You can spend a lot of time writing a LinkedIn post, finding the right image and getting the wording exactly where you want it, only to publish it and have very few people see it (been there too). That doesn’t necessarily mean the post wasn’t good. Many factors affect how far content travels on LinkedIn, and the post itself is only one part of the equation.
Giving your content the best chance of being seen starts with a series of smart choices. The topic, opening, format, visual, timing, network, consistency and what happens after you publish all play a role. A strong LinkedIn strategy brings all of these pieces together.
Link to Start With Topics People Actually Care About Start With Topics People Actually Care About
Think about where your knowledge overlaps with the interests, problems and questions of the people you’re trying to reach. Client questions are a great source of content, along with conversations with colleagues, industry developments, presentations, conferences, articles and things happening in your everyday life.
Content pillars help organize those ideas. Choose three to five areas that support your brand and your business, then explore them from different angles. Someone who wants to become known for employment law, private equity, AI or leadership should return to those subjects regularly. Repetition helps people associate you with your areas of expertise.
Keep a running list of ideas somewhere you’ll actually use it. I do this because ideas come to me constantly and I know I won’t remember all of them later. A question on a client call, something someone says at a conference or an everyday experience that makes me look at a familiar topic differently can all become content.
Link to Put More Thought Into the Beginning Put More Thought Into the Beginning
The first few lines have an important job. Someone scrolling through LinkedIn is deciding very quickly whether to keep reading, so get to the interesting part early and give the reader a reason to continue.
For a story, start close to where something happens. For an educational post, introduce the problem or question. For an opinion piece, make your perspective clear early. Long introductions that spend several paragraphs working their way toward the subject make it much easier for someone to scroll past.
I often write the body of a post first and return to the opening later. Once I know exactly what the post is saying, the strongest opening is usually much easier to see. Strong openings also don’t have to manufacture drama. Specific, interesting and relevant works.
Link to Structure Posts for the Way People Read on LinkedIn Structure Posts for the Way People Read on LinkedIn
Think about how you read LinkedIn yourself. You’re probably scrolling on your phone, checking it between meetings or looking at it while you’re doing something else. If a post looks like a huge block of text, it takes more effort to read, even when the information is really good.
Formatting can make a big difference. Keep your paragraphs relatively short, add white space and use bullets when you’re sharing a list of ideas or tips. Numbered lists work well when there’s an order to what you’re explaining, and emoji bullets can add some personality when they fit the subject. These small choices make a post feel much more approachable when someone first sees it in the feed.
At the same time, every sentence doesn’t have to become its own paragraph. I like a mix of shorter and slightly longer paragraphs because it feels much more natural and gives you room to actually develop an idea. Read the post out loud before you publish it too. If it sounds like you, that’s usually a good sign.
There’s no perfect length for a LinkedIn post either. A quick observation may only need a few paragraphs, while a story or educational post may need more room. Give yourself enough space to say what you want to say, then go back through it and see where you can tighten it up.
And remember that people often decide whether to read a post before they’ve read a single word. They see the shape of it first. Make it inviting. Give them some breathing room, make the important information easy to find and then give them something worth reading.
Link to Be Thoughtful About Your Visuals Be Thoughtful About Your Visuals
I love using photos on LinkedIn, especially real photos that help tell the story. If I’m writing about something that happened at a conference, I’ll use a photo from the conference. If another person is part of the story, a photo of us together makes sense. Some of my favorite posts have used everyday photos because the photo and the story naturally went together.
Every post doesn’t need an image, though. A strong text-only post can do incredibly well, and sometimes the words are enough. Try breaking up the text with bullets when you’re sharing several tips or ideas. I also like using emojis as bullets when they relate to the topic. They add some personality and make the post easier to read.
I’m not a big fan of generic stock photos because they don’t tell us anything about you or add much to the story. Real photos, screenshots, simple graphics, charts, checklists and documents usually give you much more to work with. When you add a visual, think about what it’s adding to the post and whether it helps tell the story.
For posts with several photos, think about the order before you upload them. Put your strongest image first because that’s the one people will notice first in the feed. Make sure your photos are clear, well cropped and look good on a phone too.
