Over the past year, I’ve shared over 400 posts on LinkedIn, resulting in a 2.5X+ growth in CloudZero’s follower count — all through organic social media.
Sometimes, it feels like everyone is leaning into ‘unhinged’ social media or TikTok—esque videos, but this doesn’t align with our brand and values. We want our customers and audience to see us as trusted, reliable, and thoughtful. But just because we’re not tapping into all the mindful, demure trends of the moment doesn’t mean we can’t have social media success—and our hard work on LinkedIn this year proves it.
As a B2B SaaS platform, we use LinkedIn to share and promote our content to prospective buyers, which include director and C-suite level executives. Yet, it can be tough to gain exposure without a well-thought-out and optimized strategy. Simply resharing article links to your feed is not a reliable way to reach people on LinkedIn.
In this article, I’ll outline the strategy we used to go from 4,000 to over 9,500 LinkedIn followers, including the types of content that have performed well and the tactics we’ve used to maximize engagement.
Overview: What Type Of Content Performs Best?
It’s no secret that LinkedIn favors content that KEEPS people on LinkedIn. More time on LinkedIn = More engagement = More ads seen/clicked = More revenue. Still, it’s always interesting to see the data and how apparent that preference is.
Over the past year, CloudZero published over 400 posts on LinkedIn. Here’s a highlight of the engagement:
Posts without a link had 1.7x more likesPosts without a link had 4.1x more commentsPosts with an image had 1.9x more likesPosts with an image had 2.6x more comments
The takeaway? More visual content + avoiding links = Higher LinkedIn engagement.
This is important to note as this should guide your LinkedIn strategy. External links should be shared sparingly and wisely. External links are best reserved for key social posts (e.g., a recent press release, an event or webinar registration page, etc.).
Otherwise, your goal should be to share content that engages users directly on LinkedIn.
9 tips to increase engagement and visibility on LinkedIn
An emphasis on content that engages people on LinkedIn is one of the reasons we’ve been able to grow CloudZero’s following. We know that visual content performs well and we limit the number of external links we share in posts. But what other ways can we increase engagement and reach?
Here are nine tips that have helped us get the most out of our LinkedIn social strategy — and that you can employ to maximize the effectiveness of every LinkedIn post.
1. We use visual content whenever possible
Posts with an image received 1.9x more likes and 2.6x more comments than posts without an image. If you want more people to engage with your content, make it visual. When posting …
Upload images directly to LinkedIn (vs. populating images from an external link). This will help increase your exposure. Additionally, this gives you the chance to take up more real estate in someone’s feed. LinkedIn recently updated image preview sizes — which are now significantly smaller. A move that, again, shows LinkedIn’s preference for content that keeps people on the platform.
See the difference between sharing a link (left) and sharing an image (right)
As LinkedIn puts it:
“To help members stay on LinkedIn and engage with unique commentary, we’re simplifying our feed by changing the image size and third-party article link preview for organic posts and Sponsored Content. When an organic post becomes a Sponsored Content ad, the small thumbnail preview image shown in the organic post is converted to an image with a minimum of 360 x 640 pixels and a maximum of 2430 x 4320 pixels.”
Upload videos directly to LinkedIn (vs. adding a YouTube link). Videos uploaded directly to Linkedin will autoplay as someone scrolls through their feed — increasing the chance of grabbing their attention.
So, what types of content should you share? Here are a few types of visual content that we share to engage people directly on LinkedIn:
Data graphics and reportsPodcast audio snippets Webinar video snippetsCustomer interviewsCustomer quote cardsSlidesInfographicsCulture and achievement photosCloud cost memes
A few examples of our visual content
2. We format our text so that it is easily scannable
Proper formatting makes your posts easier to read — and scan. One easy formatting trick is to use bulleted or numbered lists. However, LinkedIn does not have a native way to add bullets. Instead, opt for emojis.
Here are a few you can use: ✔️ ✅ ➡️ 👉➜.
Using colorful emojis also has the advantage of helping your content stand out in someone’s feed.
3. We tag other LinkedIn profiles
Tagging will help increase the visibility of your post. Tagging your partner organizations, influencers, or thought leaders at your company (your CEO, CTO, etc.) can help increase the chance that employees and people who follow that page or person’s profile will also see your post.
To tag your brand, type “@yourcompanyname”. A popup will appear, find the appropriate page or person, and click to tag.
4. We use 1:1 (Square) or 4:5 (Portrait) images to take up more real estate in the feed
When possible, upload a square/portrait image or video to make your post more noticeable as someone scrolls through their feed.
On the left is a landscape image compared to a square image.
5. We use 3-5 hashtags to increase exposure
Hashtags help LinkedIn users find content on a topic and can be a good way to reach a broader audience.
Opinions vary on how many hashtags you should use on LinkedIn. Some say 1-3, others say 3-5. We’ve found three hashtags to be the sweet spot for increasing exposure while maintaining the readability and credibility of a post (including too many hashtags looks spammy).
Posts with three hashtags had an average of 15 likes per post vs. roughly only one like per post for those with no hashtags.
Number of Hashtags
Number of Posts
Likes per Post
Comments per Post
0
75
1.4
0
1
47
10.2
0.2
2
90
10.9
0.2
3
153
15
0.4
4
28
14.5
0.3
5
5
6.4
0
7
2
34.5
0
8
1
4
0
A mix of broad hashtags (ex. #Cloud), niche hashtags (ex.#CloudCostOptimization, #FinOps), and branded hashtags (ex. #CloudZero, #CloudCostIntelligence) is a good place to start.
6. We create a social content calendar and schedule posts ahead of time
I cannot stress the importance of planning ahead enough to build consistency, especially if you’re in a role where you manage multiple marketing initiatives.
