If posting on LinkedIn is part of your social media strategy, you should be staying on top of the platform’s key trends. Knowing what’s hot and what’s just meh means you can come up with content that generates engagement and helps you reach wider audiences.
Here are the top 14 LinkedIn trends to watch for in 2026 and some tactics on how you can use these trends to your advantage. Let’s go!
Top 14 LinkedIn Trends for Brands and Professionals in 2026
1. Personal Branding
Do us a favor: open your LinkedIn feed and scroll through 10-20 posts. What do you observe more? Posts written by company accounts or individuals? That’s correct – individuals.
Personal branding on LinkedIn began gaining popularity a few years ago. This surge coincided with LinkedIn introducing the LinkedIn Top Voice feature to reward prominent content creators on the platform.
As you rightly guessed, in 2026, this trend is expected to strengthen even further. Individuals at all levels are sharing personal stories, expertise, and insights to build their brand or even to help amplify their companies’ reach and credibility.
2. Storytelling
Everyone loves a good story with twists and turns, including LinkedIn’s “professional” audience.
The storytelling trend encourages brands to dive deep, sharing their journeys, the obstacles they’ve overcome, and the successes they’ve celebrated in a way that resonates with their professional audience.
Stories can bring your brand to life and, as a bonus, help create a bond with your audience.
How can you incorporate storytelling into your LinkedIn content strategy this year?
Create a series of posts that tell the story of your brand’s biggest challenges or successes. Use video content to share client testimonials or to provide behind-the-scenes glimpses into your company culture, making your brand’s narrative both engaging and relatable.
3. Founder Content
Just like the personal branding trend, founder content is also gaining traction. This trend sees founders and CEOs sharing personal insights, industry perspectives, and company news, adding a human touch to the corporate image and building trust with the audience.
If you’re a founder or somebody in an executive position, in 2026 you should try to show up more on LinkedIn. Don’t miss an opportunity to humanize your brand.
4. Interactive Content
Brands that do well on LinkedIn talk to their audience. They don’t just post content for the sake of it. They try to include their audience in conversations.
With this in mind, in 2026 you should not only be posting but also actively encouraging engagement. Use LinkedIn polls to transform your audience from passive content consumers to active participants. Polls can also help you gauge your audience’s interest in new features or products and understand common challenges they face.
5. Social Selling
Social selling is becoming a big deal on LinkedIn. Instead of companies hard selling to their target customers, they’re now creating and sharing valuable content, engaging in conversations, and establishing themselves as trusted experts in their field.
Through this approach, companies can attract and nurture leads in a more personal and effective way.
But as you can see, the common denominator here is still content. First, you need to educate your audience, then show with your content how you can solve your target customers’ pain points, and then clients will come to you without you needing to make a hard sale.
6. Employee Advocacy
If you’re not leaning hard into employee advocacy on LinkedIn this year, you’re missing out. People are quite tired of corporate posts. They find it hard to engage with brands that don’t show their faces.
However, those brands that recognize the power of their employees’ networks and are encouraging them to share content and insights are winning. Content shared by employees receives higher engagement and helps you appear more relatable and real.
Now, when it comes to letting your employees loose on the platform, it’s a good idea to have a basic plan for what they should post about. You don’t need to oversee every single post. But, you should agree on the type of content that would be valuable to your audience.
7. Collaborative Content
In 2026, joint content creation will become a powerful way to grow reach and build credibility on LinkedIn. Instead of posting alone, creators, founders, and industry experts will collaborate on visuals, carousel posts, or insights-based videos to co-educate their audiences. This allows both parties to tap into each other’s networks, expand visibility, and position themselves as trusted voices in their niche.
Collaborative content works best when the topic is highly relevant to both parties’ audiences and presented in a clear, value-led format.
8. Authenticity
The time for perfect-looking content is over. Now, being real matters the most. Everyone wants true stories, honest talks, and real facts. Sure, we all like to share positive things, but being open and genuine is what really helps us connect with others.
So, in 2026, you should be showing up as an authentic, raw, and honest brand. That will help you to receive attention and connect with your audience in a more meaningful way.
9. Educational Content
As the professional audience is hungry for knowledge, educational content has become a cornerstone of LinkedIn. Webinars, how-to guides, industry analyses, and thought leadership articles are highly sought after.
The easiest way to share educational content is through carousels which, according to studies, tend to receive the most impressions and engagement.
Therefore, in 2026, aim to provide bite-sized value in an engaging format to your audience. This strategy will position you as an expert and warm your audience towards you.
10. LinkedIn Newsletters
We all know regular newsletters that land in our inboxes… but let’s talk about a different approach: LinkedIn Newsletters. They’re becoming quite the trend as well in 2026. Especially if your business operates in the B2B sector, chances are your audience is already active on LinkedIn, which simplifies the process of creating and distributing these newsletters.
Consider kicking off a newsletter on LinkedIn that brings together the freshest industry news, insights from your company, and actionable tips. Using LinkedIn Newsletters is a fantastic way to consistently keep your audience informed and maintain their engagement with your brand.
11. Short-form Videos Will Gain More Traction
Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube have proven how powerful short-form videos can be. Now, LinkedIn is catching on to the trend, with brands and professionals quickly embracing this engaging format.
