LinkedIn changing feed, will show less low-quality content, polls

LinkedIn is now reducing the visibility of several types of content in its feed, including polls and engagement bait.

Here’s what LinkedIn announced it is changing. 

Less “low-quality content.” Any posts that explicitly ask for or encourage engagement, such as comments or reactions, will have less visibility in the feed. LinkedIn said users find these types of posts that exist solely to boost reach “misleading and frustrating.” 

Fewer polls. You had to know this one was coming. If you regularly browse LinkedIn, it’s become common to see multiple polls in your feed every day. Many of these are from people you don’t know. LinkedIn said it has better filtering and promises to show only “helpful and relevant” polls, from people in your network.  

Less irrelevant updates. Ever seen a connection congratulate someone you’ve never met about a recent job change? LinkedIn says it will reduce how often users see this and try to show “more targeted activity” from your network. 

“I don’t want to see this.” In addition to algorithmic feed changes, LinkedIn is giving users a way to tell LinkedIn what they don’t want to say. All individual posts will include an “I don’t want to see this” option. You can limit content by authors or topic – plus you can choose to not see any political content. 

Why we care. These are positive and needed changes that LinkedIn hopes will result in a feed full of relevant, reliable, credible and authentic content. Hopefully, you haven’t been using engagement-baiting tactics on LinkedIn for your clients or brands (or yourself). If you have, expect engagement and reach to decline as LinkedIn’s algorithm will no longer reward these tactics with greater visibility.