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How to Write Great LinkedIn Articles (With Examples)
On its surface, writing a LinkedIn article may seem unnecessary. It is an unpaid service that has no guarantee of helping advance your career prospects.
However, the truth is that well-written LinkedIn Articles provide many benefits to their authors. The benefits of writing a LinkedIn Article more than make the endeavor worth the time investment.
Otherwise, why are others still doing it? Let’s dive in and see what LinkedIn articles can do.
Table of content:
What Is A LinkedIn Article?
Benefits of writing linkedin articles, how to write a great linkedin article, examples of great linkedin articles .
Articles are different from updates . Basically they are longer, in-depth blog liked pieces where you can create and publish on LinkedIn for you to share content about:
- Thought leadership
- Professional experiences and anecdotes
- Industry insights and expertise
- Advice for other professionals
- Opinions on developments in your field
- Content marketing messages in support of your brand
In our own opinion, we see there are three main benefits of writing LinkedIn articles.
Establishes You as a Thought Leader
Something critical in any industry is establishing yourself as a thought leader. Businesses are looking for candidates who are experts in their fields. An article outlining your expertise allows you to position yourself as precisely that.
Candidates could have similar levels of expertise on any given topic. However, from the employer’s perspective, the ones who have written a well-researched, competently written article have already proven their knowledge. This gives them a leg up on the other candidates.
Articles Help Grow Your Reach
At its core, the purpose of LinkedIn is to amass relevant connections that allow one to build a network within their field. An excellent article will resound among industry insiders, allowing you to make contact and grow your own network .
Additionally, LinkedIn articles rank on Google. So, if yours does well enough, it will reach those who are searching for particular topics that you wrote about before. If an employer is looking for someone to handle a niche subject for their company, odds are they will reach out to any individual whose name comes up on the first page of the search results.
LinkedIn Provides Detailed Analytics on Articles
Finally, LinkedIn provides detailed analytics to all users who write on their publishing platform. You will know how many people clicked on your article, what areas it generated the most interest in, the careers of those who read it, and much more.
Not only will this help you understand the audience that is looking for information on the topics you are writing about, but it will help you shape your future articles. Detailed analytics let you know if you are heading in the right direction or if you need to change tack for the next one.
If you have decided on writing a LinkedIn article, it is important to make sure it is amazing.
Unfortunately, we do not all write for a living. For those inexperienced in delivering professional quality articles, writing one for all your connections can be concerning. It might feel a bit like being asked to read your essay in front of your class.
But LinkedIn articles are not written exclusively by professional writers. While it may seem daunting, with enough effort you can write an article any professional would be proud of.
Choose Your Topic
The most important aspect of writing a LinkedIn article is choosing what you want to write about. That is because you need to balance three critical factors at this part of the process:
First, you want to make sure that you are writing about something you are knowledgeable about. This will make actually writing the article significantly easier because you will be more comfortable talking about it and need to do a lot less research ahead of time.
You also want to make sure you are writing about something that people in your industry will read. Consider your audience: for instance, if you’re writing for software engineers, what topics would they want to hear about? What’s relevant to their field?
In a similar regard, you also want to find something unique to talk about. This means finding a new spin on a popular topic, discovering interesting new ideas to talk about, diving into niche subject matter, or anything else that is interesting and engaging.
These three aspects are often at odds with one another. There are many ways to go about balancing them, but the best thing you can do is research, research, research. Look at what people are talking about and find interesting topics not being discussed in your field.
Choose Your Headline
Headlines are critical in getting the reader’s attention. They need to be relevant to the topic at hand — no one is ever happy to read an article after a clickbait headline brought them there — while also garnering the reader’s attention.
In general, we encourage article headlines to be succinct and to the point. “Mitosis: Understanding Cell Division, the Contemporary Research Surrounding It, and the Future of the Industry” is a mouthful and insults the reader’s intelligence by over-explaining its purpose.
Instead, something like “Three Contemporary Mitosis Studies you Should Know” clearly states its purpose without over-explaining itself to the reader. Little changes like this can make a world of difference in the reader’s eyes.
That said, don’t go too far in the other direction. “Five Common Interview Mistakes and How to Avoid Them” is still a lot better than “Common Interview Mistakes” because it better prepares the audience for the structure and purpose of the piece.
Format Your Article for Easy Reading
There are a few tricks professional writers use to increase engagement in their articles. While a whole article could be written about these tricks, here are three of the most common ones:
- Keep your paragraphs and sentences relatively short and concise. When speaking to a business-oriented audience, you want to get to the point as quickly as possible. Dense, flowery text does not do that.
