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Any businessperson who thinks LinkedIn is a waste of time, think again.  Now owned by Microsoft, LinkedIn generated $8.05 Billion in revenue in 2020.  The company, based in Sunnyvale, CA, employs over 16,000 people and has over 756 million users worldwide, including 196 million in North America, 198 Million in Europe, 206 Million in Asia/Pacific and another 114 Million in Latin America.  Of those, about 310 million are active monthly users.  It is not only the platform where professionals go to interact and network, it features a huge job board with over 15 million open jobs. 

Those who, once upon a time might have ignored or looked down on social media sites as a fad or ridiculous waste of time, have realized that LinkedIn adds real business value.  After all, there are 57 million companies listed on LinkedIn and 80% of LI users drive business decisions.  There are also over 10,000 B2B software product pages on LinkedIn.  If a business has a need or a problem, they are likely to find a solution on LinkedIn.  And 80% of all B2B leads in the U.S. are generated from LinkedIn.  The platform is invaluable… when leveraged properly.

Using LinkedIn Properly

But, while LinkedIn can be incredibly useful and effective, it must be used correctly in order to get the most use out of it.  Most people, however, have a rudimentary understanding of what LinkedIn offers, what the site allows users to do, and how to function on the site.  And LinkedIn is constantly changing.  For example, did you know LinkedIn now offers a “Service Page”?  You can have up to 500 characters in this page.  Service Pages have been rolling out since May 2021.  LinkedIn Service Pages are dedicated landing pages that showcase your services and business at no cost.  Potential clients can contact you for free regardless of connection degree.

Even people who dedicate themselves to learning all they can about LinkedIn may not know it all.  But surely no single article can ever do justice to explaining how to use LinkedIn strategically.  There are actually countless webinars that break down how to use LinkedIn both in practical and strategic terms.  But here are some basic ways employers and employees can use LI to their benefit:

For Companies

1. Communicate the company’s brand
2. Post job openings
3. Do research to determine how your company’s job openings and salaries compare to others
4. Find candidates to recruit
5. Find solutions to business problems
6. Keep up with the issues facing your industry and/or customers
7. Expand your network and connections
8. Connect with prospective clients in a less sales-driven way

For Professionals

1. Build your personal brand
2. Demonstrate your knowledge as a subject-matter expert
3. Find job openings
4. Do research to determine how much your skills/education/experience are worth
5. Research employers
6. Get found by recruiters and employers
7. Expand your network and connections

Getting Active on LinkedIn

There are, of course, still some naysayers who think commenting, and engaging on LinkedIn is a waste of time.  Consider this.  Six out of 10 LI users actively look for industry insights on LI, and 280 billion feed updates are viewed annually.  In fact, there was a 55% increase in conversations on LinkedIn in 2020 and a 60% increase in content creation, probably because of Covid and the rise of remote work.  And LinkedIn Livestreams increased by 437% last year.  For many, LinkedIn became the new place for professionals to connect and engage with others.  And connecting with a decision-maker through LI is a much more natural, relaxed and unguarded way to start a conversation than cold-calling.

As for content, there are 2 million active publishers on LI and there are 1 million LI members publishing content weekly.   Employees are 14x more likely to share content from their employers than any other type of content on LI.  So an army of active LI employees can help leverage content that anyone in a company posts.  Also, LI makes up more than half of all social traffic to B2B websites and blogs and 92% of B2B marketers include LI in their digital marketing mix.   Most importantly, 45% of content readers on LI are part of upper management of companies.

When deciding what to post, long-form content posts (1,900 words or more) perform better on LI than short posts.  Also, posts with images get 2x higher engagement, and LinkedIn users are 20x more likely to re-share a video post over a written post.

For those who are thinking of either building or updating their page, generating posts, publishing articles, or starting a group on LI, it is important to know the basic character limits (not word limits… LinkedIn counts characters, which includes all spaces, letters, numbers, symbols and emojis) and image size limits on the platform.   This information changes over time.  What was valid in 2020 may have changed.  The information provided here was valid as of June 2021.

