A Glimpse Into The LinkedIn Feed Algorithm

LinkedIn is currently experiencing record levels of user engagement, but much of it appears to be dominated by re-posts from other platforms, spam, vaguely topical polls, and other low-interest posting behaviours, all of which are meant to drive superficial engagement.

But LinkedIn is striving to change things, and today it announced a new project ‘Mythbusting the Feed’ to bring more insight into how it's addressing these issues and improving your LinkedIn experience. In an attempt to do so and create transparency, LinkedIn has released a set of video blogs to explain how its feed algorithm works. 

In the first video, “Mythbusting the Feed - What kind of conversations are welcomed on LinkedIn?” the VP of Engineering, Sabry Tozin, tells viewers that any kinds of conversations are welcome on LinkedIn.

• Encouraging people to talk about things that are authentic and relevant to them is the key message of this video. 

• Tozin brings up the topics of the challenges of working from home and being a front line worker in the times of Covid-19 to give examples of the kinds of conversations LinkedIn wants to have.

• He also talked about people sharing posts about more sensitive and personal subjects such as mental health on the platform. LinkedIn is looking to make the platform a safe place for the sharing of such information.

• So, while conversations about work and productivity may be the drivers of content on LinkedIn, the networking platform wants people to feel connected with a community while on it.

The second video was “Mythbusting the Feed - What does it mean to be professional when it comes to content on LinkedIn?” 

• In this video, Tozin focuses on the fact that profession and personal growth are both very closely intertwined.

• This means that there is no need to limit yourself to speaking about the singular topic of growth in the professional environment. 

• Any form of personal growth you may have experienced while on the road to success, or while overcoming failure, is something that can be talked about on LinkedIn.

This video leaves us with a few questions. What is considered ‘personal’ or ‘personal growth’ and how personal can we get on LinkedIn?

Can you occasionally share posts, content, or updates about your life that you have shared on other platforms such as Instagram, which is known to be a more casual and ‘informal’ place, on LinkedIn? Would that result in a lower reach than your normal posts would get? 

The answer would probably be that it depends on the content and the topic. Something you post on an Instagram story, like a picture of you out with friends, just chilling, might not be the best thing to do. 

The next two videos of this project are ‘Mythbusting the Feed: How the Algorithm Works and Personalizing the Feed’ and ‘Mythbusting the Feed: Content Distribution and How We Work to Address Bias’. We are hoping these are more specific and delve deeper into the mechanics of the algorithm.

To begin with, LinkedIn had never been this open and transparent about its algorithm before, which makes this project a welcome surprise. The platform had, however, previously mentioned that some of the things it factors into the ranking of content are:

• Dwell time. Thich refers to how long users spend while they look at an update or a link. This parameter is used by LinkedIn as a measure of relative interest

• Posts that specifically ask or encourage users to interact with them through likes or reactions will have a lower reach.

• LinkedIn is now actively limiting the number of polls that viewers can see in-stream.

• LinkedIn posts containing double-spaced text, which are intended to get people to click by making the user tap on the post to see the entire message, are now penalised with lower reach.

Being a digital marketing agency, ANTS Digital promises to help your brand and its voice reach diverse audiences through various channels, including LinkedIn, depending on your requirements. 

Our content and social media team works hard to define a suitable voice, tone, and purpose for your LinkedIn brand page so that we can highlight what your brand stands for, what it does, the company’s ethos and work culture, and stories that are personal to you.