LinkedIn: The ultimate guide for marketers in 2023

Accueil » Our Blog » The secrets of the LinkedIn algorithm revealed: How can you make the most of it for your business?

With its 875 million users, LinkedIn celebrated its 20th anniversary on 5 May 2023. In honour of this milestone, we’re releasing our LinkedIn guide, in which we take a look at the platform’s algorithm…

Key facts and figures

At the end of 2022, a report on the LinkedIn algorithm over the past year appeared on our screens. Here are the main points we picked up on:

In 2022, inkedIn had 850 million users, around 10% more than the previous year. And in 5 months, the number of users has already increased by 3%.
Only 5.2% of users actively publish content on the platform.
Around 20% of internet users interact in some way on LinkedIn (whether by liking, sharing or commenting).
61% simply consume publications without interacting with them.
Larger companies, with more than 1,000 employees, are increasingly active on LinkedIn. 74% of them share content every week in 2022, compared with 69% in 2021.
The majority of internet users (58%) connect to LinkedIn via their phone.

This data provides a snapshot of LinkedIn usage in 2022 and highlights the behaviours and trends of users of this constantly evolving platform.

Understanding Linkedin’s algorithm is therefore crucial for professionals wishing to establish a strong presence on the platform. Find out how to reach a wider audience and gain maximum engagement in no time.

The LinkedIn news feed: how are the publications highlighted selected?

First step: The quality

LinkedIn evaluates and filters your content to determine whether it is high quality, low quality or spam.

✅ High quality:

The content is readable and free of spelling mistakes
It encourages engagement
It contains no external links (like any platform, the aim is to stay where you are and not visit a competitor)
Doesn’t contain too many hashtags (between 3 and 5)

📉 Low quality :

The content generates little engagement
It is too long or difficult to read
Contains too many hashtags
It contains one or more outbound links

⛔️ Spam:

Rough grammar and syntax
It contains several (too many) links
It contains the identification of more than 5 people
Content contains unnecessary hashtags ( #marketing #career #why )
Too high a publication rate ( > 1x every 3 hours )

Second step: The commitment test

During the first 90 minutes, LinkedIn shows your publication to a small panel of your subscribers in order to assess the content’s ability to generate engagement. Several criteria are taken into account: reactions, time spent on the post and comments.

Third step: Deploying to a larger audience

Finally, depending on the ranking signals mentioned in the previous point, the platform will push your content to new users from a more distant network. This takes into account the relevance of interest (your publication will be shown to users who could potentially be interested in it), the likelihood of engagement, and the relationships that link you.

LinkedIn engagement signals

How is the engagement calculated?

A like on your publication equals 1 additional view,
A click on “See more” equals 4 more views,
A share equals 7 more views,
A comment equals 12 more views.

Which formats generate the most engagement?

Although single images accompanied by text remain the most popular type of publication, and in order to vary the content you offer your readers, other formats can (and should) be used to increase reach and engagement.

Here are the best performing publication formats on LinkedIn according to Social Insider and Hootsuite studies:

PDF documents: 2 to 3.5x greater reach
Polls: 2 to 3x greater reach
Carousels: 1.5 to 2.3x greater reach
Multiple images with text: up to 1.5x greater reach
Videos: 0.5 to 0.8x less reach
Post with an external link: 0.4 to 0.6x less reach
Native LinkedIn articles: 0.1 to 0.2x less reach

This is where content and its organic reach are ranked in ascending order. Anything below 1 will penalise you more than it helps you.

Produce relevant content on a regular basis

As a company, your content must have added value in order to interest your target audience.
You need to be informative, without being overly promotional, making users want to follow you (without frequent external links), and your stakeholders want to pass it on to their own networks.

Make yourself a part of everyone’s daily lives, by giving your community a fixed date and time.

In B2B, the most relevant content are:

Webinars (LinkedIn can host live videos!)
Surveys
Behind the scenes” videos and photos (employer branding)
Company news
White papers
Postings by an executive (leader advocacy)

When to publish on LinkedIn?

First of all, you need to be able to post regularly: between 1 and 3 times a week, maintaining a constant rhythm over time. Avoid publishing 2 publications with an interval of less than 18 hours between each post. Choose weekdays and the hours between 8am and 11am for best performance.

Ensure maximum engagement and reach on LinkedIn through teamwork

We now know that the first 90 minutes are decisive… So what better way to get commitment than by enlisting the help of your teams? We all know the saying:

“Alone we go faster, together we go further”.

With Limber you can easily delegate, automate, plan and therefore simplify your Advocacy Marketing strategy.

With our campaign and scenario tools, getting engagement has never been easier, without even asking Jean in HR or Bastien in accounts to log in and search for the post on LinkedIn, then share it, like it, comment on it…!

The benefits of Advocacy Marketing in three lines:

Trust: according to the Edelman trust barometer, employees are the most reliable and influential source of information about a company. 78% of Internet users trust a message broadcast by an individual more than a brand (Nielsen study).

Audience: the cumulative audience of employees on networks is 10 times greater than that of the company (Cisco study)

Engagement: publications made by an individual generate 8x more engagement than those made by a brand (LinkedIn study)

Limber was designed to deploy your Content Marketing, Social Selling and Employee Advocacy strategies with ease. The platform allows you to centralise content and share it on various channels such as newsletter, blog and social networks.