LinkedIn is essential in building relationships with employees, customers, partners and communities. Here is a 10 page playbook for creating engaging content with high quality visual storytelling that leverages the full capabilities of LinkedIn and maximize engagement.

1. Brand Journalism
on LinkedIn
(Facebook, too)
Three elements that maximize Engagement
(Likes, Comments, Shares) and extend
Audience Reach, 2 key top line measures of
addressable markets and future sales
how customers happen
Ed Alexander
Chief Digital Marketer

2. What is “Brand Journalism”?
Brand Journalism combines the best of
two worlds: mainstream journalism,
where the author takes a detached,
objective stance, and Brand building,
where you are obviously promoting
your Brand in a hype-free way while
tuning your message to suit audience
interests and expectations and
leverage online channel capabilities.
In a world awash with noise,
audiences appreciate and share
content that is timely, relevant, well
constructed, and renders well on its
channel.
Why do it?
These LinkedIn stats tell the story.

3. Who’s doing it?
In today’s real time social media space, the
ability to conceive, design, package and
showcase branded visual content on the fly
has replaced the slow-paced, iterative process
of siloed content creation, graphic design and
multiple approvals.
One client, a Global 500 company, has been
quietly crushing it, using this rapid content
playbook to build Engagement on LinkedIn.
They are enjoying Engagement numbers 2½
times higher than competition while reducing
talent acquisition costs with a branded
campaign.
The chart on this page shows how they are
outpacing benchmark rivals, measured in
sheer audience size as well as growth rate.

4. The “Brand Journalism” Recipe Box
These three key ingredients, shown below in order of impact (highest first),
are proven to grow Engagement (Comments, Clicks, Shares) on LinkedIn.
The next few pages will expand on each of these elements. Briefly, they are:
1. “Movie Poster” graphics (attention starts here – not the headline)
Everything old is new again. Human brains process visuals better,
not text, no matter how large or how loud your headline may shout.
If you have video, use it! If not, do a movie poster. Carefully craft it
to portray multiple themes and engage multiple audiences. Your
graphics should blend multiple reader-interest themes into a colorful,
visual “story at a glimpse”. This injects intrigue and invites audiences
deeper into the content.
2. Headline – the first line of text in your Update paragraph
• Reinforce your Graphic image’s theme(s), but keep it to one line
• Construct it to flow logically and fit on Line 1 of your Post (that‘s around 70
characters on LinkedIn and Facebook). Pro Tip: avoid “click bait tactics”.
3. Summary paragraph
• Expand on main themes. Use all 75-word space available. It creates a break
in mid-paragraph, making the “more…” tag a cliffhanger, inviting readers.
• CTA – include a Call to Action link to further, deeper fulfillment via additional
content, main news article, landing page, etc.

5. 1. “Movie Poster” Graphics (attention starts here, not the Headline)
Human brain receptors are tuned to process visual information faster than
text. If you have video, use it! If not, use colorful graphics to tell a story
in a glance. Everyone loves a winner, so select images of success.
Product pictures and head shots alone are boring (especially stock photos
of models) but, combined, they add relevance. Here we pictured a
customer, a product action photo, and photos of two key execs featured in
a linked press release announcing a milestone achievement.
Solar-Yay CompanySue Solar
CXO
Our company
Pete Partner
CXO
Our client
Caption / title / label
Action photo

6. Use this Layout Template
Use this enlarged frame as a workspace to compose and arrange your
images, captions, logos etc. into a “movie poster” composite image
that tells the story.
LinkedIn graphic
image
actual size
(350 Pixels X 200
Pixels)
LinkedIn graphic image standard proportions: 700 W x 400 H
(Enlarged 4x for easy working space)
This frame is enlarged 4X to give you plenty of room to experiment
and arrange the elements of your movie poster image.
When you upload it as a .jpg to LinkedIn, it will automatically
be reduced to 356 x 220 pixels.
This is how big your Movie
Poster graphic will look in
LinkedIn’s newsfeed. Keep
captions and text in your
assembled image legible even
when shrunk to this size. Limit
text; your objective is an
intriguing visual image that
tells the story in a glance and
motivates engagement. A click
enlarges your article and image
in a pop-up window.
1. “Movie Poster” Graphics (cont’d)
Your
Workspace
Auto-shrunk
by LinkedIn

