Algorithm changes tend to make people in digital marketing nervous. Many of us have had the situation where we’ve seen something that has been a reliable approach suddenly become a negative factor.
But the new LinkedIn algorithm update seems to be a breath of fresh air. From everything we’ve seen, it’s a great reason to consider re-evaluating your thought leadership approach. And if you don’t have a thought leadership approach? Well, this update provides a compelling reason to start one.
Why did LinkedIn change their algorithm?
In recent years, if you thought the LinkedIn posts you were seeing had become more like Facebook-style content, you weren’t alone – following the increased levels of working from home, there’s been blurring of lines with regards to what was appropriate for LinkedIn.
Dan Roth, LinkedIn Editor in Chief talked to Entrepreneur about how “our home and work lives got enmeshed”, and personal and political content became more popular. This led to the previous algorithm favouring viral content – which meant you were more likely to see broadly popular posts.
While this may have been good for overall traffic, it took away some of LinkedIn’s unique selling point. After all, if a site is trading in personal, political, inspiring or influencer-led content, then that’s already well-served by Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, along with newcomers like BlueSky and Threads. When three out of those are owned by the same parent company, that’s a competition that LinkedIn is unlikely to win.
So, LinkedIn has moved back to what really sets them apart – expert-driven content.
How LinkedIn determines the type of content you want to see
Rather than ‘virality’, LinkedIn is now focusing more on three core metrics:
· Relevance
· expertise
· and engagement.
It means the content should be relevant on a professional level and must now show a level of expertise. This will partly be measured by the level of meaningful comments from people in your network and others who share your interests.
This is good news for anyone who is reviewing their organic content approach to LinkedIn, especially if they work with thought leaders as well as posting content on their company feed.
There are two reasons to review or build your thought leadership approach.
Firstly, your connections and followers will now see your posts first because there are obvious links between your interests and your connections. Posts with high engagement within these circles will be more likely to be widely seen than those with low engagement.
Secondly, your interests will be used to identify what the algorithm will show you – and these interests will be determined based on your profile as well as what you post.
While your company content should also be relevant and show expertise, the increased emphasis on connections means that people in your company who already engage on these topics will also get more traction for their content. That’s because the algorithm now assumes that if someone is both an expert in a topic and has an engaged network, they’re more likely to produce content that is relevant to their community.
Why it’s a good time to start building thought leadership
LinkedIn engagement isn’t something that builds immediately. But if you have someone in your organisation who has the potential to become a thought leader, then their content is likely to become more valuable to LinkedIn than it may have been in recent years.
There are never guarantees. But if LinkedIn can favour the type of professional content that set them apart in the first place, then content creators should move quickly to benefit from this. Meaningful engagement can take time to build. However, by partnering with your thought leaders and aligning your goals, you’ll be in a better place to take advantage of this new algorithm with meaningful professional engagement.
When you’re working on organic campaigns, don’t just focus on your company account. Consider:
What does the user journey look like if it starts when someone engages with your thought leaders?
What is it about your campaign it that’s relevant to those people?
And how do you rework the content to fit them?
Where possible, highlighting these thought leaders and building content with them that fits comfortably into their output is likely to be the way forward. And that doesn’t mean copying and pasting content from your company account – it should feel like original and authentic viewpoints.
This will take work as well as thinking differently about how you approach organic content. But especially when it comes to B2B organisations, LinkedIn will see more value in this approach going forward, so it’s a strategy that is likely to get results.
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