The LinkedIn algorithm change and what it means to you and me and Richard…perhaps.

I have been watching the development of conversations around the proposed changes to the Linkedin algorithm and what it might mean for the average user. Also a cautionary thought for those planning to change what they do.

In this Hubspot article https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/new-linkedin-feed-algorithm they look at the problems with the current algorithm and how it gives a huge amount of “love” to influencers with tens of thousands of followers and proportionally less to mere mortals with just a few hundred and that the LinkedIn changes hope to address this imbalance.

It’s interesting that the LinkedIn newsfeed algorithm rather like the Google ranking algorithm in designed to give the user the best possible experience. That experience is centred about (in Google’s case) providing the pages that the algorithm thinks are most likely to meet the demands of what you’re looking for, and (in Linkedin’s case) providing a representation of what you might want to read when you log-in.

In the case of LinkedIn I suspect that this is a combination of what’s popular on LinkedIn at the moment, what’s popular in my network at the moment and what’s popular with me at the moment. Obviously this is sort of biased towards those individuals with huge networks and huge gravitas in their chosen field. So, whether I like it or not, Richard Branson’s posts are seen by more people than mine, and even assuming the same engagement rate as mine, therefore liked by more people than mine.

LinkedIn is about to change this weighting (if I have understood that changes properly) and this means that there will be more of a level playing field between me and Rich. Although I stand to benefit from this, I’m not sure this is a good idea and I’m certainly not sure that you should change your LinkedIn strategy (if you have one) to take account of this.

Why?

Well, first, because algorithms are subject to change and re-tooling your behaviour to suit an algorithm change today may need re-tooling again tomorrow and may leave you with a less impressive footprint than you might later want. Second, because Richard Branson actually deserves more visibility than me because he’s Richard Branson!

So how can you and I sidestep the vagaries of the algorithms and acknowledge that Richard Branson will always have more fans than us!

When Tim Hughes and I founded Digital Leadership Associates the first task I undertook was to analyse Tim’s social behaviour and see what he did and how this made him successful. I consider him to be successful because he was (and still is) the #1 Social Selling influencer and on the Top 10 influencer rankings for several more things. Because he had generated impressive visibility and collected 200,000 twitter followers (although at the time it was only 120,000). More importantly though he generates more inbound leads than I do and I figured I could learn from this.

So I sat down with him and he explained what he did, to which I responded “no Tim, what’s your secret…what do you DO to make you so successful.” He again explained what he did…and it was simple and elegant and best of all it was obvious.

Since then we have packaged this up and we teach it to our clients and they, also, get success from these methods and I can sum them up in one simple statement.

Do the right thing and you will generate the success you deserve.

By this I mean.

• create a personal brand that makes you look credible so that people will think your content might be worth reading.
• grow your network. I DON’T mean collect connections or followers, because 30k people who don’t know and respect you is with no more than 50 people who don’t. I mean grow and engage a network and always be looking to expand this.
• publish your best ideas. Although this may be counterintuitive, your best work is worth more to you out there getting you seen and raising your credibility than it is sitting locked away on your hard drive.
• publish often. I don’t mean interacting, or posting, or liking and commenting (although that too) but publishing your thoughts in your words as a blog, as a video as a podcast...often.

This is what we do. This is what we teach our clients to do and it works. The Hubspot article talks about how “Kim average” doesn’t get much love for her posts whilst Richard Branson gets loads for his and this might demotivate her…which it very well might. But that’s life and it WILL change if she perseveres. When I started my first job I didn’t earn much money and I didn’t get much respect but the owner of the company did. It wasn’t fair, but over time it changed. In the LinkedIn (or social media) world this is no different.

Some experts are also saying that this means you should publish less content as the algorithm favours this, and to be honest this is a line of debate that I think is really offensive. It's offensive because it is basically saying to everyone that you will get more success by doing less work and the world simply doesn’t work that way. The world NEVER works that way.

So my advice to you is simply do the things that you know in heart of hearts are the right things to do. Be nice to people, like share and comment on things that you believe are worth sharing, connect with interesting people that you would like to know and write down your best ideas and publish them.

If you do this you won’t go too far wrong. Perhaps you won’t become the next Richard Branson but I know plenty of people who are “LinkedIn Influencers” or have “Verified Accounts” on Twitter and they think they're Richard Branson...but they aren't famous and the don't have loads of money!