LinkedIn Algorithm Bullsh*t

Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Sniffing Out The Bullshit. This week, I felt absolutely compelled to talk about the LinkedIn algorithm. Now, oh my god, I spend far too much time on LinkedIn, as far as I concerned. The problem is, I get a lot of business from there. And so, I kind of have to, I feel obliged. But I feel like a lot of people expect me to be on LinkedIn. I was part of the LinkedIn Creator Accelerator program in the UK that happened, I think, from October to around December last year. Yeah, it was October to December last year. It was a six week intensive program, and apparently thousands of people applied to be part of this Creator Accelerator program in the UK. And they only selected 150 people, which was incredible. And I was one of those 150. So naturally, I feel completely honored to have been selected as one of the creators in the UK, especially as also they paid us a whopping $8,000 to be a part of that program. So we were heavily rewarded for creating content for LinkedIn. So I do feel like I have a bit of loyalty towards LinkedIn. They spent time training us, and I have an amazing Creator Manager who supports me and gives me advice. And I do think it's a great platform when used properly. The problem is, is that everyone now is kind of obsessed with becoming a LinkedIn influencer. And I hate the term influencer, and obviously the other platforms have their own influencers. And LinkedIn is becoming a place like that, which is bizarre. We've had that sort of stuff on Instagram for ages, but LinkedIn, who would have thought it? I think the difference is with LinkedIn is that there are a whole different type of influencers on there, and you don't have to be doing ridiculous selfies or bikini pictures or all that kind of cliché, cringy influencing to do well on LinkedIn. And actually, you can be rewarded for actually being an expert at something and vocalizing professional opinions and winning work from this. And naturally, for lots of people, this is a much better way to go. And this is obviously why I prefer to be on that platform. The problem is that there are ways to manipulate the algorithm on LinkedIn. I mean, just like with any social media platform, this is what it's all about. Oh, gosh, I'm just getting awful flashbacks to about a year or so ago. Do you remember when everyone was obsessed with polls? Oh, my God, LinkedIn polls.

They were ridiculous. I used to log on, like, a couple of years ago to LinkedIn, and it'd be like, what's your favorite fruit, apples or oranges? Just for the sake of the bloody algorithm, there'd be dumb polls every single day. But because they boosted engagement and the algorithm seemed to like it and promote your profile, everyone was doing dumb polls. So the whole feed was obsessed with polls. And now it's carousels, and everyone loves a bloody carousel. And don't get me wrong, I love a bloody carousel. But, you know, we have a design agency, and, you know, we like to create pretty carousels and stuff like that. But, you know, I do like them, and I think they are engaging. But, you know, the algorithm favored carousels at some point. Now, again, getting a bit weaker. So where are we at now with the LinkedIn algorithm? Well, the funny thing is, the LinkedIn algorithm seems to love posts about the LinkedIn algorithm. Go figure. So people seem to go viral whenever they're giving other people advice of how to do well on LinkedIn. It's like Inception. It's so messed up. And you know what? It's the same on every single platform. The people on Instagram do well by giving advice on how to grow on Instagram. The same on Twitter. It's so incestuous. But naturally, obviously, a social media platform is going to want to promote material that boosts their own social media platform. So now what we see is a bunch of people on LinkedIn who are claiming to be LinkedIn experts. I literally have multiple people drop into my DMs on a daily basis, send me different requests every single day, telling me that they are experts and they'd love to grow my LinkedIn. Now, I'm sitting here with just over 12,000 followers, which I've lost 2,000 followers recently due to the LinkedIn purge. So if anyone's listening to this thinking, oh my God, I've just recently dropped a bunch of followers, I lost 2,000. LinkedIn cleaned out their platform and removed all the accounts which were dormant. So that's people who haven't been on it for a long, long time. And I've seen top creators going, I just lost 20,000 followers overnight. Crazy. So there's a bunch of people who basically joined LinkedIn and then didn't do anything about it. And they've gone. So I've dropped a couple of thousand followers, but that's fine. As I said, I'm not into the vanity metrics, but obviously it's nice to grow your following and show that you're actually putting good stuff out there. So I'm sitting here with about 12,000 followers. And my content does reasonably well in terms of engagement. I get a fair amount of engagement per post.

