These LinkedIn best practices are part of a series we have on Social Media best practices. Included in this series are Facebook Best Practices, Instagram Best Practices, Snapchat Best Practices and TikTok Best Practices.
LinkedIn has become one of the leading platforms for business and organization-related marketing since its launch, with more than 900 monthly active users worldwide. Furthermore, 80% of B2B marketing leads from social media come through LinkedIn, making it a valuable channel for businesses focused on increasing leads and developing a thought-leadership strategy online.
Platform Audience
Current audience demographics as of January 2023.
- 20% are 18–29
- 31% are 30-39
- 23% are 40-49
- 51% male
- 49% female
Posting and Cadence Times
We find that this is currently the optimal cadence and posting schedule for LinkedIn.
Cadence
- 3x/week is ideal
- 1x/week minimum
Posting Times
- Tuesday-Thursday
- 8-10 am, 12 pm, 4-5 pm
(Post cadence may change depending on industry and unique audiences)
Content Formats
Including images in your LinkedIn posts is key. Images typically result in a 2x higher comment rate on posts, and adding 3-4 images can also increase engagement. Up your game with video posts, which earn 3x the number of engagements as text-only posts and are shared 20x more than any other type of content.
Post Types
Posting regularly on LinkedIn can be crucial for your client. Finding out which posts are receiving the most engagement and interest is crucial to the success of a company’s media ventures.
Text Only Posts
Text posts can be useful for driving engagement. Posing a question to encourage a response is a successful way to engage with your audience.
Best Practices: Avoid big blocks of text. Many people are viewing the post from a small device, so try to appeal to the human eye. Create an engaging tagline and a call to action. If they fit with your brand tone and voice, emojis can add personality to your text posts.
Single-Image Posts
Visuals are some of the best ways to grab your audience’s attention. Posts with at least one image usually get 2x more comments than those without.
Best Practices:
- Use clear, high-quality images to create a professional appearance
- The optimum image size is a minimum of 552 x 276 pixels, and the maximum image size is 5MB
- Adding descriptive alt text can improve the accessibility of posts. Alt text is heard by members using voice-over screen readers. You can add alt text by clicking the pencil icon when uploading images via desktop.
Multi-Image Posts
Multi-image posts allow clients to share more content and drive engagement with the post.
Best Practices:
- Post clear, high-quality images
- Include descriptive alt text to improve accessibility and cater to all audiences
- Create text that will accompany your post and provide context
Videos
Native videos are video content shared with your followers on LinkedIn. Videos can heighten the emotion and message you are attempting to convey to the audience. Videos on LinkedIn play automatically on members’ feeds, maximizing the number of people who watch and engage with the content.
- Include post text along with the video to provide context and encourage people to stop scrolling and watch
- Prioritize short videos that make your content easy and understandable to digest
- Videos can be up to 15 minutes long, but aim for videos to be between 30 and 60 seconds long
- Add closed captions to improve accessibility
PDF Carousels
In replacement of typical image carousels, LinkedIn has introduced PDF carousels where users can showcase multiple pages of their content or documents within a single ad unit. With PDF carousels, users can present their audience with engaging and informative content in a visually appealing and easily digestible format.
Best Practices:
- Create visually appealing PDFs with eye-catching images, clear branding, and consistent formatting
- Use high-quality visuals to grab the attention of your audience and ensure your designs align with your brand guidelines
- Keep content concise and focused
- Establish a clear call to action that prompts viewers to take action
Video Carousels
Similar to image carousels, video carousels are a way to share multiple videos within a single post. Followers can either swipe through carousels manually or they can autoplay. It is best to aim for consistency between videos, so keeping videos the same length is the best practice.
Articles
Publishing articles will allow your followers and supporters to comment, like, and share to their network. You may use articles to share announcements, launch a new campaign, or enforce thought leadership. Using articles on LinkedIn offers several advantages. Firstly, they serve as a great tool for thought leadership, allowing professionals to share in-depth insights, expertise, and valuable industry knowledge with their network and beyond. Secondly, LinkedIn provides more comprehensive analytics for articles compared to regular posts, enabling authors to gain deeper insights into the reach, engagement, and impact of their content. Additionally, the fact that LinkedIn articles are crawled by Google enhances discoverability and increases the potential for broader exposure and organic search traffic.
