LinkedIn is currently seeing ‘record levels’ or user engagement, but much of that is apparently dominated by re-posts from other platforms, spam, vaguely topical polls, and various other low-interest posting actions specifically designed to generate superficial participation.
At least, that’s how it feels, but LinkedIn is working to improve this, and today, LinkedIn launched a new initiative to provide more transparency on how it works to combat these elements and improve your LinkedIn experience.
As LinkedIn explains:
“Starting today and for the next few weeks, we will be publishing “Demystifying the Feed”, a series of blog posts and content on the platform that will aim to provide a greater understanding of how our product works and address common misconceptions and assumptions. . Our ultimate goal is to be transparent with you about how we think about the feed and how things work.”
The first two videos in the series are now live, with LinkedIn VP of Engineering Sabry Tozin explaining what types of content LinkedIn is looking to amplify in the stream:
As well as the alignment between professional and personal growth through LinkedIn content:
The latter is probably a key focus note, with many seemingly off-topic posts potentially falling into the more “personal” category.
Should you post the same updates you share on Facebook also on LinkedIn, where your audience will be professionals and those in your peer network? In most cases, probably not, but as Tozin explains, there are some crossovers that are acceptable and align with the LinkedIn use case.
That information is interesting to have, but really, what LinkedIn users probably want to know is what gets the most traction on the platform and what is likely to be penalized by their algorithms.
LinkedIn traditionally hasn’t provided much insight into this (hence this new initiative), but has previously noted that:
So if you want to maximize the performance of your content on LinkedIn, you probably want to move away from these elements and focus on creating relevant and engaging posts that align with your target audience.
That, of course, won’t stop some people from re-sharing viral posts from other apps as a means of attracting cheap engagement.
However, LinkedIn hopes to provide more oversight on how it’s addressing you with this new initiative, which could help you create a more effective and engaging presence on the app.
The first two videos (above) are pretty general, but LinkedIn says it has more to come, including:
- Demystifying the feed: how the algorithm works and customizing the feed
- Demystifying the feed: content distribution and how we work to address bias
Hopefully, these items will have more specific actionable tips to help you improve your LinkedIn approach.
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