And I get people coming into my DMs with maybe a following of about 1,000 people, maybe 2,000 max, and they get like one to two likes per post. And they're giving me advice, well, trying to sell me their advice on how to grow on LinkedIn. And I'm like, are you actually kidding me? So it's all a little bit ridiculous. But there are experts on LinkedIn, and I probably should put an expert in inverted commas, but I won't for now because there are actual experts on LinkedIn who offer advice and have been doing training for years. So let's take Mr. Richard Vanderblom, who is probably Mr. LinkedIn. He has been, he's one of the legit guys. Now, if you go to his profile, I've just given him another shout out, he gets shout outs like every five minutes on LinkedIn, I swear. If you go to his profile, he's been doing this for over a decade. He's, you know, been doing LinkedIn training. That's what he does. He's bloody good at it. He spends a long time researching the algorithm and testing things and doing all these sort of things in order to create content revolving around this and gives away a ton of value. The thing is, he made this report about at the beginning of the year, I'd say, and it was basically all about how to make the most of the LinkedIn algorithm. It was a really, really detailed thing about, you know, what the algorithm likes, what it doesn't like, do's and don'ts about posting, about commenting or sharing, all these sort of things. And the world went nuts for it. And ever since then, there's been recycled posts on this and people doing their own version of Richard van der Bomm's post. Now, I've seen some creative ones where people have taken what he's done and made it into a sketchnote, for example. That was artistic. I saw someone do that. And Richard appreciated that, shared it, shared some love, and that's different. They put their own artistic license on a piece of material and shared it in their own way. Great. But what we are now seeing is just straight up plagiarism. It's just the same stuff day in and day out because every post that talks about how to grow on LinkedIn seems to do bloody well on LinkedIn. So everyone's doing it just to get that one viral post. They gain a bunch of followers about LinkedIn, like people who want to grow on LinkedIn, nothing to do with what they actually do for a living, but they love it because it's vanity metrics. But it doesn't actually help their business at all because if they're not selling LinkedIn services, then how are these people going to matter to them?

They're not the sort of people who are going to want to stick around and listen to their actual content. So what I've actually started to notice is that some of the people who were in other jobs before started noticing that their posts around LinkedIn have been doing really well. So now that's what they do for a living. They sell LinkedIn training. They help you grow your LinkedIn account. It is so pathetic. Honestly, it's like all these supposed experts are coming out of nowhere when all they're doing is just recycling and regurgitating the same stuff that people like Richard actually put out there and claiming money for it and claiming the benefit of it when they've got absolutely no experience or proof of reputation behind them. But people don't check. People believe a good sales pitch, which is ridiculous. So let's touch on some of Richard's findings and what is supposedly the best way to grow on LinkedIn at the moment. So let's talk about first a posting strategy. Now, they don't sell you to post every day, but obviously, consistency is the magic word that everyone says. But what does consistency mean? Is that once a week? Is that twice a week? Is that once a month or is that every day? So obviously, you need to pick a posting schedule that's good enough for you, because if you set out to post every day, or even like three, four times a week, and that's too much for you, and then you burn out, and then you don't post for a long time, the algorithm doesn't really like that. So you just got to be consistent. I took a break from LinkedIn for two and a half weeks, and I came back, and I was getting an average of like 40,000 impressions per post, and I came back and I was getting like 1000 impressions. I swear the LinkedIn algorithm just did not like me. It was like, F you, you've not been on my platform for a while, so I'm going to punish you. I'm going to make you work your butt off to get some of your impressions back. And oh my God, it's been like a couple of months since it took me to build them back up. But at the same time, I have heard this complaint across the board. The engagement, not engagement, sorry, the reach and impressions are massively down for absolutely everyone. I'm talking even the top creators on LinkedIn. And just for a moment, let's talk about who these top creators are, because just recently, this new list suddenly appeared from nowhere, at least from nowhere for me. Favicon, who the hell are Favicon?

But suddenly, I came on to LinkedIn one day and everyone was like, oh my God, I'm in the top 200 creators in the world. Look at me, I'm amazing. And I'm using that voice, but if I was one of them, I totally would be posting that too. So I'm just writing that because I'm bitter that I wasn't anywhere near the top 200. But yeah, that's what it felt like, because literally every post was saying that I just had so many people on my feed bragging about it. And to be fair again, rightly so, I'm just jealous, what can I say? But Favicon has now gamified the platform in a way. Everyone is like, I want to be in this top 200. Before, they didn't know where they were, unless they got a LinkedIn top voice. And you know, those people have been rewarded badges for a good reason, they're writing some quality posts, engaging, lots of traffic, all that kind of stuff. But how would you know where you stood? And now everyone's kind of competing for this little top list. So, and people are obsessed, honestly. But what I thought was really interesting about the Favicon platform is that it showed different creators on other social media platforms. And what's really interesting is some of the top LinkedIn creators are really quite shit on other platforms. Go check them out. They might have like 500 followers on Instagram. They tried this stuff there. It just didn't work. And I've seen things vice versa. There were some amazing people on Instagram, absolutely huge, and they tried to put their stuff on LinkedIn. It just doesn't work. Which proves that you cannot master every platform. Although, have you seen the host of LinkedIners who are going to Twitter? Some so many of the top LinkedIn creators, a bunch of them, are now on Twitter, really active, because apparently Twitter is much easier to grow. Personally, I can't stand Twitter. I always end up in arguments with absolute idiots, and I can't help but get sucked into the idiocy. So I'm just like, I can't deal. And so I try to stay off Twitter. One day, I will get someone to help me manage it, and I'll write some content and see how that goes. But the LinkedIn creators seem to be doing quite well with that. So back to the LinkedIn algorithm. Right, let's talk deets, because you're probably sitting here thinking, oh my god, when is she going to get to the part where she tells me how to do really well on LinkedIn? Okay, so first up, you've got to make good content.

