Why you should start posting on LinkedIn right now

You may have played around with LinkedIn a little and while you’re enjoying the content on there, you haven’t got around to creating any of your own. Why should you do it now and what should you do?

LinkedIn is quite unique in that the difference between those posting and those who are part of the network but don’t do posts is vast. We’re talking about there being less than 3% of all people on LinkedIn who actually post anything to it. Compare that with Facebook where it’s more like 70%. While that might seem like a crazy low number, it actually makes sense.

After all, LinkedIn is our professional profile. It’s like a resume. Our employer, potential employer and clients are seeing what we’re up to there. And for most of us, our presence on LinkedIn isn’t a Company page, it’s our own personal profile. So, everything we do there reflects on us as a professional.

Yet, if you do start posting, you have this incredible opportunity that doesn’t exist on the bigger networks like Facebook, Instagram and even Twitter. Because there are so few people on the platform that are posting regularly, anything you do post is that much more likely to reach more people. Think about it. When you’re on LinkedIn you see a LOT of content being posted. But that content tends to be from the people you’re connected to or follow. Which means that you have a limited number of things you can see. LinkedIn then pumps up your feed by adding in the stuff that your contacts are commenting on and liking, so that your feed doesn’t get too empty. This means that you have an opportunity to reach well beyond just the people you follow or are connected to.

So what do you post?

You can start by sharing news stories of significance in your industry and adding your own opinion or comments. Try running a quick poll to seek other people’s opinions on an issue or question that is related to the work you do. Interesting quotes from real people like yourself, or someone you admire always do pretty well — especially if they’re related to your work or industry. If you’re feeling more daring, you can write an article. LinkedIn has a great tool for posting articles, like a blog, in your profile and once it’s posted it lets you share that article to your network. From time to time, LinkedIn will feature these articles on the right-hand column, especially if you’re posting something that people are really interested in right now.

With so few of LinkedIn’s hundreds of millions of people actually posting, you really do have a big chance of having your content reach a lot of people.

Dante St James is the founder of Clickstarter Australia, a Lead Trainer with Facebook Australia & New Zealand and a digital advisor with a number of Australian Government Small Business support initiatives.