LinkedIn changed what it thinks is important: Here’s what you need to know (November)
LinkedIn changed what it thinks is important: Here’s what you need to know (November)
LinkedIn is getting better at matching posts to professional interests as long as you give it something worth matching.
An executive publishes a post about AI. Colleagues like it, a few familiar contacts comment, and the marketing team records another week of LinkedIn success. Whether anyone who might buy from the business saw it is not always clear.
However, the difference between a manufactured round of applause from colleagues and something genuinely earned is starting to matter. Published on 9 November, LinkedIn has explained how a system called Profile Relevance finds posts for people who aren’t connected to the author.
It uses large language models (LLMs) to compare professional profile information with the subjects discussed in posts. LinkedIn is not making wholesale changes to the feed yet, but it is a signal of intent. LinkedIn wants to reward good quality content, not the stuff we are seeing marketing departments produce today.
There are three things worth paying attention to.
Colleague applause won't get you as far
Before a post can be recommended through Profile Relevance, LinkedIn says it needs at least one like, comment or share from someone outside the author’s network.
Twenty likes from existing connections wouldn’t satisfy this particular condition, but one qualifying interaction from an unconnected reader could. This may well be the downfall for many social media campaigns.
What LinkedIn has not offered advice on is how to get that first interaction from an unknown.
It isn’t a universal rule for LinkedIn distribution, and passing the threshold doesn’t guarantee further reach, but it gives content teams a genuine question to ask. Are we producing content which engages our desired audience, or are we simply making a lot of noise inside our echo chamber?
Relevant to whom?
“Senior telecoms decision makers” might be what some marketers believe qualifies for an audience profile, but that won’t fly with the new approach.
The platform wants to be specific in how it recommends content, so be specific in what you say and to whom.
If a brief says “raise awareness of our AI capabilities”, then it falls short of anything remotely useful. The Profile Relevance system has the potential to be incredibly useful, and marketers can respond by increasing the quantity of highly specific content with very narrow objectives.
Generic content has been flooding our feeds, but there will be a place for specificity if LinkedIn has its way.
Give the executive something to say
None of this supplies a cheat code for extra impressions, but it is a roadmap to becoming successful on LinkedIn.
Before the next content brief, choose a problem the audience actually faces. Ask which decision they would make, what evidence informs it and where their own approach falls short. Then keep those details through the approval process instead of letting the roster of approvers sanding down a message to talcum powder.
If the post could carry a competitor’s logo without changing a sentence, then there is not point publishing. This might be more marketers that we want to admit.