PRACTICAL INFO FOR USING LINKEDIN IN 2021

Download this article and save it as a reference whenever you’re going to use LI.

PROFILE – BASIC INFO

First Name: 20

Last Name: 40

Professional Headline (Desktop): 220

Professional Headline (Mobile): 240

Vanity URL: 29

IM (Instant Message): 25

Address: 1000

Website Anchor Text: 30

Website URL: 256

Phone number: 25

PROFILE SECTIONS

About (Previously called Summary): 2,600

Experience Position Title: 100

Experience Position Description: 2000

Skills (Per Skill): 80 (up to 50 skills total with top three pinned to appear at the top)

Publication Title: 250

Publication Description: 2,000

Co-Author Names:  up to 50 co-authors to a publication

CONTENT MARKETING

Profile Status Update / Post:  3000 (About 200 characters are readable before click to see more)

Comment: 1250

Company Page Status Update: 700

Note:  For a profile status update, there is no way to exceed the 3000 character limit. The only workaround is to continue in the comments of that specific post. Example: Post: 3000 characters, 1st comment: 1250 maximum characters.

Mentions In a Status Update: 40 (This is known as “tagging” someone. You can tag individual and company pages. When you do a mention, their profile name will be clickable.)

Publisher (Article) Post Headline: 100

Publisher (Article) Post Body Text: 110,000

Image or Photo Credit (Under Article Image): 250

GROUPS

Title: 200

Body (Thread / Conversation): 2,000

Comments: 1,250

Subject: 2,000

OTHER

Recommendation: 3,000

Sending an Invite to Connect (aka “Add a Note” / Include a personal message): 300

COMPANY PAGE

Name: 100

About Us: 2000

Status Update: 700

SHOWCASE PAGE (an extension of your Company Page)

Name: 100

Description: 200

CAREER PAGE

Page Name: 50

Company Leaders Headline: 150

Company Leaders Description: 150

Employee Testimonial: 400

Custom Module Title: 150

Custom Module Body: 500

Custom Module URL Label: 70

LINKEDIN IMAGE SIZES

Max file size 8MB and file type must be PNG, JPEG, or GIF

LinkedIn profile cover photo: 1584 wide by 396 high. This is 4:1 proportion.

LinkedIn profile picture: Per LI, upload any size between 400 x 400 pixels and 20,000 x 20,000 pixels

LinkedIn blog post link shares: 1200 x 627 pixels

LinkedIn photo share: 1200 x 1200 square looks best on desktop, 1200 x 627 on mobile**

LinkedIn Page cover photo size: 1,128 x 191 pixels

LinkedIn logo size: 300 x 300 square**

* NOTE:  57% of LI’s total traffic comes from mobile devices, and 80% of all engagement on content comes from mobile devices.  So when deciding on how to size photos, posting images sized for mobile makes the most sense.

**NOTE:  For companies thinking about rebranding, horizontal logos are not allowed on LI anymore.  Every company should have a square version of their logo to use on LI.

LinkedIn Pages are available on multiple devices and screen sizes.

TAB	MODULE	MINIMUM IMAGE SIZE	RECOMMENDED IMAGE SIZE
Page	Logo Image	300 (w) x 300 (h) pixels	300 (w) x 300 (h) pixels
Page	Cover Image	1128 (w) x 191 (h) pixels	1128 (w) x 191 (h) pixels
Life	Main Image	1128 (w) x 376 (h) pixels	1128 (w) x 376 (h) pixels
Life	Custom Modules	502 (w) x 282 (h) pixels	502 (w) x 282 (h) pixels
Life	Company Photos	264 (w) x 176 (h) pixels	900 (w) x 600 (h) pixels

Note: Some fields may also have a minimum character limit required.

Armed with this information, you are ready to make the most of LI for your business.  Go for it!

Quote of the Week

”
LinkedIn is very good for browsing relationships and hooking into your contacts’ networks. It re-connected me with high-level execs I hadn’t talked to for some time, who then helped me close various deals.”Danah Boyd

© 2021, Keren Peters-Atkinson. All rights reserved.