- If possible, include images to break up the text. Particular attention should be paid to the banner image, as it (along with the headline) will be your article’s first impression. Spend
- While LinkedIn Articles can be up to 125,000 characters, we recommend writing about 500-750 words an article. This retains reader engagement throughout the piece. Once your article reaches over 1,000 words, it might be time to consider cuts. When you are doing edits, always ask yourself: “Is this section really necessary?” Often, you’ll find that you’re unnecessarily discussing tangential topics that could instead be their own article.
For the last section of this article, we’ve found three excellent LinkedIn Articles and written a short explanation as to why they are effective. We hope that with these articles in mind you can get a sense of direction for your own articles.
How To Get Started With Your AI Journey by Bernard Marr
Bernard Marr is one of the premier article writers on LinkedIn, making him an ideal candidate to kick off our example section. In this article, Marr provides a thorough overview of AI, what it can do for one’s business, and how to practically begin implementing it.
This article is a great teaching tool because it demonstrates the tried and true tactic of delivering well-researched content that people want to read. AI is a topic few want to dive into because of its inherent complexity, which makes practical guides for beginners a relative gap in content surrounding it.
Marr pounces on that opening and delivers an article that provides an excellent introduction to AI implementation. At the moment of writing, this article has over 350 likes and 20 comments.
It’s Time for a New Definition of Success by Jeff Haden
In this article, Jeff Haden discusses how one’s personal definition of success will often differ from what society’s overall definition is. Haden cites anecdotes and experiences from his own life en route to delivering an excellent thesis statement.
What we really like about this article is that it is interesting for just about anyone to read. In tackling a broad subject, Haden can reach a wide audience and receive additional engagement. At the moment of writing, this article has over 700 likes and 85 comments.
Five Business Lessons from Radio Disney by Dave Kerpen
Finally, we have an article from Dave Kerpen written in the traditional “five tips” fashion. In it, Kerpen does exactly as the title says: extrapolate five lessons from his time working at Radio Disney.
We wanted to highlight this because of its accessibility. The listicle is used because consumers respond well to it, and having Disney in the title piques the average reader’s interest.
The article itself has relatively conventional advice — be persistent, prioritize connections, etc. — but it still received 150 likes because of its SEO-friendly formatting. This article provides a lesson in how far a little forethought in formatting and marketing can take your article.
Are You Ready to Write Your First Article?
If you are planning to start your own blog, I suggest you try giving LinkedIn articles a shot first and see if there is any traction on your topics and content.
You will eliminate the time needed to build your own site and get way fast response to see if your audience enjoys what you write before you invest more time and effort.
And if you are looking for more help to improve your LinkedIn game, we run FREE LIVE Masterclasses from time to time.
Join me [in]side Content Conversion System and build out the foundation for your Content Pillars, Audience Personas, 90-Day Plug & Play LinkedIn Content Prompts. my signature Copywriting Techniques AND…
Your own [in]sider Hub – All the steps, tools, and templates I created for all my clients to PLAN and ORGANIZE their Content on LinkedIn all in ONE place!
Learn the proven strategies to win eyeballs, trust and clients on LinkedIn in 2023.
Join my live linkedin for business masterclass.
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Quick links.
Are you publishing LinkedIn articles?
If you’re not, you seriously missing out.
LinkedIn articles aren’t only a great way of giving value to your readers, but they can also help you increase your reach.
In this guide, I’ll show you how to write LinkedIn articles that convert and help you establish your presence on the platform.
Let’s get writing!
Why LinkedIn Articles?
Actionable value, inspirational value, topic ideas, crafting a title, consider the first-person, keep it to less than 800 words, avoid fluff, use your headings, your cover photo matters, split the text up with pictures, optimize your article for mobile, add hashtags, make sure it is seo-optimized, cross promotions, use linkedin pods, what to do after.
Linkedin articles are one of the best ways of giving value to your followers.
They’re essentially like blog posts, but instead of being on your website, they’re present on LinkedIn.
Now using posts is important if you want to expand your reach on LinkedIn. They allow you to showcase your knowledge and give visitors to your profile instant access to your writing without technically leaving the site.
On the plus side, if you’re aiming to be a LinkedIn influencer, having published posts is a great way to show visitors social proof.
There’s not doubt that LinkedIn posts are the way to go, but if you’re looking for a more feature-packed way to express yourself, articles are the way to go.
How to Write a LinkedIn Article: Let’s Talk About Value
“What should I write about?”
Anything really.
But, that’s not the question you should be asking when writing articles on LinkedIn.
The question should be:
“How do I give value to my readers?”
A lot of people use LinkedIn articles for traction, traffic, exposure, etc.
However, that comes after you’ve provided value to your potential readers.
Here are a couple of things you can keep in mind when picking out a topic for your next LinkedIn article.
Actionable content is content that can help you take action and get results.
Say, for example, you wanted to talk about growth hacking in the B2B landscape, an actionable way of doing it is to give an instructional on how to get more leads using a particular piece of software.
