Posting status updates on LinkedIn is a great way to share news, ideas, articles, and other content with your professional network. LinkedIn status updates appear in the feeds of your connections and can help you establish your professional brand, highlight your skills and expertise, and expand your reach. Here are some tips on how to create and post status updates on LinkedIn.
Why Post Status Updates?
There are several benefits to posting regular status updates on LinkedIn:
- Share news and accomplishments – Use status updates to share news about new jobs, promotions, projects completed, publications, speaking engagements, or other milestones.
- Demonstrate thought leadership – Share insights, opinions, trends, and best practices to establish yourself as a trusted voice in your industry.
- Promote your business or brand – Status updates provide a channel to highlight your products, services, company culture, events, job openings, etc.
- Increase engagement – Posting status updates helps drive reactions, comments, and shares, leading to more engagement with your network.
- Improve search visibility – Quality status updates can help increase your appearance in LinkedIn searches.
- Expand reach – Status updates appear in the feeds of your 1st-degree connections, allowing you to get your content in front of your extended network.
Regularly posting value-driven, relevant status updates is a key part of developing an engaging LinkedIn presence.
How to Write a Good LinkedIn Status Update
Follow these best practices when crafting your status updates:
- Provide value – Offer insights, advice, tips, or other useful information your audience will appreciate.
- Be authentic and genuine – Share real experiences and opinions using your natural voice.
- Make it scannable – Use concise paragraphs, bullet points, numbered lists, and other formatting to increase readability.
- Use multimedia – Include images, videos, SlideShare presentations, etc. to make your updates more visual.
- Use relevant hashtags – Include hashtags to make your updates more discoverable to those interested in your topic.
- Interact and engage – Pose questions, ask for input, or encourage sharing to spark dialogue.
- Be consistent – Post updates regularly to stay top of mind with your network.
- Monitor performance – Pay attention to which types of updates get the most engagement.
Test different types of status updates and analyze what resonates best with your audience.
How to Post a Status Update
Posting status updates on LinkedIn is easy to do through the LinkedIn website or mobile app. Here are step-by-step instructions:
On LinkedIn Website:
- Go to https://www.linkedin.com and log into your account.
- Click on the “Share an article, photo, video or idea” text box at the top of your homepage.
- Write your status update in the text box. You can include up to 700 characters of text.
- You can customize your update using formatting like bullets, hyperlinks, @mentions, hashtags, and emojis.
- Optional: Add any images, videos, presentations, or other files you want to include by clicking the corresponding icons below the text box.
- Select who can see your post – You can post publicly, to your connections only, or to a specific group.
- Click “Post” to publish your status update to LinkedIn.
On LinkedIn Mobile App:
- Launch the LinkedIn app and log into your account.
- Tap the “+” icon at the top of your feed.
- Write your status update in the text box.
- Format your update by adding mentions, hashtags, emojis, bulleted lists, hyperlinks, etc.
- Optional: Tap the camera, video, document, or presentation icons to add multimedia to your post.
- Tap “Share with” and choose who can see your update – public, connections, or a specific group.
- Tap “Post” to share your status update.
Posting from your mobile device allows you to easily create updates on-the-go.
Status Update Ideas and Examples
Here are some LinkedIn status update ideas and examples to spark inspiration:
Industry News Commentary
Share your take on the latest news and trends related to your profession:
“The new rules proposed by the State Board will have major implications for our industry. Here are my thoughts on how this will impact healthcare organizations…”
Event Promotion
Promote upcoming conferences, webinars, and other events:
“I’ll be speaking at the Digital Marketing Summit next month about leveraging online video. Use promo code SOCIAL15 to save 15% on tickets!”
Behind-the-Scenes
Give a behind-the-scenes look at your company and team:
“It’s ‘bring your dog to work day’ here at Smith & Co. Check out these cute office pups!”
Job Openings
Share new job opportunities at your company:
“We’re hiring! Looking for a driven HR Manager to join our fast-growing team in Austin.”
Industry Advice
Provide tips and best practices:
“5 Ways to Use Data More Effectively in Your Marketing Campaigns”
Quotes
Share inspirational or thought-provoking quotes:
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
Recognize Employees
Highlight top performers at your company:
“Huge shout out to Jane for landing our biggest client to date! Her passion and persistence were key to sealing the deal.”
Best Practices for LinkedIn Status Updates
Follow these best practices to create engaging, effective status updates:
- Post consistently – Share status updates regularly to remain active and visible.
- Vary the format – Mix up text updates with links, images, videos, presentations, etc.
- Post at optimal times – Early morning and lunch hours tend to see high engagement.
- Length – Updates with 40-80 characters get highest clicks and reactions.
- Use multimedia – Posts with images/video generate more engagement than text-only updates.
- Call-to-Action – Encourage comments, shares, likes, and feedback from your network.
- Monitor analytics – Pay attention to the types of updates that perform best.
- Re-share evergreen updates – Don’t be afraid to re-post your best performing updates.
Experiment to see what works for your audience and aligns with your goals. The more you post, the more you’ll learn about how to create stellar status updates.
Tips to Increase Your LinkedIn Engagement
To help your LinkedIn status updates reach and engage more of your network, incorporate these tips:
- Ask questions – Pose questions to encourage others to chime in.
- Reply to comments – Actively respond to any comments and @mention users to continue the dialogue.
- @Mention influencers or brands – This will notify them and invite their input.
- Use hashtags – Include relevant hashtags so your content surfaces in more feeds.
- Tag location – Add your location tag to help your update appear in local feeds.
- Tag co-workers – @Mention colleagues also involved to get their networks engaged.
- Share user generated content – Repost great content from others and give them credit.
- Sequence posts – Create a series of updates that conclude or lead into each other.
- Follow up on popular posts – Leverage your best-performing updates by building on or continuing their themes.
The more interactive and engaging your updates, the more traction they will gain on LinkedIn.
Conclusion
Posting regular status updates is an impactful yet straightforward way to establish your professional brand, demonstrate expertise, and engage your network on LinkedIn.
Focus on providing value through insights, resources, and visual content. Observe which types of updates resonate best, and continue to refine your strategy over time. With consistent, high-quality status updates, you can become a recognized thought leader in your industry.