In this article you will follow my personal guide to sharing and creating content on LinkedIn. We’re going to take it one step at a time until you feel comfortable with a rock solid plan that reflects your goals for LinkedIn and the types of content that make sense for you.

Once you’ve updated your LinkedIn profile with our Professional Profile Update or LinkedIn Profile Essentials online course, then you’re ready to be more active on LinkedIn. My preference is that you take a more intentional and strategic approach to how you show up on LinkedIn. I’m not a fan of the ‘humble brag’ on LinkedIn. [Read more about this concept in What Is Humblebragging, and How Can You Avoid It in Your Writing?]. I also believe you don’t necessarily need a ‘content heavy’ and more extroverted approach on LinkedIn (despite the increasing pressure to ‘put yourself out there’).

While I do understand the value of stepping into the light (occasionally, and only after careful consideration), my suggestions for sharing and creating content will be helpful if you’re feeling tentative about being more active on LinkedIn.

If you are weighing up the benefits of being more active on LinkedIn versus the discomfort of having to put yourself out there, I recommend you focus first on being a strategic content curator, as opposed to the ubiquitous content creator.

Your Personal Guide to Sharing and Creating Content

Research Your Content Topics on LinkedIn

Begin by doing your research on LinkedIn about the topics or conversations you’re keen to contribute to or lead. Take the time to understand how other LinkedIn members are approaching these topics in their LinkedIn content.

Curate Your LinkedIn Newsfeed

To maximise your time on LinkedIn and stay informed in your areas of interest, take the time to review who and what you are following. Consider your favourite writers and content creators and check you are following them on LinkedIn, and ring the bell to get notified of when they post.

This bell can be viewed on LinkedIn Profile intro cards or Company Pages, on the top RH side of the person’s profile or page, when you are viewing it. Follow the person or page and then ring the bell, choosing to be notified about either all or their top posts.

Develop a Content Marketing Strategy for LinkedIn

The key to success on LinkedIn is showing up regularly with a consistent and well thought out content marketing strategy. Here are the key areas to consider when developing a Content Marketing Strategy for LinkedIn:

• Clarify and document your target audience on LinkedIn.
• Clarify and document your goals for LinkedIn.
• Develop a LinkedIn Profile Content Marketing Strategy.
• Develop a LinkedIn Page Content Marketing Strategy (if you manage a page as well as your own profile)
• Document your content library.
• Determine your cornerstone content and how to maximise this on LinkedIn.
• Develop a content plan to follow, populate and implement on LinkedIn.
• Review your LinkedIn analytics to review and adapt your plan

The Content Marketing Strategy Playbook will help you map out this framework for LinkedIn.

In my LinkedIn Live How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy for LinkedIn I walk you through the types of questions you need to be asking yourself when creating your Content Marketing Plan on LinkedIn.

Post Content on LinkedIn

Whether you are one of the key leaders who represents your organisation or are someone who’s wishing to raise your profile within your industry, sharing content via your LinkedIn Profile is a great way to stay top of mind with your LinkedIn community, share your insights and start conversations with influencers within and beyond your industry.

How to Share Content via Your LinkedIn Profile

You can share an update by using the share box on your LinkedIn homepage to post a wide variety of information.

LinkedIn tends to preference updates that keep members on LinkedIn (e.g. text and image based posts, documents and videos uploaded directly from LinkedIn). You can share links for interesting articles you’ve read, with a commentary, share links from your organisation’s website blog and upload photos from a recent event or conference. I also recommend you add up to 5 hashtags at the end of your update to signal to the LinkedIn algorithm what your content is about.

How to Publish Articles on LinkedIn

You can publish an article from your LinkedIn Profile or your LinkedIn Page. Learn more about this in How to Publish an Article from Your LinkedIn Profile and How to Publish Articles as Your LinkedIn Page. There are also some key ‘must knows’ if you are planning to regularly publish LinkedIn articles.

• Sharing drafts – You can share drafts of your articles before publishing.
• Editing – You can edit an article you’ve published.
• SEO settings – There are SEO Settings for LinkedIn Articles & Newsletters.
• Deleting – You can delete an article you’ve published.
• Viewing Stats – You can view analytics for your published articles to gain insight on the impact of your content within your network.
• Where they show up – Articles are displayed on your profile, shared with your 1st-degree connections and can be distributed more broadly. Your articles could be featured, but there’s no guarantee or formula to ensure this. This article, How to Browse LinkedIn Profiles Anonymously, continues to get circulated by the LinkedIn editors and, at the time of writing this, had over 22,000 views.

Learn more about How to Write a Newsletter on LinkedIn.

Examples of Relevant Content to Post via Your LinkedIn Profile

In this article I provide 12 Tips for Leveraging your Attendance at Conferences and Trade Shows on LinkedIn, and include a number of examples of how to share updates. Here are the options you can use to improve your experience of posting content on LinkedIn:

• Editing – You can edit a post you’ve already shared.
• Deleting – You can delete a shared post.
• Viewing Stats – You can view analytics for your shared posts to gain insight on the impact of your content within your network.
• Where they show up – Your posts are shared in the Network Updates Feed with your network. Your posts can also be distributed further through the actions of your connections.

Need help with LinkedIn?

Browse Think Bespoke’s website library and knowledge base for helpful articles about LinkedIn Training, LinkedIn Profile, LinkedIn Marketing and Career Management.