Content reach has crashed on LinkedIn this year.
Not one member can tell you, hand on heart, that they’re getting the same volume of impressions as they were this time last year (unless they’re in a pod).
For most of us the drop has been excruciating. Posts that would routinely return reach of 5K+ struggle to reach 1k.
The change has been widely blamed on the algorithm. Early in the year it was believed, tweaks LinkedIn made to it favoured certain kinds of content, penalising others in its wake.
Most recently, the arrival of the new ‘Videos for you’ tab in our feed has pushed videos to the fore. Both in terms of number of video posts and results gained from them.
It is expected that within 2-3 weeks the new native video feature will roll out although this has not been officially announced. This will allow the direct uploading from phones and other devices to LinkedIn lives, profiles and posts.
While the rise and rise of video has certainly taken attention from other formats, this plus the algorithm change are not in fact the main reasons for the evisceration of reach.
That honour goes to AI, reports Richard van der Blom, an internationally respected expert on the algorithm and LinkedIn feed.
His research shows that the volume of posts fully written by AI have increased by 180% in the past six months and that posts 50% created by AI are up by 128%. This puts huge pressure on the feed, crowding out organic posts written by humans, like you and me.
Richard also says the number of AI-generated images in posts has risen 80% but – here’s the shocker – AI-written comments are up by 340%. An AI-generated comment looks like the one to the right.
Richard says, ‘This is not success. This is a flood of soulless content.’
He is of course correct. It’s easily spotted in the feed and just as easily scrolled past. But if you or I see too much of this, what will we do? We’ll leave the feed and the platform to find the content we want to read or watch elsewhere.
But the increasing pervasiveness of AI on LinkedIn – in our posts, messaging and profiles – which shows no sign of slowing, begs the question: will LinkedIn members stay and be unhappy, or leave and find another platform that is more to their liking.
LinkedIn recently benefited from the exodus of X after the Musk takeover, but this influx may just as swiftly move on.
If members depart in masse, they’ll take their content with them, exacerbating the problem of AI overrunning our feeds.
This is of course entirely unlikely. LinkedIn will take steps to prevent this. After all, its members are its top priority, it says.