A guide to LinkedIn’s algorithm
As of April 2022, LinkedIn has over 810 million users and over 58 million registered companies. The algorithm processes billions of posts per day to prioritise relevant content for each individual user. Understanding how the algorithm works is a vital tool to boost engagement and ensure your posts are being seen.
In this post, learn how the LinkedIn algorithm works to get the most out of this social platform.
How is my content sorted?
Content is sorted into three categories: spam, low-quality or high-quality.
To avoid the spam category:
- Check for bad grammar
- Don’t include multiple links in your post
- Don’t post too frequently
- Don’t tag any more than five people
- Don’t use typical hashtags like #comment #follow #like
Low-quality posts are those that aren’t engaging for other users, they are not considered as spam, however, they are obviously missing some features that could make them good quality content.
High quality posts follow all LinkedIn recommendations for top engagement.
Some ways to make your post high-quality
Hashtags
- Check for bad grammar
- Don’t include multiple links in your post
- Don’t post too frequently
- Don’t tag any more than five people
- Don’t use typical hashtags like #comment #follow #like
Dwell Time
This is a pretty new feature that LinkedIn implemented into their algorithm in 2020. It analyses the amount of time people have your post on their screen and also whether they click the “see more” button.
Getting people to click on the “See More” button boosts engagement and is more powerful than the “Like” button so its definitely worth spending some more time to make your posts a bit longer (but keep them engaging)!
Best and Worst Performing Posts
Best:
- Polls are the best way to get immediate engagement and on average have 450% more reach
- Document posts that include a PDF or a slide deck increase dwell time
- Multiple picture text posts
- Posts with 1200-2000 characters
Worst:
- Posts that include an external link, to get around this edit the post and add the link after it goes live, or post the link in the first comment
- Pre-defined posts (like Kudos)
- LinkedIn Articles
Use of video
Video is the most re-shared form of content on LinkedIn and it is one of the best ways to maximise your dwell time. Video posts get 5x more engagement that any other type of post.
To create the ideal video to post on LinkedIn:
- Have the video uploaded to Vimeo first
- Be between 45-60 seconds
- Make sure it is captioned as many people use socials out and about without any sound
- Square format
- Have an engaging first frame thumbnail
- Upload natively, do not share a Youtube link
When should you post?
To get the best out of your post, the first group of people that see it need to engage within the first 2 hours of publishing. The success of the post is then based on this initial engagement. This is why it is important to put your content out there at the right time.
- The best days to post are Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
- The best time to post is in the morning between 08:00-10:00am.
Posting too frequently reduces the engagement of all your content entirely. It is best to only post one piece of content onto LinkedIn within 24 hours, as your second post will kill the engagement of your first, and so on.
Other tips and tricks to beat the algorithm
- Make sure all your content is optimised for mobile viewing as 60% of all LinkedIn traffic comes from mobile devices.
- Reply to comments from your audience within two hours
- Constant engagement from you with your own connections will help boost your content’s success
- Keep track and measure how your audience engages with your posts so you know if there is anything you need to change, or do more of
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