There’s also a small step that’s easy to overlook: rename your image files before uploading them. Instead of IMG_4837.jpg, use your name and a few descriptive words, such as stefanie-marrone-linkedin-personal-branding-tips.jpg. Add descriptive alt text to your LinkedIn images as well. Alt text makes your content more accessible, and descriptive image names are also helpful for images you use on your website, blog and other places online where search matters.
Mix up what you use from post to post. Sometimes a real photo will make the story more personal. A carousel or graphic may help explain something. And sometimes a text-only post will outperform all of them. Pay attention to what works with your audience, but don’t add an image just because you feel like a LinkedIn post is supposed to have one.
Some of the strongest posts I’ve seen are just great ideas, well written and easy to read. A good visual can help someone stop scrolling, but the content still has to give them a reason to stay.
Link to Post When Your Audience Is Likely to Be There Post When Your Audience Is Likely to Be There
People ask me all the time about the best time to post on LinkedIn. There are so many studies and opinions about this, and I wouldn’t spend too much time trying to find the perfect minute. I generally like weekday mornings, somewhere around 7:30 to 9 a.m. That’s when people are starting their workdays, checking their phones, commuting and catching up on what they missed.
I also want to give every post a long runway to succeed. When you post early in the day, there are many more hours for people to see it, comment on it, share it and for the conversation to continue. That’s one reason I’m not a big fan of posting late in the afternoon or on a Friday. You’re giving the post a much shorter window when people are actively spending time on LinkedIn.
Pay attention to your own audience too. Try posting at different times within that morning window and look back at what happened. If you have clients and contacts across the country, think about time zones. An 8 a.m. post in New York is hitting someone in California at 5 a.m., so you may want to adjust depending on who you most want to reach. Over time, you’ll start to see which days and times tend to work best for your content.
I also try to post when I know I’ll have some time to check LinkedIn afterward. I want to see who is commenting, respond to people and keep the conversation going. If I write something at night or over the weekend, I’ll schedule it for the next morning instead of posting it immediately.
And remember that a post doesn’t stop working after the first few hours. I’ve had posts continue to get comments, views and shares for days. Give your content time to find its audience before deciding whether it worked. Sometimes a post takes off immediately and sometimes it builds more gradually. Both can be valuable.
Link to Pay Attention to What Happens After You Publish Pay Attention to What Happens After You Publish
What happens after you publish can tell you almost as much as the post itself. Go back and look at the comments, respond to people and keep the conversation going when there’s something worth discussing. Some of the best ideas for future posts come from the questions people ask, the perspectives they share and the examples they add from their own experience.
Also look closely at who is engaging. If a client comments, a prospect keeps liking your posts or someone you haven’t spoken to in a long time suddenly starts showing up in your notifications, pay attention. Take a look at what they’re working on and what they’re posting about. There may be a natural reason to reconnect. LinkedIn gives you all kinds of clues about who is paying attention to your content, and that can be incredibly useful for relationship building and business development.
The comments can also take the conversation in directions you hadn’t considered. Ask a follow-up question when someone makes an interesting point. Respond when someone shares an experience that adds to the discussion. If several people ask a similar question, write that down because it may be your next post. Your audience can be a great source of ideas when you pay attention to what they’re telling you.
Your own posts are also a starting point for engaging with other people. Spend some time looking at what the people in your network are sharing, especially clients, prospects, referral sources and others you want to stay connected to. Leave a thoughtful comment when something interests you or when you have something useful to add. It keeps you connected and often starts conversations that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
And think about what could happen next when someone regularly engages with your content. Send them an article that relates to something they commented on. Congratulate them when they share good news. Reach out to someone you already know and suggest catching up. Some of the best opportunities on LinkedIn start with very small interactions, which is why it’s worth paying attention to who keeps showing up.
Link to Build the Right Network Build the Right Network
One of the best things about LinkedIn is how many people it gives you the opportunity to meet and stay connected with. Every person you add to your network becomes someone who may see what you share, learn more about you and, over time, get to know you through your content. And you get the same opportunity to learn more about them.
Think about the people you’d genuinely like to have in your professional world. Clients and prospects are part of that, but so are referral sources, former colleagues, people you meet at conferences, speakers who impress you, people doing interesting work in your industry and people you’ve gotten to know through LinkedIn itself. Some of my best relationships have started with a connection, a comment or a conversation on LinkedIn.
