Digital leadership on LinkedIn: Guidance for tech companies

Success on social media takes significant effort, commitment, and a strategic, long-term approach. How to effectively navigate the right digital platforms to influence, connect, and drive business outcomes isn’t always clear. We’ve found that digital leadership on LinkedIn to be an important aspect in B2B marketing. Tech companies that integrate the LinkedIn strategy and tactics into their marketing experience positive outcomes within their organization.

What is the strategy? We define digital leadership on LinkedIn as a leader’s ability to effectively hone their authentic and expert voice, expand their sphere of influence, and build relationships to drive impactful results for their organization.

Understanding how to effectively use LinkedIn is key, and focusing on elevating subject matter experts and leaders within your organization presents the opportunity to amplify your brand’s voice, build stronger industry credibility, and drive meaningful engagements that lead to tangible business outcomes.

Whether your goal is improving your personal-professional brand or finding ways to apply it more broadly to your organization’s leaders and experts, this practical guidance will share best practices for digital leadership on LinkedIn.

Why LinkedIn matters

LinkedIn is the go-to hub for professional connections. In many ways, it is the center of our online professional identity. It is also uniquely designed for personal interactions that make it easier to share perspective, build trust, and regularly engage with partners, customers, colleagues, and other experts.

Putting experts in the driver’s seat

How can you support yourself or other leaders to build a strong presence on LinkedIn?

It starts with determining the primary motivation that will shape your personal-professional brand. It requires finding a balance between personal and professional objectives to structure your authentic voice on important topics that both you and your ideal audience care about.

Internal discovery and reflection provide the answers. We’ve outlined six categories of questions to explore:

1. Personal insights and motivations: What are the personal and professional drivers that shape who you are today and how you want to be seen by others?
2. Leadership and influence: What type of leader are you? Give examples of leadership in action.
3. Expertise and ambitions: What would you and others consider yourself an expert in, and what are your goals for the future?
4. Corporate alignment: What have you and your team set out to achieve this year, and how will you be measured?
5. Target audience: Who do you want to engage with, and what are their biggest challenges?
6. Content themes and preferences: What are you passionate about, and what do you want to be known for?

The answers to these questions will help guide your publishing on LinkedIn. We pull this information together into a Digital Leadership Playbook that outlines both the strategy and tactics you’ll employ. Step-by-step details on what to include in the playbook (along with more questions to help flesh out the primary motivation) are covered in this blog post: Build your digital leadership playbook for LinkedIn.

Tactics to extend a leader’s voice and amplify reach

There are five tactics we regularly employ to guide publishing on LinkedIn:

1. Create valuable content and deploy consistently.
2. Incorporate touchpoints with your audience within your content.
3. Experiment with a variety of post types.
4. Engage and converse with your audience as often as possible.
5. Test, learn, and refine your approach as required.

Start small and ramp up – if it makes sense. Aim to stay active with one or two original posts each week. The key here is consistency. Establish a cadence of content that is realistic and achievable.

Craft engaging posts

Even when starting small, there is great content and not-so-great content for LinkedIn. The posts should:

• • Share a perspective and one idea only.
  • Make each topic feel personalized and unique.
  • Be engaging and clear.

Here’s how you can craft posts that stand out with some LinkedIn algorithm insights from Just Connecting’s most recent research that show the impact:

Identify your message

Understand the core message you want to convey and its relevance to your audience. Stick to one idea or story, really focused on sharing a point of view.

Personalize your tone

Use your unique voice to make the content relatable and conversational. Be clear, concise, and free from overly promotional language or jargon.

Hook the reader and make it approachable

Begin with a strong hook that compels readers to “see more” and ensure there are clear breaks in text to make it easy to scan, avoiding large hard-to-read chunks of text. The first two or three sentences are critical. A strong start has the potential to increase reader retention by 30%.

Start a dialogue or encourage interaction

Ask the audience to share their thoughts on the topic and be sure your call to action is clear. Ending a post with a question can lead to an increase in engagement by 20–40%.

Use @mentions strategically

Tag colleagues or partners using the @ sign to encourage engagement. Limit mentions to three per post to avoid being marked as spam. Tagging up to four relevant profiles in your posts can increase your reach by up to 48%. It’s important to be strategic when tagging because a lack of engagement from those tagged directly can have a negative impact on organic reach, reducing growth potential by 25%.

Use relevant hashtags

Add 3–5 relevant hashtags in your posts. While research indicates a lesser impact of hashtags on LinkedIn, adding four can provide a 9% increase in reach.

Pitfalls to avoid

When writing your post, here are some common pitfalls to avoid:

• • Too much preamble
  • First line falls flat
  • No point of view or personalization
  • Reliance on a link rather than the idea
  • Reads like a corporate infomercial

Bring content variety to the audience

Combining different post formats can keep your audience engaged. Typical LinkedIn post formats include:

• • Text-only posts
  • Text post with an image
  • Video posts
  • Document (PDF) posts
  • External links in posts

You’ll want to include a variety, but also align content type to post format and focus on the post types that LinkedIn favours.

Here are three examples that the algorithm research notes that match what we’ve seen in our experience:

1. 1. Stories are best served by text-only or text-with-image posts.
   2. Educational content belongs in a text-only or document style post.
   3. Event-based content works well with video or text with an image.

Ultimately, LinkedIn wants to keep users on the site. That’s why text-only and text-with-image posts continue to be strong performers. It’s easy to default to external links, but it’s important to use them only where necessary to encourage the desired outcome (think: registration and third-party industry content).

It’s important to remember that LinkedIn is not going to reward link-out posts with broader organic visibility. For effective digital leadership, prioritize perspective-based, educational, and conversation-starting posts over external links.

