How to Check LinkedIn Profile Activity

Knowing what resonates on LinkedIn means looking beyond likes and views to understand the full story of your content's performance. The good news is that LinkedIn provides all the tools you need to see exactly what you - and others in your network - are posting, commenting on, and reacting to. This guide covers how to check your own profile activity, analyze your performance metrics, and strategically view the activity of others to sharpen your content strategy.

Why Checking LinkedIn Activity is a Game-Changer

Dipping into your LinkedIn activity feed isn't just about satisfying curiosity, it's a strategic move. Regularly reviewing this data helps you connect the dots between the content you create and the results you get. When you know which posts sparked conversations and which ones fell flat, you can stop guessing and start building a content plan based on actual performance.

Here’s why making this a regular habit is so powerful:

• Understand Your Audience: See which topics, formats (text-only, polls, videos), and tones generate the most meaningful engagement. This feedback loop is essential for creating content your network actually wants to see.
• Perform Competitor Research: By viewing the public activity of competitors or industry leaders, you can see what they're posting, how they engage with their audience, and what strategies are working for them. This isn't about copying them, it's about learning from them.
• Refine Your Networking: Identify active and engaged people in your network or industry. Seeing what they comment on and post about gives you a perfect, non-intrusive way to start a genuine conversation. To further enhance your professional relationships, learn how to network on LinkedIn effectively.
• Find Content Inspiration: Feeling stuck for ideas? Browsing the activity of influential people in your niche is a great way to see what conversations are trending and find new angles for your own content.

How to Check Your Own Activity on LinkedIn

LinkedIn keeps a running log of everything you do on the platform. Finding it is simple, and it's the first step to understanding how your actions contribute to your professional brand and network growth.

Finding Your Activity Log: A Step-by-Step Guide

You can access your complete history in just a few clicks from your profile page.

1. Navigate to Your Profile: Log in to LinkedIn and click on your profile picture or the "Me" icon in the top right navigation bar. From the dropdown menu, select "View Profile."
2. Locate the Activity Section: Scroll down your profile page past your headline and recommendations. You'll see a dedicated section labeled "Activity." This section shows a brief preview of your most recent actions.
3. View All Activity: To see the complete log, click "Show all activity" at the bottom of the section. This will take you to a dedicated page that archives all of your public actions on the platform.

Understanding the Different Activity Tabs

Once you're on your main activity page, you'll see several tabs that help you filter and organize your history. Each one tells a different part of your engagement story.

• All activity: This is the default view, showing a chronological feed of everything you've done - posts, comments, and reactions mixed together.
• Posts: This tab isolates everything you’ve published: original written posts, images, videos, shared articles with commentary, polls, and reposts. This view is your go-to for analyzing the performance of your own content. From here, you can click on the analytics for each individual post.
• Comments: A complete feed of every comment you've left on other people's posts. Reviewing this can be a great way to remember past conversations, reconnect with contacts, and see which topics prompted you to engage.
• Reactions: Here, you’ll find a list of every post you've reacted to with a Like, Celebrate, Love, Insightful, or Funny emoji. It paints a picture of the content you endorse and find valuable in your feed.

There may also be tabs for articles and media you've uploaded, depending on the type of content you regularly create.

Diving Deeper: Analyzing Your Post Analytics

Finding your activity log is step one. Step two is learning how to interpret the numbers so you can improve your strategy. LinkedIn provides basic analytics for every post you create, and understanding them is crucial for growth. For more detailed insights, learn how to analyze LinkedIn post performance.

Accessing Post-Specific Analytics

You can see the performance of any individual post directly from your feed or your "Posts" activity tab. Below your post a few minutes after publishing, you’ll see a grayed-out number showing your post's impression count (e.g., "652 impressions"). Clicking on this link will open a pop-up window with detailed analytics.

What Do These Metrics Actually Mean?

