Wondering How to Post on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn’s a great platform for companies looking to recruit, B2B businesses wanting to generate business leads, or professionals wanting to connect with like-minded people. What it’s not good at, though, is welcoming new users and making them feel part of the community. So, if you’re wondering how to post on LinkedIn, The Outsource Your Marketing team has created this guide to help you out. (Because we know how scary it can be to get started!)
Anxieties around how to post on LinkedIn are normal. Most people start out feeling overwhelmed by the sheer mass of professionals on the platform. It’s easy to feel like and you’re going to be judged or put down – but don’t let it hold you back. Instead, read on for lots of ideas about how to post on LinkedIn, so you can start generating B2B leads, finding new connections and recruiting great people to work with.
Who is on LinkedIn?
The reason why LinkedIn is such a powerful platform is because of its demographics. You only have to take a quick look at the kind of people you can connect with, to see why it’s well worth your time and effort to get to grips with how to post on LinkedIn:
- LinkedIn audiences have around twice the buying power of audiences on other platforms.
- 80% of LinkedIn users are decision drivers.
- 53% of users are defined as high earners (over $75,000).
- 60% of LinkedIn users are between 25-34.
- People in over 200 countries use LinkedIn.
Why Post on LinkedIn?
Posting on LinkedIn ensures that you get the most out of using the platform. When you share interesting content, people who are interested in what you have to say can see it. So, the more you take part and share, the more likely others will notice you. It won’t happen straight away; you’ll need to be patient and consistent in order to get noticed.
Also, when you create and share things, you’re giving people a chance to get to know you. As with any networking situation, you have to give something in order to get something. Use your personal profile to post. People want to connect with other people, not faceless businesses.
What Kind of Content Should I Post?
To answer that question, you’ll need to know who your audience is, and what your business goals are.
What is my Goal When Posting?
Once you are clear about the reason for posing, it will help you to refine the audience you want to post to. If, for example, you want to generate new leads, the people you want as an audience are decision makers and executives. Knowing this helps you to decide what kind of content to post.
And LinkedIn helps you to filter your content, so it gets seen by the right people. You can choose to show your posts to specific groups of people who have certain characteristics or are like your ideal customers.
Who am I Posting To?
LinkedIn encourages you to be very specific about your target audience, so you need to know precisely who they are. Here are the questions you need to be able to answer:
- Who do they work for (which companies or organisations)?
- Which countries, cities or regions do they work in?
- What is their profession?
- What kind of job title would they have? There may be a number of variations.
- What is the average age of your target audience?
What Should I Post on LinkedIn?
When you create content on LinkedIn, you always need to ask whether what your posting will be valuable to your target audience. It’s worth doing some research prior to posting, in order to find out what attracts the most Likes, Shares, and Comments among the people you’re focusing on. As with any social platform, trends come and go but the most popular types of content are:
- ‘How to’ posts.
- Tips and insights.
- Your thoughts on industry trends.
- Personal challenges you’ve overcome at work.
- Workplace related content (remote working, hybrid working).
- Fun posts occasionally.
- Brand pieces that promote the vision and ethos of your business.
LinkedIn recently increased its character limit for posts to 3,000 characters which translates to between 500-600 words. The limit change was an attempt to strengthen the impact of posts by allowing users to develop an idea, or argument, without having to resort to an article format.
How to Post on LinkedIn
Once you know who you’re writing for, and what content will be of value to them, you can get to work on the post itself. When you’re happy with what you’ve written, there are still a few decisions you need to make before it hits your feed.
Choosing Who You Share With
After spending time deciding who to share your content with, it’s important to select the settings that will ensure they are the ones that get to see your posts.
When you start writing your post, you will see a drop-down menu. Click the ‘Anyone’ button to expand the list of options:
- Anyone: People on or off LinkedIn, even if they’re not users.
- Anyone + Twitter: This lets anyone see it, and it will also be automatically shared on Twitter (X).
- Connections only: Only the people you’re directly connected to.
- Group members: People in a certain group you’re part of.
- Events: People who are going to the same event as you.
Picking the right audience makes sure you’re showing your post to the right people. Not only can you limit who can see, but you can also do the same for who can comment. Here are the choices:
- Everyone: Anyone can leave a comment.
- Connections only: Only people you’re connected with can comment.
- No one: You turn off comments completely.
Restricting comments is useful when you want feedback about something from certain people. For example, people you know well and trust.
Publishing Your LinkedIn Post
Any platform presents challenges when you start out, so we’ve made our guide pretty basic:
- Step 1. If you’re already signed up your starting point will be your ‘Home’ page that displays your feed. These posts are generated by people or pages you follow, pages you’ve liked, and any events you’ve attended.
- Step 2. If you’re on a phone, or iPad you’ll need to click ‘Share’ to create a post.
- Step 3. Let’s imagine you’re wanting to share an article. All you have to do is paste in the url and the article will appear. You can add a comment in the space above if you wish. If you want to add a video or image LinkedIn has an excellent guide which walks you through the process.
- Step 4. Click ‘post’ and your article will appear on the feeds of your chosen connections.
When Should I Post?
Hootsuite has published results of a survey they carried out in order to determine the very best time to post on LinkedIn. For optimum results you should aim for either a Tuesday, or a Wednesday at the start of the working day.
For best times across the whole week, we’ve compiled a table, so you can schedule in your posts. Weekends are not completely off limits, but the traffic is much lower – so you may want to give yourself a well-earned break and focus on the working week instead.
We hope that you’re feeling a lot clearer now about how to post on LinkedIn. It will be nerve wracking the first few time, but it does get better!
