With more and more professionals embracing the content publishing features available on LinkedIn, I’m increasingly asked ‘when is the best time to post on LinkedIn and ‘how often should we be posting content on LinkedIn’?  Today’s article answers both of these questions. The guidelines provided are general and recommended as a very good starting point. Post at a variety of different times and track your content performance for engagement, reach, clicks and shares to maximum your content marketing efforts and achieve the best results for your LinkedIn goals.

I published this guide to the best times to post on LinkedIn after Sprout Social released The Best Times to Post on Social Media. Sprout Social does not specify if they tracked LinkedIn Profiles or LinkedIn Company Pages in their study, so you’ll need to apply the results to both. Whether your LinkedIn Profile or Company Page get better results will depend on a number of factors, particularly how many followers each has.  Here’s a summary of the Sprout Social findings for the best times to post on LinkedIn.

• Wednesday at 9–10 a.m. and 12 p.m.
• Best day: Wednesday.
• Most consistent engagement: Tuesday through Friday from 8 a.m.–2 p.m.

Frequency for Posting Content from Your LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn rewards members who engage with other member’s and company page content, so your engagement results will invariably be better if you’re also engaging with other people’s content.

In the article, How to Develop a Plan to be More Active on LinkedIn I recommend a number of ways to engage as an individual from your LinkedIn Profile. In terms of frequency, I recommend you like and comment every other day on the content of other company pages and connections that are relevant to your areas of focus and consistent with your organisational brand.

• You can post multiple times a day without offending others (as time spent on LinkedIn is still currently relatively low compared to other more social platforms) but this feels like overkill (and who has time?).
• You can also use 3rd party scheduling tools (e.g. Buffer or Hootsuite) but, at the time of publishing this article, they do not allow you to use the mention feature in the same way you can with Twitter. You can always go back in and edit this after it’s posted, which I recommend.
• Post text based updates and / or relevant articles (owned and/or curated) at least once a week. Owned means you or your company created it. e.g. a link to a blog from your website. Curated means it’s from a 3rd party source. e.g. The Age newspaper.
• Post PDF documents, photos and videos as relevant to your content strategy.
• Publish a LinkedIn article once a month, and curate/adapt this from your blogs (publish first via website blog for SEO).

You can apply for the LinkedIn Live option, which is worth exploring if video is your preferred form of content. Make sure you have a strategy. Apply here via LinkedIn.

Frequency for Posting Content from Your LinkedIn Company Page

For LinkedIn Company Pages, your Admins will also be prompted to comment on particular content based on your page’s 3 specified hashtags, so make sure you also comment as relevant as your Company Page when prompted. Here are some examples so you know what to look out for in your notifications. You must be an Admin of your Company Page to receive these notifications.

LinkedIn recommends you post daily, however the frequency you choose will depend on your resources and capacity.  At a minimum I recommend Tuesday to Thursday during business hours.  You can test and measure and then move to once every weekday. Remember to post a mix of relevant and useful curated (50-60%), owned (30%) and promotional (10-20%) content based on the promise you’ve made to the followers of your LinkedIn Company Page.

You can also now apply for the LinkedIn Live option for your LinkedIn Company Page, which is worth exploring if video is your preferred form of content. Again, make sure you have a strategy. Apply here via LinkedIn.

Additional Resources to Help You Develop Your Plan for LinkedIn

• Review the LinkedIn’s Insights Hub for more research about LinkedIn members.
• Use the Content Suggestions feature for your LinkedIn Company Page. Watch this video from LinkedIn Marketing Solutions to find out more about this feature.

• Here’s some 2017 statistics about entrepreneurs and their LinkedIn behaviours (US & UK based information, but still worth a look). They seem to be more engaged than medium to large organisations and job hunters so this article is worth reviewing if this is your target market, despite its age.

Photo Credits: Feature Image by Etienne Boulanger, Woman at laptop by Christin Hume, Woman being filmed by Sam McGee