Posting on LinkedIn is an excellent way to build your reputation and show potential prospects your expertise through posts, articles and varied content such as images and videos. One of LinkedIn’s many advantages is that it lets companies work on both their outbound and inbound marketing strategy.
When it comes to publishing on LinkedIn, we’re in inbound marketing territory, looking to increase inbound leads either directly on LinkedIn or through a knock-on effect on our website. This content strategy also boosts your “social selling” and raises your visibility. If you gain visibility, your company benefits too. Creating content takes time, so it’s only natural to want to know when to post on LinkedIn to maximize the impact of your posts, by choosing the right moment, the appropriate format and attractive images to capture users’ attention.
What are social selling and LinkedIn posts?
Social selling refers to the use of social networks and social media platforms by sales professionals to interact directly with their prospects. Salespeople use their social networks to share content, answer questions and be helpful, rather than using direct sales tactics. The aim is to develop and nurture relationships with potential customers, helping them progress through their buying journey until they’re ready to buy. Regular posts, including text, images and videos, reinforce this process.
It helps drive business development. Social selling revolves around using social media to establish a closer connection with prospects and customers. As an online sales technique, it uses social networks to build and maintain a relationship with the customer, by regularly publishing relevant posts and content tailored to the target industry.
Social selling offers a global perspective on the challenges and needs of customers and prospects, making it possible to initiate authentic dialogues based on the trust established through thought leadership. It also makes it easier to build relationships with new prospects and to continue the conversation with existing customers, to explore upselling or cross-selling opportunities, or to encourage them to become ambassadors for your solutions within their own social networks. Varied posts, including articles, videos and images, can boost this engagement.
An effective salesperson in social selling is one who knows how to use social networks to get in touch with the right people and market their products or services through attractive posts and content adapted to the type of audience targeted.
For the purposes of this article, we’ll focus on content creation on LinkedIn, one component of social selling. In B2B, that’s enough, but in B2C you’ll also need to consider other social networks such as Facebook, X, TikTok, Instagram and so on, adapting formats and content types to each platform.
To measure your presence on LinkedIn, the SSI or Social Selling Index was introduced. It’s a score out of 100 that LinkedIn assigns to you. The higher it is, the more people your posts will reach. As LinkedIn considers you credible and an expert, it will show your content to 2nd, 3rd and even 4th degree connections, increasing your visibility and the number of your followers.
A LinkedIn account is considered influential when its Social Selling Index (SSI) is above 75. The SSI is a key indicator on LinkedIn that measures your ability to generate opportunities on the platform. A high SSI indicates strong influence on the network and also lets you compare yourself with other professionals in your industry and with members of your network. To find out your SSI, go to LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index page.
The SSI is calculated on the basis of four main criteria:
- developing your professional brand and your posts
- finding the right people
- sharing information
- building and maintaining quality relationships
These criteria are essential for maximizing your effectiveness on LinkedIn, by optimizing your content and your publishing formats, and by choosing the right types of posts to attract the attention of your professional audience.
Why is a high SSI important?
LinkedIn is an ideal platform for creating and maintaining professional relationships, which can open the door to a variety of opportunities, whether sales, recruitment or career progression. Although the SSI was originally designed for sales professionals, it’s actually a useful tool for everyone. It lets you assess your credibility and the impact of your communication on the platform, by analyzing your posts, articles and interactions.
A high SSI is generally the result of a strong personal presence and quality interactions. The higher your score, the more likely you are to generate new opportunities through regular, engaging posts that capture users’ attention.
Your presence on LinkedIn is crucial for establishing your professional credibility, expanding your network, accessing new opportunities and strengthening your personal or company brand. It encompasses several elements, including a complete profile, regular and engaging activity, a diverse network and positive interactions with others on the platform, through relevant posts, articles and videos.
Before posting regularly on LinkedIn, it’s essential to make sure your LinkedIn profile or company page is up to date and attractive. This means filling in all the necessary sections properly, from the description of your services to a professional header image. These visual aspects, including high-quality photos and images with suitable opacity, play an essential role in building your brand identity and ensure that your company looks credible and professional to your audience. Don’t underestimate the importance of a neat layout to capture the attention of potential customers and partners.
Improving your LinkedIn profile
To maximize your potential on LinkedIn, it’s essential to have an optimized profile. This includes a professional profile photo, a catchy headline, a detailed summary, a complete list of your skills and experience, recommendations, and so on. What’s more, regularly publishing relevant content, such as articles, posts and videos, will strengthen your professional presence on the network.
MirrorProfiles offers several tutorials produced in collaboration with Ruben Taieb, a LinkedIn expert. These guides cover different aspects of profile optimization and walk you step by step through the different sections of your profile, giving you valuable advice on how to optimize them, including creating attractive content and publishing engaging posts.
For the other ways to improve your SSI, take a look at this article.
LinkedIn posts are an integral part of your LinkedIn SSI and should be the cornerstone of your content strategy. Articles written directly on LinkedIn are not recognized at their true value. They’re interesting for leveraging LinkedIn’s strong domain name as part of a personal SEO strategy, but they’re less visible than LinkedIn posts. Visibility is the number of impressions, in other words how many people have seen your post. Using different formats such as images, videos and text can also increase the impact of your posts.
