161. How does the LinkedIn algorithm work?
Want to go viral on LinkedIn? 🤝 This episode dishes on everything you need to know! After combing through countless articles about LinkedIn's algorithm, brand strategists hosts Phil and Lauren share their takeaways. You'll learn how to avoid being marked as spam, maximize the Golden Hour, think like LinkedIn's home feed, and navigate the algorithm like a pro. By the end of this episode, you'll have the tools to make it big on LinkedIn!
Episode transcription
PHIL
Well, hello there, friend. Welcome to Brand Therapy. I'm Phil.
LAUREN
And I'm Lauren.
PHIL
And this is the podcast where we help you position, build and promote your brand. You already know the topic of what we're tackling because you click on this episode to listen to it. I'll be the first to admit it's not the most exciting topic in the world. No, it's not. No, it's not. But you can trust us. I'm assuming you've listened to the podcast before you know that we can take even the most boring of topics and make them exciting. Or if you're brand new, welcome. And I apologize in advance that this is the first one that you listened to, because we're talking about the LinkedIn algorithm. And there's just no way to make this the most exciting thing in the world. But certainly we will do our best. Are we not up to the challenge, Lauren Moore?
LAUREN
Yeah. I mean, LinkedIn is gray. It's just dry. Videos, not great. JPEGs aren't that great. But my goodness, if you understand the algorithm, and if you play your cards right, you can go viral. You can literally fuel your brand and your business, if you get LinkedIn. Right. And for people who aren't. So visually, LinkedIn is a really good place where you can thrive. I feel like yes, I feel with Twitter, Twitter is great for people who are comfortable writing. But Twitter also is so saturated, it moves 1000 miles per minute. And if you get a tweet that takes off, you'll be forgotten about in 24 hours.
PHIL
It's fleeting. It's certainly not the type of platform where your content will live, you know, an exceptional lifetime. I know that sounds corny, but it's true. I'd say the same about Instagram, to be honest, like, certainly a piece of content can have legs, especially when people decide they want to share it, and they want to share it now. But one week from now, less people are gonna care about it. LinkedIn, your content, like YouTube can live on for a very long time, not forever, but a lot longer than other platforms.
LAUREN
I mean, sometimes I'll log into my LinkedIn, and I'll see a post from someone who's a third degree connection, which, or even less than that, which means it's someone that I literally am not connected to, my friends of friends aren't connected to it, my friends of friends of friends are not connected to that person. Pretty much as far a degree of separation as you can . I’ll log into LinkedIn, I will see that person's posts and better yet, that post is a month old. It's wild, it's really wild.
So today, we were thinking it would be useful to summarize everything that we've researched, and know about LinkedIn algorithm. So that way you can put this social network to work for your business.
PHIL
Let's talk about it.
LAUREN
Alright, so first off, you need to understand the algorithm's purpose. And this actually applies to every single social network that you post on the algorithm's job is to ensure that every user has a good experience. So there is a reason why not every one of your Instagram posts is seen by every one of your followers. There's a reason why posts by someone that you haven't thought of for 10 years come up on your Facebook feed. And it's because the algorithm is trying to understand who you are as a user, what you're interested in, and what really entertains you, and present that content to you. Because it's impossible for you to see every single post by every single person that you're connected with. And that especially applies on LinkedIn.
So with that in mind, if we're going to be thinking like a marketer, we need to think like an algorithm. Your content is only going to be seen, if it's giving a good experience for a particular user. There are millions of posts and updates and activities happening every single day on LinkedIn, and the algorithm's job is to make sure that out of everything that's going on, you're seeing the most engaging content for you. So basically, your content needs to be engaging, it needs to be appealing, and it needs to be more useful than another similar post on LinkedIn.
PHIL
Absolutely. And that's, I mean, what a checklist. seful for people. These are the things you need to strive for. The more you do it, the better you get. I'm sure in this episode, we'll talk about consistency. And I've got a really good example for that. The importance of that I've tried more than just once, don't just go and try once today, and if it doesn't take off, you give up, you really need to keep trying on this platform.
