How to Succeed on LinkedIn
Is it a challenge to create meaningful business communication on LinkedIn in a busy workday?
Most communications professionals are familiar with questions like:
- How can we consistently come up with interesting and relevant content for multiple posts each week?
- How do we capture all the day-to-day events our colleagues experience that could be turned into content?
- Why is the social media content calendar so difficult to maintain, and isn’t most LinkedIn content just “superficial” self-promotion anyway?
As PR, communications, and social media advisors, we hear these concerns often. But it’s worth remembering that LinkedIn is designed for professional, knowledge-based content—content that helps us make each other smarter. One effective approach is to decentralize communication.
When everyone in the organization shares what they are passionate about, what they’re deeply interested in, and what they actively strive to improve in their daily work, the content becomes much more meaningful. LinkedIn posts then stop being a stressful chore created “at the last minute” and instead become a natural part of daily knowledge sharing with peers. It becomes a platform for showcasing and communicating the results of your work.
When everyone contributes content based on their professional interests and the posts maintain quality, these can easily be reposted from the company’s main channel or incorporated into a weekly concept like “Meet Our Experts”. This makes life much easier for the communications team while keeping the overall content standard high across the organization.
However, creating good content across departments requires a fundamental PR mindset, some basic copywriting skills, and photo competencies. This is exactly what we focus on in the PR/Social Media workshops we run at Goodrel. We work from the principle that everyone—regardless of role or industry—can learn to create content that is meaningful and rewarded by LinkedIn’s algorithm.
Content can be structured around these principles:
- Professional passion with general relevance
- Identification and significance
- Factual perspectives on current topics
- Authenticity with a touch of humor
- New tips and generous advice that add value to others’ work lives