LinkedIn Shares Insights into its Latest Feed Algorithm Updates

LinkedIn has outlined some of the latest updates to its content distribution algorithm, which could alter your posting approach in the app, including a bigger focus on valuable, evergreen updates, its ongoing efforts to stamp out clickbait approaches, and changes to its “Creator Mode” offering.

The notes come via an interview with LinkedIn’s editor in chief Dan Roth, and senior director of engineering Tim Jurka, on Entrepreneur’s “Problem Solvers” podcast, which you can tune into here, and if you’re serious about maximizing your LinkedIn performance, it is worth taking a listen, and hearing the latest advice direct from two of the top decision-makers in the app.

There’s a lot more insight in the full discussion, but here’s a look at some of the key notes.

First off, LinkedIn says that it’s looking to put more focus on maximizing value in the app, as opposed to timeliness, necessarily, which could see more content have a longer shelf-life.

As explained by Entrepreneur:

“Let’s say you went to LinkedIn and posted a detailed lesson about beverage marketing. Typically, that post would disappear from people’s feeds within a few days or more. Now LinkedIn is thinking differently. It might identify your post as uniquely useful – and whenever other users show an interest in beverage marketing, it might display your post in their feed as a special “suggested post.” This means your content could actively live on for months or even years, reaching a hyper-targeted audience.”

The main aim of this change, LinkedIn says, is to better align with its mission to “connect the world’s professionals to economic opportunity”, through niche, valuable content that helps members grow their knowledge in their specific areas of interest.

So rather than posting about timely, trending topics, as has generally been the best approach to maximize traction in social apps, you could actually see more benefit from posting more in-depth, insightful posts, including information that people can’t get anywhere else.

Indeed, Roth says that LinkedIn members shouldn’t bother chasing posting trends, like best times to post, post length, etc. Instead, Roth says, members should focus on sharing their insight and knowledge.

“If you can just share knowledge into the world, I guarantee you things are going to work out. They won’t always work out for every single post, but over the length of your posting, it is going to work out for you.”  

That could be a consideration for your platform strategy.

Another interesting point of note from Roth is the platform’s move away from clickbait-style, spaces-between-each-sentence posts, or ‘broetry’ as it became known a few years back. LinkedIn users have long been employing this as a tactic to improve post reach, because users are forced to tap on the “Read more” prompt to get the full context. In the past, LinkedIn’s algorithm understood those clicks to be a positive engagement, which would thereby increase its ranking signal.  

But Roth says that LinkedIn doesn’t count “read more” clicks the same way anymore.

“As soon as we realized what people were doing, and that we had incorrectly attributed the ‘read more’ button as a signal that people were getting some value out of [a post], we just stopped using that as a signal.”

So there’s no point baiting people into tapping through to expand a post for your full insights.

LinkedIn’s actually been looking to squash “broetry” for some time, as per this update.  

Among other notes from Roth and Jurka:

LinkedIn is developing new CTA button options for user profiles, including a “Subscribe to My Newsletter” option, among others. Custom CTA buttons had been a function of “Creator Mode”, which LinkedIn recently shelved, with its core functions now being made to all LinkedIn members.
LinkedIn is moving away from the term ‘creator’ because most LinkedIn members already have other titles (i.e. “doctor”, “lawyer”) that they better identify with in a professional context.
LinkedIn plans to expand its newsletter product this year.

These are some interesting notes, which could help you outline a more effective LinkedIn strategy, in line with its key areas of focus.

For example, if you have a blog post or piece of research that regularly gets referenced, it could be worth re-sharing that via your company page, in alignment with this new push towards more valuable material.

Maybe, in the long term, that’ll deliver better results for your LinkedIn referral traffic.