Last week the Facebook announced that posts from business pages were going to be seen less because of changes to its algorithm. But the social giant is not the only platform to alter how posts are seen in feeds. LinkedIn starting making changes to its processes in 2017. The implications are just now being felt.
Keeping The Feed Relevant
A blog article from March 2017 by Rushi Bhatt and Bari Saltman, describes these new LinkedIn changes. Strategies for Keeping the LinkedIn Feed Relevant, lays out how millions of updates get shared daily. The result is clogged news feeds for users. The new processes are intended to reduce the amount of unwanted updates in feeds.
Keeping the LinkedIn feed relevant by identifying unprofessional and spammy content, is critical to maintaining the quality our members’ content consumption experiences.
While this blog post was not a direct announcement of changes, it was an indication that LinkedIn was doing things differently. “We would like to eliminate as much low-quality content from the site as possible.”
LinkedIn Changes: Predicting Update Performance
In the past, LinkedIn presented updates in the feed from your connections by the order in which they were created. In theory, you could see the posts of your connections and they could see yours.
The new change involves a grading system for updates. At the time of creation, LinkedIn applies a “Spam,” “low-quality,” or “clear” grade to each update. Those deemed spam are removed from the feed right away. Low-quality content is being offered to a small portion of your connections to see if it generates any engagement. If it doesn’t within the first four hours, then it is removed, as well.
So the real question is this: How is low-quality defined? LinkedIn doesn’t tell us this exactly, but we can determine that it is connected to engagement.
When a post is created and graded, LinkedIn is using an algorithm to predict how that update will perform. If it matches LinkedIn’s prediction, it will be removed. If it generates discussion, it will continue to be shown in the feed.
What Does It Mean?
The bottom line is this: If you have posts that get little or no engagement you might want to stop your marketing on LinkedIn right now. The new changes don’t just impact a single post but will end up removing all of your future updates from the feed! This is serious stuff! Nothing you post will ever appear there again.
For more information on how this change is shaking out on LinkedIn, read this blog post from LinkedIn expert Crystal Thies.
The Wrap
While marketing on LinkedIn might be a challenge now for your business, there are still paid options on the platform to consider.
Businesses should also consider switching their emphasis to their own websites. Create new content on a regular basis and engage in search engine optimization strategies that will get the website found in search. It was the soundest way of being found online before the rise of social media and still continues to be today.
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Bob Turner is a Digital Marketing Consultant in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Bob Turner - Digital Marketing Thoughts 
Leave a Reply