LinkedIn And The Algorithm: Create Content Communities (Stop Laughing)

Do you use LinkedIn? If you’re a heavy user, you’re aware of the network’s latest algorithm changes.

As a recovering nerd, I love SEO and algos; I’ll read and study that stuff all day long. No joke, once upon a time, I could reel off all Google’s major algorithm updates for the past two decades off the top of my head.

However, fascinating as it was, I stopped wasting time on that. My clients can’t splash the cash like the major players in their industries. They don’t have million-dollar advertising budgets. So my knowledge of SEO didn’t add a cent to my clients’ bottom line (or mine.)

Over time, I realized that Google and all publicly listed companies have one major concern: the share price.

Ditto LinkedIn. Since LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, a company that is known as a strict taskmaster, presumably they were ordered to stop lollygagging and lift profits.

LinkedIn and the new algo: create knowledgeable content

LinkedIn has become a major social media site.

From LinkedIn Changed Its Algorithms — Here’s How Your Posts Will Get More Attention Now:

The company says it saw a 42% year-over-year increase in content shared from 2021 to 2023, a 27% increase in content viewed, and now has three professionals joining every second.

Entrepreneur’s article reports that LinkedIn now wants more knowledgeable content, which offers advice… And gets “meaningful” comments:

“We are looking to see that you are building a community around content, and around knowledge-sharing that you are uniquely qualified to talk about,” Roth says.

Huh? They want you to build a community around your content on their network?

LinkedIn wants you to build a community

Yes, it wants you to develop your best content for their site.

By the way, you may be unaware that if you include a link to your site in a post, that post’s reach is minimized. They want to keep everyone on the site, as do Facebook, YouTube, and all the others.

I think content marketing on LinkedIn just died for many small business owners.

Is it content marketing, or unpaid labor?

Obviously, it’s bottom-line time. Microsoft cracked the whip on LinkedIn, and the network decided that all its members had better get to work and plant those share crops on their rented land.

Will you do that?

Everyone’s situation is different.

Although I enjoy LinkedIn, I don’t appreciate this demand for their members to create “communities” on the network. It’s a professional network, so members have lots of time to do that, don’t they? (Sarcasm.)

I’ve always been against digital sharecropping on walled gardens; nothing good can come from that.

So, much as I love LinkedIn, it’s a pass for me.

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