The LinkedIn Algorithm in 2026: How It Works & What Creators Need to Know

LinkedIn's algorithm in 2026 is engineered to surface relevant, engaging content for professionals. That has always been the goal of LinkedIn's feed. But today? They're getting better and better at it. As a business owner, founder, content creator, solopreneur, or anyone looking to grow on LinkedIn: this is for you. Understanding how this algorithm works will help you craft posts that gain more visibility, grow your network, and effectively market your product or service.

As someone who has been actively creating, selling, and building companies on LinkedIn for nearly a decade, this guide includes plenty of historical context. So for those of you who have been around LinkedIn for a while, we'll try to dispel some myths and misconceptions that you might have believed based on past information.

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1. Content Ranking: How LinkedIn Prioritizes Feed Posts

LinkedIn uses a mix of automated filtering and relevance signals to decide which posts appear in a user's feed. (The one exception to this is when a highly viral post eventually makes its way to the LinkedIn editorial desk, and a human decision can be made to make that post "superviral" based on their judgment.)

Here's how the initial automated filtration and signal system works:

Initially, every post is scanned by their machine learning algorithm for spam or low-quality content. Posts that misuse tags (more than ~3 hashtags or irrelevant tagging of users or company pages) or are posted too frequently (under 12 hours apart) risk being flagged as spam. If you've been flagged as spam in the past and you only ever post spam, this is what creators sometimes refer to as being "shadowbanned".

For that matter: if your posts normally get 3,000 impressions on average, and today your post got 800 impressions, you weren't shadowbanned. Your content just wasn't very good. Sorry. Now, please read on.

Once a post passes the spam filter, the algorithm uses three main ranking factors to determine visibility:

Whether You're Known and Connected in One Niche

LinkedIn looks at who you are and who you know. Your profile info (industry, job title, skills, location) and connections inform what content is relevant to you. Users tend to see posts from people they interact with often or those who share similar professional backgrounds. If you consistently post in a specific niche, LinkedIn tags you as a topic expert and will show your content more widely in that domain.

If Your Content Is Relevant to That Niche and Keeps Viewers' Attention

The platform favors content that is timely, professional, and likely to interest the viewer. It measures dwell time (how long someone spends on the post), the post's engagement history, and whether the content provides knowledge or value. Fresh, original insights and industry-related topics get a boost. Posts that spark civil, constructive conversations in comments are seen as higher quality content. Native content formats (text updates, images, videos, documents) are prioritized over external links to keep users on the platform.

Your Past Engagement Signals

The algorithm learns from your past behavior. It notices what topics and types of people you've engaged with before, and then shows you more of that. Similarly, content from your first-degree connections and people you follow is more likely to appear. LinkedIn tries to serve each user posts that match their professional interests and interaction history.

Does Having More Followers Help?

Kind of. But here's the main point: more followers does not necessarily mean more reach.

It's logical, if you think about it: the overall number of LinkedIn users in the United States, for example, is increasing relatively slowly. And LinkedIn's ad revenue is increasing faster than that. Do the math: with a 5–10% increase in ad revenue, plus many more creators flocking to LinkedIn to get in on the action, and you have a lot less supply of organic reach than the user base growth rate might suggest.

All this is a recipe for a slowly-shrinking pie: less organic reach available per creator, on average. As more followers and connections are built? The pie is not getting bigger, it's just getting more connected. So the relationship between follower count and reach is going to continue to decouple over time.

Put simply: I follow way more people than the number of posts I view. Right now I'm following around 20,000 people (mostly due to connections), but I maybe only end up viewing 1,000–3,000 posts per month on LinkedIn in total. The fact that I follow someone may or may not be the best determinant of whether I want to see that person's posts. LinkedIn is smart: following is just one factor of many as to whether a post will be shown to any given user.

The Data: LinkedIn Reach vs. Followers

Having a lot of engagement tends to create follower growth; having a high follower count today doesn't mean you'll keep that reach — because the pie is shrinking.

