What should a small business post on LinkedIn?

First, whether you should be there at all: if you sell to other businesses, probably yes; if you sell to the public, almost certainly not. That single question saves more wasted effort than anything else on this page. For the businesses that belong there, the platform rewards something quite specific and unfashionable — and it is not thought leadership.

Post from your profile, not the company page

The clearest practical rule on any platform.

Company pages reach very few people. Personal profiles reach many more, because the platform is built around people and because people follow people. A one-person consultancy posting from its logo is competing with itself.

Use the company page for what it is good at: existing, looking legitimate, and holding your details for anyone who checks. Do the actual posting from your own profile, and mention the business naturally in it.

If several of you post, that is better still — but nobody should be made to. Reluctance is visible.

What actually works

Specific, unglamorous detail about your work

The problem you solved this week and how. A number that surprised you. A mistake that cost you something. Specifics travel; generalities do not.

"We spent three weeks discovering that the reporting nobody used was costing two days a month" is a post. "Efficiency matters in modern business" is not.

Things you learned the hard way

Genuinely the strongest material, because it is unfakeable and useful. The pricing decision that went wrong. The client you should not have taken. What you would do differently.

Straightforward answers to questions you get asked

The same instinct as everywhere else: if customers ask it weekly, other people are wondering it. This is also the material that keeps working, because it gets found and shared later.

The occasional short piece about the work itself

Photographs of real work do fine here, contrary to the platform's reputation. A picture of something being built, installed or repaired stands out precisely because the feed is mostly text about strategy.

What does not work

• Anything that sounds like a press release. "We are delighted to announce" is where attention goes to die.
• Motivational posts. The parable ending in a business lesson is now a genre people actively mock.
• Engagement bait. "Agree?" as a whole post. It works briefly and costs you standing.
• Reposting your Instagram unchanged. Different audience, different reason for being there.
• Pure promotion. Occasional and direct is fine. Constant is why people mute you.

Write it for the feed

• The first line is the whole decision. Everything after about two lines is hidden behind "see more", so put the interesting part first — no preamble, no "I've been thinking a lot lately".
• Short paragraphs. One or two lines each, with space between. A dense block does not get read.
• Say the thing plainly. Building to a reveal loses people at the fold.
• Links get less reach. Put the substance in the post and the link in a comment, or accept the trade.
• Two hundred words is plenty.

Comments are worth more than posts

The most under-used thing on the platform for a small business.

A useful, specific comment on someone else's post is seen by their audience — which is exactly the audience you are trying to reach, and you did not have to write a post to get there. Ten minutes of thoughtful commenting is frequently worth more than a post nobody sees.

It is also how you become recognisable to a specific set of people, which for B2B is the whole game. Nobody buys from the first post they see; they buy from someone they have noticed being sensible three or four times.

How often

Once or twice a week, sustainably. This is a platform where consistency over months matters more than volume, because the audience you are building is small and specific and it accumulates slowly.

If once a week is what you can genuinely hold, do that. The habit is the hard part, not the writing.

Who should skip it entirely

• You sell to consumers. A hairdresser, a plumber doing domestic work, a café. Your customers are not there in that frame of mind. Spend the time on your Google profile and local channels.
• You are already stretched across other platforms. Fewer, properly.
• You would only post to look professional. An abandoned profile does that better and costs nothing.

Even if you skip posting, keep the profile itself complete and current. It gets checked — by prospective clients, partners and people deciding whether you are real — and that alone justifies the twenty minutes.

If you do use it, do this much

1. Finish your profile as though it is a landing page, because for a B2B business it is one. What you do, who for, and how to reach you.
2. Post once a week from your own profile, specifically about your actual work.
3. Comment properly three times a week on people in your field.
4. Connect with people you actually meet, the same day, with a line reminding them where.
5. Judge it on conversations, not followers. For B2B the measure is whether anyone worth talking to started talking to you.

The bottom line

Only if you sell to other businesses. Post from your personal profile rather than the company page, about the specific unglamorous detail of your actual work and the things you learned the hard way. Put the interesting part in the first line, keep it short, and spend as much time commenting usefully as posting. Once a week, held for a year, beats a burst. And if you sell to the public, keep the profile tidy and spend your time elsewhere. See also what a local business should post.