No matter how much you follow all these rules, or do all these things, and how many hours you spend on there doing everything they say, your content needs to not suck, because if you're writing crap content, you're still not going to succeed. Now the problem is, there are people who are succeeding with crap content. So, you know, there are ways you can get through it, but they're not consistently crap, obviously, and they're teaming up with big, good creators. So, let's look at what makes your content do well, according to the experts. So, yes, you can post every day, but they do say never more than 18 hours apart. So, you must wait at least 18 hours before you post your next post. Otherwise, your reach will deplete on both of them. They will cancel each other out because they're both trying to capture attention in the feed, and you'll basically destroy the reach of both of them. So, I mean, I think the best thing to do, and I say this, I'm struggling still to do this because you need a lot of planning, but it's supposed to post the same time every day. So, if you post in the morning as well, this is what people are saying, that there's also best times to post, which is generally Monday through Thursday, early hours of the morning, so 7 or 9 a.m. And then Friday and on the weekend, it's usually between 12 and 3 p.m. according to a lot of charts, generalized. So, if you post all the time in the morning, at least schedule your posts, then you're not going to miss this 18 hours, which is good. And this hits a consistency thing. People expect it to come on to their feed at the same time every day and see your posts, then they kind of get used to it. They expect it, they engage with it. It's like a nice kind of part of their day. So, you can post every day, but there are some things that you shouldn't do as well. So, you should not put links in your posts. Any external links depletes your reach again. So, you're supposed to put your external links in the first comment, which you used to be able to pin, and they removed that feature, which was ridiculous, because it was a great feature. But, so you should add comments underneath. But, there's a but, don't be the first person to comment on your own post, because then that hurts your reach too. So, you need to wait for someone to comment on your post, and then you leave your comment on there, and you leave with the link, and actually, now they're saying you should also leave more comments, maybe leave another addition to the post.

Say, if you've talked about something in your industry, I can't even think of a topic. So, in my industry, I often talk about how to make low-carbon websites. So, say if I made a post giving some tips on how to lower the carbon output of your website, and then I wait an hour, is apparently the supposed time, and I drop another knowledge bomb in those comments, that's supposed to boost the algorithm and help my post. And any links, don't put it in the post, put it there later. So, that's basically what I should be doing. Adding an image also increases reach because it's more attractive in the feed, all that sort of stuff. Hashtags, there have been some interesting things about hashtags. People have said, use three to six hashtags, I believe, but there doesn't seem to be any clear indication of which ones are better in terms of whether it does help or make it worse if you use too many hashtags. But what I have heard, which no one's really mentioned in their little reports, but I've heard directly from LinkedIn headquarters, is that too many hashtags can indeed hurt the profile, hurt the post at least. And this is because if you're using conflicting hashtags, so, for example, I was doing my post and I was going low carbon sustainability, and then put websites, creative agency, and then I put like Agency Life, London Life, Blogger, all these sort of things, the algorithm gets really confused. It's like, whoa, wait a minute, what is the post about? Who do I show it to? And then doesn't show it to anyone. So it's better to use two or three hashtags if they're going to be related to each other. So at least the algorithm knows who to show that material to. It's people who have been regularly engaging with that sort of material before. So these are the sort of tips that have been released in Richard van der Blom's post that he did a while ago. And people are recycling this. But now the trend is all about the comments. And that's what I'm here to address, because there are also tips on not just your post and your post strategy and content. And oh my God, hooks. I forgot to mention hooks. Oh my God. If I see another post that says, I'll steal my top 21 hooks. Oh my God. I'm going to go nuts. I think even that rich guy has put in his tagline, please don't steal strategy, because it's become such a trending thing to say. But everyone's talking about hooks.