Your posts are first shown to an "inner circle" of people very likely to engage, then to a "medium circle", and so forth. So your engagement rate is going to be strong at first, and then it's going to drop as your reach grows. LinkedIn has determined that just being a follower of someone doesn't mean you'll see all their content, or that you want to see it every day. There just isn't enough dwell time to go around as the number of creators rises.

The Data: Who is Gaining vs. Losing Reach?

Data from our research shows that some creators are gaining reach — sometimes a lot — and some are losing. Most are in about the same ballpark as before, or slightly down. Here's how the distribution looks:

• Fewer than a fifth of users are seeing declines of 50% or more in reach, year over year
• A little over a fifth are seeing 25–50% reach declines
• An eighth are seeing 0–25% reach growth
• One seventh are seeing 25–100% reach growth
• One seventh are seeing over 100% growth in reach

In other words: things are changing, but if you think the fact that there's less reach to go around means you're doomed? That is just not true.

Recent Algorithm Updates (2026)

While LinkedIn has said they will down-rank engagement bait (e.g. "Please like/share!" or "Comment X to get Y" posts), we have seen that this is only partially true so far. The algorithm now better detects and has begun to penalize clickbait pleas for engagement, instead prioritizing posts that generate genuine discussions.

Another recent shift is the increased emphasis on first-hour performance — if a post gets strong engagement quickly, it's accelerated to more people's feeds faster than before. The corollary? Posts will either slow down much more quickly, such as after the first two hours; or, they will last much longer, such as a week or more.

The first hour matters quite a bit, the first 24 hours matter less than before, and the days following a post are more important than before.

Hashtags Are Worthless in 2026

Don't bother with them. There's some very marginal benefit to being found by creators who are searching for posts with particular hashtags, but this is going away in the AI age. LinkedIn's algorithm now works with programmatically defined topics and semantic signals, not hashtags.

One or two hashtags probably won't hurt you, but why take up valuable real estate with them?

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2. Engagement is the Key to Increasing Post Visibility

Engagement is the currency of the LinkedIn feed algorithm. However, not all engagement is equal — LinkedIn values quality over quantity in interactions. Here are the engagement signals that most boost a post's visibility:

Meaningful Comments and Conversations

Thoughtful comments (especially from people in your industry or network) are the top signal of value. A post that sparks dialogue will outperform one with just reactions. The algorithm can tell the difference between a generic "Great post!" and a substantive comment that furthers the discussion, and it's getting better. Aim to get people asking questions or sharing perspectives that invite your responses. When your post receives comments, reply and keep the conversation going — this not only builds relationships but also signals to LinkedIn that your post is worth spreading.

Reposts Are the Best Signal

When people share your post with their own commentary, it extends your reach to new audiences. (Conversely, when you as a creator repost other posts with your own commentary, your repost is unlikely to see the light of day. Consider a "repost with comments" to be purely in service of the original author; it will not serve you.) Even more importantly, if those shares generate additional comments or reactions, LinkedIn interprets it as your content having broader relevance. But if your goal is to maximize your own reach, you shouldn't engage in this behavior in more than 5–10% of your posts.

Dwell Time

This measures how long users linger on your content. If people click "See more" and read your entire post, or spend time watching your video, it increases the post's rank. LinkedIn tracks time spent on a post as an indicator of interest — after all, their goal is to keep people in the feed to serve ads to them. To improve dwell time, use formatting like line breaks or bullets to make posts easily readable, and deliver content that hooks readers early. Rich media like documents or carousel posts that users scroll through naturally boost dwell time.

Reaction Volume and Speed

While comments carry the most weight, reactions still count as positive signals. A higher number of reactions, especially in a short time after posting, tells LinkedIn that people find the post relevant. The timing of engagement is crucial — the first 60 minutes after you post is often called the golden hour. Personally, when my content gets fewer than 500 impressions in the first hour, I know it's unlikely to do very well. But if it gets 1,000+ impressions in the first hour, it's likely to have a really good second and third hour.

