Hey Reader,

Fun fact: 64% of the Solo Business Barometer survey respondents named LinkedIn as their main social media platform. Did you fill out this survey yet? The data is already super interesting and I’d love to get to over 100 responses. If you haven’t, you can do so here — you’ll get the full report in November.

I promise you it will be something you bookmark. Because we all need to know what’s working for other solo founders.

The stat above is one of the reasons why I decided to write this issue. The other reason is that LinkedIn strategy comes up in almost all my strategy sessions. I think I’ve only had two where it wasn’t mentioned and where my clients were focused on other platforms.

So yeah, there’s a lot of interest around LinkedIn these days. There’s also a love-hate relationship with the platform — people hate the low organic reach but love the networking opportunities.

Today, we’re looking at ways to increase that organic reach.

Before you use the stuff below, make sure that you send people from LinkedIn to a GREAT sales page. Our partner today was generous enough to put a whole damn course on sales pages together for Strategic AF readers. And it’s 100% free.

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How does the LinkedIn algorithm work?

No one knows exactly. That’s the truth, and if anyone says otherwise, you can bet they’re trying to sell you something.

We do have a few insights into what LinkedIn pushes, though, most of them from the LinkedIn engineering blog and a few others from various experiments.

Here’s what we know:

LinkedIn started prioritizing relevance over recency in the summer of 2025

This means that your post can get views even a week or two after its posting date. (source)

This is great for evergreen useful content. Think: frameworks, ideas people can implement, detailed breakdowns, and more.

However, the first hour after posting something is still crucial because:

LinkedIn “tests” your posts on a small segment of your audience before pushing them outside your inner circle

In the first hour, LinkedIn will push your posts to the closest connections you have aka the people who usually engage with your content. If they engage with it, then the algorithm decides it’s a good post and it pushes it further, to “colder” connections, then to second- and third-degree connections. (source)

This is where things get murky, though. LinkedIn doesn’t “push” posts in bulk, haphazardly. It uses a complex mesh of data points containing everything they know about a member to decide whether a certain post is relevant to them. (source)

For instance, even a very popular post might not get shown to some connections if the algorithm decides it’s not relevant to them i.e., if they don’t follow similar people/pages, if they rarely engage with similar content, and so on.

This is also why:

Engagement rate matters more than impressions

Especially if that engagement rate is strong in the first hour.

You can calculate your engagement rate with the following formula:

(Likes + Comments + Shares) ÷ Impressions × 100 = Engagement Rate

If your post gets:

• 45 likes
• 18 comments
• 7 shares
• and 2,500 impressions

→ (45 + 18 + 7) ÷ 2,500 × 100 = 2.8% engagement rate.

This is a fairly low engagement rate, unlikely to get your post boosted by the algorithm. Typically, you should have an engagement rate of over 5% for that to happen.

However, take this with a grain of salt. Some metrics matter more than others. For instance, a repost (especially by a peer) is much more valuable than a like, even though the formula treats all of them as equals.

Topical authority matters more than ever

LinkedIn uses your profile data, your previous posts, your endorsements — pretty much everything they know about you to decide what topic(s) you’re an authority on.

As a marketing strategist, LinkedIn will push my posts on marketing. But they might bury a post where I decide to talk about, say, sales or web design.

Unless, of course, I find a way to make it appealing, super contrarian, or tie it to a current megatrend. Any of these pretty much gets you prioritized.

Links aren’t instant death anymore

This was my favorite find in Richard van der Blom’s report. There is, however, nuance to it.

Like any other platform, LinkedIn likes people to stay there – and it likes native content. So, adding a link won’t instantly kill your reach, but only if the post is still relevant and valuable.

What relevance and value mean differ a lot from account to account, so test this one out for yourself.

What works on LinkedIn right now?

With organic reach down 50% year over year, there are a few things you can do to boost it:

• Write slightly more: LinkedIn analyzes dwell time, not just engagement. The more time someone spends on your post, the better it will rank. Don’t go overboard, though! Fluff will get you de-ranked. Think 3-400 words, easy to scan and clear takeaways.
• Average-length carousels: they, too, work because they increase dwell time. Richard van Der Blom found that 8-10 slides is the sweet spot.
• Videos are hit and miss: the video boom seems to be over in the sense that your content won’t be prioritized just because it’s video. It still needs to play by the same rules as all other types of content.
• Polls: they work if they’re not too complex or irrelevant. “Do you agree that value-based content is valuable? Yes/No” is engagement bait. Relevant polls, however, do perform, even if you add a link to them. Hint: this might be your way to sneak in an opt-in or a sales page.
• Funny posts: memes, shitposting, funny takes on controversial topics — they all work. However, this is LinkedIn, so keep it tasteful and, preferably, work-related.

