LinkedIn Promotes Old Posts

Optimistically, this replaced the previous opinion: LinkedIn is becoming Facebook, I’m running away from here because there’s no point in writing. Because that was already very boomer-like.

OK, but have you also noticed that LinkedIn shows you posts from a week ago instead of today’s? This is not just your impression. The guy managing the algorithm claims this is not a bug, but intentional action.

Just like in Windows. In summary, this makes sense, because LinkedIn also belongs to Microsoft, so what do you expect?

What happened? LinkedIn introduced an algorithm change in mid-June. Older posts are pushing current content out of the top of the feed. According to the company, this is to “balance timeliness with relevance” – sounds like corporate gibberish, right, or is it just my opinion?

Gyanda Sachdeva, VP of Product Management at LinkedIn, explains: “You should expect less emphasis on timeliness, because we want to ensure that posts are relevant to you.”

What does LinkedIn consider “relevant”? The algorithm analyzes many factors, and timeliness is just one of them. Most important is belonging to the right “tribes” – groups of people with whom you regularly interact.

That’s why a post about a job change by a colleague from your company from 3 weeks ago will be prioritized over today’s post by someone outside your network.

In theory, this change was also supposed to cause “secret LinkedIn support groups” to stop making sense because people from those groups will only see their own posts, they will be hidden from outsiders. I feel like tagging someone here and asking if this is happening ;)

The action of tribes (how to translate this, as a gang of people?) I explained very precisely in my presentation at I Love Marketing and I’ll put a link to it in the comment.

What can you do? Do your thing. Your posts are visible on Google, even when LinkedIn hides them. This is not lost work – someone will find your content through a search engine in a year.

Focus on relationships. LinkedIn strongly promotes engagement. Comments have their own analytics and are pushed in notifications and you can still do them. You can and should still invite people, write messages, etc.

Be patient. I’m also waiting for LinkedIn to stop twisting the algorithm knobs and it will be clear what works.

Well, I forgot about one most important question: Do only I have this problem with old posts, or do you too?