How to write a LinkedIn post

LinkedIn has evolved a house style so recognisable it has become a joke: one-sentence paragraphs, a manufactured revelation, a hard-won lesson, "Agree?". It is parodied constantly and it is still used constantly, because parts of it genuinely work on this platform. The trick is to take the parts that are about readability and leave the parts that are about performance.

How the platform shapes the writing

Two mechanics drive almost every stylistic convention you see.

The truncation point. Only the first two or three lines show before "…see more". Everything depends on those lines. A post that opens with "I'm delighted to announce that after much consideration" has spent its entire visible allocation on nothing.

Reading on a phone, mid-scroll. Dense paragraphs are skipped. This is why short paragraphs and line breaks work — not as a growth hack, but because a wall of text on a small screen is genuinely hard.

That is the whole of it. Everything else attributed to the algorithm is folklore.

The shape

Hook, one or two lines. Specific and concrete. A number, a claim, an admission, a moment. "We lost our biggest client on a Tuesday" earns the click. "Reflections on client management" does not.

Context, briefly. What was happening. Two or three lines.

The substance. What you did, what happened, what you noticed. This is the part most posts skip, and it is the only part with value.

What you took from it. One idea, not five. Concrete enough to disagree with.

An invitation, if you have a real one. A genuine question you actually want answered. "Thoughts?" is not a question.

Aim for 150 to 300 words. The limit is 3,000 characters and almost nothing benefits from using them.

Writing it so it does not sound like everyone else

Be specific about the thing. Numbers, names of tools, what it cost, how long it took. Specificity is what makes a post readable and it is the first casualty of writing for reach.

Do not manufacture a lesson. The tell of a bad LinkedIn post is a small event bent into a large moral. If the thing you learned was small, say so — small and true beats large and invented every time.

Cut the throat-clearing. "I'm humbled and honoured to share", "Excited to announce", "I wanted to take a moment". These are visible-preview real estate spent on nothing.

Write about your work, not about your brand. The posts that hold up are people explaining something they actually do.

Allow yourself to be uncertain. Nearly every post on the platform is written by someone who has it all figured out. Not being that person is a differentiator.

Formatting

Short paragraphs, one to three lines each, with a blank line between. No walls of text, but not one-line-per-sentence either — that reads as a poem and is now heavily mocked. Emoji sparingly if at all; they suit some industries and undercut you in others. Three to five relevant hashtags at the end, or none. Never bury the point below the fold.

Common mistakes

Announcing rather than telling. Vague-posting about a conflict with an unnamed colleague. Reposting a well-known anecdote as if it happened to you. Ending with an engagement-bait question. Tagging people who are not involved. Writing for recruiters instead of for the people who do your job. Posting daily with nothing to say.

Practical tips

• Write the hook last, once you know what the post is actually about.
• Read the first three lines alone. If they do not earn a click, rewrite them.
• Run it through BRYME's cliché detector — this platform has its own dialect of cliché and it is worth seeing yours.
• If you would not say the sentence to a colleague at lunch, do not post it.
• One post a week with something in it beats five without.