And what are hooks? It's basically the first line of your post, because you want people to click see more, because that, again, helps the algorithm. So you've got to put something catchy. But now there are people just writing the same hooks over and over again, and it's actually boring. But people are now not just talking about a content strategy in terms of your posts and what you post and who you post it to. We can talk about that. But that's kind of a more normal topic, let's say, because content marketing, a lot of the stuff that revolves around content marketing is going to affect what you post on LinkedIn. But now it's all about commenting strategy. Now, some of the big guys have been talking about commenting, and you'll probably go on LinkedIn and see a lot of the top creators are all commenting on each other's profiles. And that's because commenting boosts reach. But how exactly? We'll come to that in a moment. So I kept seeing that people were talking about, you must comment 20 comments per day. And they talk like you got to do good comments, not great posts, thanks for the share, love this, or something which is, you know, super pathetic. Really insightful comments, because then if they are writing stuff, if other people are seeing your comments on other creator posts, it's almost like you're posting again, and it's adding to the reach and your profile being viewed. But I was trying to break down the maths behind this. So 20 comments. Let's say, I'm going to be really overly generous and fast with this. Let's say you took one minute to find a good post to comment on. Let's say you then spent a minute trying to decide something meaningful. So you want to read the post as well. You got to read the post and decide what to say. And then you need another minute to physically write the post. And that's pretty quick. Let's say that's three minutes. So that's then an hour a day commenting. I think that seems pretty reasonable, but I've done that really quickly. Now, the problem is people are now saying 20 comments is not enough. It's 200 comments a day. I've just said that is an hour a day. So that's 10 hours a day they're spending commenting. People's defense is that you will leave multiple comments on the same thread.

Fine, but you're still going to need time to go back to that thread, and you're not just sitting there refreshing and doing this all day every day. This is not going to be good for your productivity. And yes, obviously, you want to spend time on there, and you want to get business, but I'm not spending 10 hours a day. Even if I had that made it extra quick, I'm not spending five hours a day on LinkedIn. It's just not worth it. Now, this is why I want to address this issue, because I've seen so many people obsessed and going down a rabbit hole with comments. I had tested it the other day. I logged on the other weekend to just reply to my comments, not even spend the day seeking out comments. I just applied to comments that other people had written on my posts or other ones I'd commented on occasionally, because I do occasionally, and just applied to them. It took me five and a half hours, and I hadn't even finished. And that was just on a Sunday as well. That wasn't even on a busy day. So it is time consuming, but that's because I leave meaningful comments and I don't use automation software, which is obviously where we come in. AI, the other big buzzword that everyone talks about on LinkedIn. Again, if you're posting about AI, you will grow your account, and you will start to get more followers, and you'll have a bunch of people following you, and you'll make you feel amazing, and your posts will go viral, because everyone loves AI. But if you're not really doing AI as part of your job, it's probably not the best strategy. But there are now AI which comments for you. This is the only way people are able to actually create so many comments so quickly. And I obviously don't like this. I've done a no bullshit podcast, and running a no bullshit agency. It's just bullshit. I just think you can't be authentic if you're getting an engine to write your comments for you. But I get it. People are desperate, and they're trying to do this reach. And you know what? Annoyingly, whenever I have spent time commenting on other people's profiles, my profile views do go up loads. My reach does start to go up higher, and I am getting more requests coming in, and my follower count is growing. But you know what? They're all full of people.

I actually don't want to follow me, because all the type of people who are also not really interested in my services, but they're only interested in growing their own accounts, and they're trying to use my account for my reach, or they're interested in just learning more about LinkedIn because I'm leaving comments on other people's profiles or talking about that sort of stuff. So I think the advice about following the top creators and commenting on their posts may not be right, unless you are in the same demographics as them. I think look for people in your niche. Look for people who are leading the way and leading the conversation in the areas that you want to do well in and you want to find customers in because then if you're leaving knowledge bombs on every single one of their posts and sharing your knowledge, then someone else in their network might find it and might approach you. That's a good strategy. And actually, then you're going to need to leave fewer comments because also think about it. I looked at some of the top creators' posts today and I got a notification bell. I tested it to see how long it would take me to get notified. By the time I actually clicked on it, well, I got notified immediately. By the time I actually got the notification, I think it was about 32 minutes after they actually posted, one of them had over a thousand comments. I mean, it was ridiculous. So obviously, everyone is doing the same thing. And it's saturated again, because you're going to have to compete with all those other people who are copying the same algorithm advice. And it's just nuts. So I'm going to leave you with a bit more from the algorithm, because Richard did an event the other day. And do you know what? It was pretty good. And one of the guys has now started to do really well. I'm going to give him a little shout out as well. Katie Davis. He basically went to Richard's event, summarized it in a carousel. And now that carousel is doing wonders, and the guy has gained like 10,000 followers. So again, talking about LinkedIn pays off on LinkedIn. But I will just leave you with what is now talked about in terms of how much comments are worth. So essentially, the algorithm is triggered in two ways, the person posting and the person engaging. And so the type of interaction determines how much exposure that post gets. So for example, if you like the post, it's worth, say, one point is what they've done in terms of points to the actual person posting it.

