LinkedIn is no longer just for job seekers and employers. In fact, it’s now one of the leading social media platforms for professionals, generating around $11.5 billion in revenue in 2021 alone. But simply posting on LinkedIn will not yield positive results. Creating compelling LinkedIn posts that are engaging and enticing to your audience is essential. For beginners, a great intro to LinkedIn starts with knowing the trends already working for savvy users and recreating them to fit your brand.

Why LinkedIn is Growing 

LinkedIn launched back in 2003 as a business networking platform. It wasn’t until 2006 that LinkedIn started diversifying its platform by offering promotional emails and premium features to boost revenue and growth. LinkedIn has over 57 million businesses and 822 million users engaged on any given day, with a new study citing record levels of engagement.

The study analyzed over 141K posts and found that LinkedIn generates  80% of B2B sales marketing leads. It’s true. This platform also generates 3x more conversions than both Facebook and Twitter. But why? 

Engaging content is the key to taking any business to the next level, no matter where you choose to promote. Businesses on the platform had a surprisingly good year in 2022, creating some of the most effective LinkedIn posts yet for increasing engagement. Here are the techniques they used to do it.

Intro to LinkedIn–Top Features

Native Documents

Undeniably, the most popular LinkedIn posts cited in the study were native documents. Native documents are posts that consist of PDFs uploaded directly to the platform that scrolls like a carousel. These documents are typically created in a third-party program with step-by-step upload instructions. 

If you want to boost your engagement on LinkedIn, integrating more native documents is the way to go. Native documents typically generate 3x more clicks than other posts. They have an average click-through rate (CTR) of 3.5% to 8.6%, which is huge considering a sponsored content carousel on LinkedIn only has an average CTR of 0.40%. 

Video Posts 

If you take away nothing else from this intro to LinkedIn, remember this: Video posts are the future of social media.

Video posts are very promising for small to medium-sized LinkedIn accounts, generating the highest engagement per impression rate. The average engagement for accounts under 50k followers is 3.16%; with video posts, the engagement per impression could reach up to 4.49%. LinkedIn is pushing video content more right now to compete with other apps like Instagram reels and TikTok. It’s a good time to get in there if you haven’t already. 

Smaller Accounts

Having a large account on LinkedIn does not necessarily mean high engagement. In both video view rates and page reach, small to medium-sized accounts scored higher in attracting their audience. 

Video View Rates  

The average video view rates on the platform stand at 15.51%. Smaller accounts in the study actually came out with a higher view rate of 17.18%. The middle and larger-sized accounts had a more challenging time keeping followers’ attention for the length of a video, with only an 11.29% video view rate.

Page Reach 

Smaller accounts also did well when it came to honing in on specific audiences. The average page reach rate on a LinkedIn page stands at 3.49% for 2022. The accounts that struggled the most this year were those with 50-100K followers. 

Optimization

Not all posts are made equal. Optimizing all your posts (native, video, or text) will help boost your engagement more than simply shooting out posts from the hip. Some of the common optimization tips for effective LinkedIn posts include: 

• Create content with valuable tips and tricks. 
• Stay within your industry and audience. 
• Post shorter, more enticing text. 
• Include links, images, and videos. 
• Don’t forget to use hashtags!

For more tips on how to pump up your posts, start with True Anthem’s list of LinkedIn best practices.

Intro to LinkedIn First Steps 

There will always be some learning curves whenever you’re learning a new platform. Don’t let these discourage you. If you’re below average on your reach rate, it may just take some of the above optimization strategies to get you back up and going.

However, for existing users, if you haven’t implemented native documents and video, this is your sign of giving it a try. These two types of posts show significant opportunities to help accounts grow and get you on top of your game going into 2023.