Would You like a feature Interview?
All Interviews are 100% FREE of Charge
Your best LinkedIn posts could soon have even more reach.
it is, linkedin is developing a new way for your posts to appear in other people’s feeds. It’s called “Suggested Posts,” and it’s an ambitious new way to distribute content, where the best posts are visible to your audience for months or even years.
“Content lives and dies very quickly on newsfeeds right now,” he says. Tim Julka, Senior Director of Engineering at LinkedIn. “We’re trying to collect the collective body of expertise on a platform and make it visible whenever you need it.”
This is the latest in a series of changes at LinkedIn, with the platform now aggressively seeking to reward so-called “knowledge and advice” rather than virality. In June 2023, I reported on LinkedIn’s first algorithm change. Things like amplifying posts that recognize that posts are based on the writer’s core expertise and encourage meaningful conversations within the comments.
So what’s next?In a recent conversation with Mr. Jurka and his colleagues, LinkedIn Editor-in-Chief Dan RossWe discussed a number of topics that are relevant to anyone looking to increase their LinkedIn engagement.
- Development of suggested posts
- More new tools to help your LinkedIn users grow
- Impact of algorithm changes and complaints from some users that their reach has decreased
- LinkedIn is retiring the term “creator”
- Why LinkedIn says you shouldn’t trust reports on how to optimize your posts
You can listen to our full conversation on my site entrepreneur podcast, problem solveror read more below.
New “recommended posts” mechanism
Social media feeds are typically optimized for timeliness, showing you the latest posts from your connections and new posts you might enjoy. But timeliness can be an issue, Jurka says, because not everyone needs the same information at the same time.
LinkedIn isn’t eliminating timeliness, but it wants to be a more active content broker. That means knowing what individual users are interested in and showing them relevant posts, regardless of when the posts were created. “If a particular insight is extremely valuable to them in that moment, we really try to tailor our content to them,” Jurka says.
It looks like this:
Let’s say you go to LinkedIn and post an in-depth lesson on beverage marketing. The post usually disappears from people’s feeds within a few days or more.
Now, LinkedIn is thinking differently. We may identify your posts as uniquely useful and show your posts in our feeds as special “suggested posts” whenever other users express an interest in beverage marketing. This means your content can last for months or even years and reach a targeted audience.
If this works, Jurka acknowledges, it will incentivize users to post more useful content. This feature is currently being tested and you may see a version of it in your feed. Julka said he is currently spending about 75% of his time working on proposed posts and that the project is in a “very early stage.”
New tools to help you grow
LinkedIn is rolling out a series of new tools on its platform aimed at helping users connect more efficiently. These include:
Custom button. Premium members can now create “custom buttons,” which are small hyperlinks that appear on your profile and above all your posts. Currently, this button can only say a few phrases, such as “Visit our website” or “Make an appointment.” Ross said more phrases are coming, including phrases like “Subscribe to our newsletter.”
Verified badge. Users can now verify their identity on LinkedIn. different ways. Once verified, a small badge will appear on the user’s profile. Jurka called it a “trust-building tool” to help you connect with other users, but no, being verified won’t make your posts more visible.
Thought leadership advertising. Companies can now spend money promoting other people’s posts, such as someone praising their product. This is only available to organizations with Company Pages.
Newsletter. LinkedIn has been developing its newsletter product for years and says it currently has 550 million professionals subscribed to 156,000 newsletters. The product still lacks a lot of the data and features found in newsletter platforms like ConvertKit and Substack, but Roth says LinkedIn plans to expand the product and compete directly with other platforms in the space. It seems that it is.
Creator mode. For a while now, LinkedIn users have been able to turn on a setting called . creator mode. Enable audience building tools like LinkedIn Live, audio events, and more in-depth post analysis. The company told me that over the next few months, it plans to make these tools available to everyone, whether they have Creator Mode turned on or not, and that it also plans to make these tools available to everyone, whether they have Creator Mode turned on or not, and that they’ll also be making “the most effective tools we’ve heard in your feedback.” We will invest in it.” It’s about sharing and building an audience. ” (This was not discussed on the podcast, but the company later told me about it.)
