedIn Ecosystem 🌐.

⭐️️ Intro

LinkedIn is one of the oldest social media platforms in the world, and it turned 20 years old in 2023.

With the rise of the creator economy, solopreneurship, side hustlers, social selling, and media companies, the LinkedIn ecosystem keeps growing.

As a result, we will need more tools to enhance productivity within this ecosystem.

Here is what we will discuss today:

• 9 predictions about LinkedIn Ecosystem

• 11 products in this category

• 1 deep dive

• 1 trend chart

• 13 stats about LinkedIn

• 14 LinkedIn creators to follow

• 3 related trend reports

• 4 useful links

🤔 Predictions

1. The Creator Economy will be a hot trend of this decade. There are tons of smaller trends that are shaping this meta-trend: building in public, side hustles, solopreneurship, micro-influencers, newsletters 2.0, podcasts 2.0, links in bio, consulting, micro-consulting, gig economy, digital nomads, productized services, and communities. LinkedIn is a huge part of this trend.

2. This happens because LinkedIn is a great place to build a B2B audience that could help promote your business, company, personal brand, etc.

3. As a result, more and more companies will start relying on LinkedIn to generate more business.

4. Here are a few ways to use LinkedIn:

5. Consequently, we will see a rise in LinkedIn content creators and the LinkedIn ecosystem.

6. These creators will need tools to be more effective:

   1. LinkedIn Analytics, e.g., Shield and inlytics

   2. Co-pilots like Supergrow and AuthoredUp

   3. Commenting Tools such as Tappy and BrandEngine AI

7. The LinkedIn ecosystem will boost influencer marketing. Brands will partner with LinkedIn creators, influencers, and micro-influencers to reach their target audience.

8. LinkedIn will strengthen another trend: the rise of micro-influencers. These creators will have, let's say, less than 10K followers on LinkedIn, but these followers will be raving fans of these creators. So brands can cooperate with dozens of smaller micro-influencers, which may be a more effective strategy than relying on one well-known content creator.

9. It will be easier than ever to become a part of the creator economy:

   1. There are hundreds of great LinkedIn creators who write about LinkedIn.

   2. AI will make it easier to produce content.

   3. More and more people are joining professional social networks like LinkedIn.

   4. Analytics tools show what works and resonates with the audience.

🏢 Products

1. Shield > Your LinkedIn analytics

2. AuthoredUp > An all-in-one tool for content creation on LinkedIn

3. ContentIn > Write better LinkedIn content. 10x Faster

4. Inmanager > The LinkedIn assistant

5. inlytics > LinkedIn Analytics

6. BrandEngine AI > 10x LinkedIn engagement by commenting like a PRO

7. Supergrow > Your LinkedIn co-pilot

8. Hushl > AI assistant that helps write tweets, LinkedIn posts, and blogs

9. Tappy > Add thoughtful comments to LinkedIn posts in 1 tap

10. Taplio > Grow your personal brand in 10 minutes a day

11. Typeshare > Everything you need to start writing online

🤿 Deep Dive

Let’s review some ways how companies and content creators use LinkedIn to grow their businesses.

Build in Public

Some companies and entrepreneurs use LinkedIn to build their brands in public. Share milestones, customer stories, metrics & numbers, product updates, new launches etc.

Here are a few examples:

1. June.so and Enzo Avigo

2. Acquire and Andrew Gazdecki

3. Rows and Henrique Cruz

Social Selling

Some B2B companies have mastered their social selling game on LinkedIn: they drive traffic to their website, attract new users, grow their audiences etc.

Here are some notable examples:

1. Lavender (35K followers)

2. Gong (212K followers)

3. Drift (88K followers)

4. Chili Piper (57K followers)

Personal Brands and Solopreneurs

Lots of content creators use LinkedIn as a part of their solopreneurship journey. They build a personal brand on LinkedIn, and then monetize their expertise offering: community, courses, newsletters, consulting services, templates, digital products etc.