The analytics pop-up gives you a clear snapshot of how your post performed. Here’s a breakdown of the key metrics and what they signify:

• Impressions: This is the total number of times your post was shown in someone's feed. It’s a measure of reach, not engagement. High impressions are great, but they don't mean much if no one stops to interact with the content.
• Reactions: This shows the total count of Likes, Celebrates, and other emoji reactions. A reaction is a lightweight form of engagement that signals a user stopped scrolling long enough to interact.
• Comments: Comments are a high-value form of engagement. When someone takes the time to write a response, it means your content sparked a thought or question. Comments are fuel for the LinkedIn algorithm and for building community.
• Reposts: A repost means someone found your content so valuable that they wanted to share it with their entire network. This is a very strong signal of quality and helps extend your impression count significantly.
• Demographics: LinkedIn often shows you which companies your viewers work at, their job titles, and their locations. This is incredibly valuable for confirming that you're reaching your intended target audience.

To measure true performance, a lot of marketers focus on the engagement rate. While LinkedIn doesn't show you this number directly, you can calculate it yourself with a simple formula:

(Total Reactions + Total Comments + Total Reposts) / Total Impressions * 100 = Engagement Rate %

This percentage tells you what proportion of people who saw your post actually interacted with it. A post with 500 impressions and 25 engagements is often better than a post with 5,000 impressions and 50 engagements. It shows a stickier, more compelling message.

How to View Someone Else’s LinkedIn Activity

Just as you can review your own activity, you can also see the public activity of any other LinkedIn user (unless their privacy settings restrict it). This is an ethical and invaluable way to conduct research for networking, sales, and competitive analysis.

Step-by-Step Guide

The process is nearly identical to checking your own.

1. Navigate to Their Profile: Use the search bar to find the person or company you want to research and go to their profile page.
2. Find Their Activity Section: Scroll down their profile until you see their "Activity" box.
3. Show All Activity: Click the "Show all activity" link at the bottom of the box to see their complete public history of posts, comments, and reactions.

If you don't see an activity section, it's likely that the user hasn't been active recently or has adjusted their privacy settings.

Strategic Uses for Viewing Others' Activity

What you do with this information is what matters. Here are a few ways to use it strategically:

• Sales and Prospecting: Check the activity of a prospect before sending a connection request. What are they interested in? What problems are they discussing? Reference a recent comment or post of theirs in your note to show you’ve done your research. For example: "Hi Jane, I saw your recent comment on the AI in marketing post and completely agreed with your take on personalization. Would love to connect." To refine your approach, consider strategies for how to generate leads on LinkedIn.
• Competitor Analysis: Look at what your direct competitors are doing. What topics get the best engagement for them? Are their customers commenting with pain points or praise? This gives you a clear picture of what's working in your market.
• Industry Leadership: Follow thought leaders in your industry. By viewing their "All activity," you can see not just what they post, but where they comment. Joining these same conversations is an excellent way to network and build your own authority.

Using Activity Insights to Improve Your LinkedIn Game

Collecting data is pointless if you don't act on it. Use everything you’ve learned from your activity log to build a smarter, more effective content strategy that saves you time and delivers better results.

1. Find Your Top-Performing Content Pillars: Go through your own "Posts" tab and identify your top 5-10 posts by engagement rate. Look for patterns. Are they all about a specific topic? Were they text-only stories, image carousels, or quick videos? These are your proven content pillars - the foundation of your strategy.
2. Double Down on What Works: Once you know your winning formats and topics, intentionally create more content like it. If heartfelt personal stories about business challenges performed well, write another one. If tactical tip carousels sparked dozens of comments, make that a weekly feature.
3. Engage with Intention: Stop mindlessly scrolling. Use the activity feeds of your prospects and industry leaders to find active, relevant conversations. Instead of just liking a post, leave a thoughtful comment that adds to the discussion. This builds real relationships far more effectively than just posting into the void. To truly stand out, learn to write effective LinkedIn posts that capture attention.

By making activity review a monthly or quarterly habit, you can continuously adapt and refine your presence to meet the changing needs of your audience and the LinkedIn algorithm.

Final Thoughts

Checking LinkedIn activity - both your own and others' - isn't just a gimmick, it's a core practice for anyone serious about building a professional brand or business on the platform. By moving from simply posting content to analyzing its performance, you can turn your LinkedIn presence into a predictable engine for networking, lead generation, and brand growth.

This process of checking analytics and planning content can take a lot of time, especially when juggling multiple social media platforms. That's why we built Postbase. We designed it with a clean visual calendar and straightforward analytics to help you see what’s working across all your channels, including LinkedIn, so you can stop guessing and spend more time creating content that connects.