Now, a few years LinkedIn was often derided as being ‘Facebook for accountants.’
But since Twitter changed into X with the attendant issues that’s brought the Microsoft-owned platform has become one of several ports in a storm.
LinkedIn is the platform for professional people and guards against some of the worst excesses of other platforms by asking people to add to their profile their online CV.
So, how to use it as an organisation?
Using LinkedIn effectively
As an organisation, there’s two routes. Firstly, encourage your staff to use it as themselves. That’s particularly useful for staff who may well be contacting business people as part of their job.
A bloke called Dan when I worked in local government used it brilliantly. His job was to connect businesses in the borough we worked. He told me he would get answers far quicker by going through LinkedIn and finding the buyer than he would going through the company’s generic email address.
But more than that, the chief executive or even comms person sharing the good work and contributing to discussion on LinkedIn is an advocate for the place they work just as they are for themselves.
Encourage people in your organisation to use LinkedIn but know that it’s not mandatory. But beyond that, asking an accountant to share a corporate health and safety message aimed at engineers is the wrong way to go about it.
What content works?
There are many more tools available to a LinkedIn page admin than any other channel.
You’re probably aware of being able to post a picture, a text update and maybe a video. But did you know you can post a pdf, a landscape video, a vertical video and also post artwork and text as a video? You can repost too which mimics the retweet function.
Here’s the data from 250 posts as a cross section of the public sector.
What surprised me is that carousel content – that’s a spread of three or more pictures – topped the charts. That’s exactly the same as the 2025 numbers for Facebook and Instagram.
Take a look…
The carousel of images certainly makes sense. It’s visually interesting, and it’s likely to hold the scroller’s attention for longer.
What is surprising to me is that artwork is comparatively high. It’s third in the table. At the bottom is toolkit content. No surprises there but the repost function also didn’t connect that well.
Here’s an example of a carousel. In this case, Manchester City Council has used images with permission from Instagramers. They post to Instagram and I’ve also seen them post to Facebook.
Here, the images celebrate Spring. The lack of call to action is a strength. It’s just good content that encourages engagement. By posting things that aren’t selling you are tapping into what social media really used to be. It’s a conversation rather than a marketing technique. Besides, the algorithm will show that important update to more people next time around if people are engaging.
Here’s a carousel.
You can see the original here.
Video, video video…
Yes, reader, even LinkedIn likes video.
What’s striking is that vertical video is being promoted by the platform. This is distinct and has its own feed you can scroll through. See one and you can see more.
Here’s an example from NHS England…
You can see the original here.
I’m not surprised that NHS England have created a good example of the vertical video genre. For me, their LinkedIn page is one of the best. It celebrates staff as well as communicating big picture messages. As a result, almost 800,000 people follow it.
Landscape video isn’t rewarded as much as vertical. This should inform your future content.
In addition, there is the genre I detected of artwork as video. This is text on a screen or designed images to make a point. As the scrolling passer-by, this seems maybe less likely to reach a wider audience. But if its for your niche then it can work.
Please, post jobs as a separate jobs post
You may be wondering why jobs aren’t featured in this review.
That’s because jobs are a separate stream from routine updates. When you post using LinkedIn’s own jobs functionality you are adding the position to a large pool that users can search. For example, there are 800 jobs on LinkedIn 40 kilometres from where I live. That’s an entirely separate thing. Please, don’t post jobs into the main posts. Few people will see it. Far more will look at the jobs stream and look what’s there. It’s the difference between using a trawler and a kid’s fishing net in the canal.
Good content
Of course, what this analysis doesn’t factor in is the nature of the content. It doesn’t differentiate between the story of the daughter following in the footsteps of her mother to be a paramedic illustrated with a picture or the picture of the building where the training happens. One is more engaging than the other.
For me a good LinkedIn page needs to celebrate staff, celebrate success, celebrate partner’s success as well as promote jobs using LinkedIn’s jobs functionality.
Pages included in the review
I looked at 25 posts on 10 UK public sector pages including NHS Fife, NHS England, NHS Supply Chain, Local Government Association, Manchester City Council, Powys Council, Metropolitan Police, Police Service Northern Ireland, Dorset & Wiltshire Fire Service and Scottish Fire and Rescue.
I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS, ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER, ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS and ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.