Why your LinkedIn content experience has plummeted
And what you can do about it.
Running around in circles for good content? Here are 3 reasons why your experience has plummeted on LinkedIn.
Are you scrolling around more these days and seeing the same ho-hum or AI-regurgitated posts?
This UnfilteredFriday, let's talk about the not-so-secret reason: the social media network isn't actually capable of identifying good content.
Instead, it relies on signals that users send. And that's where the problem starts.
Blackhat trickery
The simplest way for the algorithm to determine if a piece of content is good would be to look at the number of "likes" a post attracts.
Unfortunately, it's the easiest to fool.
Through browser plug-ins installed on tens of thousands of fellow participants, it is possible to create massive engagement pods to vastly inflate likes.
Some of these pods even offer the ability to choose between industry niches, and some also let users throttle the rate of likes to throw off suspicion.
Grey tactics
There are some techniques that are not quite as dubious, which I call grey tactics.
One of the most common is to leave a massive number of comments a day on other posts. This greatly increases the chances of them repeating the favour, effectively propelling one's content to the top.
Obviously, nobody has that much time to spare, which is where AI tools come in. Yup, automated commenting by the scores, no reading or thinking required.
What could go wrong?
Ads
Finally, LinkedIn is also pushing more on monetisation these days, which means a lot more space being given to ads.
Not much I can add here, except to mentally gear yourself for a lot more scrolling to get past them.
What can you do?
Simple. Try to engage more with posts that you like, preferably with a thoughtful comment. Or drop a personal note if commenting is sensitive to your role; it means a lot.
You can also hit the bell to see more content from your favourite folks here. To not miss anything, be sure to select "All" instead of the default of "Most relevant".
Have you ever unfollowed anyone who used blackhat or greyhat tactics here?
PS: And to all of you has ever dropped me an email or a DM, thank you!