Advice for executives on LinkedIn is usually written by people who have never measured it. We isolated 2,775 posts from 11 executives inside a dataset of 12,988 posts and compared their strongest work against their weakest. The short version: the median post earned 101 reactions and 8 comments, while their top-decile posts ran 12 comments. The gap is not the topic. It is whether a specific person is visible in the first two lines.
The short version
- Sample: 2,775 posts from 11 executives.
- Median post: 101 reactions, 8 comments (0.46 per 1,000 followers).
- First-person openers: 17.5% of their top posts vs 18.8% overall.
- Most-written topics: Technology, Leadership, Startups & Founders.
What do executives 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 (1,107 posts)
- Leadership (406 posts)
- Startups & Founders (309 posts)
- Customer Experience (305 posts)
- Finance (288 posts)
- Artificial Intelligence (283 posts)
- Education & Learning (215 posts)
- Career Growth (178 posts)
This is what executives 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 executives 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 executives 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 executive expect?
| Measure | Executives | Whole cohort |
|---|---|---|
| Median reactions | 101 | 122 |
| Median comments | 8 | 12 |
| Median rate per 1,000 followers | 0.46 | 0.4 |
| Top-decile median comments | 12 | 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 executives use?
| Format | Executives | All posts |
|---|---|---|
| text | 11.2% | 21% |
| image | 35.3% | 36.4% |
| video | 12.1% | 12.4% |
| Shared article/link | 40.6% | 29.4% |
| Document/carousel | 0.5% | 0.5% |
| poll | 0.3% | 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 executives posting video at 12.1%, 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 executives in this dataset, shown as readers saw them before the fold, with author names removed.
Dear recruiters, I know you have an extremely difficult job. The hiring market is white hot and getting worse (better, for candidates) by the hour. We all get pinged repeatedly, daily. I mostly don't mind. …see more
Yesterday, I joined PayPal as Vice President and Venmo 's Chief Technology Officer. I'm truly humbled by everyone that extended their congratulations. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. In many ways, I …see more
Here's a staggering statistic: Truck driver is currently the largest profession in 29 states of the US. Combine that with the fact that we're very likely to see the rapid growth of self-driving trucks on our …see more
I am thrilled to announce that today Arsenal Biosciences, a programmable cell therapy company, launched with $85 million Series A funding. As well as seeding the company, Westlake Village BioPartners is a …see more
Thank you for all of the kind words about launching Westlake Village BioPartners. We are very grateful to our LPs and look forward to working with great entrepreneurs who wake up every day working on …see more
When I first fell in love with the cultures of China and Japan decades ago in college, the rise of "Japan, Inc." was the story, and, outside of the "4 Tiger economies" of Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and …see more
Boulder Valley has updated wellness policies, and schools are working with teachers and families to implement healthier snacks at school. #education #health …see more
Today marks five years to the day that I began working at The Verge full time. I moved into a more central role as creative director of Vox Media networks in August, 2018, but the preceding two and a half …see more
This is funny and unexpected :) But jeez, what does this mean in the future, advertisers dropping things on us that we least expect, and spamming us. #AdvertisingAndMarketing #Creativity #DigitalMarketing …see more
Mr. Ratan Tata and Mr. Narayana Murthy may have been business rivals at one stage, but it is great to see the respect that they continue to have for each other. Video via Ratan Tata, TiEMumbai …see more
A practical starting system for executives
The point of posting is authority that travels beyond their own company, and the audience you are writing for is their industry, their board, and the people they want to hire. 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 executives post about on LinkedIn?
In our cohort, the topics executives write about most are technology, leadership, startups & founders. But topic matters less than treatment: 17.5% of their top-decile posts open in first person against 18.8% of their posts overall. Write the specific decision, mistake, or moment rather than the general lesson drawn from it.
How often do executives get engagement on LinkedIn?
Across 2,775 posts from 11 executives in our cohort, the median post earned 101 reactions and 8 comments, or 0.46 engagements per 1,000 followers. Their top-decile posts run 12 comments at the median. Note this is 11 accounts, so read it as a directional benchmark rather than an industry average.
Should executives use video on LinkedIn?
12.1% of posts by executives 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 executive's LinkedIn post be?
The visible hook is what gets judged, roughly 210 characters before the "see more" fold. Among executives 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.