7. Graphics Layout Template
Assemble the elements movie-poster style - headlines, captions, and colorful
image elements, sized and positioned as a storyboard to engage multiple
audiences. Save the composite image. A .jpg will do just fine for website and
mobile reading. It looks sharp and loads quickly. Tight budget? Assemble
your graphic in MSPowerPoint, copy it all to MSPaint, and save as a .jpg. Bam.
How it looks after LinkedIn
“auto-shrinks” it
Final assembly
(enlarged 4X)
1. “Movie Poster” Graphics (cont’d)
356x220px
356x220px

8. 2. Headline
In a 140-character world, intense competition for fleeting attention
makes the ability to write compelling headlines a coveted skill that can be
mastered with practice. Here’s how.
Reinforce your “Movie Poster” image’s themes in a single
line of text. On LinkedIn, that’s about 70 characters.
Invite curiosity. Reinforce a main story theme.
Topics that work well: (test yours at http://www.aminstitute.com/headline/)
• Product – new product breakthrough, evergreen content
• Customer – success stories, milestone events
• Thought Leadership – event speech, whitepaper, blog post
• Careers - Jobs, executive moves, business expansion
• Human Interest – Community outreach
Topics and techniques to avoid:
• Only posting positive financial news – Investor Relations policy favors
balanced reporting. Consult your Investor Relations pro.
• Repeating the same post verbatim; instead, cover the topic, event, or
person from other topical angles that appeal to relevant audiences.
• Cramming - If you have multiple themes, products or brands to promote, do
so, in separate posts. Mix it up!
Pro tip: Write several
versions of your headline.
Test and select ones that
perform best.
Idea: try using the
Portent Title Generator

9. That same 70
character limit
also apples on
Facebook
Brand Journalism on LinkedIn

10. 3. Update / excerpt paragraph
LinkedIn Limit: 75 words (600 characters including spaces)
Write a cogent summary that uses all the 75-word space available. Treat
these first few lines of visible text in your article summary as “teaser” content
that expands on your Headline theme(s). Done well, it motivates people to
click the “more…” link to access the rest of your content. This is good; a click
is a decision that builds engagement and value, and often motivates people to
Follow your channel and answer your “call to action” (CTA - discussed below).
• Expand on your Headline’s themes, but don’t give away the whole story.
Treat this paragraph as a bridge from your Movie Poster graphic image and
Headline to additional, expanded content or fulfillment.
• Call to Action (CTA): Place a link to expanded content at the end of the
Summary. This is a good User Experience tactic; in LinkedIn’s medium-
length reading format, links at the end of an article are shown to get more
clicks than links in the middle. Write your last article sentence to invite that
click. Example: “Download your free wonder widget at http……..”
• Track conversions with Shortlinks: Using your bit.ly account, create a
custom shortlink for tracking audience behavior. Be sure to edit the link
name to include, if possible, a keyword, or at least a more descriptive label.

11. Headline (70 char)
Summary
Paragraph
CTA sentence + URL
Assembled Post
Here are the main parts of your
assembled LinkedIn post.
Finishing tip: LinkedIn’s
publishing tool typically grabs
and renders your CTA URL’s
source content below your post,
but not always in a way that
tells your story best or renders
well. Solution: delete that
“grabbed” content and
substitute your Movie Poster
graphic using the LinkedIn
publisher tool’s paper clip icon.
Brand Journalism on LinkedIn

12. What results can you expect?
Brand Journalism on LinkedIn, or any
multimedia channel, is proven to
increase Engagement which can be
measured in clicks, likes, comments,
shares, landing page conversions
and, ultimately, customers and hires.
LinkedIn’s added benefit is that when
you attract Followers, you can then
access their Profiles, then segment
and nurture them as clients,
prospects, employees, recruits, and
more.
How big an effect can this have?
Our client’s Engagement results are
2 to 3 times the norm. Their Share of
Voice is consistently high in their
competitive space. They attract new
talent while reducing the acquisition
costs. Your own results may vary.

13. Thank you!
Ed Alexander
Chief Digital Consultant
ed@fanfoundry.com
+1 (781) 492-7638 USA East
For more information,
contact:
Check out LinkedIn’s official tutorial on posting Updates:
http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8262
@fanfoundry