Justin Welsh and Ruiyi Chin (Easlo) are 2 experts who earn $100K+ per year.

Easlo is a Notion expert who sells Notion templates:

Justin Welsh is building a one-person business to $5M in revenue and has a newsletter, 2 courses, and consulting.

Marketing Campaigns

Recently, WINN.AI (AI assistant for sales teams) launched a cool marketing campaign on LinkedIn. Dozens of influencers posted LinkedIn posts with the same idea: they smashed their keyboards with the hashtag NoTypingCRM.

Drift run a similar strategy with the hashtag NoForms on Twitter a few years ago:

Tease New Features and Product Launches

Slite, Acquire, June, Gong, Rows, and thousands of other SaaS companies already use LinkedIn to share product updates, product launches, product milestones, etc.

📈 Trend Chart

LinkedIn has 930 million users worldwide.

📊 Statistics

1. Over 11 million members have turned on LinkedIn creator mode.

2. There are 36K+ newsletter on LinkedIn.

3. There are 150 million newsletter subscriptions in Q1 of 2023 (80 million in Q1 2022).

4. LinkedIn turns 20 years old in 2023.

5. LinkedIn revenue was $13.8 billion in 2022.

6. LinkedIn has 8% year-over-year growth in revenue.

7. LinkedIn has 930 mln users.

8. Google is the most followed organization on LinkedIn.

9. Bill Gates has the highest following on LinkedIn (35 mln followers).

10. LinkedIn has more than 20,000 full-time employees and offices in more than 30 cities around the world.

11. 8 people hired every minute on LinkedIn.

12. The USA has the largest LinkedIn userbase, India has the 2nd largest userbase.

13. 59 million companies have a LinkedIn page.

👔 Services

👥 Agencies

• Demandii > The ultimate Linkedin demand gen system

• BAMF.com > Become a bad*ss linkedin influencer

• Impactable > B2B Linkedin Ads Agency

• Remotion > the LinkedIn Ads Agency that delivers measurable results

• belkins > Reach and engage leads via LinkedIn

• Respect Studio > Helps B2B companies increase marketing’s contribution to qualified pipeline

📖 Experts to Follow

1. Easlo (Ruiyi Chin) > A 20-years old creator who made $200K online in 2022

2. Justin Welsh > Building a portfolio of one-person businesses to $5M in revenue

3. Amelia Sordell > I brand people, not businesses

4. Matt Gray > Helps entrepreneurs with content strategy, community building, and growth

5. Ben Meer > Writes about systems and high-performance living

6. Andy Mewborn > Co-founder at Taplio

7. Matt Barker > Ghostwriter driving $1,000,000+ for clients on LinkedIn

8. Wes Kao > Co-founder at Maven

9. Jackie Hermes > Founder & CEO at Accelity

10. Jake Ward > Founder at Content Growth

11. Sam Szuchan > Founder at Saga | LinkedIn at Scale

12. Maxim Poulsen > Growth & Automation Nerd

13. Sahil Bloom > Exploring my curiosity and sharing what I learn along the way.

14. Houston Golden > Founder at BAMF

🖼️ Pitch Deck

Founder & CEO Reid Hoffman shared LinkedIn's original pitch deck that helped close $10M in Series B funding in 2004.

🔗 Useful Links

1. Favikon > Master creators and crush your brand's social media strategy

2. TOP 200 LinkedIn Creators by Favikon

3. LinkedIn > About us statistics

4. LinkedIn Revenue and Growth Statistics by SignHouse

🤝 Related SaaS Trends

1. 🏔 Creator Economy > raise of small businesses built by self-employed creators

2. 🏔️ Solopreneurship > start and run your business independently

3. 🏔 Building in Public > sharing journey leads to growth opportunities

Thanks for reading. See you next time 👋

💡 Help me get better and suggest new ideas here
📈 Suggest new SaaS trend reports here
💻️ Check out our list of 18.000 SaaS companies here
📝 Check out other SaaS lists here