LinkedIn is the leading professional platform, connecting over 1.2 billion members across 200+ countries and regions worldwide.
If you’re not optimizing your content or maintaining a presence on the platform, you’re missing a major opportunity. About 86% of business-to-business (B2B) marketers use LinkedIn as part of their social media strategy, and it’s widely recognized as a top channel for B2B reach and lead generation.
In this guide, you’ll learn LinkedIn marketing solutions and best practices for sharing content for improved visibility as we discuss:
• What Is LinkedIn Algorithm and How Does It Work?
• 8 Types of LinkedIn Posts That Get the Most Engagement
• The Do’s of LinkedIn Posting
• The Don’ts of LinkedIn Posting
What Is LinkedIn’s Algorithm and How Does It Work?
LinkedIn’s algorithm is designed to show people content that’s relevant, helpful and likely to spark meaningful conversation. It aims to:
• Promote content that provides knowledge or advice.
• Prioritize updates from people within your network.
What does this mean for your LinkedIn marketing strategy? Your content, especially personal or professional updates, will likely be shown to your direct connections.
The update also increases the chances of your followers and connections seeing your posts as their feeds will feature less content from people they don’t know.
To reach beyond your network, your LinkedIn marketing content must impart knowledge, insights or advice.
Here’s how LinkedIn’s algorithm works in four steps:
1. LinkedIn Evaluates Post Quality First
LinkedIn checks your post for compliance with its professional community policies and spam guidelines. Clear, high-quality content is prioritized, while spammy or low-quality posts are flagged or filtered out.
Spammy content examples include:
• Reaction polls or emojis designed to artificially boost engagement.
• Misleading posts about LinkedIn functionality.
• Chain-letter-style posts asking for likes or shares.
• Repetitive, irrelevant or excessive comments.
To meet these standards, incorporate LinkedIn marketing solutions that focus on delivering professional, engaging and value-driven content.
2. LinkedIn Tests Your Post With a Small Audience
Once your post passes the quality check, LinkedIn shows it to your immediate and extended network. The algorithm monitors engagement — likes, comments and shares — to gauge its value. If your post performs well, LinkedIn expands its reach to a larger audience.
3. LinkedIn Matches Content to Member Activity
The algorithm considers user activity when distributing posts. It considers factors like interests, hashtags followed and previous engagement to ensure your content reaches the users most likely to interact with it.
4. LinkedIn Prioritizes Relevance Within Your Network
LinkedIn prioritizes content that’s relevant to your network. First-degree connections are the most likely to see your posts, especially those you frequently interact with. Beyond that, LinkedIn analyzes your post’s topic, language and mentions to assess its relevance to extended networks.
Benchmarks vary depending on whether you’re measuring personal profiles or company pages. But recent reporting shows LinkedIn can deliver strong engagement compared to other platforms, with one 2025 benchmark putting the average engagement rate at around 6.5% (Buffer).
With this in mind, what types of content achieve more than the average LinkedIn engagement rate? Find out in the next section.
8 Types of LinkedIn Posts That Get the Most Engagement
While LinkedIn’s algorithm doesn’t prioritize one type of post over another, certain types of content consistently perform well and align with the platform’s best practices:
1. Question-Based Posts: Ask simple, engaging questions to start conversations.
2. Timely Updates: Share news or stats to keep your audience informed.
3. Visual Content: Use infographics, quotes or memes to grab attention.
4. Employee Highlights: Showcase team achievements or behind-the-scenes moments.
5. Event Updates: Post highlights from conferences or events to engage followers.
6. Videos: Share short tutorials, native videos or live streams to connect with viewers.
7. Achievements: Celebrate awards or milestones to draw support.
8. Quick Tips: Share short, helpful advice without any hard sales pitch.
In fact, LinkedIn engagement often depends on format — and recent benchmarks show carousel posts average 6.6% engagement, while native video averages 5.6%, making both strong options for brands that want better visibility (Social Insider).
Popular topics for LinkedIn posts include industry insights, career development tips, business advice, professional news and substantive market analysis.
Engagement is key to LinkedIn’s success. Monitoring your LinkedIn engagement rate helps ensure your posts resonate with your audience.
“The main advantage of creating content for LinkedIn is having a ‘captive audience’ that is actively looking for news/insights regarding their industry,” said David Salazar, an organic social media content strategist at Thrive Internet Marketing Agency.
Other social media platforms still have a very social component to them, but LinkedIn being a professional network, makes it a great place to promote B2B products/services.”
However, before you try your luck with these types of content, it’s important to understand that your post still needs to follow LinkedIn best practices to see real results.
This brings us to our next topic: The do’s and don’ts of posting on LinkedIn.
The 7 Do’s of LinkedIn Posting
Good LinkedIn posting etiquette can increase your visibility and help your posts reach the right audience. Follow these LinkedIn marketing tips for posting shareable content:
1. Create Valuable Content
Share informative, inspiring or educational content. Focus on industry insights, personal experiences or practical tips that address common challenges in your field. Providing value positions you as a thought leader and encourages your audience to engage.
