To make a post on LinkedIn, click "Start a post" at the top of your home feed (or tap Post in the mobile app), write your text, add an image or document if you want, choose who can see it, and click Post. To write a good LinkedIn post, start from an idea only you could write, add your own story or take, put a first line above the "see more" fold that earns the click, and improve from what your own posts teach you.
Making a post on LinkedIn takes about thirty seconds once you know where the buttons are. On desktop, go to your home feed and click "Start a post" at the top. On the mobile app, tap the Post button in the bottom bar. Write, choose who can see it, and hit Post.
That's the mechanics. The part people actually struggle with is writing a LinkedIn post that someone stops to read. I've written a lot of them over the past year, enough to pass 4 million impressions in under a year, and the process that works for me has three pieces: an idea that's actually mine, a first line built for the fold, and iteration on what my own audience responds to.
Below is the full walkthrough, from the button to the habit.
How to make a post on LinkedIn, step by step
If you've never posted before, here's the whole flow. LinkedIn moves its buttons around every so often, so the labels might be slightly different by the time you read this.
On desktop:
- Open linkedin.com and go to your home feed.
- Click the "Start a post" box at the top of the feed. A composer window opens.
- Write your text. You get up to 3,000 characters.
- To add a photo, video or document, use the icons at the bottom of the composer.
- Check who can see it. Clicking your name at the top of the composer lets you choose between anyone on LinkedIn and your connections only.
- Click Post. If you want to publish later, the clock icon next to the Post button lets you schedule it.
On the mobile app:
- Tap the Post button (the plus icon) in the bottom bar.
- Write your text, add media if you want, and check the visibility setting at the top.
- Tap Post.
That answers "how do I post on LinkedIn." Everything after this is about the harder question: how to write a good LinkedIn post.
Step 1: Pick an idea only you could write
Most bad LinkedIn posts fail before the first word is typed. The idea itself is borrowed.
Here's the test I use. If you write someone else's idea in your own words, you didn't do anything new. You paraphrased. Tone doesn't fix that. A lot of AI tools promise to write "in your tone," and tone is the least important part. What matters is whether the post contains something the reader couldn't get anywhere else.
That something is what I call your own spice. It usually comes in one of four forms:
| Your spice | What it looks like | Example opening (fill in yours) |
|---|---|---|
| Your interpretation | A known idea, read through your experience | "Everyone quotes this advice. Here's where it broke for us." |
| A contrarian take | You disagree with the consensus, with a reason | "The standard advice on [topic] is wrong for companies like ours." |
| A useful tip | Something you actually do that works | "I put a line break right after the promise word. Here's why." |
| One true story | Something that happened to you, with details | "A customer said one sentence on a call last week that changed our roadmap." |
You don't need all four. One is enough. If you can't find any of the four in your draft, it isn't ready, no matter how well it's written.
Where do these come from? From your day. A call where a customer said something surprising. A decision you argued about with your co-founder. A mistake you made last quarter. The best raw material I have comes from things I've lived through, which is why I capture them as they happen instead of trying to invent them on Monday morning. If you want a list of starting points, I wrote up 20 ideas for what to post on LinkedIn.
Step 2: Don't copy viral posts
There's a whole category of software that promises to find great content from top creators and rewrite it for you. It was a hit for them, so it'll be a hit for you. I think that's nonsense, for two reasons.
First, top creators get pushed by a different mechanism. The algorithm shows their posts to a lot of people because they're already at the top. They have a big audience that already engages with them. Their post working says a lot about their position and less about the post. Imitating it won't give you their distribution.
Second, a copy has no reason to exist. If you make a copy of an Eminem song, I'll just go listen to Eminem. If you make an original variation on rap, you always have room, even if the audience is small. LinkedIn works the same way. Everyone has room for a unique voice, even in a niche. Nobody has room for a second version of someone else's post.
Some tools look for viral posts from unknown creators, which is a better signal because those posts worked without a big audience behind them. That's a reasonable place to look for formats that land. It still doesn't give you your voice. You have to add the spice.
Step 3: Write the first two lines for the "see more" fold
On LinkedIn, only the first few lines of your post show in the feed. On desktop that's roughly the first 210 characters, and on mobile it's often less. Then comes "...see more." Everything below the fold is invisible until someone clicks.
So the first two lines have one job: get the click.
I treat this as a layout decision as much as a writing one. In one post, I wrote a line promising a playbook, then deliberately added one or two line breaks after the word "playbook," so the explanation of the playbook landed below the fold. You had to click "see more" to get it. In my experience, that click is one of the strongest signals you can send LinkedIn that a post is worth showing to more people, and it keeps people reading longer.
A few rules that help:
- Make a promise in line one. A result, a surprising claim, a story that's already started.
- Withhold the payoff. Name the thing, then put the explanation below the fold.
- Use white space on purpose. A line break is a tool. Place it where you want the reader to click.
- Skip the warm-up. "I've been thinking a lot about..." wastes the most valuable space you have.
Before you post, paste the draft into the post preview tool to see exactly where the fold cuts on desktop and mobile. If you're stuck on the opening, the hook generator gives you several versions to react to.
Step 4: Write the body like you talk
Once the reader clicks, deliver what the first line promised, fast.
- One idea per post. If you have two ideas, you have two posts.
- Short paragraphs. One to three lines each. People read LinkedIn on their phones.
- Concrete over abstract. A number, a name of a tool, what you actually did on Tuesday. Specifics are what make a post sound like a person.
- Say what you think. Hedged posts rarely get reactions. I wrote a whole post on this: say the damn thing.
- End with something real. A question you actually want answered, or the one-line takeaway. Skip the generic "Thoughts?"
Length matters less than people think. A post can be five lines or thirty. It needs to be as long as the idea and no longer.
If you draft with AI, the same rules apply, and there's one extra check: does the draft contain your spice, or did the AI fill the gap with generic filler? I wrote about why AI posts sound like AI, and it's almost always because the raw material was missing.
Step 5: Publish, then iterate on what works for you
There are two principles I keep coming back to with content. The first is consistency. The second is iteration.
Consistency without iteration gets you stuck. You show up every week and you don't improve, because you're not learning anything from each post. So after every post, I look at what happened. Which posts got people to click "see more"? Which ones got comments from the people I actually want to reach? Which topics flopped?
The key is to iterate on what works for you, instead of what works for top creators. Their results come from a different mechanism, as above. Your own posts are the only data that describes your audience.
A simple loop:
- Post consistently. Pick a rhythm you can keep. For most founders starting out, a few times a week.
- Note one thing after each post. What worked, what didn't, what surprised you.
- Double down on the pattern. When a kind of post works, write more in that direction, from a new angle.
- Keep one slot for something new. Keep testing formats and topics so you keep learning.
This is also how I think about tools. The useful thing a system can do is learn from your posts over time, take your original idea, and recreate the kind of content that has already worked for you. That's the job I built Liftli to do. Whatever you use, the loop is the part that makes you better.
A checklist before you hit Post
Run through this every time. It takes a minute.
- Does the post contain my interpretation, a contrarian take, a useful tip or a true story?
- Would it still make sense if someone else had written it? (If yes, add more of you.)
- Does the first line make a promise, and is the payoff below the fold?
- Is it one idea?
- Are there any paragraphs longer than three lines?
- Did I say what I think, plainly?
- Is the spacing clean? (Text pasted from Google Docs often breaks. The line break fixer cleans it up.)
- Is it posting to the right audience?
If you can answer all of these, click Post, and then go reply to the first people who comment.