Many small startups don’t have a person dedicated to managing social media. Instead, they likely have a person who manages digital marketing, which can mean overseeing content marketing, SEO, web design, graphic design, email marketing, AND social media. That’s me at CloudZero.
We’re growing, and I have more content marketing help now. But for my first three years at CloudZero, from around 20-75 employees, posting to social was almost entirely my responsibility.
Managing all these different areas can make it difficult to stay consistent and publish frequently. If I left each day to find something new to publish on social, I would have struggled to keep up and certainly would have missed some days.
So we use a social media calendar to plan and schedule out all of our social posts to LinkedIn. We publish several times a week, sharing various types of content, and creating “themes” for each day of the week. This helps us publish consistently and it means I don’t need to worry about what to post throughout the week.
7. We create a strategy for sharing different types of content
At CloudZero, we have themes for sharing different types of content on LinkedIn. Much of our social media strategy is driven by our content marketing efforts (content we create on our blog, customer stories, interviews, webinars, etc.). Social media is a place for us to share and promote that content.
We publish four blog posts per week and want to ensure we get the most value out of each one. That’s why we have a dedicated blog post category. Yet, these LinkedIn posts externally link to our website, and as we’ve covered, posts with outbound links receive less engagement. It’s important to have a mix.
So, we also have categories for sharing different types of content. For instance …
Monday morning: Cloud Cost MemesTuesday morning: Customer Interview VideosWednesday morning: Customer Quote CardsThursday morning: Report/Data GraphicsFriday morning: Podcast Videos or Audio Snippets
Creating categories or themes like this makes it easier to decide what type of posts to create and when to post them. It allows us to create content for each category, build up a library of posts, and schedule ahead of time.
Buffer recently assessed over a million LinkedIn posts sent through Buffer and found videos to be the best content to post:
This data further supports the conclusion that link posts perform poorly on LinkedIn.
We mix up the publish times of each of these categories throughout the week (e.g., Monday mornings at 8:45 AM EST, Tuesday mornings at 9 AM EST, etc.), but here’s a good starting point if you’re unsure what times to post. Generally, publishing in the morning has received the highest engagement for us.
8. We publish frequently and consistently
Consistency is key when it comes to any social media network. It takes time to build up your following and to do that, you need to consistently publish great content. Publishing sporadically and/or relying on a post to go viral is not a reliable strategy. Some of your posts will perform well and some won’t. That’s just how it goes.
Additionally, publishing consistently signals to LinkedIn who you are, what you do, and who wants to see your posts. This helps LinkedIn show your content to the people most likely to engage.
Many LinkedIn Creators recommend publishing at least once daily, if not more — and I agree. For instance, we publish 1-2 times per day (posting at our regularly scheduled times but also leaving time for random announcements).
When it comes to publishing time, unsurprisingly, 9-5 on weekdays performs best:
9. We share content more than once
We publish to our blog 4+ times per week. Even when I first started at CloudZero (~3.5 years ago), we published 2-3 times per week. That is A LOT of content, especially for a company (and marketing team) of our size.
It would be easy to publish one social media post for each article and be done with it. But that would be doing us a disservice. We put a lot of effort into creating each article, and one of my goals as a marketing leader is to maximize the value of each piece — which means we need to share multiple times on social.
It’s too easy for someone to miss your post if you only publish once. Maybe someone would have found your post interesting but didn’t check LinkedIn that day or didn’t scroll through their feed long enough to find your post. Or maybe the post didn’t show highly in someone’s feed due to low engagement.
For us, we have a cadence of sharing blog posts multiple times throughout the week. This is where creating a library of posts is important (making it easier to repurpose past content).
Since we create and share so much of our blog post content on LinkedIn, it could be weeks or months before a post is shared again. But that helps us reduce the risk of fatigue around that specific topic.
We’ve received nearly twice the coverage and engagement by simply resharing the same LinkedIn posts at a later time:
First Time
Total
Boost
Recycled Posts
502
1.1K
2.2 Cycles (We’ve shared the same LinkedIn post on average 2.2 times)
Likes
781
1.6K
2x
Shares
111
197
1.8x
Comments
22
36
1.6x
Impressions
179
449
2.5x
Clicks
2.2K
3.5K
1.6x
We could take this a step further by creating multiple variations of social posts for each article. For instance, we could create multiple summaries for each blog post, pull quotes from the article, or summarize key takeaways.
Generally, we don’t do this because I don’t have time and we already create so much content that doing this isn’t a priority. But if you’re a company that only produces one blog post per week, for instance, this could be a good way to get more value from each one.
Create visual content to engage people directly on LinkedIn
In summary, create visual content that aims to engage people directly on LinkedIn. I know it’s tempting to use LinkedIn as an outlet to drive traffic to your website — but that’s not LinkedIn’s goal. They want people to remain on their platform, and the algorithm is optimized around that goal.
Aim for a mix of content, and reserve external links for key posts (i.e., important announcements, driving traffic to a webinar registration, etc.). Just realize that engagement on these posts will likely be lower. You may also consider adding links to the post comments rather than in the post itself. Anecdotally speaking, sharing links like this doesn’t seem to negatively affect post-performance.
With Buffer, you can now schedule a first comment along with your LinkedIn post — perfect for those ‘Find the link in the comments’ moments. Connect your LinkedIn Page or profile to get started.
Creating themes (or content pillars) can be a good way to organize your social posts and to decide what type of content to create. Stay consistent and schedule content ahead of time. Sure, you can be spontaneous and publish the occasional “day of post” here and there, but creating a content calendar will help you stay consistent and never miss a post — and ultimately, help you build your following on LinkedIn.