Did the algorithm negatively impact your reach?
Since algorithm changes started rolling out last year, many LinkedIn creators say their posts are reaching fewer people. 1 reportsays there was a 66% decrease in reach in October 2023 compared to October 2022, based on ratings of 1 million posts.
really?surely Apparently in this way. Post daily on LinkedIn, I find it harder to get impressions and new followers.I I surveyed my followers He recently said this on LinkedIn:
LinkedIn Editor-in-Chief Dan Ross said he didn’t want to “negate” these concerns, but didn’t share them.
“Tim [Jurka] “We’ve been working on this together for 10 years now,” Ross said. “My gosh, I can’t think of a time when someone hasn’t told me that it’s getting harder to reach people on LinkedIn.” Ta.
Instead, Ross said, LinkedIn takes a completely different view of the value of “reach.” The company’s goal is to “connect professionals around the world with economic opportunities,” but in their eyes, that doesn’t usually mean reaching the greatest number of other professionals. Instead, we want to help users connect with a small number of people who can make a meaningful difference within their industry.
As an example, he told the story of a nurse who recently started posting on LinkedIn. This caught the attention of the employer, who hired the person for a larger role. “It was a financial success for this person,” Ross said. “The only people he needed to reach out to with this post were the people who work at this hospital.”
Yes, he acknowledged that some content creators on LinkedIn (myself included) aim to reach large audiences. But that’s a “small percentage” of users. LinkedIn’s priority is to build products that help the majority of users, and those users benefit from targeted rather than mass reach, he says.
Why LinkedIn is retiring the term “creator”
LinkedIn has been calling out “creators” and using the term aggressively for the past few years. Sponsoring programs to support creators, Ross said, creator weekly.
However, the word “creator” is disappearing from platforms.rot even close his newsletter I replaced it with something called insider.
why? It’s simple, Ross says. “Our members told us that that’s not something they resonate with.”
“This is my responsibility,” he continued. “I had a team that focused on using the word creator. We were approaching people, and the feedback we always got was: ‘I’m a lawyer. .Why do you keep using this word?’ creator?’ That deterred them. ”
That doesn’t mean LinkedIn is abandoning people who identify as “creators,” Ross said. But those people are just part of the company’s much larger user base.
Don’t do optimization hacks Seriously, says LinkedIn
If you’re interested in expanding your reach on LinkedIn, you’ve probably seen people posting reports on how to hack the platform’s algorithm.
These reports typically analyze a large portion of your LinkedIn posts and draw detailed conclusions about things like the best times to post, the best length for posts, and how to include hyperlinks without diluting your reach.
Ross doesn’t mince words, saying, “That understanding is often wrong.”
The problem is twofold, he says. First, LinkedIn constantly adjusts its algorithm, so yesterday’s signals may not reflect today’s product. But the bigger problem is, “There’s a lot of causality to this, but we don’t really understand how things work.”
He gives an example. Years ago, experts claimed that LinkedIn favored a certain style of long-form writing. As a result, many people started writing in such a long style.
But it was LinkedIn actually Will I get paid to post in that style? No, says Ross.
“When we had a button that said, ‘Read more,’ and people clicked on it, we thought: Well, this is a sign that people are gaining knowledge from this thing“But as LinkedIn knows, that’s not true. The ‘Read More’ button only indicates that you’re interested in what’s next. That doesn’t necessarily mean the post itself is valuable to readers. ” As soon as I realized what people were doing and that I had mistakenly interpreted the “read more” button as a signal that people were getting some value, [a post], we just stopped using it as a signal. ”
Of course, the authors of these reports may disagree, claiming that their reports are well-sourced snapshots of trends on the platform. But for those looking to optimize their posts, Ross offers the following advice: Don’t chase trends. “If you can share your knowledge with the world, I guarantee you things will go well,” he says. “It won’t always work for every post, but the longer you post, the better it will be.”