LinkedIn remains one of the most important social media platforms for industrial marketers trying to reach engineers and technical buyers. But succeeding on LinkedIn looks different than it did a few years ago. Company pages still matter, but individual thought leaders can often gain more traction and amplify your message. We discuss what strategies marketers should prioritize on LinkedIn today.
Industrial marketers should build a LinkedIn strategy that combines company-page content with individual thought leadership.
Company pages remain important for maintaining an active brand presence, sharing company news, promoting educational resources, and supporting campaigns. However, individual experts often have an advantage when it comes to reach and engagement because LinkedIn users want to hear directly from real people with real expertise.
An effective LinkedIn strategy should also involve executives, salespeople, subject matter experts, engineers, and other employees who can share credible perspectives with their own networks.
Thought leadership helps companies extend their reach beyond what their corporate LinkedIn page can achieve alone.
Industrial companies may spend significant time developing useful content only to see a company-page post receive a few hundred impressions. Individual profiles can generate much stronger reach because audiences are more interested in hearing directly from knowledgeable people over brands. Engineers and other subject matter experts can bring a level of credibility and experience to a post that is difficult for a corporate account to replicate.
Instead of asking only, “What should our company post this week?”, marketers should also ask:
Which experts inside our company could be sharing content?
Which executives already have an active LinkedIn presence?
Which engineers or technical SMEs have perspectives our audience would value?
Start with the people who are easiest to activate, then expand your program over time. Executives, founders, and salespeople are often the easiest place to begin because they may already be comfortable posting or building their personal networks.
However, some of the most valuable voices can also be the hardest to activate: engineers and technical subject matter experts. Technical audiences want to hear from people who understand their problems firsthand. An engineer explaining how they approached a design challenge may be more compelling than the same information presented as a traditional brand post.
A strong thought leadership program can therefore include a mix of:
Founders and executives
Sales leaders
Product leaders
Engineers
Technical subject matter experts
Thought leadership content should connect to your broader marketing strategy while reflecting the expertise of the individual posting it.
Start with your existing campaigns, product launches, company messaging, customer challenges, and educational content. Then adjust the angle based on the person sharing it. For example, several employees could support the same product launch without posting the same message.
A founder might discuss why the company invested in solving a particular problem.
A sales leader might discuss what customers are asking about.
An engineer might explain the technical challenge the team was trying to solve or how a particular approach could be applied.
This approach allows industrial marketers to get more mileage out of existing campaigns without simply copying corporate posts onto employees’ profiles.
Yes. Personal content can help LinkedIn thought leaders increase reach, build familiarity, and make their professional content more effective.
Photos from events, travel, team activities, career and personal milestones, and other personal experiences can give audiences a reason to stop scrolling. Those posts may also generate stronger engagement than traditional business content, which can increase the overall visibility of an individual’s profile.
Personal posts should still use good judgment. Highly controversial topics or posts far outside what someone is comfortable associating with their employer may create risk. But authenticity itself is not something industrial marketers should be afraid of.
Thought leadership ads can be an effective way to expand the reach of strong individual posts while being significantly less expensive than other LinkedIn Ad types.
Instead of building an advertisement from a traditional branded graphic or video, LinkedIn thought leadership ads allow companies to promote posts from individual profiles. This works particularly well when the original content is already educational and credible.
At TREW, we have experimented with promoting thought leadership posts from experts. In our experience discussed, these posts have produced strong engagement and relatively efficient results compared with some traditional LinkedIn ad formats.
For industrial marketers already investing in LinkedIn advertising, thought leadership ads are worth testing when you have a particularly strong organic post.
Yes. Industrial brands should still maintain an active LinkedIn company page. Some content formats are particularly useful for generating engagement, while others may be better at generating reach and impressions.
Document posts, sometimes called PDF sliders or carousel-style posts, can be particularly effective for engagement because users click or swipe through multiple pages. Multi-image posts can have a similar advantage because users interact with the post as they browse the images.
Higher interaction can signal to LinkedIn that users find the content useful.
On the reach side, industrial marketers may see stronger results from:
Team photos
Event photos
Posts tagging relevant employees or partners
Videos
Content employees are likely to share with their own networks
A strong company-page content calendar should include a mixture of formats rather than optimizing every post around a single metric.
If your company has not developed an employee thought leadership program, start by identifying one person who is most likely to participate. Once you identify that person, audit their LinkedIn profile. Check:
Profile photo
Banner image
Headline
Featured section
Experience
Areas of expertise
Relevant keywords
Pay particular attention to the LinkedIn headline.
Many professionals simply list a job title such as “VP of Sales.” A stronger headline can explain who the person helps, what they specialize in, or what problems they solve. That makes the profile more informative when someone discovers them through a post, comment, connection request, or LinkedIn search.
LinkedIn is becoming increasingly people-driven.
That does not mean industrial marketers should abandon company pages or traditional brand content. It means companies need a broader definition of what social media management includes. The industrial marketer managing LinkedIn today may be responsible for:
Company-page content
Executive thought leadership
SME interviews
Employee advocacy
LinkedIn video
Document posts
Paid thought leadership amplification
Event engagement
Profile optimization
Yes. Company pages remain important for maintaining an active brand presence and distributing company content. However, brands should combine company-page activity with individual thought leadership to expand their potential reach.
Executives and salespeople may be easiest to activate, but engineers and technical subject matter experts can be particularly valuable because they can speak directly to the technical challenges audiences care about.
For someone new to thought leadership, one post every other week can be a realistic starting point. As the person becomes more comfortable and the content process improves, marketers can work toward a more frequent cadence.
Hashtags may provide some value, but they should not be the centerpiece of a LinkedIn strategy. Event hashtags remain particularly useful for joining conversations around conferences and trade shows.
Document posts, multi-image posts, team and event photography, and videos can all play different roles. Document and multi-image posts can encourage engagement, while people-focused photos and videos may help expand reach.
Choose one willing employee, optimize their LinkedIn profile, identify topics connected to your existing marketing strategy, and begin with a manageable posting schedule.
During the episode, we also previewed TREW Marketing’s What’s Working Now webinar on September 24, which will cover actions industrial marketers can take today, over the next few weeks, and as they begin planning for 2027.
We also shared an update on the 2027 Industrial Marketing Summit, taking place February 23 through 25 in Austin, Texas, including new sessions shaped by attendee feedback and covering topics ranging from marketing leadership and reporting to e-commerce and sales training.
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