Looking for ways to improve your LinkedIn content performance?

This could help - Alexandra Morales, a social media manager for the LinkedIn Ads team, recently shared some key best practices to make your organic and paid posts stand out in-stream, which are worth noting in your process.

You can read Morales’ full listing of tips here, but in this post, we’ll cover the key notes.

Readers are keen to interact

Social media users are keen to interact, but the key to maximizing this element is to simplify the process, and to ensure that users receive something in return for their engagement.

That can be as simple as contributing to a poll, or replying to comments, but if you’re seeking interaction, it’s worth also considering what you’re giving back for that activity.

Content and ads that disrupt the norm are more likely to get noticed

This may be an obvious point, but stopping users as they scroll is key, and one way to do that is to prompt people with engaging, interesting text or visuals.

As per Morales:

“Disruptive content can include bold or counter-intuitive statements that ignite the reader’s imagination and curiosity, or it can include eye-pleasing, pattern-breaking visuals that stand out in the scroll.”

You could also argue that argumentative statements would fall into this category, which is one of the pitfalls of algorithm-defined reach - that binary systems can’t determine the difference between positive and negative engagement. That’s what’s led to the latest generation of take-based journalism and media personalities, and it can also work in getting you more attention in social apps - though whether you want that type of attention is a whole other consideration.

Provide inspiration

Another key to maximizing engagement with your social posts is to trigger an emotional response, and while anger is one way to prompt such, joy, happiness and inspiration are also more likely to get users to register their support.

And that can also reflect on your brand, when used well.

“Instead of settling for inspirational quotes, aim to create stories that inspire confidence in your brand and connect back to your company’s core values. Inspirational stories that reinforce your brand’s values can deliver positive effects for years.”

So instead of posting generic ‘you can do it’ type posts, share specific examples where you can, which explore your business or personal ‘why’, and share insight into what inspires you about your work.

Use the right visuals

Morales notes that using the right visuals, in the right formats, is key to boosting interaction.

“You’ll want to embed larger images instead of standard thumbnails as content with larger images tend to get a 38% higher CTR. An image size of 1200 x 627 pixels is recommended.”

Morales also recommends that you consider how your visuals will appear on mobile devices, another element to test in your process.

Concise headlines are better

Morales says that shorter headlines generally lead to more engagement.

“When writing ad headlines, aim for 150 characters or fewer. As for descriptive copy, shoot for 70 characters or fewer (anything over 100 characters will be truncated on desktop).”

This is a key point, and we often get caught up trying to be too clever with our posts, when you really want to grab attention and entice clicks.

Getting users to take the next action is more important than sharing everything at once in the post. 

You can also use generative AI tools like ChatGPT to come up with copy variants, as well as LinkedIn’s own evolving generative AI tools.

These are some of the key takeaways from Morales’ LinkedIn posting and ad creation tips, but you can read her full overview on the LinkedIn ads blog.

Worth noting in your LinkedIn efforts.