How Often Should Executives Post on LinkedIn? A Guide

If you’re on LinkedIn—and, if you’re reading this, you must be—then this thought has probably crossed your mind: how often should I post?

The answer is—well, no one knows for sure, really. But while there is no scientifically determined number, some rules of thumb have emerged. For starters, how often you should post on LinkedIn depends on many factors, including the nature of your business, your industry, your target audience, and the types of posts you like to publish. For example, according to a LinkedIn report, three-to-five times per week is a good starting point for a B2B brand.

With that in mind, here’s a guide to how often executives, business leaders and thought leaders should post on the world’s #1 professional networking platform. But first…

Why post on LinkedIn at all?

It should go without saying that LinkedIn should be a part of every leader and business’s overall social media strategy. The platform boasts nearly 1 billion users, after all. But for execs, specific reasons to post on the platform include:

  • professional networking
  • engaging your audience
  • enhancing and building your personal brand
  • building trust
  • talent acquisition and retention
  • lead generation

More than any other social media platform, LinkedIn is the go-to for professionals of all stripes.

Understanding the LinkedIn Algorithm

To effectively leverage LinkedIn, it helps to know what kind of content the platform favors. The posts that inspire the most views and engagement do so for a variety of reasons. The trick is to know which factors you can control—and those that you can’t.

For instance, unless you’re Richard Branson, you are not going to get the kind of play on LinkedIn enjoyed by the Virgin CEO. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t post content that your followers and others in your industry will find useful.

One way to do this is by sharing knowledge about your field. The platform has begun prioritizing content that disseminates information that users find valuable. This often means actionable, useful advice, tips and knowledge. Knowledgeable, informed posts about your industry and its issues will nudge the LinkedIn needle in the direction of delivering more eyeballs to your work.

While this may not clue you into how often to post, it is certainly a starting point for creating great content that will outlast your colleague’s hot take on Cowboy Carter.

Quality vs. quantity

Ah, the age-old question: is it better to fire off five meh posts or one kick-ass one? We’re on the side of the latter, especially as AI floods the internet with even more repetitive and pizzaz-less content.

In addition, the LinkedIn algorithm prizes what the platform poobahs call “meaningful interactions.” Defined as “thoughtful comments from relevant connections and constructive discussions,” these kinds of interactions are usually prompted by high-quality content, often with a personal flair.

Self-described “LinkedIn nerd” John Espirian has some tips on leaving comments on the platform. Are your posts generating these kinds of discussions?

But whether you decide to post a short post every day or a longer post once a week, one thing is certain: consistency builds trust. By posting on a consistent basis, you become a regular part of your audience’s LinkedIn routine. This keeps your audience engaged and positions you as a dependable source of valuable insights or content within your niche—i.e., a thought leader.

Using metrics/data to help drive decisions

Tracking metrics and data may be the best way to help you decide how often to post. By understanding which posts are getting the most engagement and when, you can create and schedule content that will reach the greatest number of viewers. For instance, if you see a drop in engagement when posting twice a day, that is a fairly clear indicator that you are trying the patience of your audience. You can then reevaluate your strategy, not just in how often you post but when.

However, many social media nabobs agree that LinkedIn analytics are limited. If you find you’re not getting the information you need, or in a way that is helpful and easy to understand, third-party tools like Shield can come in handy. These paid services offer more data, like how your posts are performing over a period of time, which posts are working or not, who is consuming your content, and how creating LinkedIn posts impact your overall impressions, followers, and engagement. And they often do this in an easily digestible form. For instance, Shield provides a spreadsheet-style view of your posts with custom filters.

Below is an example of a Shield content table.

Another feature, word cloud, gives you an idea of your content themes, giving you a clear picture whether your posts reflects what you want them to (i.e., SaaS marketing tips).

Other third-party tools include Taplio and Inlytics. Specifically designed for LinkedIn, Inlytics provides you with real-time and historic visualizations of your content performance. It tracks metrics such as impressions, reactions, comments and engagement rates.

Taplio not only monitors post performance but prides itself on its AI-generated posts.

Creating a calendar

A calendar will help you get the most out of your LinkedIn content strategy. Planning ahead will give the time necessary to get the content ready and to post consistently. You can strategically schedule your posts to publish on optimal days and at optimal times, and ensure that you are staggering your content.

There is a psychological component to building a calendar as well. As mental models, they show us something familiar to help us comprehend something abstract. A simple, visual calendar lowers the perceived difficulty of the tasks at hand. And a calendar can improve your content creation and social media strategy by giving you a bird’s-eye view of your work, showing you any gaps. It helps you plan and organize around key events, dates, and launches. And it ensures you have plenty of prep time to ready your content for publishing.

Naturally, there are several third-party tools that can help you plan and build your LinkedIn calendar. Three of the most popular are Trello, Hootsuite, and Sprout Social.

Hootsuite’s Calendar lets you see, schedule, and adjust your social posts across all major networks. By dragging and dropping content you can fine-tune the timing of cross-platform campaigns. The content in your calendar will then publish automatically at the designated time. The service also has a built-in tool to suggest the best time to post based on your audience and desired results.

A unique feature of Sprout Social is its social listening tool, which helps users understand topics of interest, trends, and more using AI to comb different social networks. “What businesses love about Sprout Social is how easy it makes the otherwise tedious process of managing multiple social accounts,” says Forbes Advisor. One caveat: it’s $249USD (per month) price tag.

Trello takes a different approach to project organization by using “cards” to manage the details for each task in the planning and production timeline. Multiple team members can be added to each card to keep everyone in the know.

So, er… so then how often should I post on LinkedIn?

Are you enlightened yet? If not, don’t worry. We now turn to the experts for their advice.

Matthew Rolnick, VP Strategy & Innovation at Yaymaker, recommends “posting at least once a month” for beginners.

Hootsuite recommends one-to-two times per day.

And Remy Scalza, of dedicated full-service thought leadership agency CSuite Content, recommends one-to-two posts per week. “It’s the LinkedIn sweet spot. Posting once or twice a week ensures a) you’re not overwhelming followers; b) your not overwhelming yourself in drafting content (these posts take time!);  and c) you make the most of LinkedIn’s algorithm, which tends to keep content resurfacing for days (or weeks) at a time.”

LinkedIn’s own research bears this out—the platform says that companies who post weekly see twice as much content engagement as those that don’t. That generalization can likely be extended to executives, as well. Post more and reap the benefits—perhaps.

Now, that doesn’t sound so hard, does it? So get creating, scheduling, and posting. Your followers are waiting.

 

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