This type of content packs a lot of value because it tells the reader exactly what they need to do to create for themselves.
Given our years of growth hacking, we’ve found that the most engaging types of content are actionable ones. These are also the pages that people frequently bookmark and share with other people.
Actionable LinkedIn articles include guides, instructional, how-to’s, etc.
Make sure you include a lot of screencaps to serve as examples and to make things easier for your reader to understand.
The plain-text founder story is probably one of the best examples of inspiring stories being used to provide value, and they shouldn’t just be limited to your LinkedIn posts.
If you have an inspiring story that you want to share, but find that it’s too long to be fit neatly in a LinkedIn post, consider using a LinkedIn article to share it.
This way you’ll have more space to tell your story and you can even include some media in between.
Inspiring stories work because they’re usually relatable.
However, note that you can just write about anything that inspires you, they still have to be relevant to your target audience so that the messaging will resonate better.
Growth hackers and prospects, alike, love real-life examples and case studies.
And, here’s why.
They’re relatable.
People want to hear about what could have happened to them, without taking the risk of doing it first.
These examples serve as real experiments that they can learn and get inspiration from.
When you add data to it, it becomes even more valuable.
Here are a couple of topic ideas that you can play around with to get you started with LinkedIn articles.
- Industry trends and how they affect your niche
- Instructions on how to perform specific tasks
- Case studies
- Infographics
- Definitions
- Product and service guides
- Founder stories
Pay attention to your title.
It’s the first thing that your reader reads before they even get to the body of your work.
Your first step in crafting a title is making sure that your keyword research.
Since LinkedIn articles are indexed, you want to make sure that your primary keyword is in your title.
Now there are different ways to craft a title.
Here are a couple of pointers that can help you out:
- Make sure it’s short and easy to read.
- Use exciting language, but avoid using clickbait strategies to lure readers in.
- Use power words that are relevant to your industry, e.g., in marketing you can use the word “convert” instead of “sell”.
- Listicles work, but make sure you have a list that actually has value. (If you’re using numbers, you’ll find that odd numbers work better than even numbers.)
- Consider converting the title into a question so that you can elicit curiosity.
- “How-to” titles – just like the title of this guide – work well, too.
- Use techniques such as alliteration or assonance.
- Get a colleague to check out the title and get their feedback.
- Two-part titles are okay, but your challenge is to keep them short and brief.
- Google your title before you use it, chances are there’s another article related to the one you’re writing and you can get a couple of good ideas for titles.
Crafting the Body
There are different ways to craft the body of your LinkedIn article, and most of the time it is dependent on your writing style.
However, there are styles that work better on LinkedIn than on any other platform. Here’s how to write a LinkedIn article’s body using our best practices.
Writing in the first person allows you to keep things engaging with your reader, and it’s slowly becoming the style of choice for many professionals.
It’s easier to connect with a person if the style is conversational because it’s a break from the usual formality.
However, this shouldn’t always be the case.
If you're writing to a very formal audience, it would still make sense to write in the third person.
The average LinkedIn reader should be able to comb through your article and grab value in less than 10 minutes. This means you should fight the urge to write an article with complex metaphors or too many anecdotes.
Keep things as simple as you can and aim to engage an emotional response.
This also helps with your mobile optimization – as we’ll discuss later on in this guide.
People who read LinkedIn articles are busy professionals who are coming in from LinkedIn.
Since you’re already keeping articles to less than 800 words, it would make sense not to include any fluff in your writing.
Less fluff allows you to maximize your word count, and keep things lean.
Always make sure that you use your headings.
This doesn’t just help you organize your writing, but it also helps with SEO.
Remember, LinkedIn articles can get indexed by Google. You want to show crawlers how your article has been structured.
Ending a LinkedIn Article the Right Way
There are a bunch of ways to end a LinkedIn article.
You can for the old-fashioned approach and just add a couple of takeaways, you can truncate, you can end with humor, etc.
But here’s what matters the most.
Always make sure that you end with a thought that they can take with them after they close the article.
This could be a statement that makes them question the status quo or a piece of advice that they can apply to their business in the next hour.
Whatever it is, it has to stick in the person’s mind.
There’s a high probability that your reader is still going to go back to LinkedIn after they’re done with your article.
If you can, add your contact information and how they can view more of your products or services, or schedule a quick meeting with you. This helps turn the LinkedIn article into a passive lead generation mechanism.
Alternatively, you may choose to truncate the article.
This means posting only half an original article and hosting the full version on your website.
This helps keep your LinkedIn articles shorter and also aids in driving traffic and sessions into your website.
However, you still need to have a CTA with a link to the website. You also need to make sure that it is clear to the reader that the article has been truncated and that isn’t offered in its complete form on LinkedIn Publishing.
