When LinkedIn Suits a Launch
LinkedIn is where people talk about their work. That makes it a good place to announce a product people use or buy at work, and a weak one for almost anything else.
It tends to fit when:
- You sell to businesses or professionals. A tool for recruiters, accountants, sales teams or agencies has its buyers on LinkedIn.
- Your network includes your buyers, or people one step from them. Years in the industry you're building for give you an audience already.
- The story is about work. A problem you hit in your last job, a process you fixed. LinkedIn readers respond to that more than to a feature list.
It's a weaker fit for games, consumer apps and hobby tools: friends will cheer you on, but few customers will come from it. Put those products where your users already look for new tools; our guide to launching with no audience covers where.
The basics of a launch post are the same as on X, and our guide to announcing your launch on X covers them. This guide is about what's different on LinkedIn.
Your Profile or a Company Page?
Post the announcement from your own profile. A company Page you created last month has no followers yet, and people respond to a person far more than to a logo.
A Page is still worth setting up as the product's permanent home on LinkedIn. According to LinkedIn's help center, with a Page you can:
- Post as the Page. Super and content admins can post text, images, videos and documents as the Page, and save drafts or schedule posts for later.
- Invite people to follow it. Super and content admins can invite their 1st-degree connections to follow the Page. Pages get monthly invitation credits, shared across all admins, and each invitation includes your name. LinkedIn recommends inviting only people likely to be interested.
- Add a Product Page. Pages in some industries, including business-to-business (B2B) software, can create Product Pages for what they sell. LinkedIn's team reviews each one before it's published, so set it up well before launch day if you want it.
A practical order: publish the launch post from your profile, then post a short version from the Page that links to it. Your post does the reaching; the Page keeps a record.
Writing the Launch Post
The opening lines
In the feed, LinkedIn shows only the start of a longer post, with a link to expand the rest. Write as if only your opening sentence will be read. If it doesn't say what you built and for whom, most people won't open the rest.
Openings that work name the reader's problem or the result: "Recruiters rewrite the same job post for every job board. I built a tool that writes all of them from one draft." Openings that waste the space: "Some personal news", "I'm thrilled to announce", or a row of emoji.
The LinkedIn post formatter keeps your spacing and previews roughly where the feed cuts the text. The only sure check is your own feed, so look at the post once it's live. You can still fix the words: LinkedIn lets you edit the text of a post after sharing it, and marks it "Edited".
The body and one ask
Posts can hold up to 3,000 characters. A launch post doesn't need all of them. A few short paragraphs is plenty: the problem, what the product does, who it's for, what it costs, and one ask.
Pick the ask that matters most this week: "try it and tell me what's confusing", "tell me if your team does this differently", or "send it to someone in [role]". Three asks usually get none. Write it the way you'd explain it to a colleague, and leave blank lines between paragraphs for phone readers. The launch post generator drafts a LinkedIn version alongside your other launch posts.
Images, a document or a video
Show the product. From LinkedIn's help center, your three options:
- Images: you can add up to 20 photos to a post. The first image sets the layout, so lead with your clearest screenshot. Use the ALT option to add alt text for people using screen readers.
- A document: you can upload a PDF, PowerPoint or Word file to a post, up to 100MB and 300 pages. A short PDF, one screenshot and one sentence per page, makes a good walkthrough.
- A video: LinkedIn's video requirements allow files up to 5GB and 15 minutes, far more than a launch needs. Our guide to making a product demo video suggests 20 to 45 seconds for a feed post. Add captions so it makes sense with the sound off.
Check your media before you publish, since only the text can be edited afterwards. Here's a structure to start from:
"One line naming the problem your buyers have, in their words.
I spent time as a role doing this by hand, so I built Product: what it does for who it's for.
It does the main job in how long, or how simply, and it works with tools they already use. It's price, or free while in beta.
