What’s new and how does it affect you?
LinkedIn Algorithm Changes – It has made some pretty big changes to its algorithm and how it prioritises posts and content for its users. This information comes via Jason Feifer of Entrepreneur, who recently spoke to the LinkedIn team about their updates. In this blog, we cover everything you need to know to stay relevant to the new changes.
There are two main changes affecting the reach of posts on LinkedIn:
1. If you post on LinkedIn, it is now more likely that your followers will see your post.
This change comes after users preferred content from people they “know and care about”, saying they found content from their own connections more valuable. Already, LinkedIn has seen a 10% increase in people viewing posts from people they know. If you want to prioritise your impressions, now would be the time to do it!
2. Posts that share “Knowledge and Advice” are now prioritised throughout the platform.
This change goes hand in hand with the first – Posts sharing “knowledge and advice” will now be a primary way to reach people who are not current connections. LinkedIn’s system will now evaluate whether a post contains knowledge and advice, categorise it, and show it to other users whom it deems likely to find it relevant and useful. LinkedIn aims to provide greater value to help its users feel “more productive and successful”. With this shift to value-based algorithm changes it is more important than ever to produce high-quality social media posts.
But how does the LinkedIn algorithm identify “Knowledge and Advice”?
While they haven’t told us every metric they use to classify posts, they have given us a few. From everything we know, it looks like LinkedIn is making a shift to prioritising quality and relevant posts and content to bring more value to its users. A few of the new metrics used to identify posts providing “knowledge and value” include:
The post speaks to a distinct audience – The system will look at posts and ask, “Who is this relevant to”. For example, a personal birthday post would most likely only go to close connections. While a post on B2B advertising would be visible in that sector regardless of connection status. Following this, the post’s success depends on whether it provides good advice and value to other users.
The author is writing in their core subject area – Now when posting on LinkedIn, the platform isn’t just evaluating the value of your post. It’s now also evaluating you, and the value you hold in your core subject area. Engaging in your core subject area builds a trust factor and lets LinkedIn you are relevant in that category. Your previous post’s success in a given category will increase your visibility too. There has been an overall shift to providing higher quality and relevant content to its users.
The post has “meaningful comments” – In the past LinkedIn would amplify posts with a lot of comments. As a result, some users banded together to create “engagement groups” where they agree to like and comment on posts. LinkedIn wanted to stop this and now random comments of “great” or “so true” will not hold value. Relevant comments to the content itself and responses from the original poster will have significantly more value. The algorithm will see these exchanges as a “conversation” that other people may find value in and boost this instead.
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