LinkedIn Post Writing Guide

Guidance for drafting LinkedIn posts promoting Data Controller (datacontroller.io).

Audience

Our readers are typically:

Technical managers and platform owners in regulated industries (Banking, Insurance, Pharma) running enterprise SAS® estates.
Data governance / data quality leads dealing with End User Computing (EUC) risk and audit requirements.
SAS developers and administrators who maintain data pipelines and care about automation, security and auditability.
Occasionally C-level / procurement - keep business value (OpEx, risk reduction, compliance) visible alongside technical detail.

Implications:

Assume competence - no need to explain what ETL, SAS, or a data warehouse is.
Speak to their pains: regulatory reporting deadlines, audit trails, hand-cranked ETL, EUC sprawl, OpEx, blame-games between business and IT.
Professional but direct tone. Avoid hype, buzzword stuffing, and exclamation-mark overload.

Structure

Hook - first 1-2 lines must stand alone; LinkedIn truncates the rest behind "…see more". State the pain or the claim, not the product.
Problem - short paragraphs describing the pain in the reader's context.
Belief / shift - what we believe the world should look like.
Solution - introduce Data Controller, one or two sentences on what it does (zero-code data capture, review/approve workflow, audit trail, loads into SAS / any database).
Outcome - the concrete result (eliminated ETL flows, reduced OpEx, full lineage).
CTA - single call to action, typically "book a Discovery Call - link in the comments below 👇". LinkedIn deprioritises posts with external links, so put URLs in the first comment, not the body.

Formatting capabilities and tricks

LinkedIn posts are plain text - there is no rich-text editor, so no markdown. Bold, italics and other styling you see in posts are faked with Unicode characters:

Faux bold / italic / monospace via Unicode Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols - e.g. 𝐛𝐨𝐥𝐝 (U+1D401+), 𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑐 (U+1D456+), 𝚖𝚘𝚗𝚘𝚜𝚙𝚊𝚌𝚎 (U+1D670+). Tools like YayText / LingoJam generate these. Use with extreme restraint: they break screen readers and accessibility tools, are not searchable (LinkedIn search treats them as different characters, so keywords in faux-bold won't be found), and can render as boxes on some devices. Our default: avoid them; use CAPS sparingly for emphasis instead. If a hook or single key term really needs to pop, one short faux-bold phrase is the acceptable ceiling.
Bullets - no native lists; use literal characters: -, •, ✓, →, numbered 1. etc. Each on its own line.
Whitespace - blank lines survive and are the primary layout tool; use them aggressively (1-3 sentence paragraphs). LinkedIn collapses multiple blank lines beyond one, so a single blank line is the unit.
Emoji - work natively and render fine; use sparingly and professionally (👇 for the CTA, occasional ✅). Avoid emoji walls.
Links - URLs in the body get auto-linked but LinkedIn deprioritises posts containing external links; put the URL in the first comment and point to it ("link in the comments 👇"). Tag people/companies with @mention (native, drives reach) where relevant.
Truncation - only the first ~3 lines (~210 characters on mobile) show before "…see more". The hook must earn the click; never waste the first line on a greeting or context-setting.
Special characters - Unicode symbols like → ✅ ⏱ work fine and can structure a post; avoid exotic characters that some fonts render as tofu (□).
No nested structure - no headings, tables, quotes or code blocks. Simulated section breaks (a line of — or just blank space) are the only separators.

Formatting rules

Hashtags are written as #tag (e.g. #endusercomputing, #excel, #datagovernance, #sas, #masterdata). Never write hashtag#tag - that is an artefact of copy-pasting from LinkedIn's editor UI and must be stripped/normalised to #tag before posting or republishing.
3-5 hashtags, all lowercase, placed at the end on their own lines.
Use regular dashes (-), not em-dashes (—).
Short paragraphs (1-3 sentences) with blank lines between them - LinkedIn has no markdown.
No markdown syntax (no **bold**, no [links](url)) - LinkedIn renders plain text. Use CAPS sparingly for emphasis instead.
® symbol on first mention of SAS® is fine; don't repeat it every time.
Keep total length under ~1,300 characters where possible; longer posts are fine when the story warrants it, but the hook still has to earn the "see more" click.

Media

Always attach an image - posts with images get substantially more reach. Use the same image as the feed post's previewImg where one exists.
Optimum image size: 1200 x 627 px (1.91:1 landscape) - LinkedIn's recommended size for feed images and link previews, displays uncropped on desktop and mobile. Square (1080 x 1080) and portrait (1080 x 1350, 4:5) also work and take up more feed real estate on mobile; avoid narrow/tall images beyond 4:5 as they get cropped. Keep key content away from the edges.
Product screenshots work well for feature announcements; flat branded illustrations for thought-leadership posts.

Relationship to the site Feed

Feed posts (content/feed/) and LinkedIn posts are siblings, not copies: the site version may contain markdown links and omits hashtags; the LinkedIn version uses plain text, #tag hashtags, and "link in the comments".
When converting site → LinkedIn: strip markdown, convert links to a comment-based CTA, append hashtags.
When converting LinkedIn → site: strip hashtag# artefacts and hashtags, add proper markdown links, add front matter per the add-feed-post skill.

5.8 KiB Raw Blame History