If You Engagement Bait, Make Sure You Deliver

LinkedIn now down-ranks posts that overtly ask for cheap engagement (e.g., "Like this if you agree," or "Comment 'YES' for xyz"). Instead of baiting, focus on organic interaction. End your post with an open-ended question or call-to-action that genuinely invites opinions ("What's your experience with this? I'd love to hear your thoughts.") — this encourages replies without resorting to spammy tactics.

Lead Magnets — How Do They Work?

We tested out a lead magnet post of roughly similar quality, format, and media roughly 10 months apart — in early 2025 and late 2025. The conclusion:

• Down ~46% reach
• Up ~18% reactions
• Down ~10% comments

There was a moderate "reach penalty" around asking for engagement in recent months versus a year prior. But the amount of engagement this generated was still far above average. While LinkedIn may "not want you" to post these kinds of formats, they still work.

Just make sure you deliver. User signals are an algorithmic proxy for people's trust in you. If you deliver, that creates trust and an algorithm boost for you.

Should You Comment on Others' Posts?

Engaging with others' content can indirectly boost the visibility of your own posts. It also causes your profile to be seen up to 3x, 4x, or even 5x more on LinkedIn than the reach of your posts alone. When you regularly leave thoughtful comments on industry peers' posts, you increase your profile's visibility in those circles.

Does Engagement Help Your Reach?

YES. There is a strong correlation (0.57) between the quantity of comments you write and the quantity of comments you receive. Top creators (the top 5% by reach) are not adding many new connections — they're mostly adding followers. Reach is volatile and changes every few months as the algorithm does, and is not a very good predictor of actual business success. But engagement, especially high-quality engagement from the right people, is a good predictor.

For my profile specifically, about 55.9% of profile appearances come from posts, and 41.5% come from comments. To translate: almost half of the millions of times my profile is viewed each year are from my comments — and that's not because I have low post reach. In the last 365 days, my posts have been viewed over 1.3M times. You can't sleep on engagement.

Clearly, you can't sleep on engagement if you want to grow on LinkedIn. Contribute to your market. And by the same token: post the kind of content that invites others to contribute, implicitly or directly.

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3. Best Posting Strategies: Timing, Frequency & High-Performing Content Types

Getting the most out of the LinkedIn algorithm requires not just what you post, but when and how often you post, as well as the format. Here are best practices backed by data:

1. Posting Frequency & Consistency

Aim for a regular posting cadence that you can sustain with quality content. LinkedIn's own data shows that posting at least weekly can double the engagement rate compared to posting less often. Many find success posting about 1–3 times per week — enough to stay on your network's radar, but not so much that quality dips.

Avoid excessive posting in a single day, as LinkedIn may suppress posts if you don't allow a ~12-hour gap between them. It's better to have one strong post a day (or a few per week) that gets good engagement than several sparse posts.

2. Best Time to Post on LinkedIn

As a rule, weekday mornings tend to yield the best engagement on LinkedIn, aligning with professionals' work schedules. Tuesday 7–10 AM and Thursday around noon or early evening (5–6 PM) are particularly high-engagement windows for many industries. Mid-week (Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays) is often cited as the prime time for LinkedIn activity. Weekends generally have the lowest activity for most professional audiences.

That said, know your audience. If you target restaurant owners or healthcare workers, their schedules might differ. Use your analytics to see when your followers are most often online. The key is to synchronize posting with when a critical mass of your network is scrolling the feed, to harness that golden first hour of engagement.

The Pattern of Engagement: Our data, primarily from the US and Western Europe, show a measurable spike in total and median post engagement starting at around 7 AM Eastern Time, peaking at 8–9 AM Eastern Time, and declining thereafter. It picks up as Europe gets online, then peaking the next day, and so forth.

