The Anatomy of a Good LinkedIn post

The essence of social media is creating content and posting consistently, and according to Demand Curve, organic LinkedIn has a lot of untapped potential.

Not only is it great for visibility and engagement, you can generate leads using your free personal LinkedIn just by posting and interacting the right way.

Let's take a look at what it means to post the right way on LinkedIn.

And by that I don't mean keeping track of every single change in the LinkedIn algorithm. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Posting the right way means

• making sure your message is clear,
• that it speaks to a particular audience, and not everyone,
• it's clear what action you want them to take on your post.

Let's look at an example I came across this week which had all the makings of a good post on Linkedin.

Feast your eyes on the post. Deceptively simple, right?

Let's dive into what makes it so effective.

The Opening Line (Hook)

The first line consists of just 12 words and conveys 2 complete ideas: The pain-point, and the proposed solution.

Although there's no attempt at standing out, for example with the use of bold or other types of formatted letters, the line accomplishes its task.

It addresses a problem that keeps content marketers, ecommerce specialist up at night. So it gets their attention right away.

The second line leads you to read the rest of the post.

CTA above the fold

Above the fold is a term used for what you can see on when you land on a webpage before you start scrolling.

Ideally it contains the most important information and the most important action you can take.

That's the same principle this person uses here:

LinkedIn shows you the first 2 lines of a post and then you have to click on "See more..." to keep reading it.

So this person adds the Call-to-Action "Share your website in the comments" AND what you can expect (a FREE analysis) before you have to click on See more. Brilliant.

Now you don't really need to click on See More. If you share your website in the comments, he has

1. Succeeded in getting you to engage with his post,
2. Got a possible lead.

But he doesn't stop there.

Digestible chunks of information

When you click on See More on this post, you don't see huge paragraphs that flood you with unnecessary information.

Instead you get a small numbered list giving you exactly the information you need, and nothing more.

Again to the right audience (content marketers et al) this contains the terms and phrases that get them excited. It saves them a lot of time and expertise if someone just hands them this information.

So it's highly relevant.

Tagging & Inviting Connections

Though this part of the post seems like it was added as an edit to the post later, there's still lessons to be learned.

Ask people to connect with you if they like a piece of content that you posted.

That way, only people who are interested in your content will become part of your network. And the more targeted your LinkedIn network is, the more your message will resonate with them and encourage them to interact with you.

Tagging other relevant people in your post is also a great way to get them to interact and make your content visible to their network too. Free visibility.

Hashtags

Lastly, another underrated way to increase your posts visibility for the right audiences.

This person attached 5 hashtags right at the bottom of the post. LinkedIn and specialists also suggest around 3-5 hashtags in a post.

Important note, it's because we follow the #digitalmarketing hashtag on LinkedIn that I got this notification on LinkedIn. That's how important adding the right hashtags can be.

Word of Caution

This is probably not the perfect LinkedIn post. There are probably tons of things you can improve here. For example:

• You could add a photo, video, or a carousel to make it more engaged with
• You could bolden the letters in the opening line, or garnish it with some emojis.
• You could create an enticing first line that makes people curious to read on.

This is also not how every post with these basic elements will perform. You need to couple it with

• encouraging your network to interact with the post in the first few hours of posting,
• replying to all the comments that come in.

But this bare minimum approach tells you that even with these few elements at your disposal, you can get not just good engagement, but also qualified leads from your organic LinkedIn post.

There's more where this came from...

If you liked this brief breakdown of a good LinkedIn post, we've got 30+ examples of good LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts in our free e-book.

Here's just one such example from the e-book:

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