So if I make a post and you like it, I get one point for that. If you click see more, I get two points for that. If you repost it and put your own thoughts on it, I get three points for that. It's like a computer game. If you just click instant repost because you don't even need to put in the comments, it's six points. And just think about it, every time someone hits repost as well, it hits their network as well. And so that's how you get all those extra bits of impressions and reach because of the fact that people are instantly reposting it. But comments are the key. So if you comment, but without anyone responding to you, then it's worth seven points. But this is where why you should take the time to reply to every single person who comments on your post. Because the comment's worth seven points, but if you comment and then you reply after it, it's worth nine points. Now, if you comment and then they comment again, it's worth a whopping 11 points, because you are building a conversation. If you can do that conversation and build up an interesting discussion, this is what LinkedIn wants. Think about it. It's a social media network. If you're creating good posts, and people are actually willing to have a little conversation on your post, then LinkedIn are going to think, oh, it's sparking discussions, this content's good, and show it to more people. It makes complete sense. So each of these are weighted differently. Now, let's talk about what that does to the person engaging. And this is where people don't realize. Now, if you also make or do all these engagements, you as the engager also get points on your profile, essentially. So you get one point for liking. You don't get anything for seeing more, but you also get similar things. If you repost with thoughts, you get three points for that. If you click instant repost, you also get two points for that. If you comment, you get five points. If you comment and the author replies, that's a seven points. And so if you comment again after that, that's eight points. So this is why everyone is talking about commenting, because according to this amazing carousel with Richard and Cody, this is what's happening to your profile every time you comment. So comments are clearly a very powerful way to go, and that's what everyone is talking about. So if you've seen a LinkedIn algorithm and everyone's talking about comments now, your comment strategy and all of this sort of stuff, this is why.

But this is the post I think is doing really well. But do you ignore anyone telling you that you have to be commenting a certain amount of times, because that's not how it works. It doesn't say quantity. It's all about the quality of conversation that you are curating. And look at what they're talking about in that post and terms of the points values. Go back and replay this if you're not sure, or drop me a message to ask me about it, and I will give you a link to what they've explained. But commenting is good, and it is going to help your LinkedIn algorithm. But commenting a certain amount of times a day, scrap that. Focus on quality and driving conversations. You're just dropping great share, love this, amazing, or emojis on people's profiles. That's not really going to do anything. And actually, it's just going to spam the feed, and it's probably going to think that you're actually not very good at LinkedIn. So, once again, quality over quantity all the time. Right, this has been a big, big episode. It's the longest one, and it's going to be over 30 minutes, so I apologize, because I did pledge that this podcast would be a short, snappy one, but hopefully there's loads of value in here. And you know what? I should really put this on LinkedIn, right? Isn't that what I said? LinkedIn content does really well on LinkedIn? Well, I have also said that this is a sniffing out the bullshit podcast, and I'm trying to call people out on their bullshit. And I have spoken about what stuff is bullshit within this, but there's also a lot of value in here, and the guys who are creating this stuff are putting a lot of effort into it. But creators on LinkedIn are doing really, really well, and collaboration is still clearly the key. So these guys have done so well from their collaboration, and I see it all the time now. I've seen even LinkedIn creators are flying to different countries to meet up with each other because they start creating a bunch of content when they're with each other. They've got months and months of content, and they're tagging each other in, they're showing each other love, and they're all boosting each other's profile. So it's actually crazy, the collaboration that's going behind a lot of this stuff. And it shows you, though, that sharing is caring. So I hope that this podcast has been pretty useful to you in terms of the content today.

And you've sniffed out enough of the bullshit to stay away from to not make your life on LinkedIn really stressful. And instead, you're kind of concentrating on the quality that you can do. So my recommendation is go out there, make a content strategy, think about who you want to talk to. But then also, when you're trying to do a commenting strategy, don't just pick the top creators. Pick the people who are making a name for themselves in your industry and that you value what they have to say and their opinions and their quality of content. So that's my advice, and hopefully I will see you all next week for another episode of Sniffing Out The Bullshit.