I’m active on LinkedIn, I post new content every day or two, and I know it has helped me win business and hold clients. I see some professionals using it well, but many failing to seize its full potential. Some still use it as a jobs site. More often, people simply repost or like announcements from their company, and congratulate friends on their news.

If you have any kind of advisory, sales or thought leadership role (most of us), having no substantive original content on LinkedIn is not a good look. That’s particularly true if you’re advising clients on how to promote themselves.

An obvious point always worth recalling: your LinkedIn audience – clients, prospects, staff, recruits – can see what you do, or do not do, on LinkedIn. If you simply like or re-post your company’s news, your readers will draw their conclusions about you as an expert or advisor. If you do nothing on LinkedIn, you simply will not be top of mind. Contacts I hadn’t spoken to for years have come back with opportunities because of my posts. 

My advice is to get comfortable posting original content, ideally at least weekly. “Likes” and reposting aren’t terrible, but don’t add to your personal credibility and aren’t favored by the algorithm. For B2B and professional services firms, the data shows that individual, authentic posting is what drives the most powerful and relevant engagement. 

By “original content,” I mean up to several paragraphs in a LinkedIn post, generally with a photo or link to other content such as a news article. (LinkedIn “articles,” as opposed to “posts,” is something that I’ve largely ignored. Analytics don’t suggest that “articles” are that effective for most people)

What makes it work

Most important is relevance to your audience, with a clear point of view and provision of useful information. Disagree or agree with something that’s happened. Use the same tactics that you would speaking to a reporter as a thought leader: predict, warn, call for action, compare or contrast. Perhaps you see a trend, perhaps you are skeptical about a development, perhaps it will be popular with one category of firm in your sector and not another. You don’t have to be entirely black or white. Examples and quick statistics can work well.

Naturally, business professionals are cautious about commenting on anything around clients or prospects. Only individuals can say what is client-specific and therefore sensitive in their case.  Generally, saying nice things is safer, though ultimately posts that are more questioning about issues do better. Keeping a certain level of generality, say around types of company or business trends, is safer than heavy criticism of one company, particularly if you attack motive or probity. But I can assure you that constructive comparisons of Jamie Dimon’s and Larry Fink’s shareholder letters are not going to raise hackles at either firm, even if employees of either firm would not probably post in that way.

Overall topics connected to your specialism and personal brand perform best. Politics I find does not work well on LinkedIn. You can afford to post on a range of topics as long as you concentrate on some central themes where you bring real expertise.   

Such posts need to be timely. If you are commenting on a news article or an official announcement, it must be on the same day. If it is more arcane information highly relevant to your world, probably a few days is still fine. Most months I post some comments about the latest WSJ Style and Substance column, which updates on its stylebook changes. You need a mindset open to finding interesting developments, and an “action this day” (Churchill) approach to execution.

A news article link is often effective (good images); it’s really not a big problem if this is behind a paywall. While annoying for some, if you include a few quotes from the article in your post, most readers will get the gist. But have a point of view on the article in your post.   

Some flattery can work. People engage when you mention them or their company (ie use their handle) – especially for companies that are not natural newsmakers. Similarly, personal news is powerful: your new job, promotion, or winning a prize will get a heavy audience response. Make sure you also post content that is not personal or flattery. There are too many posts that begin with the words “Proud” or “Thrilled”.

Photos you take at events or out and about can be effective. Hashtags are O.K., but perhaps overrated. Referencing multiple people or firms by handle is better.

Since there is no headline in a LinkedIn post, two things matter greatly: your first sentence and the image/link. Your first sentence has to function as the headline and draw the reader in. If you have a link, check that the image appearing in the link relates to what you are saying; this isn’t always the case. If not, there are workarounds.

If you link to your own content elsewhere (say a blog by you on your company’s site), make sure your post, in the first sentence and first para, says what your main point is. Not simply “see my blog on the Bahamas below” but rather “The Bahamas face big changes and the main trends my blog below analyzes are….”.

Above all, keep going, or to use a British expression, KBO. Not everything will get great engagement; trial and error is good.

