Advice for authors & creators on LinkedIn is usually written by people who have never measured it. We isolated 5,502 posts from 22 authors & creators inside a dataset of 12,988 posts and compared their strongest work against their weakest. The short version: the median post earned 106 reactions and 9 comments, while their top-decile posts ran 98 comments. The gap is not the topic. It is whether a specific person is visible in the first two lines.
The short version
- Sample: 5,502 posts from 22 authors & creators.
- Median post: 106 reactions, 9 comments (0.37 per 1,000 followers).
- First-person openers: 22.9% of their top posts vs 15.5% overall.
- Most-written topics: Technology, Leadership, Productivity.
What do authors & creators write about on LinkedIn?
Ranked by how many of their posts touch each theme. A post can count toward more than one, so these overlap. Each links to the real examples and engagement data for that category.
- Technology (1,208 posts)
- Leadership (1,039 posts)
- Productivity (791 posts)
- Career Growth (756 posts)
- Finance (551 posts)
- Customer Experience (514 posts)
- Marketing (479 posts)
- Education & Learning (364 posts)
This is what authors & creators in this cohort do write about, which is not automatically what earns the most engagement. Compare the list above against the per-category medians on the examples hub before deciding where to spend your effort. A crowded category needs a sharper hook, not a different topic.
What separates their best posts from their worst?
Hook patterns: top-decile posts by authors & creators vs all their posts (%)
Opens in first person
Says 'you' in the hook
Contains a question
Contains an emoji
Four or more hashtags
The comparison above is deliberately internal. It holds the author constant, which removes the biggest confounder in engagement data: some accounts simply have more engaged audiences than others. When the same authors & creators write a top-decile post instead of a typical one, first-person openers and questions go up and hashtag stuffing goes down. That is the pattern worth copying.
How much engagement should a creator expect?
| Measure | Authors & Creators | Whole cohort |
|---|---|---|
| Median reactions | 106 | 122 |
| Median comments | 9 | 12 |
| Median rate per 1,000 followers | 0.37 | 0.4 |
| Top-decile median comments | 98 | 72 |
Benchmarks are only useful against your own follower count, which is why we report the rate per 1,000. To place yourself precisely, run your own numbers against the percentiles in the engagement benchmarks.
Which formats do authors & creators use?
| Format | Authors & Creators | All posts |
|---|---|---|
| text | 15.8% | 21% |
| image | 37.5% | 36.4% |
| video | 14.6% | 12.4% |
| Shared article/link | 31.5% | 29.4% |
| Document/carousel | 0.5% | 0.5% |
| poll | 0.1% | 0.3% |
Cohort-wide, native video appears in 26.3% of top-decile posts against 10.1% of bottom-half posts. If the row above shows authors & creators posting video at 14.6%, that is the cheapest unclaimed advantage available to this group. The video breakdown covers how to start if you would rather not be on camera.
Real examples: 10 of their highest-performing hooks
Real posts by authors & creators in this dataset, shown as readers saw them before the fold, with author names removed.
My little brother passed away last week. He was 18. Three weeks ago he asked to work for me after he graduated high school. And I said yes & there was nothing I was looking forward to more. To everyone …see more
LinkedIn needs more black & brown creators. I started creating on this platform when I was 23. There were only a few people creating on the platform that looked like me. I saw opportunity in that but I know …see more
What an honor it was to sell Getting There at this year’s Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting next to the amazing Robert Cialdini ! Plus a visit from the awesome Danielle Town ! #warrenbuffet …see more
Do you listen more than you talk? Leaders cite LISTENING as an essential soft skill because it demonstrates respect, builds trust, and makes people feel valued. It also allows leaders to discover new ideas …see more
In my latest Forbes article, I share the one thing Sara Blakely , Gary Vaynerchuk , and my dad say is key for professional fulfillment—and six ways for you to embrace it. Are you a "career contrarian?" …see more
If you have the opportunity to do amazing things in your life, bring someone with you. …see more
2008 and 2018. I was 23 on the left and just starting my company, Zen Media. I’d just finished graduate school and writing my thesis on Twitter. No one believed social media would be a field. It was early …see more
Life changes for the better when we realize that we don't have to know everything and we don't have to pretend that we do. …see more
Can you show me any more useful healthcare infographics than this one? It's created by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, summarizing its latest guidelines for the investigation and …see more
NYC is dead forever. People say, "NYC always comes back." Or "NYC has been through worse." No and no. Business, culture, food, education, quality of life, expenses, are all going in the wrong direction. I …see more
A practical starting system for authors & creators
The point of posting is reach that converts into readers, subscribers, and bookings, and the audience you are writing for is an audience they own rather than rent. That narrows what belongs on the page.
- Pick three recurring themes, drawn from the topic list above, and stay in them long enough that people learn what you are for.
- Bank moments as they happen. The specific detail is what you cannot reconstruct later, and it is the thing the data rewards.
- Open in first person and cut at the fold. See how to start a post.
- Ask a real question when you want comments, which carry the most weight of any signal.
- Show up on a cadence you can hold without the quality collapsing. Frequency matters less than consistency.
Frequently asked questions
What should authors & creators post about on LinkedIn?
In our cohort, the topics authors & creators write about most are technology, leadership, productivity. But topic matters less than treatment: 22.9% of their top-decile posts open in first person against 15.5% of their posts overall. Write the specific decision, mistake, or moment rather than the general lesson drawn from it.
How often do authors & creators get engagement on LinkedIn?
Across 5,502 posts from 22 authors & creators in our cohort, the median post earned 106 reactions and 9 comments, or 0.37 engagements per 1,000 followers. Their top-decile posts run 98 comments at the median. Note this is 22 accounts, so read it as a directional benchmark rather than an industry average.
Should authors & creators use video on LinkedIn?
14.6% of posts by authors & creators in our cohort are native video, against 12.4% cohort-wide. Cohort-wide, native video appears in 26.3% of top-decile posts and 10.1% of bottom-half posts, roughly a 2.6 times over-index. That is one of the strongest format signals in the data, and it is under-used by most professionals.
How long should a creator's LinkedIn post be?
The visible hook is what gets judged, roughly 210 characters before the "see more" fold. Among authors & creators the median hook is 206 characters. Hook length does not separate strong posts from weak ones anywhere in our data, so spend the effort on what the opening line says rather than how long it is.
About this data
Numbers come from our analysis of a public dataset of 34,012 LinkedIn influencer posts. We scored 12,988 English posts from 65 creators by engagement rate (reactions + 4× comments, divided by the author's followers) and compared the top 10% against the bottom half. The dataset captures each post's text up to LinkedIn's “see more” fold, which is exactly what a reader sees before deciding to engage. These are correlations, not guarantees. Full methodology and caveats are in the full study.
Role buckets are assigned from each author's LinkedIn headline, so they are approximate, and each bucket covers a small number of accounts. Treat these as directional benchmarks rather than industry averages.