Changes to the LinkedIn algorithm is designed to serve up more personalised and relevant content to users and while that sounds great in theory, what does it mean for you?

LinkedIn is cracking down on post that bait people for engagement and that includes the previously popular polls. This spells big changes coming to LinkedIn.

This is what LinkedIn announced in a blog post about the changes.

  1. They are reducing content consider as low quality. “We've seen a number of posts that expressly ask or encourage the community to engage with content via likes or reactions – posted with the exclusive intent of boosting reach on the platform.” LinkedIn have listened to their users who find these sort of social media posts to be misleading and frustrating, so going forward they will not be promoting engagement bait content and are encouraging everyone in the Linkedin community to focus on delivering reliable, credible and authentic content. This means if you’ve been creating clickbait (sensationalised headlines for clicks), engagement bait (asking for likes or reactions), your social media strategy needs to change.
  2. Less Polls. Scrolling LinkedIn as part of your morning routine, it’s not unsual to see lots of polls in your feed and most of them are on topics you really don’t even care about and people you don’t know from a bar of soap. For example: Dell sent out a poll asking what percentage of people are working remotely from home. You might get random marketing managers asking what your biggest struggle at work is and at the end of the day, who cares right? So using filtering LinkedIn is promising to show only relevant polls that are helpful from people in your network. If relying on polls is a main staple of your LinkedIn strategy, it’s time to reevaluate.
  3. Options to filter content. LinkedIn provides you with options to reduce how often you see content from your community. Options to tell LinkedIn are attached to all individual posts with users able to filter content by topics and authors.If multiple people are telling LinkedIn they’re not enjoying your content, the algorithm is going to decrease your reach. It’s now more important than ever, to ensure you’re only posting high-quality, thought-provoking content.

How does the LinkedIn algorithm work and what do the changes mean for your content?

The new algorithm changes have been introduced to fuel value-added content. It’s time to step up the way you post to LinkedIn and put in more thought if you wish your posts to continue to get exposure. Going forward all posted content will go through a series of filters. Each piece of content gets divided into one of three categories:

1. Spam

2. Low Quality

3. High Quality

What happens next is that your content gets rolled out to a small group of followers. If it passes the spam filter, then it is rolled out on line to discover how your content is received by LinkedIn audiences. If it gets comments and likes and shares, then LinkedIn enables it to be ranked higher and will then be seen by more pairs of eyes.

Get your personalised LinkedIn Strategy from Xdesigns Advertising.

It’s time to make sure your LinkedIn personal and business profile is up to date and instigate a solid strategy for posting. If you need a social media strategy to that navigates the LinkedIn changes, please reach out to our team at XDesigns Advertising.