You can even use ellipses to splice our truncated articles, this helps build a little mystery and gets people to click on the full article links on your website.
Your cover photo is as important as your title.
It takes up a lot of visual real estate and its primary purpose is to get people to click on it.
Think of it as a visual CTA that serves to covert.
There are several ways of crafting an article cover photo, and we can’t use the same rules as your LinkedIn profile cover photo.
- Make sure that you include your title in the cover photo . Chances are people will see the title on the cover photo before they see the title on the article itself. This means it has to be pronounced.
- Your ratio of text to graphics must be low . Your article should contain most of the words, not your cover photo.
- Include a lot of empty space , this helps create emphasis on the various elements of your cover photo such as the graphics, photos, etc.
- Use photos whenever you can. At BAMF, we use photos of people because it’s more engaging. It helps build trust and gets people interested in the article.
- Use the proper cover photo dimensions on your LinkedIn article.
Read more about LinkedIn photo dimensions here!
If you in a pinch, you can use a drag-and-drop graphics tool like Canva to get you a quick cover photo.
Make it a rule to use at least one photo or graphic for every 200 words in any piece of content that you’re putting up online.
This doesn’t just help you break up the text, but it also serves to brighten up the most and make it more engaging.
Make sure the photos that you’re using are royalty-free, and as much as possible, you want to make sure that they are branded for your organization.
Personally, I like using screenshots and graphics that are made in-house, this allows me to create streamlined branding.
Using original pictures also shows your reader that you’ve made an effort to add value to the article that they’re reading.
A significant amount of your readers are going to read your article on their phones.
When given a choice to optimize for mobile or desktop, always pick mobile.
Mobile-optimized articles look good on desktop, but desktop-optimized articles look pretty text-heavy on mobile.
So, how to write a LinkedIn article for mobile?
First, consider your paragraph lengths.
At most, we highly recommend that you stick to 1-3 lines per paragraph with four-liners seldomly being used only towards the middle of your article.
This keeps your LinkedIn articles from becoming text-heavy. Remember, text-heavy articles are an eyesore on mobile given small screens and limited attention spans. You don’t want to make your article look intimidating.
The aim of the game is to make things easily digestible and non-intimidating for your readers.
Hashtags help LinkedIn figure out the subject matter of your article and organize it accordingly.
You will want to add hashtags so that they can be put in front of people who find the article relevant depending on what topics they’re interested in.
It’s useful to note that even though you can edit articles after they’ve been published on LinkedIn publishing, you won’t be able to edit the hashtags.
Make sure you pick the appropriate ones in the beginning, you can’t switch them later on.
Promoting Your LinkedIn Article
Promoting your article is an important part of the process.
This gets people to actually read the article and engage with it.
There are several ways that you can promote your freshly-written LinkedIn article.
Since LinkedIn articles are indexed by Google, it helps to add a little SEO-optimization to the article before you publish it.
It is strongly advised that you do regular keyword research even if it’s just a LinkedIn article. Use your main keywords in your title, your secondary keywords can go into your headings, and also include some LSI in the article itself.
Check your images if they have alt-text before you upload them onto the platform.
We understand that you can’t go all out with on-page and off-page optimizations, but simply adjusting your headers and your titles accordingly can make all the difference.
I want to read more about LinkedIn SEO and how it can help me!
You can use your other social profiles such as Facebook and Twitter to promote your LinkedIn link.
This helps streamline the content release on other platforms and feed traffic from one medium to another.
Just like viral posts, LinkedIn articles also need some momentum to show the LinkedIn algorithm that it’s worthy of being shown to more people.
You can use LinkedIn pods to promote articles that you’ve written so that they can get an initial round of engagement.
Also, there’s another reason why it’s nice to have some engagement on your LinkedIn article, it shows people that are about to read the article that it’s worth a look.
Give LinkedIn pods a try and get yourself a little LinkedIn engagement.
Now that we’ve taught you how to write a LinkedIn article, it’s time for you to write another one!
You can build on the initial topic you write about and create a weekly series, repurpose the entire post for use in another medium, or even come back to it again after a year and write an update.
If you don’t feel like you have the time to continuously churn our articles, think about truncating some of the posts on your website.
LinkedIn articles are powerful.
They allow normal people on LinkedIn a publishing platform to voice out their thoughts and get recognized for their expertise.
People who publish articles on LinkedIn are usually industry and thought leaders, if you’re aiming for influencer status, they help build the reputation and social proof that you need.
Also, remember this.
Knowing how to write a LinkedIn article is an essential part of your skillset as a growth hacker.
A growth hacker should be well-versed in a number of disciplines, and promoting content is one of them.
If you aren’t publishing LinkedIn articles yet, then you’ve got to do something about that today.
You already know how to write a LinkedIn article right?
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