3. Content Types That Perform Well

LinkedIn's algorithm doesn't treat all posts equally — it has preferences based on format, largely tied to what keeps users engaged on the platform. Here's how to think about each:

Text Posts with a "Hook"

A simple text-only post can go far if it's well-written. Start with a strong hook in the first 2–3 lines to entice people to click "see more." Because lengthy, thoughtful text posts often generate a lot of comments, they can perform exceptionally well. Make sure to break up long paragraphs — mobile users especially appreciate short, digestible chunks.

Native Video

Video content surged in late 2024, but the algorithm has since recalibrated. Native video now gets roughly 30% less reach than a comparable text post — the opposite of what many guides still claim. That doesn't mean skip video: it's still valuable for trust-building and brand presence. Just don't expect an impressions windfall from it anymore. Short, authentic videos (1–3 minutes) still drive strong engagement when the content is genuinely useful.

Images and Documents (Carousels)

Document posts (carousels) are currently the top-performing format, getting roughly 30% more reach than text-only posts. The algorithm rewards the dwell time that comes from swiping through slides. If you have data, a framework, or a step-by-step process worth sharing, a carousel is your best bet. Static images also tend to outperform text on reach, though not as dramatically as documents.

Polls and Interactive Posts

LinkedIn Polls often receive high engagement because they're quick and interactive. When someone votes on your poll, it can appear in the feeds of their connections, amplifying reach. Use polls sparingly but strategically to drive engagement or gather opinions.

Articles and Newsletters

Long-form content like LinkedIn Articles and Newsletters can establish you as a thought leader and have long-term SEO benefits. If you're going to take on creating a newsletter series, make sure you have the engagement base to support it first — do this once you're already getting lots of engagement, not as a means of getting it.

External Links

LinkedIn still modestly penalizes posts with outbound links, but the effect is much smaller than it used to be. Our advice: don't overthink it. Post your link directly in the body of your post if it's relevant — the friction of the "link in comments" workaround isn't worth it anymore. Save the comments trick for when you genuinely want to maximize reach on a post that doesn't need a link to stand on its own.

The Format Conundrum: Is There a "Best"?

No. Regardless of what the trends or overall numbers say, what matters is:

• What kind of content you are creating
• What your creative skills and gaps are
• What your audience likes to consume

Maybe you're excellent at carousels. Great — do more of those. Maybe you can't stand photos and want to stick to text. So be it. Lean into your strengths. My text posts, other creators' carousels, others' videos — they're all playing to individual strengths. The best format is the one you'll sustain and execute well.

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4. LinkedIn Ads Algorithm: What It Rewards (and When to Use It)

The LinkedIn ads algorithm is a relevance auction. LinkedIn scores every ad on how much users engage with it — CTR, dwell time, conversion rate — then weighs that score against your bid to decide what gets shown. The practical implication: ads built on content that's already proven organically consistently outperform cold creative. The platform is literally rewarding you for already knowing what resonates with your audience. If you haven't figured that out yet via organic posting, paid is just paying for faster failure.

LinkedIn's targeting is genuinely excellent for B2B — job title, seniority, company size, industry, skills — with a precision that Facebook and Google can't match for professional audiences. But CPCs run $5–15 for most B2B segments, and the algorithm needs real budget ($50–100+/day minimum) to learn effectively. Going in too thin burns money and teaches you nothing.

Spend time dialing in your organic content first — the formats, hooks, and core message. Once you know what resonates, ads amplify it. Don't put the cart before the horse.

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5. LinkedIn Search & Profile Visibility: Ranking Higher and Getting Discovered

Optimizing your LinkedIn presence isn't just about posting content — it's also about making your profile easily discoverable through LinkedIn's search algorithm. Here's how LinkedIn ranks profiles in search and how you can enhance your visibility:

Complete and Keyword-Rich Profile

Much like Google SEO, LinkedIn's search algorithm heavily relies on keywords. It scans all sections of your profile — headline, About summary, experience, skills — to match against search terms. To rank for terms related to your niche, strategically include those keywords throughout your profile. Your headline might read "Social Media Marketing Strategist | B2B LinkedIn Expert" instead of just "Marketing Consultant."