Here are a few tips for composing a LinkedIn post that will gain visibility. Use attractive images, engaging videos and punchy text to capture the attention of your followers and network users.
Best practices for writing a LinkedIn post
Format of a LinkedIn post:
- Length: Between 25 and 3,000 characters, with a recommendation to stay around 700 characters for optimal readability.
- Visibility: The first 210 characters are crucial for capturing attention before the “see more”.
- Media: Images (1200×627 pixels, PNG or JPG) and videos (max 200 MB) can be embedded.
In addition to your posts, consider using varied formats such as image or video carousels. These interactive formats captivate your audience by encouraging them to interact directly with your content, increasing the time spent on your post and the potential for engagement. They’re perfect for going deeper into a subject or guiding your audience through a series of steps or information.
Types of posts on LinkedIn:
- Traditional post: Text, image and link, with the option of tagging pages or people.
- Asking for opinions: Engage your community by asking for their opinion.
- Carousel: Lets you scroll through several images or videos.
- Video: Can be used to present a visual subject, although less engaging than images.
Steps for writing a post:
Step 1: Hook
- Use relevant keywords.
- Be original and avoid abbreviations.
- Tease the content to encourage reading.
Step 2: Post structure
- Keep it to around 500 words so as not to tire your audience.
- Air out the text with short paragraphs and line breaks.
Step 3: Using tags
- Include relevant hashtags to improve your post’s visibility.
Step 4: Emojis
- Use emojis wisely to attract attention without harming the quality of the post.
Step 5: Copywriting
- Write short, clear sentences.
- Be direct and clear, and adapt the tone to your audience.
Step 6: Optimizing resources
- Include relevant images, links and videos to enrich your post and make it visually appealing.
Step 7: Interacting with the community
- Engage your community with questions, contests or debates in the comments.
Step 8: Keeping the post alive
- Reply to comments and interact with your community to maintain engagement.
Now armed with the tips for putting together a punchy LinkedIn post, it’s time to apply these recommendations and evaluate the feedback to refine your approach to content on this platform, varying formats and post types to maximize impact.
It’s essential to understand that content creation on LinkedIn isn’t just about writing; the type of content you share plays a crucial role in engaging your audience. A good mix of text, visual and interactive content such as polls or comments can get your audience to engage more actively. Make sure you adapt your content to your audience’s preferences to maximize interactions.
Although a LinkedIn post may be rich in information and value, it may not produce the anticipated impact, and that’s where timing comes in. If you’re limited by time when it comes to content production, and can only create 1 or 2 posts a week, choosing the day and time of publication becomes essential. Choosing the right type of content and the right formats can also influence the performance of your posts.
When to post on LinkedIn: the optimal time to publish
The moment you post on LinkedIn is of capital importance, rivaling the content itself in terms of priority. Although this timing may fluctuate depending on your industry or audience, three rules remain unchanged:
- Target commuting times: Professionals browse LinkedIn in the same way as other social networks, particularly to keep up with their industry. Post when they’re most likely to be on their mobile, i.e. in transit.
- Favor the less busy days of the week: If your audience is B2B, avoid the days when they’re probably too busy to check LinkedIn: Mondays and Fridays are generally not ideal.
- Adapt to your target: If you’re targeting bank advisors, Saturday morning may be optimal. For tradespeople, consider early morning between 7 and 8 a.m. or late evening after 7 p.m.
Consistency in timing is also crucial. Only start posting on LinkedIn when you have at least 4 or 5 posts in reserve, to avoid any surprises. If possible, draw up an editorial calendar over several months, although many professionals don’t have the time or expertise for this. Using content management tools can also help you plan and diversify your post types.
As an example, we publish 1 LinkedIn post a week, every Tuesday at 9:25 a.m. Avoid posting at “round” times, as most posts are scheduled for those moments, and you don’t want yours to get lost in the crowd. Experiment with different formats to see what resonates best with your audience.
In short, here’s a list of best practices for deciding on the day and time of your LinkedIn posts:
- Opt for Tuesday, Thursday or Friday.
- Choose between 8 and 10 a.m., 12:30 and 2 p.m., or 5 and 7:30 p.m.
- Pick a precise time that isn’t “round”: 9:23, 8:18, etc.
- Favor regularity, even if it means fewer posts over a longer period.
Bonus:
As a tool ourselves, we owe you one extra tip! To schedule your LinkedIn posts, you can prepare them in advance with the following tools, which will publish them on the day and at the time of your choice:
- Swello
- Buffer
- LinkedIn: Indeed, thanks to a relatively recent feature, you can now schedule your posts directly on LinkedIn 😉
Knowing when and how to post on LinkedIn will make you visible to your prospects. However, it’s not the only indicator to watch. The engagement rate of your posts is also crucial, which brings us to “account verticalization”.
Verticalizing LinkedIn accounts, the essential growth trick
For LinkedIn to recognize your profile as a valuable content creator, an engagement rate above 30% is needed. With such an engagement rate, LinkedIn will promote your content not only to your immediate network (1st and 2nd degree) but also to similar people in more distant circles (3rd, 4th degree). Using different types of posts, including photos, videos and articles, can help you reach this rate.