Make connecting with people part of what you already do. When you come home from a conference, go through the attendee and speaker lists and connect with the people you met. If someone says something interesting on a webinar, look them up. If you have a great conversation with someone on a Zoom call or at an event, connect while you’re still fresh in each other’s minds. And pay attention to the people who regularly show up in your comments. You may find someone there who becomes a great contact, referral source, collaborator or friend.
LinkedIn search can help you be more intentional about this too. If there’s an industry you want to work in or a company you’d love to work with, look for people in those areas. Read what they’re posting and see who is participating in the conversations. This is a much more natural way to grow your network than sending hundreds of random connection requests.
When you send an invitation, add a note when there’s something personal to say. Mention where you met, the event you both attended, the person you have in common or the post that made you want to connect. It takes a few extra seconds and gives the other person some context for who you are.
And once you’re connected, remember that the connection request was only the beginning. Keep up with what people are doing. Congratulate them when something good happens. Comment on their posts. Send them something they might find helpful. Reach out every so often just to say hello. Those small interactions are how people stay in each other’s lives, and they’re also what makes LinkedIn so much more valuable than a list of names and connection counts
Link to Give People a Reason to Follow You Give People a Reason to Follow You
Think about why someone would follow you after coming across one of your posts. They should have a pretty good idea of what they’ll get if they do. That comes from consistently sharing useful content around a few recognizable topics and developing a point of view that people want to hear more from.
This is where your content pillars really matter. If you want to be known for employment law, talk about employment law regularly. Share practical advice, explain developments, answer questions you hear from clients, comment on what’s happening in the workplace and bring your own perspective to the conversation. Over time, your audience begins to associate you with that subject. The same applies whether your focus is private equity, AI, leadership, healthcare, marketing or something else.
Also give people something they can actually use. Teach them something. Help them understand a complicated issue. Share an experience that might help someone else. Offer an opinion they haven’t considered. Tell a good story. Your content should make someone want to see what you’re going to say next.
Your profile has to support this too. If someone sees a post and clicks on your name, your headline, About section, Featured section and recent content should reinforce what they just saw. They shouldn’t have to work hard to figure out what you do, who you help or what you know.
And every so often, actually ask people to follow you. Tell them what you post about and invite them to follow if those subjects are relevant to them. You can do this in an introductory post, at the end of a particularly useful post, when you start a series, in your newsletter or when you’re speaking at an event.
Then add the bell as an extra reminder. Tell people that if they want to make sure they see your future posts, they can go to your profile and turn on the notification bell. Many people still don’t know this feature exists, so mentioning it occasionally can help the people who already value your content make sure they see more of it.
Link to Use Different LinkedIn Formats Use Different LinkedIn Formats
One of the things I love about LinkedIn content is that there are so many ways to share an idea. Everything doesn’t have to be a text post. A story might be better with a photo. A list of tips could become a carousel. A topic you talk about all the time might be perfect for a short video. And when you have more to say, write an article or turn it into a newsletter.
Think about how you naturally communicate too. If you’re great on video, use that. If you love teaching and breaking things down, carousels and documents may work really well for you. If you’re a strong writer, lean into that. Your content should feel like you, and trying different formats gives you more ways to figure out what you enjoy creating and what your audience enjoys seeing.
You can also take an idea that worked and use it again in another format. Turn a successful post into a video. Take an article and create a carousel from it. Use several photos to tell the story of an event instead of posting the standard photo of yourself standing in front of the conference sign. There are a lot of ways to make the same idea interesting again.
Collaborative posts are especially useful when you’re doing something with another person or organization. If you’re speaking together, co-authoring an article, hosting a webinar or working on a project, create a collaborative post so it reaches both of your audiences. It’s a great way for each of you to be introduced to people in the other person’s network.
And use tags when they make sense. Tag the people who are actually part of the story, event or conversation. Those are the tags that feel natural and may help bring more people into the discussion..
Link to Bring Your Strongest Ideas Back Bring Your Strongest Ideas Back
Creating content becomes much easier when a good idea has more than one life. Most of your network One good idea can give you a lot of content. Start by looking at what you’ve already created: LinkedIn posts, articles, presentations, webinars, podcasts, client alerts, newsletters and videos. Look for ideas that generated good engagement, prompted questions or are still relevant to the people you’re trying to reach.