The ugly side of LinkedIn — you won’t like this

I know my piece on being influential without becoming a personal brand cliché resonated with many of you, so you probably won’t like this any more than I do.

Here’s what (sadly) still works:

• Commenting and generally spending a ton of time on LinkedIn: yep, the more the better. Like any social media platform, LinkedIn wants to keep you hostage for as long as possible.
• DMs and recent engagement: this one isn’t so bad. If you recently exchanged DMs with someone or commented on their post, odds are they’ll see your content. If you can time this well, you can use it to make sales. For instance, exchange DMs with a prospect, then post something that’s super-relevant to them and to your conversation. Not easy, but worth a shot for high-ticket sales.
• Images: yep, they work, especially if there are faces (preferably yours) in them.
• Semi-quitting LinkedIn will get you punished: Andrea Bosoni found that, if he spent less time on LinkedIn (but still posted regularly), his reach tanked. This is consistent with my findings and those of other marketers. Side note: please don’t spend ages on LinkedIn just to massage an algorithm!
• Personal/relatable/vulnerable posts: bleeding in public (my friend Lee Densmer taught me this term!) works like a charm. But please (please!) use it sparingly and only when true. This is engagement bait at its finest and, while it may bring you likes and clicks, it won’t do anything for you in the long term. Trauma pr0n is already rampant on other platforms and, in the grand scheme of things, it makes real trauma and mental health issues look like jokes.

If you only remember one thing from this issue, make it this one

There are a few trust signals that dwarf everything else:

• Topical authority: talk about what you’re good at, not shower thoughts
• Comment length: the longer, more thoughtful comments you get, the more the algo rewards your content because it’s clear that it sparked real conversations. “Thank you, great post” is barely engagement. So: foster real engagement on your posts, keep the threads going (maybe ask a question when you reply to someone’s comment). But also, try and leave longer comments on other people’s posts yourself — for discoverability purposes.
• Do your best to increase dwell time. Either through carousels or through long-ish posts.

That’s my personal playbook and the compromises I’m willing to make because some of these things (like writing longer posts) come naturally to me.

Use everything else above as needed: adopt if they make sense for you, nix if you feel like they dilute your voice or cheapen your brand.

Also, LinkedIn, like any other social media platform, should be treated like a series of experiments. Put your scientist goggles on and have fun with it. Try new things. Add a link or two in the posts — your calendar won't implode.

The best advice I can give you is to do 20% of everything in this newsletter and experiment with the other 80%. This is how you break the mold, not by doing what everyone else is doing.

Do this next week

Use the insights above to create your own LinkedIn strategy. And, more importantly, don’t think you have to implement everything that the algorithm rewards.

Here are a few things you can try in a week to see what works for you — without jeopardizing your brand to appease the algo gods:

• Switch formats. Take an older text post that performed well and turn it into a carousel or a video. See which one performs best.
• Take a longer piece of actionable content (YouTube video, blog, newsletter) and turn it into a full breakdown you publish on LinkedIn.
• Try a three-option poll — but, again, make sure it’s not drivel. See how much engagement it gets.
• Measure something other than impressions. Saves and meaningful engagement are more important metrics.

LinkedIn without the cringe and the wasted time

Your reputation is the compounding asset that follows you everywhere — LinkedIn or not. Don’t torch it for a cheap dopamine spike. Publish work that would still make sense six weeks from now, even if the algorithm forgets your name for a day.

Yes, we all love that sweet, sweet organic reach. But, trust me, it’s not worth trading your sanity or your reputation for it.

Need help with integrating LinkedIn into your strategy — in a way that doesn’t keep you hooked to the machine for 30 hours a week? In Growth Intensive, my 1:1 program, we map your social media and your non-social-media tactics and we make sure that every minute you put into every channel is well spent.

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🔦 Community Spotlight

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That's it from me today! See you next week in your inbox. Here to make you think, Adriana ​

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