Linkedin secret sauce revealed! · Women in Tech Power Network

Linkedin secret sauce revealed!

Morning all - I has the most fascinating briefing last night from a chap who’s ‘secret contact’ commissioned a huge report on the LinkedIn Algorithm(s) for some big firms - I’m not allowed to post about it on LI but thought I’d share with you all to help anyone that’s trying to ‘work the algorithm’

here goes:

there is no 1 algorithm, there’s about 20 and they have been changed considerably recently
95% of users are seeing 75% LESS engagement 😩 on thier posts
Numbers of impressions have gone down BUT the algorithm is now showing your posts to relevant people not just to anyone. This is a good thing. 100 impressions to your target audience is better than 1000 to just anyone
Many companies used to employ marketing companies who would be paid to have hoards of people liking and commenting on thier posts to improve reach - this doesn’t work anymore. The algorithm penalises you if the same old people comment on every post - it rewards diversity in your audience. A comment from a friend who comments on every one only your posts is bad - a comment from someone NOT in your network is good.
The algorithm is constantly scoring your posts and based on the score it decides how far to push your post.
It rewards people who post 2-3 times a week - but it also penalises people who post every day or who only post infrequently.
It rewards consistency - if you post on the same days and at the same times every week the algorithm learns your pattern and rewards you (for some unknown reason?)
Each post should have a single clear topic. The algorithm is trying to work out the topic in order to know who to show it to - the more ambiguous the topic or posts that cover more than 1 topic are penalised.
Across all your posts you shouldn’t cover more than 2 topics. Ie for me - some posts on women’s issues and some posts on AI strategy for example. This sounds crazy to me. I post about way more than 2 topics.
The posts that score the highest are posts that trigger conversations and debates or posts that teach people (here’s my top 5…)
Posts that are penalised are complex or too long
Industry insights don’t score well anymore (McKinsey/gartner say….)
Post formats that score higher are posts with text and an image. It must have an image basically - text only posts don’t score well.
Videos are temporarily scoring really well but that’s about to change so don’t invest too much in vids. A user has to watch half your video for it to count as a ‘view’ so careful not to make them too long.
Be careful posting random selfies -you will be penalised if the selfie isn’t related to the post content
Likes and reactions mean nothing - it’s all about comments and they have to be meaningful. A “great post” comment scores nothing. Comments = big points and your post will be shown to more people. If someone comments on your post make sure to reply and try to ask questions to keep the conversation going - questions in comment count BIG style as the algorithm likes conversations.
PDFs score big points - must be between 4-10 pages long. Long PDFs are penalised.
Infographics score well - but make sure they're not overly complex.
personal stories and experiences score very well
if you want your post to reach lots of people do this - the hour before you post it make 6 comments on 6 people’s posts on the same subject. It reinforces to the algorithms what the topic is about and pushes the post further.
business accounts make up less than 1% of the content and aren’t worth having (this is news to me!)
your engagement will go up significantly if you get over 6k followers and the algorithms favourite people have 15k+ followers. It is very hard to get to 6k but easy to get from 6k to 15k as the algorithm starts to promote you heavily from 6k.