Skills & Endorsements Matter

The Skills section is extremely important for search visibility. You can add up to 50 skills — choose those that truly represent your expertise and that people in your field value. Skills act as keywords; if someone searches for "Adobe Photoshop," profiles with that skill (especially with endorsements) will rank higher. Make sure your top 3 skills (which are most visible) are highly relevant to what you want to be known for.

Connection Degree and Network Factors

LinkedIn search results are personalized. Typically, people will see their 1st-degree connections first (if relevant), then 2nd-degree, and so on. This means that having a larger network of relevant connections can expand your search visibility.

Profile Activity and Recency

Anecdotally, active users (who post content or at least engage regularly) seem to have their profiles show up more often. If you have Creator Mode turned on and you list the topics you talk about, those may help you appear in searches for those keywords.

Personalize Your URL and Headline

Customize your LinkedIn profile URL to be your name (e.g., linkedin.com/in/yourname). Your headline is prime real estate for keywords — use a formula like "Title | Skills | Benefit." We've put together a full guide to LinkedIn headline examples if you want to see what works across different roles.

Leverage Search Appearances

LinkedIn provides a "Search Appearances" metric that shows how many times you appeared in search results in a given week, along with what companies those searchers work at and keywords they used. Monitor this. If the keywords listed are not what you expect, tweak your profile to align with desired terms.

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6. Networking & Connection Growth: Organic Tactics to Expand Your Audience

Growing your LinkedIn network organically is crucial for extending your content's reach and building potential customer relationships. The larger and more relevant your network, the more people will see your posts — and the more opportunities will come your way. (For a deep dive on the mechanics of connection growth, see our guide on how to get more LinkedIn connections.)

But you shouldn't just spam connection requests. Doing that over time can cause algorithm confusion, where LinkedIn doesn't know what kind of creator or professional you are, and so it doesn't show your posts to the right people.

1. Send Personalized Connection Requests Only if You Have Something to Say

When connecting with someone when you don't necessarily have a specific reason, don't add a note. Explaining who you are and why you'd like to connect is fine if you have a reason they would recognize — you met at a conference, or just spoke with them on a call.

If you're going to break this rule, always tailor it to them. Your acceptance rate will be awful if you try to use AI to craft your connect requests or disingenuously refer to their recent content without having actually read it.

2. Engage with Your Connections' Content

Networking isn't just about adding connections — it's about building relationships. Drop meaningful comments, add to the conversation, build on what they said, congratulate people on their achievements, and message folks when appropriate.

When you engage with others, you stay on their radar and often on the radar of their network — your comment on a 2nd-degree connection's post is visible to their network, with your headline. If it's insightful, people might click through to your profile, leading to new connections. This is a genuine way to attract inbound connection requests too. If you're thinking more intentionally about which people to engage with, our guide to finding influencers on LinkedIn covers how to build that list.

3. LinkedIn Groups Are Usually Terrible

I do not currently know any successful professional LinkedIn users who consider groups to be anything more than a minor part of their strategy at best, and a distraction at worst.

Groups on LinkedIn are often centered around industries or interests, but for whatever reason, they haven't really taken off. They tend to be cesspools of spam where no actual decision-makers participate. Take heed.

4. Be Patient and Authentic

Real relationships take time, and they are largely built in private. You can and should begin them in public, and you can nurture them in public, but the 1-on-1 chats — whether Zoom calls or coffee meetings — are where the magic happens.

Avoid spammy behaviors like mass messaging new contacts with sales pitches. Nurture your network by consistently offering help, insight, and engagement. Over time, you'll find your follower count and connections growing through a mix of outbound effort and inbound interest.

One trend to be aware of: automated voice notes. It's here. It will be advertised to you. Don't use it.

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7. Does Your Industry Change the Strategy?

The algorithm itself doesn't operate differently by industry — reach, dwell time, engagement velocity, and comment quality matter the same whether you're in SaaS or healthcare. What changes is what your specific audience finds valuable enough to engage with, and what the unspoken content norms are in your corner of LinkedIn.