According to Salazar, posts that showcase the “human” side of companies are the most effective types of LinkedIn content for driving engagement.
“For example, celebrating employee anniversaries or similar milestones. This is a clever way to promote your product and services from a more emotional angle,” Salazar said.
2. Engage With Your Audience
Engaging with your audience doesn’t stop after you hit “post.” Actively responding to comments, asking follow-up questions and initiating conversations boosts your LinkedIn engagement and helps your content reach a wider audience. This can result in your content being displayed to a larger audience.
3. Add Visuals
Using visuals is one of the top LinkedIn marketing tips for boosting interaction. Posts with images receive 98% more comments than text-only posts (Sproutworth) and personalized visuals can boost engagement by up to 30% (Authoredup). Use images, videos or infographics to break down complex ideas and make your posts more engaging.
4. Use Hashtags
Using hashtags on LinkedIn can help you connect with industry peers, expand your reach and build a community. The rule of thumb is to add 3-5 well-chosen hashtags per post to avoid appearing spammy.
Popular choices include #innovation, #productivity and #hiringalert, but also explore niche-specific hashtags for your industry. Tools like hashtag generators or keyword research can help you find the best ones.
5. Tell a Story
Storytelling works because it makes your message feel real and relatable — and on LinkedIn, posts that feel human tend to drive stronger interaction than overly corporate updates. When you share a lesson learned, a challenge overcome or a behind-the-scenes moment, you give people a reason to stop scrolling and join the conversation.
6. Post Consistently
Obviously, you want to post when your audience is most likely to see it. Unsurprisingly, LinkedIn is the only social platform to report a weekday as one of the best times to post.
While the “best time to post” depends on your specific audience, LinkedIn tends to perform strongly during the workweek, so weekday testing is a smart starting point before you refine your schedule using your own analytics.
CoSchedule analyzed 37,219,512 social media messages from more than 30,000 organizations and found that:
• The best times to post on LinkedIn in 2024 are 12:00 PM, 10:00 AM and 1:00 AM.
• The ideal hour-long periods to post on LinkedIn are 10:00 AM, 2:00 PM and 3:00 PM.
• The worst hour-long periods to post on LinkedIn are 4:00 AM, 10:00 PM and 11:00 PM.
• The best LinkedIn posting days are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
• The worst LinkedIn posting days are Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
But then again, each brand is different, so it’s best to test and analyze your posting schedule to find the times that work best for your audience.
7. Leveraging LinkedIn Features
LinkedIn has a suite of tools designed to help you create engaging content and connect with your audience:
• Polls: LinkedIn polls are interactive by nature. Even a quick vote or response can boost your post’s visibility because, as established earlier, LinkedIn’s algorithm favors content with strong engagement.
• Native Videos: Video is a strong engagement driver on LinkedIn, and recent benchmarks show native video averages 5.6% engagement, making it one of the most effective formats (Social Insider),
• Newsletters: Regular newsletters create a steady flow of communication and keep your brand or professional identity top-of-mind for your network.
Salazar also recommends “boosting posts,” a LinkedIn feature that amplifies your content to a larger audience.
To get started, define a budget and select objectives for the boost, such as increasing reach or engagement. “What’s recommended is usually to run posts organically for a few days and then picking the ones that performed best to boost further,” Salazar said.
The 5 Don’ts of LinkedIn Posting
LinkedIn has identified types of posts that don’t align with its community standards or best practices.
Avoid these mistakes to maintain a high LinkedIn engagement rate:
1. Promotional or Off-Topic Content
Avoid purely promotional posts or comments that do not add useful insights, news or advice. Share product updates with relevant tips and avoid posting irrelevant promotions or joining LinkedIn engagement pods.
2. Engagement Bait
Don’t ask directly for likes, shares or comments to boost visibility. This includes tagging for attention, reaction-vote polls or using irrelevant hashtags. Instead, focus on sparking meaningful conversations.
3. Unoriginal Content
Resharing is encouraged, but simply reposting someone else’s content without adding your perspective doesn’t add value. Include unique insights to make your reshares engaging.
4. Unconstructive Posts
Avoid content that fosters negativity, mocks others or disrupts discussions. LinkedIn values civil, professional dialogue that encourages healthy debate.
5. Adult or Sensitive Content
Avoid sharing posts with unsettling or sensitive images, such as those related to injuries or death. Even non-graphic content in these areas can make others uncomfortable on a professional platform.
Beyond that, here are other LinkedIn marketing tips on things to avoid when posting or resharing content:
• No Spelling or Grammar Mistakes: Typos and grammar mistakes can make your content look unprofessional. Always proofread to ensure your posts are polished and easy to read. Attention to detail builds trust and credibility with your audience.
• Don’t Use Acronyms You Don’t Understand: Using unfamiliar acronyms can confuse your audience and weaken your message. If you’re unsure about an acronym’s meaning or context, it’s best to avoid it altogether to maintain clarity.
• Don’t Ignore Comments: LinkedIn engagement doesn’t stop after you post. Respond to comments, even if they’re a day or two old. This shows you value feedback, helps build relationships and fosters a sense of community around your content.
