Easy ways to share content on LinkedIn

You created your LinkedIn profile, made connections and engaged on posts seen on your newsfeed. What is the next step you should take? Sharing and making great content.

Sharing relevant content on LinkedIn is an incredibly important part to your professional brand building and presence – it shows your focus, passion and beliefs. By building your personal brand, people gain a deeper understanding of who you are as a person even if you haven’t met.

Learning how to post on your newsfeed is a natural first step into content sharing and brand building on LinkedIn.

Benefits of sharing and posting LinkedIn content

If you have been part of LinkedIn for an extended period of time, you have most likely seen and interacted with your feed. Your LinkedIn feed is your main source of information – you can see updates from your connections, companies you follow and discover great content as well.

Posting to your feed offers several benefits:

• Helps your profile raise higher in LinkedIn searches (Forbes)
• Stay in the minds of your connections
• The ability to share content to a specific group of people – target specific information to people that you want to be able to hear it!

Steps for how to post to LinkedIn

Posting content to update your profile on LinkedIn whether it be sharing an article, photo or sharing an update is a straightforward process.

These are some of the steps to follow:

1. Visit your LinkedIn home page. You should be redirected to your newsfeed.

2. On the top of the screen, there is a textbox with the wording “Share an article, photo, or update.” Click on this box.

3. Get ready to post (an update, photo or article):

• Update – An update is similar to a Facebook status where you can write about information you would like to share with your connections. To share an update, begin to write the message you would like to share. You are sharing URLs to website in the post as well as tagging businesses and your connections. To tag people or companies in your post, use the @ symbol (so for example, I would type @John if I would want to tag my connection John Smith in a post.)
• Article – to share an article in this section, just copy and paste the URL of the webpage and clear out the link. In most cases, a picture of the article should appear. Write some information or thoughts on the article.
• Image – To share an image, click on the image button with the camera located on the screen. Upload a picture from your phone or computer and write an update with the picture to provide additional background.

4. Read over and proof your content - Know that once you post the content, you won’t be able to edit your content, so watch for any misspellings or other grammatical issues.

5. Press Post – Once you press post, your article will be shared with your connections!

Congratulations, you just posted content to LinkedIn!

Examples of content to share

Since we just covered how to share an update, you may want some ideas of what type of content to share with your connections.

Here are some ideas:

• For pictures. Pictures of professional or non-profit community events. This would include professional events and causes you are passionate about in your community and are involved with.
• For articles. Share business-related articles and some trending news (to your discretion). Sources like Forbes, Inc., Wired and other business publications are great for current online content.
• For updates. Write about professional milestones in your life, events you would like to share with your connections and your perspective.

Final thoughts

Posting to your newsfeed offers great opportunity to connect with people virtually on a professional level. While it may take some time to find your content-sharing niche, the results are well worth it!