What you should be sharing on LinkedIn
Posting engaging content is your opportunity to present yourself as an expert in your industry, as it allows you to share your expertise within a field. While this is definitely not the right place for cat videos or singing babies, what should you then post on this professional medium?
Out of the more than 500 million people on LinkedIn, only 3 million share content on a weekly basis. Besides the fact that LinkedIn is the most effective social media platform for B2B lead generation, it will also help you grow your personal brand. Having a voice on LinkedIn will help you to stand out – becoming more recognized in your network – which will, ultimately, strengthen your personal brand and make networking a whole lot easier.
So, without further ado, let’s dive into what to post on LinkedIn.
How to make your content stand out?
The content shared on LinkedIn stands out from other social mediums due to its audience. Whether you are operating in an B2B or B2C environment (or simply as your own personal brand), one rule applies for making content that stands out from the crowd:
Help your audience make better decisions
Content that helps, informs or educates drastically outperforms promotional or showcasing content. And would you rather be the trusted advisor or the annoying salesman? The latter tend to become very noisy and driven by what they want rather than what the people in their network want.
Remember that people are not on LinkedIn to be sold to. They are there to better themselves, learn new things, strengthen their network and discover new opportunities. See your followers on LinkedIn as your “private fanbase”. They should follow you, because you have something interesting and meaningful to say. Not only because you want something from them.
So, when creating content to share on LinkedIn ask yourself if it has the debt to provide people with new knowledge and inspire them, or even create debate. If not, people will be left behind asking themselves: “… and so what?”.
Besides offering real value to businesses in your industry, make sure that your content has eye-catching visuals and engage with people who comment on your posts. This will, in turn, make your content stand out.
What to post on LinkedIn?
With this clarification, we can move on to the actual content that would be relevant for you to share. Here are a few suggestions to consider:
Blog posts
A blog is a great way to generate traffic, whether it's a personal blog or your company's. Marketers who prioritize blogging are actually 13x more likely to have a positive ROI on their efforts, while B2B brands with a blog create 67% more leads, so it’s definitely something companies should consider.
When you share something with an external link, such as a blog post, it’s also referred to as a Link Post. Find out how to set on up here.
Video
Mark Zuckerberg has declared video the next megatrend for platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. This goes for LinkedIn too. Think about it: Would you rather consume a piece of content in written format or via video? 59% of executives said they would choose to consume the content via video.
Furthermore, video is generally a very strong format in content marketing, as it performs better than static content such as an image. With the added complexity of time and relevance, video is a format that will help you stand out.
Industry News and Reports
On LinkedIn, people are actively looking for content related to their profession, which makes it a great platform for sharing interesting findings from your industry, whether it may be new case studies, white papers or specific reports.
Google News or Apple News are great news aggregators to consider, as they give you timely, relevant inspiration. Additionally, LinkedIn has a section of trending topics, which might be valuable when getting a feel of what people are talking about right now. Finally, you could also look for the insights behind the trending topics via Google Trends.
LinkedIn articles
Besides sharing links from an external source with your network, you can also create content – such as personal articles – directly on LinkedIn. Personal articles are often rewarded by LinkedIn’s algorithm (getting more views and engagement), because you are keeping people on the platform, instead of leading them to an external website.
When setting up the article take into consideration that length matters. You should aim for 1500-2000 words. While shorter articles are faster to write, their engagement performance is not a good as longer pieces. Read more about how to publish your own articles via LinkedIn here.
PDF, PowerPoint and Word
If you want to share your resume, a relevant presentation or a written document of some sorts, the new document sharing feature allows you to share documents directly in the feed. As for user experience, it provides you with some diversification of content and when a document appears in your feed, you’ll be able to see the first page, the document name and the total number of pages. When moussing over the image you can scroll through the pages.
With all of these different formats remember that 57% of LinkedIn’s traffic is mobile. It’s low compared to Facebook’s 98% mobile, but it has a huge say in how you optimise your content for mobile – especially regarding video formats. Here, I would recommend 4:5.
That was what. How about when?
When to post content?
When it comes to timing, LinkedIn differs from most other social platforms, as it is primarily used during business hours. With a demographic group of mainly professionals, salespeople and recruiters, there are certainly better times to post than others. The mindset is better when people are getting ready for work at the start of their day, in afternoon breaks or when they are commuting to their home, which means that you can create more engagement.
According to Hubspot, most people use LinkedIn in the middle of the week, because that is when they are most productive. The best time to post is therefore between 3PM-5PM on Wednesdays. Tuesdays between 8AM-10AM and Thursdays around 1PM-3PM are equally good posting times, while Monday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday are less good, as people tend to take a break from the platform.
Final remarks
In summarization:
Create content that helps, informs or educates your target audience – allowing them to make better decisions
Share content such as blog posts, relevant industry news, LinkedIn articles, video or even specific documents to engage with your network
Post your content between 3PM-5PM on Wednesdays for optimal engagement
On an ending note, I want to stress that sharing articles released by the media or content from your organization is perfectly fine. However, if you want to see the most impact on your own personal brand – and establish yourself as a thought leader in your network – I would advise you to create the content yourself.
In doing so, adopt an attitude for success. Building your own brand is an uphill climb, but it is achievable. And the long-term investment, will be worth it.
If you want to learn more about LinkedIn, check out 8 things characterise the great profile or 10 advanced hacks that will improve your networking.
If you are more into working with employees as brand ambassadors on social media, read the post on how to become successful with employee advocacy.