• Don’t Use Irrelevant Hashtags: Hashtags that don’t relate to your content attract the wrong audience, which can later increase bounce rates and slow your growth. They can also mislead users and cause them to disengage.
• Don’t Neglect Your Profile: When someone visits your profile through your post, they should immediately see how you can help them, so make sure your profile is complete, up-to-date and professional.
Expand Your Network and Boost Your LinkedIn Reach With Thrive
Need help optimizing your LinkedIn marketing strategy?
Thrive is a trusted LinkedIn marketing agency with over 20 years of experience. Our team can create engaging content to improve your average LinkedIn engagement rate and implement an effective LinkedIn marketing strategy tailored to your goals and audience.
“We position your brand as a ‘thought leader’ within your industry and position your collaborators (including leadership and other employees) as true experts,” Salavar said.
In addition to being a top-rated LinkedIn marketing agency, our social media marketing services also include:
• Social media management
• Brand management
• Social media paid advertising
• Reporting and analytics
• Copywriting
• Video production
Reach decision-makers and grow your LinkedIn engagement rate. Speak to our LinkedIn marketing experts today to get LinkedIn marketing solutions tailored to your needs.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About LinkedIn Visibility and Engagement
WHAT IS A LINKEDIN MARKETING STRATEGY AND WHY DO YOU NEED ONE?
A LinkedIn marketing strategy is a plan for how you show up on the platform with content that supports your goals. A clear LinkedIn marketing strategy keeps your posting focused, helps you stay consistent and makes it easier to improve LinkedIn engagement over time.
HOW DOES THE LINKEDIN ALGORITHM WORK FOR POSTS?
The LinkedIn algorithm is built to surface content that feels useful and relevant to each user. It starts by showing your post to part of your network, then increases visibility when people interact in a meaningful way. This is why strong LinkedIn engagement can lead to better reach.
WHAT TYPES OF LINKEDIN POSTS GET THE MOST ENGAGEMENT?
Posts that perform well usually make it easy for people to react or respond without overthinking. Content that starts conversations, shares timely insight or uses visuals often earns stronger LinkedIn engagement and can lift your LinkedIn engagement rate.
WHAT IS A GOOD LINKEDIN ENGAGEMENT RATE FOR BRANDS?
A good LinkedIn engagement rate depends on your audience, your industry and what you are posting. The best approach is to track your results regularly and compare them to the average LinkedIn engagement rate so you know whether your content is improving.
WHAT IS THE AVERAGE LINKEDIN ENGAGEMENT RATE AND WHY SHOULD YOU TRACK IT?
The average LinkedIn engagement rate varies depending on content format and whether you are posting from a personal profile or a company page. Tracking the average LinkedIn engagement rate gives you a benchmark, but your real goal is steady improvement based on what your audience responds to.
WHAT ARE THE BEST LINKEDIN MARKETING TIPS TO INCREASE VISIBILITY?
The most effective LinkedIn marketing tips focus on creating value and making engagement easy. Share content your audience can learn from, reply to comments and keep your posting consistent so LinkedIn has more signals to work with.
HOW DO VISUALS AFFECT LINKEDIN ENGAGEMENT RATE?
Visual content can make your posts more noticeable in the feed and easier to absorb quickly. When people stop scrolling and interact, it increases LinkedIn engagement and can improve your LinkedIn engagement rate.
HOW MANY HASHTAGS SHOULD YOU USE ON LINKEDIN POSTS?
Hashtags help LinkedIn understand what your post is about so it can show it to the right people. Using a small number of relevant hashtags can improve discoverability without making your post look spammy.
WHAT SHOULD YOU AVOID POSTING ON LINKEDIN?
Avoid posts that feel spammy, overly promotional or designed to game the algorithm. These tend to reduce trust and can hurt performance, which makes it harder to maintain a strong LinkedIn engagement rate.
WHY IS RESPONDING TO COMMENTS IMPORTANT FOR LINKEDIN ENGAGEMENT?
Responding to comments keeps your post active and encourages more conversation. That activity supports stronger LinkedIn engagement, which can help your content reach more people.
WHAT ARE LINKEDIN MARKETING SOLUTIONS FOR BRANDS THAT WANT BETTER RESULTS?
LinkedIn marketing solutions help brands improve consistency and performance without relying on guesswork. This can include stronger content planning, better post optimization and a clearer system for tracking what improves LinkedIn engagement.
WHEN SHOULD YOU WORK WITH A LINKEDIN MARKETING AGENCY?
A LinkedIn marketing agency can help when you need better content performance but do not have the time or resources to manage everything in-house. The right LinkedIn marketing agency can also provide LinkedIn marketing solutions that strengthen your LinkedIn marketing strategy and improve your LinkedIn engagement rate.
HOW CAN THRIVE HELP IMPROVE YOUR LINKEDIN MARKETING STRATEGY?
Thrive supports brands with LinkedIn marketing solutions designed to improve visibility and performance on the platform. As a LinkedIn marketing agency, Thrive can build a LinkedIn marketing strategy that increases LinkedIn engagement and helps raise your LinkedIn engagement rate over time.