LinkedIn Collaborative Posts
For years, the only way to borrow someone else's audience on LinkedIn was to tag them and hope they showed up in the comments. That changed this summer.
With Collaborative Posts, you can now publish one post together with up to five other people or Company Pages. Every name sits on the byline, the post lives on each collaborator's profile, and every reaction, comment and share counts toward the same post. If you're an executive, the people you already work with, advise and respect can now put your ideas in front of their networks, under your name and theirs.
Below you'll find the rules, the exact clicks, how I choose who to invite, and the two post formats I come back to.
Your audience gets to see the birds you flock with.
The rules before you start
- The post has to be public. A post shared with connections only can't have collaborators.
- You can add up to five collaborators, and they can be people or Company Pages.
- Everyone you add has to accept. If someone declines, the post stays on your profile without them.
- You, as the creator, are the only one who can edit the post or change who's on it. You're also the one LinkedIn holds responsible for what it says.
- People who accept can see the post's reactions, comments and shares. Company Pages added as collaborators don't get those numbers on the post itself.
- It works on text, image, video and link posts, plus documents, polls, events and celebration posts.
LinkedIn is still rolling this out gradually. If you don't see Add collaborators yet, it hasn't reached your account. Check again in a few days.
How to publish one
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1. Start your post
On your LinkedIn homepage, click Start a post and write it the way you normally would.
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2. Add your collaborators
Click Add collaborators, search for the people or Pages you want, select them, and click Save. I'd pick three to five. One collaborator is a nice gesture. With three to five, the post starts to feel like an event.
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3. Post it
Add your image, video or document and click Post. Each collaborator gets a notification and can accept from there. Once they accept, the post appears on their profile with their name on it.
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4. If you need to change who's on it
Open the post, click the More icon in the top right, then Edit post › Edit with others. From there you can add someone new or remove anyone, even after it's live.
How I choose my five
The instinct is to invite the biggest names you know. I think about it differently. Before I invite anyone, I ask myself three things about them:
- Does their audience overlap with the one I want to reach?
- Will they actually show up in the comments, or will they only click accept?
- Would they be proud to have their name next to mine, and would I introduce them in a room full of people I want to work with?
If the answer to all three is yes, they're on my list. Three collaborators who engage will do more for a post than five who don't.
Ask before you add
Nobody likes a surprise notification with their name already on something. I send a short DM first, so the invite is expected and the yes is easy. Mine always covers the same ground: what the post is about, who else is on it, the one thing I need from them (a line, an insight, a short story), and the day I plan to post. Then I tell them the LinkedIn invite is coming so they know to accept it.
Two formats that work with several names on them
A collaborative post works best when every name on it has a reason to be there. These are the two structures I come back to.
The roundtable
Ask your collaborators one sharp question and give each of them a line in the post. Open with the question, list each person's name, role and answer in one or two lines, add your own take at the end, and invite the comments to add theirs. Everyone on the post has a quote they'll want to share, and the comments fill up with people answering the same question.
The shared moment
Use it after something you did together: a panel, a launch, a board meeting, a project that shipped. Say what happened, then name each collaborator with one specific detail about what they brought. Close with the one lesson you're taking from it, in your own words. Specific credit is what makes people proud to accept.
The first hour after you post
The post goes out with everyone's name on it, and the comments under it set the tone for how far it travels. The day before, I send everyone the time it goes live and two small asks: accept the invite as soon as it comes through, and leave one comment in the first hour with something we didn't fit in the post. A story, a number, a respectful disagreement, anything real. Then I reply to every comment that comes in.
What I watch for
- Five names on a post nobody engages with looks worse than one name on a post that starts a real conversation.
- Your name leads the post and LinkedIn holds you responsible for it, so I read every quote back to the person before it goes live.
- If you add a Company Page, its admins see results in Page analytics only. Tell them up front so nobody is looking for numbers that aren't there.
- The people on your post say something about you. Choose them the way you'd choose who sits next to you on a panel.
If you only do this much this week
- Today: open the composer and check that you see Add collaborators.
- Today: write down ten people you'd be proud to share a byline with, then narrow it to three to five.
- This week: send each of them a short DM before you send the invite.
- This week: draft a roundtable post with their answers and tell everyone when it goes live.
- When it's live: reply to every comment in the first hour.
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