How do you calculate this engagement rate?
Engagement rate = (Number of likes, comments and shares) / Number of connections.
Even without being a maths expert, having an ever-larger 1st degree network directly impacts the engagement rate, making it difficult to reach that 30%. Diversifying content types and publishing formats can help increase engagement.
The solution is to verticalize your accounts. Verticalization, meaning focusing on a specific target with one LinkedIn profile, lets you:
- Have a smaller network, but one made up 90% of a specific target.
- Adapt your LinkedIn posts to that precise target using relevant formats and content types.
However, verticalization isn’t feasible if you use your salespeople’s LinkedIn accounts for prospecting and content publishing (and the same goes for recruiters), because most salespeople aren’t limited to one target, but rather to a geographical area. It’s better to use dedicated accounts with content specific to the target industry.
To verticalize your content strategy on LinkedIn, you’ll need dedicated LinkedIn accounts, such as those from MirrorProfiles, at least one for each target or ICP you have. MirrorProfiles lets you rent LinkedIn accounts warmed up over 4 months and ready for automation, so you can verticalize your accounts and equip each salesperson with several additional LinkedIn accounts (our customers generally run 5 to 6 per SDR). If you do outbound prospecting, this has a double advantage, by diversifying content types and publishing formats for each account.
With no commitment and monthly billing (the details are on the pricing page), MirrorProfiles stands out as a solution built for verticalizing your LinkedIn content strategy and increasing your LinkedIn prospecting. With options for various types of content, including images, videos and articles, you can optimize your professional presence.
These LinkedIn accounts are not only ready for automation, but also customizable (industry, positioning, photo, headline), within our usage rules. We’ve even put together guides with a LinkedIn personal branding expert, including advice on choosing formats and post types to maximize engagement.
Navigating the world of digital marketing, and more specifically LinkedIn, requires a thorough understanding and strategic implementation of the various elements that make up an effective online presence. The platform, being a crossroads where professionals from various sectors converge, offers fertile ground for networking, sharing expertise and, ultimately, generating leads and developing business through varied types of posts.
Social selling, embodied by the creation of relevant content and authentic interaction with a targeted audience, is a central pillar of this approach. It’s not simply a matter of sharing content, but of doing so in a way that resonates with your audience, that establishes your company and your teams as references in your field, and that, above all, engages and encourages interaction and conversion through various post formats.
Verticalizing LinkedIn accounts, for its part, emerges as a clever strategy for dealing with certain obstacles inherent to the platform, particularly when it comes to reaching and maintaining a high engagement rate. By targeting precisely and adapting content to specific segments of your audience, you can not only increase your relevance and impact with these groups, but also explore and exploit niches that might otherwise be overlooked, thanks to varied post types.
MirrorProfiles is a valuable tool in this quest, offering the possibility of diversifying and deepening your content strategy on LinkedIn without diluting your message or compromising your engagement rate. With a personalized approach and practical guides for navigating the sometimes turbulent waters of LinkedIn marketing, you’re better equipped not only to reach your target audience, but also to communicate meaningfully and convert these interactions into tangible opportunities through diversified content.
In short, mastering the art of posting on LinkedIn, understanding timing and engagement, and making strategic use of the tools available, such as MirrorProfiles, positions you not only as a competent player on the platform, but also as an authoritative voice and thought leader in your industry. The road to success on LinkedIn is paved with authentic interactions, quality content, and a well-honed strategy that respects and values your audience while highlighting your expertise and solutions.
Onward to an optimized LinkedIn presence, where every post, every interaction and every new contact is a step towards consolidating your brand and growing your business in today’s interconnected digital world.
FAQ
How do you write a LinkedIn post?
To write an effective LinkedIn post, start with a captivating hook, an engaging question, a striking statistic or a bold statement. Keep your post concise, ideally between 100 and 200 words, and use short paragraphs and lists for better readability. Include high-quality visuals and emojis to structure the post and make it livelier. End with a clear call to action and interact with your comments to stimulate engagement.
What are the 5 types of posts that work on LinkedIn?
The 5 effective types of posts on LinkedIn include:
- Client success stories: sharing customer success stories to demonstrate the value of your product or service.
- Multi-image posts: posts with several images, which generate a high level of engagement.
- Video posts: videos have the highest share rate and are useful for brand awareness.
- Personal stories and lessons: personal stories and lessons learned to humanize your brand and connect with your audience.
- Resource lists: lists of useful resources to position your profile as a reliable source and help others succeed.
What is a LinkedIn post?
A LinkedIn post is a short publication, possibly accompanied by a visual, a photo, a video or a link. It appears in members’ news feeds and is limited to 3,000 characters. It’s ideal for sharing news, tips, experiences or quick, concise comments.
What time should you post on LinkedIn?
To maximize engagement on LinkedIn, the best times to post are generally early in the morning, around 8 to 11 a.m., as well as at lunchtime (12 p.m.) and at the end of the day (5 to 6 p.m.). Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are particularly favorable, with a peak in activity noted around 10 a.m.
