16 types of posts that work well on LinkedIn
Mark White shares his knowledge
Foundation Posts
Foundation posts – or “Pillar” posts – focus on the key subject areas that you want to communicate to your connections and potential prospect.
Given their importance, they are likely to be longer than other posts, quite focused in the content and, more often than not, will contain tips or practical advice centred around your main topics.
The post is a summary of the main post and should contain a link through to the full article … perhaps added in the 1st comment if we are to play the algorithm a little!
2. Expertise Sharing
Share information on important topics relating to your expertise, with each post focusing on a particular aspect of that topic.
Creates trust in your ability .
3. Lists
Lists get a lot of information over in a short space of time. People can dip in and out as they see fit, so these are also the type of post that often gets referred to and shared across social media and beyond.
4. News Delivery / Reporting / News Breaking
On the spot and sharing news and information that we have found with our connections.
You want to become the go to person
Try and add your own prrsoective to the story.
5. Guides / Instructional
“How to” guide is an excellent way of passing on information and creating something which has the ability to get real engagement.
Dependent on what your topic is, the power of video is undeniable particularly if you are showing something practical, so think about whether a text based post or a video – or a mix of the two – would be the best format. If they are short, then you might post as a ‘native video’ which LinkedIn currently favours, but for longer ones, linking back to a nicely set up Channel page on YouTube or Vimeo can be really effective.
6. Link Baiting
A contentious or provocative post to incite people to read and comment – its sole goal is to provoke a reaction and generate comments and engagement.
7. Surveys & Polls
Facts and figures lend weight to an argument and by using figures from a recent survey or report and then adding your own commentary, can be really powerful.
8. Article Reply
So you’ve seen something that caught your attention on some one else’s feed or website and perhaps even left a comment on it but you want to expand on that. The length of comments is limited on LinkedIn (though more than enough for most) but sometimes you may want to expand on those initial thoughts and embellish with images etc.
Great, write a post which references the original but then goes on to either develop and expand on the points it makes, or to counter them. You can then reference the original to engage with the author and, if you wished, also go back and edit your original reply and link to your own post.
9. Rants
Never get abusive or personal, but if you write about something that really bugs you and you believe is worth sharing, then this can come over very powerfully in a post. It adds to the 3D view of you, the person, and helps tell your connections or prospects something more about you. Hey, we also like a little bit of Victor Meldrew, letting off steam now and again.
10. Industry Commentary
You are going to be well placed to pass on information about what is happening in your industry and how events are likely to effect your connections and other players in it. So make sure that you become the person that people turn to when they want to get informed opinion about what’s going on by delivering posts which report on developments in your industry.
Clearly, you will quite possibly be aware of what’s going on in any case because those are the circles you move in, but I also find that a simple tool like setting up a Google Alert for certain relevant keyword phrases is also a great way of listening to what is being talked about and reported.
11. Conferences / Exhibitions / Seminars
A great way of getting across information and sharing with a larger audience is to take information from a conference and report back via a post or series of posts. This could be your own conference or one that you are attending as a delegate – beforehand, highlight that you will be there (and willing to meet up no doubt) and then feed back what you found interesting or particularly useful.
If you are in a position to also comment on say the keynote speakers, highlighting a couple of key takeaways for you from their talk then that again allows you to associate yourself with those ideas and will also be of great value to those who were unable to attend in person.
(LinkIn the speaker and message him/her asking if that’s ok)
12. Company Specific
There may be some specific news about your company which will be of interest to your readers, perhaps new capacity, extra staff or additional clients, all of which reflect favourably on you and your business. A constant stream of these might be considered unimaginative and prove boring, but the occasional one thrown in adds to the information pool your readers have about you.
13. Press Releases
If you believe that it is relevant and interesting to your readers then there is no harm in putting PR information
A recent additional to the functional side of LinkedIn means that you can also add a document to a post – simply text on a page doesn’t work wonderfully well from a visual perspective but does allow people to download it which can have its benefits.
14. Links / Signpost Post
There’s always going to be information that you have unearthed during the course of the week that you’d like to share and is useful to your readers, but which doesn’t suit a full post on its own. So create a post with a series of links to articles, information sources, new stories etc. with just a short one line commentary on each.
(Ik – I have Spark – from paper.li – it’s really cool – https://paper.li/bsivc/1372196625#/
15. Reviews
A review might be of a book or white paper, or perhaps of a service or product which is relevant to your connections allowing you to give your own opinion on it and then open it to the floor and get your connections’ opinions as well.
Of course, as they give them they will also distribute the content to their networks as well which has great value too.
16. Video or Podcast
It’s become really easy to integrate either podcasts or videos clips into your posts and they are also a great way to offer something a little extra to your readers. Ideally make them your own but you can of course embed videos from sites like YouTube that you believe would be beneficial
. If you put commentary around them, potentially captions and a transcript for your own, then you’ll take the value on the post up a notch as well.
Of course, a post doesn’t need to fall into just a single category this one, for example, is clearly a list post but I would like to think also falls into the area of expertise sharing. At the end of the day, focus on what will appeal to your readers (you could always ask then what they are looking for!?) but hopefully you’ll find some ideas here to be going on with!
Leave a Reply
Latest Blogs
