Dive Brief:

• LinkedIn has taken a serious leap further into content and social media with the open pilot starting last week of Elevate, a paid mobile and computer app that fosters personal curation and suggests articles based on interests and past activity.

• The pilot will move on from invite-only to general release by the third quarter this year, according to TechCrunch.

• LinkedIn says that during Elevate’s closed pilot phase, for each six pieces of content shared by someone, on average, he or she received six profile views and made two new connections. Also on average, an employer gets six job views, three views of their company page, and a company page follower whenever one of their employees shares content.

Dive Insight:

For retailers, marketers must “listen” via social media nearly as much as they need to send their message out, and the analytics must be useful. ​Right now Buffer, Hootsuite, and increasingly Oktopost dominate this area, a bit crowded for sure, though LinkedIn has the advantage of its corporate focus. In fact, it will be interesting to see whether the tool’s internal focus is a boon or a disadvantage.