LinkedIn are changing up their algorithm and you might notice some changes in your Feed over the next couple of weeks. More importantly, you might need to change some of your upcoming posts to suit the new algorithm.

Polls

Polls are easy to create and easy to engage with, however they have been overused recently as a ‘growth hack’. I have seen a lot of posts complaining about this, and LinkedIn has listened.

With the new algorithm, they will be showing less polls from people you don’t know, and more polls from those who you often engage with.

LinkedIn Polls is a very powerful tool to get to know what your followers want from you – for example, I often share a poll a few days before posting these articles to allow you to decide what you want to read about – so don’t stop using the feature, just be mindful as to whether or not your polls are relevant to your followers.

Clickbait

Clickbait is a problem that comes in many forms across Social Media, but LinkedIn are cracking down on one particular form – another growth hack.

If you use Facebook you will be familiar with the posts where they ask for you opinion by getting you to use different Reactions (“Heart react for option A and Care react for option B, for example). This type of post has slowly been making it’s way over to LinkedIn.

With the new algorithm, posts where you explicitly ask for likes or reactions with the intent of boosting reach on the platform won’t be promoted.

Comments

The new algorithm will also be focusing on filling your feed with conversations you are more likely to want to join. This involves showing you less irrelevant posts from people outside of your network simply because someone from your network commented on it. In their words: “you may not get a lot of value from seeing a connection’s comment on someone else’s post about a job change if you don’t know that other person.“

For your business, this means you can support your friends, family and online community more without it annoying your followers. Win – win!

Politics

Sometimes, LinkedIn can get full of political posts really quickly and soon you will have the option to not see them. This feature has been in testing since February and is being make more widely available across the US now – if it is well received there, we should see it in the UK shortly.

Although it’s great if you want to have a politics-free feed, if many people activate it you will have to take it into consideration and expect lower engagement and reach on any of your political posts. The main problem with this feature is for the professionals who work in political roles.