B2B professionals in marketing, consulting, and SaaS skew toward first-person takes and conversational storytelling. Finance and legal audiences expect precision and data. Creative professionals get more traction when they connect their craft to business outcomes — a designer writing about managing client feedback outperforms a portfolio post. Tech companies often benefit from employee advocacy: when multiple team members post and engage in the same window, the algorithm reads the cluster of activity as signal and amplifies it. None of this changes the fundamentals. Post substantively in your niche, engage with your community consistently, and let the algorithm figure out who else should see your work.

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8. Growing Your Business on LinkedIn (3 Paths)

Reach and engagement are not everything. In fact, they're simply leading indicators of potential success — requirements to generate revenue from LinkedIn, but not predictors by themselves. You can't grow revenue much at all without any attention. This is basic marketing, and you can't skip this step.

Our analysis and experience show that there are broadly two aspects of someone's public LinkedIn presence: the substance of their content (are they credible? have an accomplished background? speak intelligently about their field? engaging thoughtfully with their community?), and the production quality of it (well-designed? mixed media formats? consistent brand?).

What is Necessary vs. Optional for Growth?

To grow a business via LinkedIn presence as the distribution channel, you do need attention. You get that, of course, by posting and engaging.

If you do a lot of consistent posting and engaging, AND the substance of what you are posting and engaging is high — meaning professionals in your industry think your contributions are relevant, meaningful, insightful — then you have a much better chance at making a lot of money on LinkedIn.

Substance is necessary for growing a real business. It's not optional.

But you'll have an even better chance of success if you combine a consistent, substantial LinkedIn presence with high production value. Thoughtful content AND excellent branding, copywriting, and media? That's a formidable combination.

What if you post memes, pop culture, and generally vapid stuff? You're unlikely to make much money from LinkedIn. You have a tiny but achievable shot at becoming a "huge personal brand" in terms of pure fame, and then you can sell sponsored posts and that kind of thing. But that's not an asset you can really sell or exit for anything. And you have a much lower ceiling.

The Paths to Growth: Recap

Here are the paths to business growth on LinkedIn, in order of likelihood of success:

• Substantial, high quality LinkedIn content and engagement — Typical Revenue Potential: High six to mid seven figures
• Substantial, casual quality LinkedIn presence — Typical Revenue Potential: Mid six to low seven figures
• Low substance but high gloss, high velocity content and engagement — Typical Revenue Potential: Low six to mid six figures

There's only one wrong answer: low substance, low quality. Obviously — if you're not trying and not producing value, you'll never succeed.

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9. Algorithm-Friendly LinkedIn Creator Workflows

How do you actually get all of this done? What are some steps you can take to create substantial content and comments, and to increase the production quality of your content? Here are beginner, intermediate, and advanced workflows at a high level.

Beginner Workflow

A simple beginner workflow involves focusing primarily on the substance of your content, while maximizing commenting over high posting frequency.

Develop Messaging → Publish and Engage → Take Interactions Offline

• Spend time coming up with your core message. You should be trying to say "one main thing" to your community. The common mistake is to think you should be saying different things all the time. That's more confusing than helpful. Then rephrase and re-approach that same concept from tons of angles.
• Post about your core message at least weekly, and write 5–10 comments per day. Your comments should be concise but thoughtful (usually 10–40 words), written on the posts of people who are both reasonably active on LinkedIn and relevant to the ecosystem you sell into.
• Be social, as if you were at a trade show — but digitally. If someone posts or comments something you find interesting, respond to them publicly. Consider sending them a direct message as a sidebar, or suggesting a meeting where it makes sense. This is not very different from normal business networking behavior.

Intermediate Workflow

Similar to the beginner workflow, just more and better. As you wrap your head around the whole LinkedIn thing, get traction on your content and message, build followers, and start to close deals, you'll be motivated to take things to the next level.

