Leveling Up: Embrace Long-Form on LinkedIn

Hey LinkedIn Fam,

Let's Discover why savvy professionals are embracing long-form content on LinkedIn:

🔑 More value in 500+ characters than 100

📝 Easier writing for everyone

⏱ Keep your audience hooked and LinkedIn happy

But here's the catch: Many miss the mark despite their best efforts.

Unravel the magic behind LinkedIn's winning formula with actionable tips and real examples for your posts.

🔍 Let's dig deep and make your content shine! 💫

Remember: User > Algo

Too many people prioritize the LinkedIn algorithm when they write their posts. But that's the wrong way to go about it. The algo might be imperfect and get tricked, but its goal is to maximize the time users spend on LinkedIn, which in the end means having good content that satisfies users.

By putting your reader and making sure you deliver value, your content strategy will become stronger when facing algorithm updates, and your personal brand will grow stronger leading to better relationships and opportunities.

1️⃣ The hook

Surely what you want to say in your post is interesting. And surely you want that to reach as many people as possible. The best way to achieve that is to start by writing a good hook.

Generally speaking, the hook is whatever comes before the “see more” button. Whatever is displayed natively in the LinkedIn feed without any prior interaction from the user. Otherwise known as a “scroll stopper”.

** How?

• Use numbers
• Show proof of work (I read/analyzed/signed/created)
• Emphasize the benefit (“how to achieve X…”)
• Emphasize the pain point ("…without having to Y.")
• Suggest originality ("underrated", “ignored”, “underappreciated”, “lesser known”)
• Add just a little controversy ("most people do X and are wrong")

** Here are a few examples you can use:

• 3 underrated tips to achieve X without having to Y
• I spent X hours reading through Y so you don't have to. The 3 takeaways 👇
• Most people fail at X because of these 3 things:

But everything isn't about the hook and getting the user to hit that “see more” button.

A disappointed user is much worse than one who just wasn't interested. Angry users close the LinkedIn tab or app, which is something LinkedIn really doesn't like. And likely it's also someone you'll lose forever because trust will be hard to rebuild.

So if you have a great hook but can't follow through with good “meat”, then your long-form post will hurt you more than it will serve you.

2️⃣ What constitutes good content after the hook?

You want 2 things in your content: form and substance.

The substance you can get from digging into your own personal experiences, points of view, knowledge, and research. What's even more effective is identifying the pains that your audience is facing and what you can teach them to help solve their problem.

But form is the key ingredient that will make or break the performance of your post.

Remember you're not writing a book. You're not even writing a Word doc. This is still social media and though it may not seem like it on LinkedIn, people are here to be entertained.

So you need to catch the user's attention throughout the entire post, not just through the hook.

** Here are a few copywriting tips to achieve that:

• Shorten your sentences
• Space out your copy/skip lines
• Use “you” instead of “I" ("how you can" > “how I achieved”)
• Think of your post as a conversation, as if it wasn't written but spoken.

3️⃣ End on a high note

If your readers go through the trouble of consuming your entire post, it's likely they found what they were looking for value and entertainment. So now you need to encourage them to take action.

And there are 2 reasons why you would want to end your post with a call to action:

• To take them to the logical next step which will strengthen their relationship with you: following you, subscribing to your newsletters, getting notified of your next post, sending you a DM, etc.
• Because another action taken by the user will send another positive signal to LinkedIn (in addition to having already clicked on “see more” and spent 30 seconds reading your post).

** Here are a few actions your audience could take after reading the post:

• Follow you ❤️
• Turn on notifications for your next posts 🛎
• Like or reply to the post
• Visit your profile
• Read a “full version” that's in the first comment

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