You’ve already seen many content guides telling you to format your LinkedIn posts properly. They talk about paragraphs, bullet points, etc., but why does any of that matter? Let’s explore that question today.
What is formatting on LinkedIn?
Formatting a LinkedIn post means manipulating the text in a way that makes it maximally suited to LinkedIn’s specifications for quality content. What does LinkedIn consider quality content?
On LinkedIn, content is considered high-quality if:
- it adds value,
- is easy to consume, and
- gets a lot of traffic.
Proper formatting gets you a long way toward meeting the latter two requirements.
First, think about making your content easy to consume. You want to make it clear and well-organized. This means dividing it into logical parts and putting them in an order that flows naturally.
You also want to break the text down into smaller chunks. Your paragraphs should be no more than three or four lines long. The modern-day Internet user has a short attention span. If faced with a big block of text, people will get bored quickly and navigate away.
Then there’s the matter of attracting traffic. It starts with your style of writing and continues with formatting. LinkedIn natively displays only the first few lines of a post, and then there’s the “See more” button.
You have to write a hook that’s attractive enough to make readers click the “See more”. Then you have to write and format the rest to appeal to your audience, keep them reading to the end, and make them want to share your content. This brings us to our next point.
What kinds of formatting on LinkedIn can you use?
There are a few, but we can categorize them as text styles, list styles, and inserting symbols. Let’s take a look at each in turn.
First off, text styles include bold, italicized, and otherwise emphasized text. This is an excellent tool for making key points stand out. If you have numbers or stats in your post, make them bold to grab the maximum attention. This is a great way to make your audience remember your standout achievements and contributions.
If your text includes quotes or tweetable phrases, italicize them to make them more noticeable. Italics are often used in quoting, with or without quotation marks. It’s an obvious clue to your audience that this is something important. Apply italics to key statements, standout testimonials, predictions, valuable lessons, and the like.
Next, lists can be either numbered or bulleted. Numbered lists are straightforward: each list item is preceded by a digit in successive order. Bulleted lists are far more versatile, so it pays to spend some time learning how to add bullet points in LinkedIn. Bullets can be anything from dashes and dots, through triangles, to colorful icons in different styles, which brings us to our next point.
Symbols in LinkedIn posts can be used as bullets for lists, or on their own in the text. They are usually inserted as a way to add emotion and character. Loosely, they can be split into font symbols and emojis. We can further divide those into:
- Geometric shapes (squares, triangles, framed numbers)
- Arrows and checkmarks
- Emoji categories (stars, hand gestures, smileys, etc.)
When you format your LinkedIn post, choose the most appropriate stylization for your content. Like we mentioned, bold text is for strong emphasis, italicized lines stand out as quotes, and emojis in your LinkedIn content add emotions and overall character.
What effects does formatting LinkedIn posts have?
The short answer is it has three: attract traffic, increase your reach, and boost your reputation as a LinkedIn content creator. When your posts are well-formatted and easy to consume, they appeal both to your audience and LinkedIn’s algorithm. The platform itself will promote you in feeds.
This results in your content reaching more people. You win new followers and build your reputation. More people will acknowledge you as an expert in the field you post in, and you will become recognized as someone who adds value to the whole LinkedIn community.
Formatting LinkedIn posts matters because it makes or breaks your content quality. Take advantage of bullets, numberings, symbols, and paragraph organization to captivate your audience’s attention. Make your posts easy to consume, and they’ll get much more traffic. Good formatting directly helps your reach and reputation on Linkedin.