• Refine your messaging with learnings from market feedback. Take that feedback and use it to make your messaging better.
• More publishing, more engaging. Post 2–3x/week instead of weekly — generally around 9:00–11:30 AM ET, or 6:00–8:00 AM CET if you're in Europe. Write 10–15 comments per day just before your post for the day goes up.
• Improve your design. Get a branding specialist to create a consistent color scheme, look and feel, and even a design kit for your content. At this stage, you might also hire a consultant or agency to come up with topics, ghostwrite content for you, or improve your hooks.

Advanced Workflow

Building on the intermediate workflow, advanced LinkedIn presence starts to involve more operational work, with the goal of chasing multiple millions of revenue per year from LinkedIn:

• Content Ops. When you move to posting 5–7 times per week, it'll be necessary to take your strategic core message, break it into distinct themes and topics, take each topic and flip it into different media types, and then repurpose all of those over and over. You'll need a system to generate the sheer amount of content you need without burning out.
• Media Richness. This is where you're combining substance with production quality. Consult with a video expert to build out a studio with high-quality gear, and begin integrating cinematic quality video into your content process. Your carousels might get longer and more involved, your graphics more impressive.
• Extensive industry presence. Way past just your own profile — you're being interviewed on podcasts, speaking at live events (but using the content for LinkedIn), and beginning to potentially coin a new term for the industry-wide paradigm shift you're spearheading.

If that sounds intimidating: don't worry. Go step by step. Start small. It'll be okay.

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10. Preventing Burnout

Burnout Kills This Process

The worst thing you can do to yourself in this process is jump the ladder too quickly. You say to yourself, "I'm going to go straight to the top of the intermediate level." You resolve to produce high quality content every day. You're armed with a content matrix, you're going to write copy and create the heck out of carousels and videos and infographics and…

Suddenly, before you've given yourself any time to breathe and actually invest time in the people you're supposed to get to know and work with from LinkedIn, you've given all of your energy to going through the motions.

Remember: the purpose of LinkedIn is ultimately to reach, meet, and build high-quality relationships with the right people. People take time to build trust with you, so this won't happen overnight. It will probably take a few months of consistently posting weekly and engaging with at least some consistency to start seeing tangible results: inbound leads, quality connections, valuable conversations you wouldn't otherwise have had.

If you dump all your energy into learning, branding, messaging, writing, publishing, and engaging right out of the gate, your chances of burning out and giving up too soon — before the process has had room to work — are very high.

Give yourself time. Start slow. Ramp up. Get help. Allow yourself to take notice of the initial traction you're getting before you triple and quadruple down into it. The growth of a personal brand on LinkedIn that fuels the growth of your company and digital assets is not something you should try to achieve in a very short period. Slow and steady. (Medium and steady is fine too. But don't push it.)

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Closing Thoughts: The LinkedIn Game

LinkedIn is diverting more attention away from organic and into ads — their advertising revenue growth data confirms this. That means the algorithm is changing. But crucially, the way to grow a business has remained fundamentally the same. The bar has been raised for attention and engagement that used to flow more freely.

At the same time, while reach and engagement are good and necessary things to build LinkedIn into a valuable distribution channel for your business, remember that the point of this is to build a real business — not just to get attention for the sake of it. That means you should be focused on reaching the right people with a substantive message, and engaging with your community and ecosystem, first and foremost. Only then does it make sense to start investing more time and money into production quality, video, and agency help.

And remember that preventing burnout and not moving too quickly through these steps is an essential part of making this whole process sustainable, especially when results typically don't come immediately.

Very best,
Alex Boyd, DemandBird

Sources: The insights and recommendations above are based on LinkedIn's documented best practices and analysis from 2025–2026 social media reports. Key references include LinkedIn's own algorithm explanations, engagement studies, proprietary data on posting times and engagement patterns, and LinkedIn SEO best practices from marketing experts. These sources and LinkedIn's own platform updates have informed the best practices in this guide, ensuring the strategies are up-to-date and effective for the current algorithm.