In 2026, we can expect to see more founders, CEOs, and brand leaders using short-form videos on LinkedIn to connect directly with audiences. This format offers a way to share quick updates, insights, and glimpses into company culture, creating a more personal and approachable experience.
So, to capitalize on this trend, start posting regular, bite-sized clips. You can, for instance, showcase recent wins, offer valuable industry insights, and share behind-the-scenes moments.
If you’re looking for inspiration, check out Santiago Suarez Ordoñez, co-founder of Momentum, using short-form videos to introduce Momentum’s new features in just under 16 seconds:
12. Big Brands Will Turn to LinkedIn Micro-Influencers for Authentic Reach
In 2026, we’ll also see more big brands teaming up with LinkedIn micro-influencers to build genuine connections with their audiences. Unlike major influencers, these micro-influencers have smaller, niche followings but make up for it with higher engagement and a more personal touch.
As polished ads become less effective, micro-influencer content offers a more genuine alternative. Their posts come across as real recommendations, which resonates well on the platform. Brands like Semrush, for example, are already testing the waters with micro-influencer marketing, and while the strategy may seem geared toward big companies, smaller brands can benefit too. The key is finding voices that align well with your brand.
13. Comment-first Visibility Strategy
Posting is no longer the only way to gain reach. In 2026, successful creators and brands will focus on commenting strategically on high-visibility posts before sharing their own content. LinkedIn increasingly rewards meaningful conversation over broadcast-style posting.
14. Detailed Analytics for Personal Brands and Company Pages
Our final prediction is about analytics. LinkedIn has already taken steps forward in 2024, offering users more robust insights into post performance, follower demographics, and engagement patterns.
In 2026, we can expect LinkedIn to push this even further, providing an increasingly granular view into both personal and company page data.
Why does this matter? With these enhanced insights, users will get a much clearer picture of what truly resonates with their audience. For personal brands, this means pinpointing exactly which topics and content types fuel growth. Companies, on the other hand, will gain sharper insights into which posts drive the most meaningful community engagement.
The takeaway? This richer data will empower brands and individuals alike to fine-tune their content strategies, creating posts that feel more relevant and impactful to their audiences — strengthening engagement and driving deeper connections.
📖 Related read: 21 Social Media KPIs to Track Across All Campaigns
How to Schedule LinkedIn Posts
To schedule LinkedIn posts for both your company’s pages and personal profiles, use our tool Gain. Gain is a social media management tool specifically designed for creative teams and agencies, enabling the pre-approval of content by both internal and external stakeholders before posting.
Here’s how to publish your LinkedIn posts with Gain:
Step 1: Open your Gain workspace.
Step 2: Click on “+New Content” at the top right corner.
Step 3: Select LinkedIn.
Step 4: Upload your content, including images, links, videos, text-only status posts, and animated GIFs.
Step 5: Set a publish date.
Step 6: Choose your audience.
Step 7: Click “Save” to save your draft.
Step 8: If your post requires approval from internal stakeholders or clients, send it for approval by selecting “To Approval.”
Step 9: Once your post is approved, it will automatically be published on the selected date.
With Gain, you can schedule as many LinkedIn posts as you want. Plus, using Gain’s post creator, you can mention LinkedIn Company Pages in all post formats and target your posts to specific audiences just like you would on LinkedIn.
Once your content is live, you can also track its engagement metrics to further optimize your LinkedIn strategy.
FAQs About LinkedIn Trends
The best LinkedIn scheduling tool for agencies and collaborative teams is Gain. Unlike standard schedulers, Gain is built specifically for content workflows with clients and stakeholders. You can create, preview, and schedule LinkedIn posts across all formats, such as images, videos, GIFs, and status updates, with a dynamic editor that shows exactly how your content will appear on desktop and mobile. Import designs directly from Canva, Dropbox, Box, or OneDrive. You can also target posts to specific audiences and @mention LinkedIn Company Pages in any format.
To find out what’s trending on LinkedIn, start by monitoring posts from industry leaders, top creators, and LinkedIn Top Voices. Pay attention to high-performing posts in your feed — look for recurring topics, formats, and engagement patterns. Moreover, consider joining LinkedIn groups related to your niche and review conversations happening there. You can also use LinkedIn’s “Discover more” section to explore suggested trends.
In 2026, brands should use both personal profiles and company pages, but personal profiles typically achieve better reach and engagement. LinkedIn’s algorithm favors content from individuals, and audiences often connect more with real voices than corporate messaging. However, company pages still play an important role in showcasing brand updates, job opportunities, and credibility. The best approach is a hybrid strategy: use personal profiles (especially founders and key team members) to share insights, stories, and thought leadership, while using the company page for brand consistency and promotion.
Use LinkedIn Trends to Update Your Strategy
Trends on LinkedIn are always changing, but some things just keep working no matter what. And those things? They’re pretty straightforward: share content that’s genuinely useful and high-quality, be real, and let people see the faces behind your brand, not just the official company account.
Once you’ve got your LinkedIn strategy and content ideas all set, schedule them easily with Gain. Try Gain for free today (no credit card required).
