Posting and engaging

Posting and engaging give professional contacts repeated opportunities to see a writer's interests, expertise and personality. The work includes choosing content, responding to others and judging what the activity achieves.

The case for being active

A freelance business coach regards not posting or engaging on LinkedIn as a mistake: showing personality can make a writer memorable, while posting about a niche reinforces the expertise presented in the profile. ^{1, 2} Frequent posting can also bring a writer into the feeds of people who have not searched for them. ³ Consistent participation and genuine interest in others matter more, in this approach, than spending a long time drafting posts or simply talking at people. ^{4, 5} Relationships built around who the writer is can later provide support and opportunities when the writer changes niche or direction. ^{6, 4}

A medical-journal editor takes a less demanding view: remaining a passive reader is acceptable, likes should be given generously, and active users should take care before sharing. ⁷ The editor became active in 2019 after a younger physician-communicator encouraged posts about planetary health, sustainability and research transparency; help learning to pre-schedule posts, followed by changes in employment and the pandemic, supported further engagement. ⁷

A freelance medical writer who began the transition from academia in late 2022 reported in 2024 that, after months of posting medical-writing topics and industry insights, clients mentioned referrals from colleagues the writer had never interacted with. ^{8, 9, 10} Engagement counts were not the primary aim; visibility and a sense of community mattered. ¹⁰ Sharing expertise, challenges and successes made the career story relatable and built an emotional connection with the audience. ¹¹ The writer considered active engagement and a personal brand reflecting expertise, passions and distinctive strengths necessary to build trust, authority and a recognisable identity, while acknowledging that social-media presence alone was insufficient and that coaching, mentoring and previous in-house experience also played important roles. ^{10, 12, 8}

Content and consistency

A personal brand can encompass more than medical writing: authorship, volunteering, personal experiences, challenges overcome, entrepreneurship, freelancing and self-employment can supply content, as can strong beliefs and recurring themes. ^{13, 14} One coach relates personal experiences back to medical writing where possible, rather than treating the account as solely a medical-writing channel. ¹³

Conversion copywriting aims to get someone to read a profile and buy into a service or message; posts should maintain a consistent thread with the profile and services offered. ¹⁵ Voice and tone should also suit the platform, with timely and relevant material helping establish authority. ^{16, 17} Images, infographics and videos can be used in posts and updates to encourage engagement. ^{16, 18}

Content curation means sharing useful resources created by others; original newsletters, ebooks and white papers can also be shared, and how-to blogs are a common choice for engaging an audience. ¹⁹ Sharing and commenting can circulate knowledge and show potential clients an effort to keep up with developments affecting the industry. ²⁰

Six LinkedIn participation roles describe different ways to help a network. ^{15, 21}

• Content creators publish original material to help their network succeed.
• Content curators share useful third-party content.
• Engagement champions like, comment on and share useful material.
• Super-connectors introduce people to help them gain an opportunity.
• Community builders develop mutually beneficial relationships that help people grow.
• Influencers, motivators and inspirers prompt action through shared content.

²¹

Strategy and measurement

Engagement should begin with a strategy and a plan to implement it, starting small, adjusting the strategy and remaining consistent online and offline. ²² Goals, the target audience and examples from active practitioners with engaged followers can guide the strategy. ¹⁹ Four recommended steps are: ¹⁸

1. Develop a strategy: be consistent and stay focused.
2. Focus on engagement: know where people are connecting.
3. Use the right tools: use time efficiently.
4. Measure efforts: assess how well the strategy works.

¹⁸

Social analytics and direct counts of retweets, reposts, follower growth and website traffic can help measure results. ¹⁸ One freelance's preferred measures were shares, comments, likes and views; a rough medical-device clinical-evaluation-report template attracted more views than any of the writer's other posts. ²³ That post offered the community something useful. ²³ The writer cautioned that the message mattered more than tactics for gaining attention, and that many views of a negative post could be a reason for concern. ²⁴

Testing content on one account

In a 2021 account of one freelance medical writer’s own posts, 22 LinkedIn posts from the preceding two years were reviewed, with video length, links and hashtags varied in the last eight. ^{25, 21}

A three-minute animation about biological and chemical drugs was posted on 24 June 2020, shortened to two minutes on 6 July and then to 15 seconds on 14 July, keeping the captions and hashtags unchanged. ²¹ About four months later, the three-minute version had 885 views, the 15-second version had 221, and the two-minute version appeared to have disappeared from the activity feed. ²¹ The writer allowed that posting the shortest version first might have given it the larger audience; this sequence did not show that shorter was better. ²¹

A text-only post received 189 views on its first day, compared with 101 for the same text posted with a link. ²⁶ The writer considered both an algorithmic penalty for links and reduced interest in seeing the same text twice as possible explanations. ²⁶

Hashtags can identify a subject and help reach a more defined audience. ²⁷ The writer's practice was to confirm that a hashtag existed, inspect its content for consistency with the message and check its following, rather than assume that it represented the intended audience. ²⁷

Learning the craft

Finding knowledgeable social-media practitioners requires filtering a large volume of online advice. ²⁸ Reading recommendations in 2014 covered five marketing practitioners and their books, blogs or other resources. ²⁸

• Seth Godin writes about marketing, leadership and how ideas spread; books include Permission Marketing, Unleashing the Ideavirus, Tribes, Purple Cow and All Marketers Are Liars.
• Neal Schaffer focuses on social-media strategy and LinkedIn; Maximize Your Social provides a guide to marketing strategy, alongside Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing and Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging, and Maximizing LinkedIn.
• Mari Smith's relationship and Facebook marketing resources include The New Relationship Marketing and Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day.
• Michael Stelzner's resources include Social Media Examiner, the Social Media Marketing Podcast, Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Past the Competition and Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged.
• Gary Vaynerchuk's books include Crush It!: Why Now Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, The Thank You Economy and Jab Jab Jab Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World.

^{29, 30, 31, 32, 33}