LAUREN
Mm hmm. Okay, so when you post, there are a bunch of things that are happening on the LinkedIn side, generally within the first hour of you posting. And so I want to go through those today, because it's important for you to understand what LinkedIn is evaluating when deciding if it should show your content to more people or not. So the first thing LinkedIn has is a content filter, it's what they call for any post that goes out on LinkedIn. And this content filter, basically labels, any posts in one of three categories, spam, low quality, and clear. And so for obvious reasons, you want to be in that clear category, right. And the difference between low quality and clear posts is that low quality posts are probably poorly written, they probably have a bunch of hashtags to try to be viral, they're not really providing that much value in terms of the education, the density of keywords, etc. And so you want to be in that clear category by providing content of value.
Okay, next up, so you get that label, and then your post is initially going to be shown to only a small group of people, you're connected with, like a fraction. And this is, again, how almost all algorithms work on social media. So what we're saying today, while it's working, looking through the lens of LinkedIn, it's definitely applicable to every single social media platform, no question. So your post is first not going to be shown to every single person you're connected with, it's only shown to a small sample of people who either follow you or are connected with you on LinkedIn. So that means that only a small fraction of people you're connected with are actually going to be seeing your content when it first posts. And so the key here, this is the window of opportunity, is you want to be getting as much engagement as possible, in the first 60 minutes of your post going out in the form of comments, clicks, engagements, expanding to see more, opening images, like any kind of click on your posts, because that will in turn, tell LinkedIn, hey, this post was seen by a small portion of people. But many people actually took action on it. This post is being very well received from a small group of people. Let's show it to more. That's basically what's going through the algorithms, virtual brain
PHIL
Shocker. This is how every social media algorithm works. Obviously, there's differences in nuances per platform, but this is how it works. This idea of like, first a sample size and a time limit to see how good this stacks up against everything else that's being published right now., and the algorithm goes, oh, this one's taken off. Let's make sure more people see it, because it's going to keep them on this app or a website and engage them. And so this is, it's just important to understand this in relation to LinkedIn, but in relation to every social media network. Ask your friends to comment on it. Yeah, drive engagement.
LAUREN
Yeah. Yeah, comment, share, like LinkedIn, actually, and this is getting really deep into the algorithm. So if your eyes are glazing over, just skip the next 20 seconds or so because this is getting really nerdy?
PHIL
Well, now people are gonna want to listen, even if they want to skip it, now they need to know it, they're gonna miss you.
LAUREN
Okay, so LinkedIn gives your content a score, internally, based on the types of engagements you get, and the volume of engagements that you get on your posts. And so all of whether it's a like, or a comment, each form of engagement has its own internal value to LinkedIn, that changes with the algorithm. Let's say our comment is two points, and a like is one point and a share is five points, this hasn't been like proven or anything, I'm just throwing all those numbers for the sake of this example, all of those different scores, all those would add up to a content score, depending on what form of engagement LinkedIn algorithm is favoring at that time. So the way that you can kind of break this down, is to pay attention to your LinkedIn metrics. This is a personal page thing, but it's also a business page thing, depending on where you're posting. But you'll be able to notice patterns, if you pay attention to the metrics of each post. For example, maybe you get way more impressions, like double the impressions on a post that has more comments. Or maybe you get way less impressions for a post that has a record breaking number of likes, but you get less impressions, which then tells you like LinkedIn doesn't really care about likes. So I recommend that over time, pay attention to the patterns that you see from all of your posts, including the ones that don't do so well, because you could structure your post ‘call to action’ depending on what you know is going to take off. So if you know that a post with way more comments is going to be seen by more people, then you want to make it as easy as possible for people to comment.
PHIL
You cannot admit that you don't love the granular geek out understanding of the LinkedIn algorithm.
LAUREN
Love it.
PHIL
It's such a mystery. And I feel like we're dispelling that mystery today. But it's valuable. This is so important to know, because you need to keep it in your mind while you're creating this platform.
LAUREN
For sure. Now, this is really interesting. LinkedIn actually has a team of people who decide what content is trending, and what shows up in news feeds, and actually what they'll model the algorithm based on content that they see that they like. Now, not everything in your newsfeed is handpicked, don't worry, you don't need to harass a LinkedIn employee to get featured. But given that there is a team of humans that ultimately kind of set the standard for what's popular, you want to pay attention to the posts that come up in your newsfeed. And you want to make sure that your content you're creating is strongly inspired by what you're seeing in the feed, because that's what's being favored by LinkedIn. So things you want to look at are the sentence structure. A lot of times there was a trend for a while where people would tell a story with one sentence per line and space it out, so it was long, long, long, long, long. But if you post it in that forum, it would take off. So you want to look at the sentence structure, you want to look at the total word count, you want to look at the subject you want to look at, photos are included, and basically model your own content off of what's doing well in your home feed already.
