LinkedIn is unquestionably a top platform for B2B marketing from brand awareness to lead generation — 97% of B2B marketers post on LinkedIn as part of their content marketing efforts.
Whether you’re just establishing your brand or a seasoned LinkedIn vet, it’s important to review your LinkedIn post strategy to ensure you’re experimenting with different formats that can help you keep your content fresh and drive consistent growth.
In this article, we’ll cover the 12 different types of LinkedIn posts, and how to master LinkedIn engagement with 10 essential best practices. Let’s get started!
Manage all your social media accounts in one place.
Craft, schedule, & auto-post content to all your social channels, then track analytics and manage interactions from a single, easy-to-use dashboard.
The 12 types of LinkedIn posts — with examples
As a business owner, it’s important to vary the content formats you’re using on LinkedIn.
Your content strategy should take advantage of each post type to create a personal story around your brand that appeals to the types of business you want to connect with.
Below are the different content types with post examples to show you how to use each type of content.
1. Text-only
Reach your audience through text-only posts.
(Share valuable ideas, advice, or insights in written long-form content that speaks to your audience and encourages them to engage in dialog. Be cautious of creating a meaningless rant post — it could be classed as sensationalist rather than professional.
2. Photos
Photos speak louder than words. Add a photo with a quick caption to show your company’s personality.
(Add behind-the-scenes footage, action shots, group photos, and product progress to show how your team creates the brand voice behind your product or service.
3. Graphic
Switch up your static image posts with graphics.
Design LinkedIn posts that give your audience insightful and valuable content, such as tips, facts, or statistics.
(You could also use a screenshot, meme, joke, or quote to entertain your audience and create a connection through shared humor.
4. Carousel
Carousel posts let you share multiple images at once, so you can create a series.
(Use this format to post step-by-step instructions and listicle-style tips or recommendations.
5. Achievements
Celebrate internal and external achievements. Not only does this show your appreciation to your team, but it demonstrates your progress forward as a company.
(Tag any people, companies, or organizations that are related to the announcement. That way, you continue to establish connections.
6. Video
With video, it’s one way of the other — short or long.
(Create videos shorter than 30 seconds to demonstrate your product, give advice, or show your team in action.
Alternatively, film podcasts, keynote speeches, and lecture-style footage to deliver conversations, interviews, and speeches.
7. Live video broadcasts
Live videos are best used for stimulating real-time engagement.
(Host question-and-answer sessions, interviews, and webinars where participants can interact.
8. Polls
Polls are a great way to vary content and facilitate easy interaction from your audience.
(Post a poll to collect feedback and ask questions. Consider how you can use your audience to understand industry trends, product preferences, and customer service needs.
9. Documents
Published an insightful report? Got a whitepaper you’d like to share? Post it as a Document on LinkedIn.
(You can share slide decks, sales pitches, surveys, reports, spreadsheets, and more. This helps you showcase your expertise.
10. Event posts
Use event posts to show what you’re hosting and where you’re going to be. This generates interest and encourages other people who’ll be attending to interact with you both online and in real life.
(Use this type of post to show events you’re hosting or attending, such as parties, trade shows, conferences, keynotes, training courses, festivals, etc.
Remember to create a call-to-action (CTA) if you’re posting your own event. If it’s not your event, offer a CTA in the form of a discount code or promotion.
11. External links
A quick way to post regular content without having to create it, is to post news, blogs, and industry-related content that encourages professional connections and interactions from your target audience.
(Mention anyone related to the article in your post to widen your network.
12. Jobs
If you’re using LinkedIn for talent, post job vacancies to connect with potential team members.
(Use the different sections to create an effective post that showcases your position and company in a brief and informative way. Use the ‘Easy Apply’ feature to streamline the application process.
Mastering LinkedIn engagement: 10 essential best practices for 2023
Your LinkedIn success story doesn’t just rely on clever content ideas. It’s about posting quality content regularly to engage with your audience on relevant topics.
Think about scheduling time, content topics, and factors that boost connection requests. Follow these best practices to create LinkedIn posts that drive engagement.
1. Know who you’re targeting to prioritize high engagers
The first thing you should do before you get into regular posting is to understand who your audience is.
Use LinkedIn’s Website Demographics tool to get an idea of what kind of people are visiting your page.
Now that you know your target audience, search for trending posts that meet these demographics and behaviors.
Try to understand what kind of content engages this audience. Look at tone, engagement habits, post timing and regularity, and post type.
If you start creating content on a regular basis without understanding your audience, you risk missing the mark completely. It’s a lot easier to come up with content ideas, topics, and themes when you know who you are talking to.
💡 Loomly Tip: Use LinkedIn Audience Targeting to show your post to a specific audience.
You can limit who sees your posts using the following attributes:
- Industries
- Seniorities
- Functions
- Company size
- Languages
- Locations
You should also build a community for yourself.
Follow thought leaders, get involved in like-minded conversations, and comment on industry-related posts to increase visibility. Join relevant groups and follow the hashtags that speak to your brand image.
💡 Loomly Tip: In Post Builder, the Hashtag Suggestions feature can help you discover hashtag communities that may be relevant to your brand.
