GLOSSARY · LINKEDIN PERSONAL BRANDING
LinkedIn personal branding glossary
Forty terms from LinkedIn personal branding, platform mechanics, content craft and ghostwriting, each with a plain definition, a worked example and the mistake to avoid.
The terms cover four areas: content craft (10), ghostwriting (6), linkedin mechanics (17), personal branding (7). Each entry gives a definition you could repeat in a meeting, how the term works in practice, one concrete example, the mistake people make most often and three related entries. Platform facts are limited to what LinkedIn has stated publicly; where a figure is not public, the entry says so instead of guessing.
A
- About sectionLINKEDIN MECHANICS
The About section is the free-text summary near the top of a LinkedIn profile, with a limit of 2,600 characters.
- AI disclosureGHOSTWRITING
AI disclosure is the practice of saying, where it matters, that AI tools were used to draft, edit or generate a piece of content.
B
- BatchingCONTENT CRAFT
Batching is producing several pieces of content in one working session rather than one at a time on the day each is due.
C
- CarouselCONTENT CRAFT
A carousel on LinkedIn is a multi-page post that readers swipe or click through one slide at a time.
- Comment strategyCONTENT CRAFT
A comment strategy is a deliberate practice of leaving substantive comments on other people's LinkedIn posts, chosen because the authors or their audiences overlap with the people you want to reach.
- Content calendarCONTENT CRAFT
A content calendar is a schedule of what will be published, where and when, usually kept as a shared spreadsheet, a board or a scheduling tool.
- Content pillarCONTENT CRAFT
A content pillar is one of a small number of recurring themes that a person or brand commits to publishing about, chosen so that over time the audience associates them with those subjects.
- Creator modeLINKEDIN MECHANICS
Creator mode was a profile setting LinkedIn introduced in 2021 that switched a profile's primary button from "Connect" to "Follow", displayed follower count prominently, let members list up to five topic hashtags under their headline and unlocked tools such as LinkedIn Live, Audio Events and newsletters.
D
- DistributionCONTENT CRAFT
Distribution is everything done to put a piece of content in front of the people it was written for, beyond the act of publishing it.
- Document postLINKEDIN MECHANICS
A document post is a LinkedIn post that attaches a file, most often a PDF, which readers can page through inside the feed and download.
- Dwell timeLINKEDIN MECHANICS
Dwell time is the amount of time a member spends with a piece of content on screen, measured both as time the post is visible in the feed and as time spent after clicking to expand or open it.
E
- Employee advocacyPERSONAL BRANDING
Employee advocacy is a programme in which a company's staff share, comment on or create content about the company and its field from their own LinkedIn profiles.
- Engagement podLINKEDIN MECHANICS
An engagement pod is a private group of members who agree to like, comment on and sometimes share each other's posts shortly after publication in order to trigger wider distribution from the feed algorithm.
F
- Featured sectionLINKEDIN MECHANICS
The Featured section is an area near the top of a LinkedIn profile where a member can pin selected items for visitors to see first: their own posts, LinkedIn articles and newsletters, external links with a preview image, and uploaded media such as PDFs, images or slides.
- Founder-led contentPERSONAL BRANDING
Founder-led content is content published under the name of a company founder or senior leader, drawn from their own decisions, opinions and experience rather than from a corporate marketing calendar.
G
- GhostwritingGHOSTWRITING
Ghostwriting is writing content that is published under someone else's name with their knowledge and approval.
H
- HashtagLINKEDIN MECHANICS
A hashtag on LinkedIn is a word or phrase preceded by the hash sign, such as #b2bmarketing, that turns into a link to a page collecting posts using the same tag.
- HeadlineLINKEDIN MECHANICS
The headline is the line of text directly under a member's name on LinkedIn, limited to 220 characters.
- HookCONTENT CRAFT
A hook is the opening line or two of a LinkedIn post, the part a reader sees before the "see more" fold in the feed.
I
- Ideal customer profile (ICP)PERSONAL BRANDING
An ideal customer profile, or ICP, is a written description of the type of company and the people inside it who get the most value from what you sell and are the best fit to buy.
- Impressions vs reachLINKEDIN MECHANICS
Impressions and reach are two different counts of a post's exposure.
- Invented storyGHOSTWRITING
An invented story is a first-person anecdote presented as something that happened to the author when it did not: the client who said the memorable line, the conversation on a flight, the employee who taught the founder a lesson.
L
- Lead magnetCONTENT CRAFT
A lead magnet is a piece of useful content or a tool offered in exchange for contact details, usually an email address, so that a reader who found you on LinkedIn becomes someone you can reach directly.
- LinkedIn algorithmLINKEDIN MECHANICS
The LinkedIn algorithm is the shorthand for the ranking systems that decide which posts appear in each member's feed and in what order.
- LinkedIn newsletterLINKEDIN MECHANICS
A LinkedIn newsletter is a recurring series of LinkedIn articles published under a single title from a member profile or company page.
P
- PollLINKEDIN MECHANICS
A LinkedIn poll is a post type that asks a question and offers between two and four answer options, with a voting window the author sets, from one day up to two weeks.
- PositioningPERSONAL BRANDING
Positioning is the deliberate choice of what a person or company wants to be known for, by whom, and in contrast to what alternatives.
- Posting cadenceCONTENT CRAFT
Posting cadence is the planned frequency and timing of publishing on LinkedIn, such as three posts a week on fixed days or one newsletter a fortnight.
- Profile SEOLINKEDIN MECHANICS
Profile SEO is the practice of writing a LinkedIn profile so that it appears when people search for someone like you, both in LinkedIn's own people search and in web search engines, which index public profiles.
- Proof pointPERSONAL BRANDING
A proof point is a specific, checkable fact that supports a claim about a person, a product or a method.
R
- RepurposingCONTENT CRAFT
Repurposing is the practice of taking one piece of thinking and publishing it in several formats or places, such as turning a newsletter edition into three LinkedIn posts, a document post and a short video script.
S
- Sales NavigatorLINKEDIN MECHANICS
Sales Navigator is LinkedIn's paid prospecting product, sold as a subscription separate from Premium.
- Social Selling Index (SSI)LINKEDIN MECHANICS
The Social Selling Index, or SSI, is a free score from 0 to 100 that LinkedIn assigns to every member, available at linkedin.com/sales/ssi.
T
- Thought leadershipPERSONAL BRANDING
Thought leadership is content in which a person or company advances a position on how their field should work, backed by experience, evidence or original analysis, rather than describing what their product does.
- Top VoiceLINKEDIN MECHANICS
LinkedIn Top Voice is an invitation-only designation that LinkedIn gives to a selected group of members whose content it judges to be of high quality in a given field, shown as a blue badge on the profile.
- Trust signalsPERSONAL BRANDING
Trust signals are the elements of a profile or a body of content that let a stranger judge, quickly, whether a person is who they say they are and whether their claims are likely to hold.
U
- Unsourced claimGHOSTWRITING
An unsourced claim is a statement of fact, most often a number or a percentage, presented in content without any indication of where it came from.
V
- Verified badgeLINKEDIN MECHANICS
The verified badge is a small check mark on a LinkedIn profile indicating that LinkedIn has confirmed something about the member's identity or employment.
- Voice guideGHOSTWRITING
A voice guide is a working document that tells a writer, editor or AI tool how a specific person sounds in writing and what that person is willing to say.
- Voice profileGHOSTWRITING
A voice profile is a measured description of how a specific person writes, built from samples of their own writing rather than from adjectives.