Since LinkedIn™ dumped AI onto its unsuspecting members back in early 2023, bot-created content has become pervasive. It shows up in posts, profiles and messages. You can hardly move without it hitting you in the face.
Many people jumped on the bandwagon immediately. Perhaps not realising their folly. More fairly, perhaps not realising the lengths LinkedIn™ would go to persuade us to use it.
Many of the features that use AI have to be paid for with a Premium (or above) subscription. But some, like collaborative articles, are open to everyone.
Collaborative articles are the thousands – if not hundreds of thousands – of AI-generated articles that LinkedIn™ wants us to ‘contribute to’ (ie comment on) with the prize for participation being a LinkedIn™ Community Top Voice badge. Note the word ‘participation’. It is not the same as excellence or even adequacy. Just contribute a few sentences to a few different articles on the same topic. That’s all you have to do. A very low bar, I’m sure you’ll agree.
While we’ve all be encouraged at every turn to get involved with collaborative articles, LinkedIn™ has quietly but dramatically reduced organic reach on posts. Whereas a post might previously have garnered a few thousand views, for many that’s now dropped to a few hundred. The algorithm has changed. And not in favour of members’ content.
You may also have noticed a distinct uptick in other kinds of content in your feed now. Sponsored posts, prompts to take actions such as ‘Grow your page’, group posts and, of course, the inevitable collaborative articles. By definition, there is less space for our own content. The exception to this (currently) is the new interactive video feed which seems to largely show only personal videos apart from the promo from LinkedIn™. The videos showing up here are also now much less likely to be shown in your feed.
It's worth remembering that the publishing platform is much younger than LinkedIn™ itself and until around a decade or so (give or take) only long-form articles could be uploaded. When posts became possible the entire game changed and people with small businesses, like me, could write about what we knew and be guaranteed an audience. Now, with the advent of industrial-sized, AI-supported engagement pods, changes to the algorithm and the other factors I’ve mentioned, the game has changed.
When the time it takes to create a quality post is considered, the ROI on posts has deteriorated badly. Posts not attracting so much reach are also not being seen by those in our wider networks. Now, for a post to appear in your feed more than one factor needs to be in play. For example, it not only needs to have been published by a connection, the post also needs to have been engaged with by another of your connections. There are various permutations of this concept that are based around your own activity and that of your network.
By making it harder to get our posts seen by those we are targeting, LinkedIn™ is reducing its relevancy for members. By leaning heavily into AI and the pay-to-play model, LinkedIn™ is making it harder to justify spending so much time and effort here. Other platforms may provide better value.
Is AI and the algorithm killing LinkedIn™ content? It would seem so.