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LinkedIn: A Review of the New ‘Content’ Features on the Professional Social Network
The pandemic parenthesis has solidified LinkedIn’s central position in the B2B world. Beyond its recruitment features and its contribution to professional Personal Branding, LinkedIn now asserts itself as the main platform for commercial and marketing exchanges with Social Selling and Thought Leadership.
To activate this lever in a professional manner, decision-makers must stay updated on how its algorithm operates, especially regarding organic visibility. That’s why the editorial team offers you a summary of the (numerous) changes that have impacted Microsoft’s social network in 2022. Let’s get started!
1- LinkedIn polls are no longer ‘on steroids
L’engagement sur LinkedIn bat chaque année ses propres records, avec des interactions toujours plus massives, plus récurrentes et plus porteuses de business. C’est en tout cas ce qu’affirme Microsoft dans son rapport trimestriel sur la performance de son réseau social. Parmi les différents formats proposés par LinkedIn, c’est bien le sondage qui a montré le meilleur potentiel en matière de visibilité organique. Petit flashback.
In a rousing press release published in May 2020, LinkedIn announced with great fanfare the launch of the ‘poll’ format to ‘stimulate collective knowledge’ and ‘spark new conversations with your trusted connections’. To encourage user adoption and promote this format, LinkedIn took steps to artificially boost its organic reach. It was not uncommon to see brands experiencing very low engagement rates on their usual content and garnering hundreds, or even thousands of responses on their polls.
Logically, polls began to proliferate on our feeds, sometimes with questions seemingly unrelated to the company’s activity and/or the interests of its audience. So it was only natural for LinkedIn to step in and call it quits. In early May 2022, almost two years to the day after the format’s launch, LinkedIn removed its artificial boost.
« We’ve learned from your feedback that there were too many polls in the feed. We’re taking steps to be smarter and only show you those that are useful and relevant. You’ll see fewer polls from people you don’t know and more polls from people in your network whom you’re more likely to engage with ».
In short, your polls will no longer reach your 2nd and 3rd-level connections. So, expect a decrease in the KPIs of your polls in the very short term.
2- Clickbait-type posts will be penalized.
“The technique of ‘Clickbait,’ such as ‘To download the latest edition of our e-book, like and comment on this post,’ is a somewhat exaggerated adaptation of the Inbound Marketing paradigm, which involves providing contact information in exchange for content.
Once again, LinkedIn has called an end to this practice. This technique has indeed run its course and will now be penalized by the new algorithm that came into effect in May 2022. LinkedIn has not detailed the mechanism it will use to detect this type of post. The most likely hypothesis is the analysis of the verbiage used, with a Machine Learning component to fine-tune the monitoring in real time.
It is also unknown whether LinkedIn plans to inform the penalized page, or if it will simply reduce its reach without any notification. To avoid this setback, create a teaser post and include a direct link to a Landing Page. Interested individuals will fill out a form (or engage with a Chatbot) to download the desired content.
3- Users have (more) control over their feed.
This new feature once again emphasizes the importance of targeting and ‘customer knowledge.’ Since this summer, users can ‘report’ content even if it does not violate LinkedIn’s usage rules:
- The user can request to see less content on a specific topic that does not particularly interest them (discrimination by theme);
- The user can request to see less content from a specific page or user (discrimination by source).
The pages and users who prioritize quantity over quality to ensure their visibility may risk being ‘de-prioritized’
Other less structural changes have also been made to the algorithm of the professional social network:
- Users will be able to provide various feedback to the algorithm with a simple click: ‘This post is old’, ‘I’ve already seen this post’, etc. So, avoid reposting viral posts on your account.
- You will no longer receive a notification if one of your connections comments on a post from someone you don’t know.
- Users can choose to hide all content with a political connotation.