I wrote a blog post in June last year when LinkedIn announced that they had just hit 4m users in the UK and, at the time, I felt that was an impressive figure, but one which showed there was still some good growth to come.
Well, times have moved on and LinkedIn has certainly been developing apace, not inly in terms of the number of people who have joined but also in terms of the functionality that the site offers and the opportunities that it delivers to the businesses and individuals using it.
As the infographic below shows (courtesy of Vincenzo Cosenza), the growth in the UK since then has been enormous and figures indicate that there are just shy of 6m UK members now. To put that in perspective, essentially 2m new members (which equates to a 50% increase in numbers) have joined in the course of the last 9 months.
That is hugely important both in terms of real figures and also in terms of perception. It’s no wonder I’m getting more and more people tell me during my LinkedIn Workshops that they are going to meetings and networking events and are being told by the people they talk to that that had “looked them up on LinkedIn” ahead of time. It’s the natural thing to do now and LinkedIn is the natural place to do it.
The range and the depth of the members is also important for this to work – there is a good mix between industries and between smaller and larger organisations. Equally, although not shown in this infographic, the number of decision makers on LinkedIn from the companies they represent remain high at somewhere between 40 and 45%.
So whether you / your organisation is looking at global, national or local opportunities, then it seems that the growth in LinkedIn’s numbers will be of great benefit and with that growth currently showing no signs of slowing, if you are not already on LinkedIn and using it to develop your business, now might well be the time!
