LinkedIn Top Voices 2016: Here are the writers you need to know — and start following — now

One of my favorite quotes about writing comes from Flannery O'Connor. Explaining why she doesn’t prepare outlines of her work, she said it’s because she can’t. “I don’t know what I think until I see what I say,” she said.

I believe that writing is still the ultimate outlet for organizing your brain’s inputs — this despite the insane number of methods and media we now have to express ourselves. You observe all day; but to know what it means, a Snap won’t do. You have to write it down. The process isn’t typically easy, but nothing great is.

Every day on LinkedIn, we see the professional world rising to this challenge. We now have over 3 million unique writers on the publishing platform creating 160,000 articles per week. These are professionals from around the world analyzing what they’re hearing in meetings, experiencing as they navigate their busy days and thinking about as they try to stay ahead of what’s coming next. Most of their articles, at first, only get seen and shared among colleagues or peers. But over time these professionals start developing a following and their words start jumping boundaries. People want to see what they think by hearing what they say.

To speed up that discovery process, we’re releasing our second annual LinkedIn Top Voices list, a look at the professionals whose words have launched countless high-quality conversations on LinkedIn in the last year. To compile the list, we use a combination of data and editorial signals designed to capture the voices making a mark in their industries. Some of the inputs include engagement (particularly the comments and shares of each post); growth of followers tied to publishing activity; and number of times the writer had been featured in a channel in his or her area of expertise. We also emphasise diversity of topics and voices. The list reflects publishing activity over a 12-month period, from October 2015 to October 2016, and as with all LinkedIn Lists, we excluded LinkedIn and Microsoft employees from consideration.

With 460+ million members worldwide, the topics and conversations professionals want to engage with diverge in interesting ways. In the US, writers tend to focus on entrepreneurship and innovation; in France, the economy and macroeconomics drive readership. India cares about branding and advertising; Brazil favors anything that’s current. But across the world, the same formula worked to develop an audience: consistency, depth and an authentic desire to create conversations (not just content). Some 66% of our Top Voices published at least once a month and the average length was just over 800 words. But when they published they weren’t done: the Top Voices made 10X more replies to comments on their articles than did the average LinkedIn writer.

What did they get for that effort? Incredible engagement. When we compare these authors to all members writing in 2016, the Top Voices have received on average 64X more comments, 52X more likes, and 24X more shares on their articles. That viral activity on their writing led to an average of 73X more views from Linkedin members than typical pieces and a huge growth in followers. Each of our top writers on average generated over 54,000 new follows this year — almost 150 new followers a day.

Among this year’s honorees:

• Danielle DiMartino Booth, a former Federal Reserve advisor, who provides an insider’s take on financial markets, monetary policy and the health of the economy, areas she says “provide a bottomless pool of inspiration week in and week out.”
• Sally Blount, the dean of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, who writes about management and business, including how a single decade rewrote the rules on the economy, society and political hierarchy.
• Joah Spearman, the founder and CEO of Localeur, a travel platform based in Austin, who writes on his experiences as a black entrepreneur in the technology industry and the opportunities he sees for founders of color to positively impact the world.
• Martin Lindstrom, the author of the New York Times bestseller “Small Data,” who explores consumer psychology and how subconscious signals influence every decision we make — and how companies use these signals to get ahead.
• Elizabeth Spiers, the founding editor of Gawker, who memorably wrote about Peter Thiel’s war against her former employer, adding, “barring some amazing act of philanthropy, this is going to be his legacy now.”

As we did last year, we broke out the Influencers into their own group. This year’s top Influencers include in the U.S., Mohamed El-Erian, Sallie Krawcheck, Y&R CEO David Sable and more. In the UK, a pair of “sirs” — Virgin’s Richard Branson and WPP’s Martin Sorrell — topped the list. In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and pharmaceutical titan Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw built massive and engaged followings. In Brazil, two media titans rose to the top — Ricardo Amorim and Walter Longo — while France was more diversified: auto giant Carlos Ghosn and celebrity chef Anne-Sophie Pic.

There are 188 Top Voices, all of them worth following — whether they’re in your industry or not. These are people whose insights can help you start your own conversations, lead to new ways of thinking or provide lessons that you might not get elsewhere that can give you an edge. And the barrier to turning any of those ideas into your own great work is now non-existent: anyone can write and start developing a following. It just takes a desire to see what it is that you have to say.

Now, see all the writers who made the LinkedIn Top Voices lists:

Plus, check out the top writers around the world:

• U.K.
• India
• France
• Brazil