Best Practices:
- Aim to make articles 1,000 words or less
- Bulleted lists get your point across in a short and more digestible way
- Include images, videos, and other types of media within your articles to break up the text
- Adding a cover image introduces the work and grabs the reader’s attention
- Include a call to action or question to boost engagement
- Create a “listicle”
- These are online articles that take the form of a list
- Ex. “Top 10 Reasons You Dog Loves You”
- “How To” listicles do very well on LinkedIn and perform 31.5% better than other types of posts
Newsletters
Newsletters are a great way to quickly create and publish professional, eye-catching newsletters from your LinkedIn page. When you create your first newsletter, your followers will be notified and encouraged to subscribe.
Best Practices:
- Add a compelling name, logo and short description to your newsletter so that people can visualize and preview what’s to come
- Create a schedule for your newsletter and help your subscribers look forward to new editions
- Indicate the cadene on the newsletter’s landing page
- Can be weekly, biweekly, or monthly
Polls
Polls are an easy and fun way to increase engagement. Companies use them to gather information about their audience. Some companies ask questions like “What type of content do you like seeing” or simply quiz followers on fun facts about their mission, plan, history, etc.
Best Practices:
- Keep questions short, clear, and concise
- Avoid using polls too much, to avoid your audience getting bored
- The character limit is 3,000 (about 500-1,000 words).
Paid LinkedIn Content
Paid Ads
LinkedIn ads offer powerful audience targeting and a variety of formats. Videos work well for awareness, image ads perform best on LinkedIn for lower-funnel activity, and sponsored InMail messages allow you to reach out directly to prospects’ inboxes.
With LinkedIn’s sophisticated targeting options, companies can narrow down their audience based on various criteria such as:
- Industry
- Job title
- Company size
- Seniority level
- Professional interests
- Personal interests
This level of granularity enables businesses to connect with professionals who are genuinely interested in their products or services, increasing the chances of meaningful engagement and conversions. According to LinkedIn’s official website, precise audience targeting on the platform can result in a 2.7 times higher click-through rate and a 34% decrease in post click costs, showcasing the effectiveness of this feature for companies aiming to optimize their marketing efforts.
Boosted Posts
With more limited targeting options than full paid campaigns, boosted posts allow you to choose an organic post, set a budget for objectives such as engagement, brand awareness, or website visits, and choose an audience.
Image/Video Specs
- Feed posts: 1:1 (square), 1.91:1 (landscape)
- Cover photo: 4:1
- Video: horizontal/square, 30 seconds or less for brand awareness, 30-60s for clicks
- Images must be PNG or JPEG files
- Maximum image size of 3MB
- Maximum video file size 5GB
- Most video files are supported
LinkedIn Hashtag Usage
Adding hashtags to your posts is a good way of increasing your post impressions and reaching new audiences. Experiment with LinkedIn-suggested hashtags, hashtags about geolocations, and hashtags about your brand niche. LinkedIn recommend that you use 2 broad hashtags and 1 niche hashtag.
LinkedIn Groups
Groups are a powerful tool on LinkedIn. Individuals or businesses that participate in them are able to network, research, share content, and generate leads from targeted communities.
LinkedIn groups provide a place where professionals in either the same industry or have the same interests can share experiences and guidance with a wide range of people.
Group owners and managers have the ability to analyze their audience in the analytics section.
Best Practices:
- Welcome new group members by making a post and encouraging them to participate
- Celebrate milestones with the group by mentioning them in a post
- Compare the number of users in the group, both active and inactive
- This can show how engaging the current content and activities are
- Experiment by posting different types of content
- Companies can join group conversations by connecting with members and offering real-time conversation
- Ask thought-provoking questions that prompt deep responses
- Participate in discussions started by other members
LinkedIn Growth Opportunities
Leverage Employees
30% of engagement on LinkedIn for a company comes from its employees. Consider your employees as a primary audience for content when deciding what to post, and use the “notify employees” feature occasionally to notify them about new posts from your page.
Live Video:
Live streaming on LinkedIn is a great way to maximize organic reach on the platform. While you need to apply to run LinkedIn Lives, this could be a valuable tool in your content arsenal.
Live videos receive an average of 7x more reactions and 24x more comments when compared to natively published videos from the same pages. What’s more, 79%of video marketers trust LinkedIn in their 2023 marketing strategy.
Tagging
Tagging members on LinkedIn and using hashtags in your posts on LinkedIn can increase reach, engagement, and website traffic. Posts with links also perform well, with up to 45% higher engagement than posts with no links.
Click here to download a PDF version of our LinkedIn Best Practices.
BOSTON, MARS