If your team has the problem, I'd love you to try it and tell me what's missing: link, or a note that it's in the first comment"
Where to Put the Link
Many people on LinkedIn keep the link out of the post and put it in the first comment, on the theory that LinkedIn shows posts with outside links to fewer people. LinkedIn's help center doesn't say that, and how any feed ranks posts changes over time. Treat it as something to test, not a fact.
The trade-offs you can check for yourself:
- A link in the post is easy to find and travels with every repost. When you share a link, LinkedIn fetches a preview image in a 1.91:1 frame (1200 by 627 pixels), so check your site's social image first with the OG image previewer.
- A link in the first comment keeps the post clean, but people have to open the comments to find it, and some never will.
- Adding the link later by editing the post is another common trick. LinkedIn's help center notes that when you edit a post, new URLs won't display a new preview image, so the link won't get a card.
To test it, tag each version with UTM parameters, such as utm_content=post or utm_content=comment, using the UTM builder. Try one approach on launch day and the other on a follow-up post, then compare visits and signups, not reactions. It's a rough test, but it beats guessing. Our guide to tracking launch traffic shows where to read the numbers.
Following Up After Launch Day
One post rarely does the whole job. Over the next two or three weeks, post a few more times, each with something new to say:
- What you learned. The question people asked most, or the change you made because of feedback. Credit the person who suggested it, if they're happy to be named.
- A customer's result, in their words and with their permission.
- A walkthrough. A short document or video of one job the product does, start to finish.
- Real numbers, if you're comfortable sharing them: visits, signups, what worked and what didn't. Small numbers are fine.
Write each one fresh rather than reposting the launch text; LinkedIn's policies don't allow "gratuitously repetitive" content. As you ship, a public changelog gives you a steady supply of things to post about. Our guide to what to do after launch day covers the rest of the first two weeks.
FAQ
Who should be able to see the post?
When you post, LinkedIn's "Who can see your post?" setting offers Anyone, Connections only, or a Group. Choose Anyone for a launch, so reposts can carry it beyond your own network. Post in a Group only if its rules welcome launches, and write that version for the group.
Should I write an article instead of a post?
Not for the announcement. LinkedIn suggests an article when you need more than a post's 3,000 characters, and a launch post should be short. An article suits the longer story later, such as how you built it.
Can I change the post after it's up?
Only the text. Photos, documents and videos can't be replaced; to change them, LinkedIn says you have to delete the post and create a new one, which means starting again without its reactions and comments.
Where else should I announce it?
LinkedIn reaches people who know you. To reach strangers looking for new tools, list the product where they browse, such as Peerlist, a professional network for people in tech with a weekly Launchpad, or Product Hunt. Then submit your launch to Hauntboard: every launch page shows its page views, visits sent and votes in public, so your LinkedIn post can point to the numbers.
Comments, Colleagues and Reposts
Reply to every comment
Plan to stay around for a few hours after you post, and answer every comment properly. A real answer to a question ("Yes, it imports from HubSpot; Salesforce is next") helps everyone who reads the thread, and the questions people ask are the objections your landing page should answer.
Don't paste the same reply under every comment. LinkedIn's spam guidelines list "excessive, irrelevant, or repetitive comments or messages", and say LinkedIn may remove or limit the distribution of content like that. The same goes for dropping your link under other people's posts.
Ask colleagues to share, without spamming
Former colleagues and clients are the most useful part of a LinkedIn network for a launch: they know your work, and their connections are often your buyers. Ask them one at a time, in a private message:
What not to do: LinkedIn's Professional Community Policies say "Don't do things to artificially increase engagement with your content" and "don't agree with others ahead of time to like or re-share each other's content." That rules out engagement groups and like-for-like swaps. The same policies say not to use the invitation feature to send promotional messages to people you don't know, so don't attach a pitch to connection requests.
Mention people in the post only when they're part of the story, such as a co-founder or a beta user who agreed to be named. A mentioned member gets email and app notifications, so tagging twenty people for reach is a quick way to annoy twenty people.