Think about the different ways to use the same idea. A longer article might contain five individual LinkedIn posts. One point from a presentation could become a post with an example and practical advice. A question from a webinar could become a short video. A successful LinkedIn post could become a longer article. A video transcript can become a written post, while a list of tips can become a carousel or checklist.
The same topic can also be approached from different angles. If you wrote about five LinkedIn profile mistakes, write a separate post about the one you see most often. If you shared advice for associates, adapt it for partners. If you wrote about something that happened to you, come back to the topic later with another example or a lesson that applies to your audience. If something happens in the news that relates to a topic you’ve covered, write about it again with the new development in mind.
Keep track of your best ideas so you can find them later. Create a simple content bank with links to your strongest posts, articles and videos, along with topics you want to revisit. When you’re deciding what to post, go through that list. You’ll often find that you already have the starting point for your next piece of content.
Link to Help Your Content Work Harder and Smarter For You Help Your Content Work Harder and Smarter For You
You put time and thought into creating good content, so don’t limit it to the people who happen to see it in their LinkedIn feeds that day. There are plenty of other ways to get that content in front of people who may find it helpful.
Include a strong post in your newsletter. Send it to a client or contact when it relates to a conversation you’ve had. If you speak at a conference or host a webinar, send attendees a relevant post or article afterward. If someone asks you a question you’ve already written about, share the piece with them. You’ve already done the work, and the content may be useful to someone long after you originally posted it.
Use your Featured section for some of your best content too. Think about what you’d want a potential client, referral source or new connection to see when they visit your profile. Choose a few posts, articles, videos or other pieces that show what you know and what you regularly talk about, and update them as you create stronger or more relevant content.
Also look at where your content fits into the other things you’re already doing. An article can become a LinkedIn post, part of a presentation and something you send to a prospect. A LinkedIn post can become a newsletter topic or the basis for a webinar. Good content takes time to create, so find more ways to use it and more opportunities for the right people to see it.
Link to Repost Your Own Content Strategically Repost Your Own Content Strategically
Most people in your network don’t see every post you publish. And even the people who did see something you shared six months ago probably don’t remember it. Add in all the new people who have followed or connected with you since then, and some of your older content may have a very different audience today.
Make a habit of going back through your posts and finding the ones worth sharing again. Look for posts that performed particularly well, sparked interesting conversations or covered topics that are still relevant. I usually give a post at least a few months before bringing it back, although a timely development can be a good reason to revisit something sooner.
Sometimes I’ll repost the original, especially if I still like it exactly as it is. Other times I’ll rewrite it with a new opening, add an example or update the advice. I may also take the same idea and turn it into a video, carousel, article or newsletter. This makes creating content much easier because you’re building on ideas that you already know resonated with your audience.
Your analytics are useful here too. Pay attention to the posts and topics that consistently attract the people you want to reach. Those are clues about what your audience wants to hear from you, and they should inform what you create and bring back. Repetition is also part of building a brand. People usually need to hear an idea more than once before they begin to associate it with you.
Link to Look at More Than Likes and Impressions Look at More Than Likes and Impressions
Numbers are useful, but context matters. A post with thousands of impressions from people outside your target audience may have less business value than one seen by several important clients, prospects or referral sources.
Look at which topics generate comments and conversations, who visits your profile, whether the right people are following you and who engages consistently. Pay attention to direct messages and offline conversations too. Someone mentioning on a call that they’ve been reading your posts for months tells you something the visible engagement numbers never will.
Review your results over a longer period rather than judging your strategy based on one post. Look for patterns in topics, formats, timing and audience response and use those patterns to decide what deserves more attention.
Link to Consistency Gives Your Content More Opportunities to Work Consistency Gives Your Content More Opportunities to Work
Posting consistently helps people become familiar with you and the subjects you talk about. Choose a schedule that fits your workload and that you can realistically maintain. For some people that may be once a week, while others may publish two or three times.
The cumulative effect matters. Someone may see your name in their feed several times before reading one of your posts. They may read several before following you. Months later, they may see something that prompts them to send you a message or mention your name when an opportunity comes up.
That’s why I look at LinkedIn content as something you build over time. Strong topics, thoughtful writing, readable formatting, good visuals, smart timing, the right network, meaningful engagement and consistent posting all give people more opportunities to see your work and understand what you know. Keep paying attention to what resonates, bring your best ideas back in new ways and make it easy for the right people to keep seeing what you have to say.
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