Maximize the impact

To be rewarded on LinkedIn, engagement is everything. This is especially true when it comes to comments.

The research shows a typical post will be seen by:

• • 10–15% of connections
  • 25–30% of followers
  • Up to 40% of second- and third-degree connections

Here are a few steps, backed by algorithmic insights, that you can take to increase engagement and widen the reach of your posts:

1. 1. Coordinate with colleagues and encourage them to interact with the post (ideally through a comment that extends the conversation and adds their own perspective). To ensure this “social scrum” occurs within the first hour for maximum boost, use a calendar invite that links to the published post.
   2. Address comments on the post promptly, ideally within the first hour they’re received. This can lead to a 40% increase in post growth.
   3. Consider initiating conversation with a few self-published comments. Tag others directly and ask for their thoughts. Tagging in the comments will not have a negative impact on reach (like it can when individuals or companies are tagged directly in the post).
   4. Spend time after the post publishes interacting (like and/or comment) with posts from connections. This could increase the reach of the post by 15%.

Engagement that occurs on the first day will either extend reach into a third day or diminish it all together.

Most importantly: don’t post and ghost.

Even if the ideal timeframes can’t be met, responding thoughtfully to those that comment is key – and in many ways the purpose of LinkedIn.

Overcome objections

It’s not uncommon to come up against objections from leaders and experts to publishing on LinkedIn. Even if you’re considering this for your own personal-professional brand, you may have some apprehension as well.

These are some common objections we hear and approaches to address concerns.

Objection 1: “I’m not sure what to post or if my content will add value. I don’t want to spam my network.”

Answer: LinkedIn is a professional platform where users seek out thoughtful, value-driven content. 91% of executives rate LinkedIn as their first choice for professionally relevant content. Digital leadership on LinkedIn as a strategy prioritizes quality over quantity. To add value, start with a personal-professional brand playbook that outlines exactly what to post and helps shape an authentic voice. You’ll have greater confidence if you’ve outlined how you want to show up online. If you prioritize quality content on topics that that both you and your network care about, it is unlikely to be received as spam.

Objection 2: “I don’t have time to create content for LinkedIn.”

Answer: Creating content does take time, but that is time invested in a long-term strategy with substantial rewards – both for you and for your organization. If your primary motivation and objectives align with establishing digital leadership on LinkedIn, making time is necessary. There are ways to lessen the time burden:

• • Use a playbook to streamline ideation and the essence of who you are, ensuring all team members involved are aligned.
  • Leverage GenAI tools to shorten writing cycles and apply the best practices from this blog to personalize your content.
  • Pre-book time to get feedback and make revisions.
  • If there’s truly no time for original content creation, consider the strategic value of simply commenting on others’ posts.

Objective 3: “I’m concerned about saying the wrong thing and increasing risk to my personal or company’s reputation.”

Answer: While it’s natural to be cautious, being active on LinkedIn can enhance your reputation when done thoughtfully. 62% of decision makers say they look for an informative LinkedIn profile before considering working with a company. By controlling your narrative and sharing well-considered content, you can position yourself and your company as experts, building trust with potential clients and partners. A good rule of thumb: stay away from controversial topics and stay on top of current events.

Objection 4: “I’m worried about sharing too much of our IP for free.”

Answer: LinkedIn content doesn’t need to disclose sensitive information. You can focus on sharing broader industry insights, thought leadership, and your perspectives on trends without revealing confidential strategies. 74% of buyers choose to work with the sales representatives that are first to add value and insight during the buying process. By contributing useful, non-sensitive information, you establish your expertise, educate, and build trust that will benefit the selling process. Consider the philosophy: “give away the best and sell the rest.”

Objection 5: “I’m concerned about mixing personal and corporate branding on my LinkedIn profile.”

Answer: Blending personal and corporate branding on LinkedIn can actually be a powerful strategy. LinkedIn users are increasingly seeking authentic connections, and a personal profile allows you to humanize your personal-professional brand. 82% of consumers are more likely to trust a company whose leadership team is active on social media. It’s important to find balance and alignment with your corporate objectives. The goal of publishing on LinkedIn is to share your point of view and expertise as it aligns to your area of business. Your professional identity should come first, your corporate affiliation second. The purpose of strengthening your LinkedIn presence is not to be a corporate spokesperson.

Objection 6: “I don’t see how publishing on LinkedIn directly impacts sales.”

Answer: While it might not be immediately obvious, LinkedIn can significantly influence the sales process. LinkedIn reports that 50% of B2B buyers use LinkedIn when making purchasing decisions. Publishing content on LinkedIn helps you stay top of mind with potential clients and positions you as a thought leader, which can lead to more direct inquiries and warmer leads. By consistently publishing valuable content, you can build relationships that ultimately translate into sales.

More LinkedIn help

We share a lot of content about Digital leadership on LinkedIn. If you’re looking for more practical guidance, here are some additional resources:

1. Take LinkedIn from “me” to “we” with a team-based approach
2. Grow, engage, and measure your LinkedIn relationships
3. Measure the data that matters and the LinkedIn algorithm
4. Steps to build a Digital Leadership playbook
5. Personal branding eBook
6. Create videos that support your personal brand
7. Simple ways to enhance your LinkedIn profile
8. Tips for a strong LinkedIn profile picture

Is the path to successful navigation and use of LinkedIn still not clear cut? We can help you pull it all together and implement a long-term digital leadership strategy. Get in touch and connect with myself and Gail Mercer-MacKay on LinkedIn  – a 15-minute chat may have the answers you’re looking for.