How to increase engagement on LinkedIn

LinkedIn, the professional networking platform, has over 830 million members worldwide. It’s a powerful tool for building your brand, connecting with industry peers and generating leads. 

Over 40% of monthly active users visit LinkedIn daily, so there are many users to reach. However, achieving high engagement on LinkedIn requires more than just a few posts and connections. It works best with a strategic approach to content creation, networking, and active participation for your brand and personal profile.

Profile optimisation

There’s two ways to build connections, one is through your business page the other is through your personal profile. The first step to increasing your engagement is to ensure that your business page is optimised with the basics. A profile enhanced with key information about who you are and what you do is essential, not just for your personal profile but also for your business page. LinkedIn allows up to 2,600 characters for your bio on your business page, so ensure this includes all your USPs, expertise and social proof, such as testimonials or accreditations, to give a comprehensive overview of what you do. 

Consistency and branding

Consistency is essential for your profile image and cover photo, which must be true to your brand and similar across platforms. Your cover photo is a prime spot for showcasing your brand and services, so use it wisely. The cover photo could consist of an image of your team or an image that relates to your industry or service. Adding a website link or CTA (call to action) to the image can help navigate traffic, and adding an element that will accentuate credibility, such as awards or certifications logos, could also add value to your cover photo.

Valuable and compelling content

Frequency and content topics

To receive engagement, you must actively post on your page. This content must capture your audience and entice them to read your post. However, it can be difficult to decide what to post, so try creating 3 to 5 content pillars that encapsulate overarching topics you want to discuss across your brand’s social media. This could be about the services you provide, social proof and testimonials you receive, your values as a company, including sustainability or the community, your brand history or your team. Establishing these pillars creates a consistent approach to your messaging to build your brand online and, if you’re stuck, it can also help generate ideas for content. Try posting at least once a week and increase the amount based on your objectives and how well your posts perform.

Mix it up with types of content

LinkedIn posts with images receive 98% more comments than those without. Videos get shared 20 times more than any other content format on LinkedIn. When you are creating the visual content for your post, think about which format is most relevant and achievable. Ensure the visual asset is high-quality, engaging, and optimised for the platform. When creating content for LinkedIn, ensure you’re filming video content in portrait and images square, portrait or 1200 x 628 pixels. If you’re tight on time, using square imagery can be more beneficial when reusing and optimising across other platforms. Content that features people always performs better, but having a mix of videos, photos and graphics is pivotal. A mixture of content is essential for keeping things fresh and discussing all content pillars in an engaging way. It also allows you to repurpose messaging in different ways, such as posting a video interview, a graphic of a quote from the interviews, or a still image of the speakers. These have the same messaging but find different engaging ways to highlight the content to viewers. 

Writing captivating captions

When writing your post, create an engaging hook at the start of the caption that catches viewers’ attention. You want them to click ‘see more’ to read the rest of your post, as LinkedIn shows an initial preview line. When writing the main copy of the post, ensure you’re using a tone of voice that is consistent with your brand and has a purpose relating to your content pillar, such as educating or inspiring your audience. It needs to immerse the reader while still highlighting the focus points of your message. Signing off with a CTA (call to action) is key, whether it’s to click through to a specific page on your website or a softer CTA, such as asking your audience for their opinion and to comment below. Due to how LinkedIn now displays imagery, place the link in the post’s comments. This avoids LinkedIn automatically pulling through a thumbnail image of the link instead of your chosen media. Use a few relevant hashtags you have researched previously and change them depending on the messaging. It can be very beneficial to vary these with personalised, location and topic-based hashtags to increase searchability. To spread your content far and wide, why not tag relevant industry individuals and businesses to boost your organic reach? If they’re tagged, this will push your content to all of their connections, too. Be careful not to overuse tags, but use them where relevant to your content.

Engagement and connections

How personal profiles support your business page

LinkedIn truly works for your business when employees also post on their personal pages, elevating their personal brand to showcase your business page. Ensure all your employees’ profiles are optimised and key admins are connected to the page if possible. It works hand in hand with their accounts and provides a multiplying effect as they share and link to the business page across their network of connections. Those who are super admins on the page can invite connections to like the business page, further expanding reach and brand awareness. Pages are granted 100 monthly invitation credits shared across all page admins.  However, LinkedIn can randomly reward selected admins with 250 credits. But, if they’re not all used, they’ll reduce back to 100 the following month. The invitation credit limit renews on the first day of every month. Sending an invitation uses one credit. If the invite is rejected, the credit will be lost, but if it’s accepted, the credit will be earned and applied back to your balance. 

Engagement with your audience

Engaging with your audience and other relevant accounts is key to brand awareness and forming relationships with them. Using the platform as a user is the best way to have true human interactions with the audience and create an authentic tone of voice. Make sure you comment on other relevant posts to gain additional visibility, as it pushes activity to all your followers’ connections and establishes relationships. Also, ensure you’re replying to any comments you receive promptly and with personal touches, as this will encourage further engagement and loyalty. 

But how do I know if it’s working? Keep testing! Determining what messaging resonates with your audience takes time, and looking at your content’s analytics can help you see what works. Take a look at impressions, reach, and engagement within LinkedIn’s analytics or a scheduling tool if you’re using one and aim to increase these statistics month on month.