What You Need To Know About LinkedIn’s New Algorithm Update
These days, the major tech companies seem to be constantly coming out with new algorithm updates, making it difficult for us to keep track of all that is new. Even though it may be difficult to keep up with, it is important to stay up to date with these changes as each one impacts the industry best practices to some extent. LinkedIn recently updated their feed algorithm in order to maximize responses and boost activity amongst users. The algorithm update comes as a response to skewed engagement metrics that resulted in a disproportionate newsfeed prioritizing users with more followers. This involved LinkedIn completely rebuilding their model for candidate selection and redefining their objectives. Here is what you need to know about the new update.
Content Creators Will Be Rewarded
LinkedIn is looking to achieve more activity from all users across the board in order to make the platform more engaging. To encourage this, they have added a metric to the newsfeed algorithm that rewards content creators on the platform, instead of simply showing content with already high engagement. This is to make LinkedIn a more active place for discussion with broader participation by increasing the variety in the content shared on the platform, straying away from the same top 1% of content being shared repeatedly.
In this new update, LinkedIn considers created content as a “contribution” when it is something that is likely to be shared, commented on, and reacted with. Users who create this type of content will, in turn, be considered “audience builders” on LinkedIn, and will be rewarded for the value that they contribute to the feed. The LinkedIn feed will now have “contribution” as a new objective when deciding what posts to feature in the feed. These contributions will help to facilitate more professional conversations and retain active users.
Going forward, this means that if you want your content to appear on your followers’ feeds, then you should create content that users will want to share and interact with. The more that your content encourages activity amongst users, the more likely it is to be featured on their feeds.
Feed Ranking will be optimized for Professional Conversation Contributors
LinkedIn’s goal with the updated newsfeed is to promote conversations that are relevant to specific users and their professional development. Content is deemed relevant if it is valuable to the user seeing the post, adds value to that user’s own network, and brings value to the original creator of the post. This new model predicts professional conversation contributions and will help to achieve this goal. The update will not only be beneficial to content creators and their followers, but it will also help to progress the various sub-communities on the platform are impacted by seeing a post.
In order to ensure that your performance is optimal, you should prioritize your specific audience niche when creating your content as they are the ones who will see your content as a professional contribution and thus be promoters for your brand. Use of relevant hashtags will also serve in your favor as it will help to tag your content as a relevant contribution. Finally, try asking industry related questions as this will raise discussion within your community.
Types of Posts that will help to Maximize Reach and Engagement
In order to help you maximize your reach and engagement for all the content that you create, LinkedIn has suggested the following best practices:
- Post content that encourages a response. For example, if you’re posting a link to an article, express an opinion with it.
- Think about using the best post format for your topic. Posts do not have to follow anyone type of format, and LinkedIn’s algorithm does not take preference of any particular format either. If a video would increase the value of your post, then it is better to include a video over other formats.
- Use @mentions to pull other people you know into a conversation. If one of your connections could add value to your post, @mention them. Make sure that the people you mention are likely to respond and that they equally see the value in being tagged themselves.
- Engage in conversation. Respond to your commenters to encourage more activity.
We hope that this helps to clarify the new updates from LinkedIn and that you will be able to implement these best practices into your strategy. If you are looking for help with your Linkedin or social media strategy, make sure to Contact Us at Evolution Digital to organise a free consultation.
