What the perfect LinkedIn post looks like

Chart of the Day: Long-form LinkedIn Posts Drive Greater Engagement

For many social media platforms, brevity means business. Twitter has based its entire business model on this (though slackened somewhat when they raised their character limit from 140 to 280 this year) and Snapchat’s disposable nature demands quick captions on pictures and videos. LinkedIn, however, appears to have become a safe haven for long-form content.

Paul Shapiro, reporting on OkDork, analyzed close to 3,000 of the most successful blog posts on LinkedIn to find out what the perfect LinkedIn post looks like.

1,500 words is something of a tipping point, pushing a successful post into the top tier of average views. Posts that approach 2,000 words also gained the greatest number of likes, comments, and shares.

This love of high word counts is reflected in several aspects that can make posts more digestible. The research found that the best-performing posts used five sub-headings to break up its content, and scored an ‘Easy’ (corresponding to the education level of an 11-year-old) on the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease test.

When looking at the sentiment of these posts, ‘neutral’ posts garnered more comments and post views than ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ ones. This matches Shapiro’s analysis of post types, which pointed towards ‘how to’ as the best performing genre of LinkedIn posts.

While this research suggests lengthy posts will drive more engagement, generating 2,000-word posts on a regular basis is a time-consuming venture. If you’re hoping to use LinkedIn as a platform to become a thought leader, here are a few quick tips to help you get started:

1. Be honest with yourself: Know how much time you’re able to set aside for your writing and consider topics you can cover in depth without doing much extra research.
2. Make a schedule: Whether it’s a new post every day or one detailed piece at the end of the month, jot down some example titles when you’re making your schedule to keep you on point.
3. Draw on your personal experience: Think back on your own career and share the lessons you’ve learned. When you write about yourself, you write with detail and passion, which will only help you in your quest to be recognized online.

• Source: OkDork
• Sample: ~3,000 of the most successful blog posts on LinkedIn, receiving an average of 42,505 views, 567 comments, and 138,841 likes
• Recommended resource: Smarter LinkedIn marketing guide