One way to rediscover writing in English is through professional social networks. Transmit our knowledge or our ideas on a social network like LinkedIn by writing about ourselves, our projects or work experiences.
Why write for LinkedIn in English?
Conveying your ideas and making them public on LinkedIn will allow you to show yourself as a professional. Attract recruiters, partners, clients or job opportunities. There are many reasons to write posts in English on this social network:
- Growing your professional career
- Get seen by recruiters or other professionals
- Part of your personal brand
LinkedIn: posts vs. articles
In a professional social network like LinkedIn, we have two writing options: posts or articles. Let's see when to use each one and what characteristics they have when it comes to writing.
Posts:- Until 1,300 characters: posts are short and fast reading- Quick way to connect: posts are an easy way to connect with people- Easily shareable: it is very easy to share an interesting post
Articles:- Until 125,000 characters: articles can be longer rather than posts- Showcase in-depth knowledge: more length means more opportunities to show your experience in that topic- Shareable outside LinkedIn: an article is easy to share through another social network or website
Useful tips for writing on LinkedIn
Every text you write can be optimized by following a series of useful tips to make your content more interesting for the reader:
- Be prepared to show emotion: we are not robots, do not be afraid to show emotions, feeling, and thought in your texts
- Write for busy individuals: people are very busy, write posts or articles as short as you can
- Write for the reader, not yourself: use more "you" instead of "I" in each text
- Positive content = articles: articles are more recommended for positive to motivate your reader to express your emotions and knowledge
- Serious content = posts: posts are more recommended expressing opinions, interact with your audience in the comments section finding fast reactions and starting conversations
You may be wondering now what kind of language to use in the posts or articles you write. LinkedIn is a social network of ordinary people like you or me. Writing informally is fine. We are not writing an academic essay where it is highly recommended to write formally.
One of your great writing skills will be storytelling. You know how to tell stories or facts in a way that grabs the reader and keeps them reading.
You can explore the Storytelling for Personal Branding Course to learn about this important writing skill and take your writing to another level.
Content Structure
Let's talk about how to structure a post or article in a way that makes it more enjoyable and faster for the reader to read.
- Titles that stop people scrolling: several paragraphs without a title in the middle are not a good idea, divide your text in sections with independent titles.
- Bullet points are your best friends: as we said, people are busy and bullets or lists of items are easy and fast to read.
You can use different structures to narrate an article:
- Structure Problem - Solutions: explain the problem, and immediately the solution
- Structure Advantages - Disadvantages: compare a thing with advantages and disadvantages
- Structure Chronological - Past, present & future: speak about the past of a thing, the present, and the future of how this thing will evolve
A few last tips to polish your texts:
- Don't use big paragraphs: no one wants to read long paragraphs
- Edit and be concise: then to finish writing an article, read and edit it, don't repeat things and be as concise as possible
- Don't forget a call to action: what do you want your readers to do later to read an article?
Grab your readers' attention with catchy titles that make them stop scrolling and get interested in your articles. You can use clickbait techniques such as the following:
- if you are thinking about...
- This is the biggest problem with...
- These are the most important...
- My story of...
- Here is what I learned...
Conclusion
Without a doubt, writing professionally is a challenge and there is a lot to learn in order to achieve excellent articles. Any advice you receive will help you to write, whether in Spanish or English. Courses such as Online Writing or Creative Writing are Platzi to help you develop writing tools and techniques.
Contributed by: Kevin Fiorentino (Platzi Contributor).
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