With thousands of users setting up LinkedIn accounts everyday, the platform is now seeing record levels of engagement and opportunities for both regular users and content creators alike. Getting noticed is becoming a little more challenging, which is why it is normal for some people to want to find loopholes in the algorithm in order to optimize their content’s performance, attract valuable connections and potentially secure business deals.
Linked; however, is not letting these opportunists get away with it. The professional platform is updating  its algorithms to make sure users don’t come across another engagement-bait post or poll on their feed.
According to LinkedIn, low-quality content, such as the one displayed in the previous picture, is being reduced for the following reasons:
We’ve seen a number of posts that expressly ask or encourage the community to engage with content via likes or reactions – posted with the exclusive intent of boosting reach on the platform. We’ve heard this type of content can be misleading and frustrating for some of you. We won’t be promoting this type of content and we encourage everyone in the community to focus on delivering reliable, credible and authentic content.
To add to that, LinkedIn’s team also stated that they’ve received feedback concerning the presence of way too many polls on feeds, luring people into engagement. Nonetheless, they’ve reassured users that the new algorithm also shows you the ones that are relevant and the ones created by people from your own network. Thus, users who do publish bait content shouldn’t be surprised to see their posts penalized as soon as the new algorithm fully kicks in.
Having said that, the new algorithm will also be effective on the notifications front, where it will be optimizing your feed to make sure you don’t come across as many updates from your network. LinkedIn explains this feature further in the following statement:
For example, you may not get a lot of value from seeing a connection’s comment on someone else’s post about a job change if you don’t know that other person. That’s why we’ll be showing you more targeted activity from your network, and where you’ll be more likely to join the conversation, too.
If there’s one thing for sure, it’s that it’ll be interesting to see the capacities of this new algorithm when it comes to processing users’ preferences, and curating content that will be of interest to them. Also, it will surely be great to see content creators scratch their heads and think hard about the information and posts they share on the platform, which was initially created for professional matters such as building connections and sharing career and industry-related information.
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