My experience

I’m not an influencer, and skeptical of the concept frankly. I’ve around 7,000 followers. In the last year I’ve got around 330,000 impressions and a little over 100,000 unique views – from roughly 150 posts of varying quality and length. A couple of successes illustrate what can work:

At Money 20/20 in Vegas I spotted Silicon Valley Bank’s stand. I posted the following with a picture of the stand: Silicon Valley Bank is alive and well at hashtag#money2020usa. So clever of new parent First Citizens Bank to keep the SVB brand center stage, since its reputation and industry experience on tech is really strong.

This got around 13,000 unique views and 324 likes, many within SVB and more broadly in the community banking world.

When Nasdaq bought Adenza last year, I posted the following with a news link:

The phrase "exchange groups" has become ever less meaningful as a category, as exchanges make increasing acquisitions in adjacent risk, data, research and software areas. Nasdaq's acquisition of Adenza today being one of the latest and biggest examples. The venn diagrams of firms like LSEG, S&P Global, MSCI, Nasdaq etc have more overlap than ever. Deutsche Boerse acquisition of Simcorp and of course Refinitiv being other recent examples. Stock was down 10% on the news but no doubt will stabilize. Looking forward to some great analysis from the likes of @RichardRepetto @CoalitionGreenwich @OliverWyman @Burton-Taylor.

This received over 10,600 unique views and around 50 likes, mostly in the exchanges world. (Anyone moderately informed about exchanges could have written this).

And finally, ultra-immediacy can sometimes bear fruit. When Rupert Murdoch stepped down at News Corp, I happened to spot this live (on Twitter!). I posted from a plane: Many huge achievements. Some things I utterly disagree with. No doubt many posts will mention Succession, but real life more dramatic. Timing nice for Michael Wolff s new book "The Fall" on Fox and the Murdochs, out on Sept 26. This received over 4,000 unique views and generated around 25 likes/comments. More instant rather than authoritative comment, I accept.

Measuring success

Most of us are seeking to persuade and sell on LinkedIn. For professional services businesses that will take a variety of forms. One is direct inbound enquiries attributable to your LinkedIn activity. The other, harder to measure, is the brand effect of the type of consistent LinkedIn thought leadership I suggest here. From my experience, if you are pitching to someone in a few weeks, it can be really compelling for them to see relevant content from you.

To be clear, I’m talking about high-level professional advisory work, not the type of mass market product and services sales, where people constantly seek a sales meeting.

Looking at LinkedIn analytics is a good way to motivate yourself (my gameification) and keep improving. In terms of what to track, impressions are good for the soul, but unique views more relevant. LinkedIn analytics can usefully show who is looking at your profile, but an underused feature in my experience is clicking the “top demographics of unique views,” which gives you most usefully the top five companies, as well as geography and job title who have seen your post.

Beyond quantitative measures, likes from clients and prospects give granular feedback. You will find that some people often like your posts, and others never do – but it doesn’t mean they’re not seeing your content, or aren’t impressed by it. Everyone is different. Remember even with hashtags, it’s principally your followers who see your activity.

Finally, the impact of your posts is a function of your followers – your network – in quality and quantity. Too many people don’t proactively manage and grow their followers. Two points here are critical. Firstly, if you post actively on credible topics, you will find people follow you – probably several hundred follow me a year. Only a minority of these are likely to be useful though, with a good number wanting to sell something.

Secondly and more importantly for most, you can grow your audience more deliberately through seeking to connect with them. LinkedIn would say you should only do that if you know them. In practice I find if you politely seek to connect, a fair number of highly relevant people (buyers, intermediaries) will accept a connection. If you have good contacts in common, that will improve the odds of invitees connecting, as will the content of your posts. And if someone accepts your connection, don’t be pushy and immediately ask for a meeting. Rather treat this as another audience member for the next few months of your activity.

LinkedIn is ever-changing. Other approaches undoubtedly work. I and some of my colleagues at Cognito are always eager to hear about other strategies and experience – come talk to us. And happy posting!