This is a detailed article about my LinkedIn Metric Dashboard where I analyzed my metrics for follower and post engagement. The KPIs are: followers; post impressions; post reactions; and post comments.
Quick Links:
Table of Contents:
Introduction
My latest data visualization showing my LinkedIn metrics from January 1, 2022 to January 31, 2023. I wanted to practice working with social media data. This is part of a challenge I've given myself. Create a dashboard in 4-6 hours. This is to practice creating quick dashboards so I can find out what I need to improve (data cleaning, labels, etc.). This dashboard took me a little over 4 hours to complete. The metrics included are:
Followers
Impressions (aka views)
Comments
Reactions (aka likes)
Goal: To create an interactive dashboard using Tableau public showcasing my LinkedIn metrics for the past year and 1 month.
Question: How has my engagement/follower count been since I've created content (started January 1, 2022)?
Process:
Overview: The original data was cleaned and manipulated in Microsoft Excel, then I used Tableau Public to create an interactive dashboard.
Microsoft Excel
I used Microsoft Excel to record my data. I manually recorded all of my post stats (impressions, reactions, comments) and my follower count every time I'd post. There may be a way to connect the data so it automatically updates but I did not do that. There is also a way to download LinkedIn post data but it did not format the data the way I wanted it. I had the following columns:
Date - date of the post
Views (now called Impressions) - the total impressions on the post
Reactions - the total reactions on the post
Comments - the total comments on the post
Reposts - the total reposts for a post (I didn't include this in my analysis/dashboard because it wasn't important to me)
Followers - the number of followers I had
Topic - the topic of the post. These are based on the main hashtag I assigned to my post. I only gave one topic to each post.
Description - give a brief description of the post
Link to post - include the hyperlink to the specific post
Tableau
Next I created an interactive dashboard in Tableau to demonstrate my LinkedIn metrics. I wanted to get a glance of my post performance and follower count since I started creating content. I included the following metrics/charts:
Top Metrics to showcase the totals for each
Total Followers
Total Reactions
Total Comments
Total Impressions
Spark charts for each top metric displaying the metric amount over time (by month)
Followers
Reactions
Comments
Impressions
Posts per Calendar Day separated by metric type (impressions, reactions, and comments). This was to compare post performance over each calendar day (1-31).
Posts per Month by Impressions to demonstrate post views for each month
Posts Topics with the count of each post topic.
Top Posts separated by metric type (impressions, reactions, comments) to display the top 5 posts for each.
Misc.
I created the background using Figma. For this dashboard I focused on using Tableau as much as I could. Meaning I made the top metrics (e.g. total followers) in Tableau instead of Figma. I also wanted to focus on creating a more compact view so you can see all of the charts/graphs in one screen. The color scheme was based off of the LinkedIn website colors. The icon in the right hand top corner links to my LinkedIn profile in case anyone wants to check it out.
Finished Project
Overview of Data
Total Followers: 10,766
Total Reactions: 12,549
Total Comments: 3,612
Total Impressions: 1.52 million
Top Posts by:
Impressions - Dec, 27, 2022 with 360,777 impressions.
Reactions - Jan. 17, 2023 with 1,049 reactions.
Comments - Dec. 27, 2022 with 199 comments.
Top 3 post topics:
Self Improvement with 28 posts
Data Analytics with 27 posts
Content Creation with 26 posts
The month with the highest post impressions, reactions, and comments was December 2022.
The month with the highest increase of followers was January 2023.
Insights
Below are general insights from this dashboard:
The post topic that do the best in impressions, reactions, and comments are: data analytics and career.
For all of my metrics (impressions, reactions, and comments) there was an increase in December of 2022. This is mainly due to one post that did well (Dec, 27, 2022).
Once I began focusing my content on data analytics whether it was about switching careers, projects, or learning new skills I gained an increase in followers and post engagement.
I generally had the same post engagement (average 2,000 impressions) and follower count (around 2,000 followers) until August of 2022. Then I got more post impressions and my follower count increased steadily.
What I Learned
How to create a universal filter that applies to several charts. This particular filter (filter by post topics) it applies to Posts per Calendar Days and Posts per Month.
How to create and showcase spark lines next to the top metrics.
Using Tableau to showcase the topic metric values instead of relying on Figma.
Displaying the top value/metric as a different color. The impressions chart in the Top Posts category has the top post metric in blue while the other four metrics are in a light gray color.
Conclusion
Overall this was a fun mini project. I wanted to get practice with social media data. Along with creating a dashboard that is different from my usual style. I liked dashboards where you had to scroll instead of navigate to different pages. I also challenged myself to use Tableau as much as possible for me metrics and charts. Using Figma as little as possible except to create a cohesive background.
While it may not be realistic to complete a dashboard end-to-end in 4 hours, it was still a good experience to test out my accuracy and speed when creating a dashboard. It also helps I'm familiar with the data and the dataset was small.
I'm planning on making another dashboard similar to this one in 2024 with my metrics from 2023. It will not only be interesting to view the change in metrics but also my data visualization skills.