PHIL
I love that idea. I love that idea. You know what you're going to need, listener, you're going to need an hour, maybe two hours, maybe a little bit longer if you want to dive deep, to literally just focus on your LinkedIn strategy. Use this episode as a checklist. Now this also feels like a good time to let you know that this is a blog post on our website, and a YouTube video. So you can consume this info in the way that you prefer. But we've tried to jot this down in multiple mediums so that it acts as a really tangible guideline for you to be able to understand the platform, the algorithm, and adapt your content strategy accordingly.
LAUREN
Mm hmm. Definitely. Now, one final thing that I'm going to say about LinkedIn, and we do get into this major detail in our blog post, but I know that this topic is a little dry, while full of potential, it is a bit dry. One final thing I'll say is that LinkedIn’s goal is to basically connect like minded people together to form online communities. That's really why their platform exists to bring similar people together. With that in mind, it's important for your profile to ultimately be the answer to someone else's search. Because if your profile is super clear, you work in brand strategy, you help personal brands, you help people grow their single person businesses, blah, blah, blah. LinkedIn’s algorithm is so smart that when you post, and it knows your area of expertise, it will show your content to the right people. So that's why it's really, really important to pack your profile with keywords. You really want to have relevant keywords and topics and lessons and competencies and make it crystal clear about who you are and what value you bring. And as well, you might even want to do a competitive search. So think about what you want to be discovered for like if someone was going to be searching on LinkedIn for a particular industry, or expert or whatever. And if you want to be the result of that, do a little search in LinkedIn and see who comes up and look at their keywords that they use. Look at what headline they've got, look at what photo they have, and obviously don't rip them off. But take note and make some assumptions about what LinkedIn might be favoring about that person. So it can influence the way you structure and fill out your profile.
PHIL
It's exciting. I think we just made a social media platform that is not exciting, exciting, how to convey the huge potential that this has to really launch your content and your brand if you can strike. I would also finish with one example of someone who does LinkedIn really well. When I open LinkedIn on a daily basis. It's not for very long, it's to get in and out, because it's not my favorite, but Catherine Gladwyn, who we have had on the podcast twice does LinkedIn like an absolute boss. And I love that her content incorporates value and incorporates humor. She is controversial about Yeah, what she posts about and she's just got this wicked sense of humor that she sprinkles into everything she does that just, it brings me so much joy. You know what else she posts every day she posts every day. And not every post that she does gets 100 likes, but sometimes she'll post something I bet when she's not even expecting it to do well, and they'll get 300 400 likes with a very, very engaged audience. Not just likes, but comments. She recently published about how important LinkedIn has been for our business. And that is her main social media platform. Yes, one of the funniest people I know. And that just goes to show you that, yes, well, Instagram and YouTube and Facebook and all these other platforms are so glitzy and glamorous, you know, and draw you in and make you spend time on the app. That's how they're designed. LinkedIn is amazing in its own regard. And I think there's huge potential here.
LAUREN
Totally. I remember, Catherine posted something last Christmas, about how she adamantly did not want to do the Santa Claus thing with her daughter. And she doesn't think that it affects the holidays at all, and had a very bold stance on it. And it erupted. Some people were praising her for taking such a bold stance and other people were deeply offended and concerned that she took away that magic from her daughter's childhood and it was so engrossing. I read every single one of the comments. Every single one of them. It literally erupted. So funny, she knows her audience, she and LinkedIn also knew the audience and that's why it took.
PHIL
She's great. We will hyperlinked to her profile in the podcast show notes. You've got your little checklist. This is a blog post. It's also a YouTube video. We hope you found this useful. Now go and execute go and carve out some time to work on your LinkedIn profile and understand the algorithm and how it's gonna affect your content strategy. If you enjoyed this episode, you know where to find us online, @philpallen.
Lauren
@thelaurenmoore
PHIL
Leave us a review in the iTunes store, a five star, five star, that helps other people discover this podcast we work hard to create for you. Until next time, this has been Brand Therapy. We'll see you in our next episode. Thanks for hanging out with us.
LAUREN
Bye bye
