As LinkedIn becomes more and more popular among B2B sales and marketing professionals, it is important to take a look at the user demographics of the social network to gain insight into how to attack the audience. While it might be perceived that the majority of the users on LinkedIn are made up of sales and marketing individuals, it is actually people in the engineering field that take the top spot. According to analysis of LinkedIn’s user base by Vincenzo Cosenza using LinkedIn’s direct ad data, Engineers make up 15% of all LinkedIn’s users, with sales coming in second at 11% of users.
While the amount of engineers on LinkedIn may be surprising, what is not shocking is the age demographic. 51% of all LinkedIn users report their age in the 25-34 year old range. This is to be expected, as people in this age group were exposed to the web at a younger age, and are probably more likely to be looking to network and use LinkedIn for a job searching purpose. Over 25% of users are in the 18-24 age range, which follows the same logic, leaving only 23% of all LinkedIn users at the age of 35 or older.
Almost 24% of the users on LinkedIn report that they work in the Hi Tech industry, which represents the largest industry segment. Finance comes in second at 18%, and Manufacturing third at 15% of the user base. The large Hi Tech and Manufacturing segments seem to explain the hefty number of engineers that are LinkedIn users.
While the majority of users reside in the United States, Americans only make up about half of the total user base. The global nature of LinkedIn may explain why 34% of the employed users work at a company with a workforce of over 10000 individuals. Large international companies will encourage their workers to join sites like LinkedIn in an effort to build up a social media presence.