2. Vary content to test what works and build brand voice
Don’t get overwhelmed by others. Get started by testing out ideas on a small scale.
Try taking the framework of posts you like and creating similar posts to see if they spark engagement.
Vary your content to see which kinds of posts work best.
For example, try employee posts, such as new starters, birthdays, and work anniversaries. Mention any important work that employees have done and any awards you’ve been nominated for — celebrate the wins.
You could also try educational posts related to your business expertise. Expert posts, infographics, and charts can be especially beneficial if you are in the B2B space.
Education is a great tool to engage with potential customers and your wider LinkedIn network. Don’t bore your audience, though, use data to demonstrate your credibility, but make your educational content entertaining and easy to read.
Remember, that it’s important for your audience to know you’re human, that your business cares about its staff and customers. They want to see you doing something positive.
Create fun and engaging CTAs so people who wish to, can get in touch or learn more about the company.
This highlights company culture, framing your brand as an expert thought leader, and making sure that potential employees or clients are aware of your business and how you interact as an organization.
Create authentic and genuine LinkedIn posts and use the automation tool to schedule them to post at relevant, active times.
It all leads back to thought leadership, making a community that you want to help. LinkedIn has its own educational series on how to make the most out of LinkedIn depending on how you want to use it, whether it’s to advertise better, drive more leads, or build your brand.
3. Be authentic and human to connect with like-minded organizations
Authenticity is predicted to be the most important factor for brands in the near future. Research shows that customers trust brands that showcase real customers, and they find these brands through personal recommendations.
Instead of relying on self-promotional content, show the humans building the brand. Avoid the trap of the faceless corporate facade. This will go a long way in creating a target audience that’ll engage and react to your posts because they align with your values and practices.
Self-promotion is fine, but make sure it is in small doses. If you do post self-promotional posts, make sure your call-to-action is target at those that need your help — avoid “salesy” pitches.
4. Stop the scroll to capture attention
While LinkedIn posts can be 1,300 characters long, you have to stop people at the caption. If people are flicking through their feed, they need something that encourages them to pause, before they even consider engaging.
To capture someone quickly, give your information clearly and concisely.
For example, try screenshotting a short tweet. The contrast of black on white, coupled with the familiar Twitter style, cues the audience to stop for a post that’s either informative or funny.
Always remember to research. Don’t just rely on your own mind to generate content from scratch. See what works for others, what your audience likes, and what’s viable for you to create right now.
5. Repurpose content from others to engage regularly
Share content created by others.
Not only does it save you content creation time, but it also gives you a jumping off point to connect with others.
By sharing news, blogs, videos and content by like-minded organizations, you can deliver regular content to your audience without having to make it yourself.
Remember to tag relevant content creators, reporters, and participants to evolve your LinkedIn network.
6. Prioritize readability to improve audience experience
Make your content easy to read.
Bullet points or smaller, one-sentence paragraphs appeal to readers. Remember, lots of people are reading on their phones so one sentence can take up three lines.
Create a short, snappy intro line that gets people interested, formatted in a way that’lll want people to click on the “read more” button. By doing this, you create a little suspense if it makes sense to do so.
(Be especially conscious of cutting off important sentences mid-line. The copy seems disjointed and doesn’t read well. A line break seems to denote a period, so it can read like you’ve put periods in the middle of sentences, which makes no sense.
7. Publish consistently to stay relevant
Consistency is key because frequent, regular content nurtures your existing audience, while providing opportunities for a wider reach. There’s no point doing all of the research regarding target audiences, hashtags, content, etc. if your audience isn’t seeing posts regularly.
LinkedIn recommends posting once a day, even on weekends, but if you’re a small business, aim for a couple of times a week. You’ll also get better engagement if you post during the weekday — engagement tails off after 5pm.
8. Provide free value to show your worth
While personal posts can help to paint a picture of your brand, try to incorporate posts that provide free value to the people you’re trying to connect with.
(Use infographics, documentation, videos, and guides to educate your audience and demonstrate your expertise. This boosts your credibility and gives a sample of the kind of value that you bring customers.
9. Use emojis sparingly to remain professional
Emojis can sometimes be a powerful visual tool for describing complex or abstract concepts. However, LinkedIn isn’t the most emoji-friendly platform. Professionals simply don’t use these characters often.
(Limit your emojis to signposting, like bullet-pointed numbers or fingers that point to CTAs.
10. Analyze your performance to improve your content
Your LinkedIn dashboard is your cheat sheet for understanding your audience. The analytics on this dashboard will show you:
- Who is interacting with your content
- How they behave
- Where they come from
- What kind of content they like
- When they interact most often
With this information in your back pocket, you can start to see patterns that help you create posts that appeal to your ideal audience.
Revisit your analytics regularly to check if your post ideas are working.
Posting on LinkedIn, in a nutshell
Posting on LinkedIn doesn’t need to be difficult. Research target audience preferences, test different content types, and analyze what works.
Remember that LinkedIn is for creating connections. You need to interact with your community to capture their attention. Share content, tag other users, connect with professionals, and reply to comments to open conversation.
If you need help managing your omnichannel presence, don’t struggle manually — try Loomly for free!
