LinkedIn is a primary channel for Asset Managers to connect with current and potential clients.
The top 10 asset management firms in the world have millions of LinkedIn followers between them. Importantly, Editions Financial research shows that the top brands are successfully seeing double-digit annual growth in their audiences on this platform and earning thousands of engagements.
So how are they doing it? Editions Financial has crunched the numbers on thousands of LinkedIn posts from some of the most active brands in the industry to see what other Asset Managers can learn from their peers.
Which of the big names are doing it well?
This chart compares the number of followers a brand has with its audience growth rate.
Typically, we would expect brands with a large following to grow their audience more slowly. Over the six months to October 26, 2019, J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs have both broken this rule. Not only do they have far larger audiences than their peers, but they are also acquiring new followers faster.
Four of the brands we examined for this post managed to achieve an audience growth rate of more than 25%. The data would suggest that Asset Managers should be looking to achieve this level of growth on LinkedIn to remain competitive.
Engagements
Of course, it doesn’t matter how large a brand’s audience is if followers are not engaging with what the business has to say.
This chart compares the number of updates with the volume of engagement earned by each one.
Clearly J.P. Morgan is earning the most engagement per post. Meanwhile, PIMCO and UBS are having to post much more frequently to generate engagement from their audiences.
Turning to the types of engagements, we can also start to see some differences between the market leaders Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan.
Goldman Sachs earned the most likes on LinkedIn for its updates, but J.P. Morgan earned more comments than any other brand over the period.
Therefore, we can see that these brands are growing their audience so quickly because they are publishing content that is successfully and sustainably engaging their followers.
This engagement will, in turn, drive LinkedIn to push these Asset Management brands content out to new potential followers through the network.
Of course, the reverse is also true. Content that fails to engage followers does little to help a brand reach its clients or potential customers.
To reinforce this point, we can look at the relative Share of Voice earned by these top asset management brands on LinkedIn.
UBS was responsible for 20% of the 1,846 brand posts from this group, published between March 26 and October 26, 2019. However, UBS content earned 16% of the likes and just 6% of the comments.
In contrast, J.P. Morgan earned 68% of the comments with a mere 8% of the posts.
Video posts leading the way on LinkedIn?
A top-level analysis of the formats used by these brands might suggest that there is little evidence of a decisive trend.
Most brands, successful or not, tend to use a mixture of link, image, status and video posts.
It’s notable, though, that LinkedIn pages with a higher proportion of video in their content mix tend to have a better rate of engagement with audiences.
This indicates that an investment in video format content may help to drive audience engagement and growth for Asset Management firms on LinkedIn.
Digging deeper
In a six-month period, J.P. Morgan earned more than 1.9m video views of its LinkedIn video posts.
A key reason why the firm has done so well on the platform is because it has been confident enough to use the “live video” feature to drive engagement.
Top posts include a live video from the firm’s Global Research team covering insights from the 2019 Global China Summit.
Other popular video topics include the firm’s #techtrends series, such as this video on cloud technologies, or video content more focused on the links between personal and professional development.
In June a live video of a panel discussion on the links between physical and financial fitness earned thousands of engagements. Another live video post on start-ups and personal branding also did well for the firm.
