Algorithm and Feed Dynamics

• First-degree reach in the feed fell from 72% in 2024 to 31% in 2026, while 93% of a comment's impressions come from the other author's network
• LinkedIn's March 2026 feed-ranking change began surfacing posts to people outside a poster's network based on topic interest
• The 2025 "360 Brew" update prioritized value-dense content over broad, superficial content
• The 2026 feed rebuild ranks by behavioral signals, so widely copied formats lose reach as audiences get used to them
• LinkedIn is now acting against engagement pods, automated comments, and fake-conversation tools
• Doubling posting frequency across two languages lifted weekly reach about 50%, with non-native engagement holding steady

‍

Outreach and DMs

• Cutting a DM from 200 words to a 67-word structure lifted one sender's response rate from 4% to 31% across 1,000 messages
• "Thanks for connecting," title callouts, and "quick call" asks were named as the top reply killers; one client's rate rose from 3% to 28% in fourteen days after dropping them
• Sales Navigator's "Posted on LinkedIn" filter surfaces active prospects for a comment-first approach; one user booked a call two days after commenting
• A bot-farm lead-gen plan for a UAE real estate raise was turned down as negative-ROI
• A prospect who never replied to a LinkedIn message still remembered the sender's name on a later cold call
• Pairing organic content with outbound DMs and active engagement moved one founder past a stalled 50/50 result

‍

Content Strategy and Format

• Ten unchanged daily habits sustained growth to 376K followers over five years on about two hours, four days a week
• Reposting a teammate's content earns 85% less engagement than an original post
• Three posts mapped three virality types: 250+ reposts on a shareable post, 344 comments on a discussion post, 1,600+ profile views on a personality post
• A single bold-quote-image post, made in under five minutes, generated 50,000 impressions and 74 new followers
• A founder post was broken down as "Trojan Horse" content: company-building story shifting into a product pitch, backed by a photo hook and replies to every comment
• A July challenge among 163 members produced 2,032 content pieces and 21.7% average follower growth, prompting a LinkedIn round through end of September

‍

Employee Advocacy

• Employees describing their own work experience, not promoting the company, generated tens of thousands of impressions with no prompting
• A 13,000-plus employee advocacy program cites measurement as the hardest part of scaling it
• A solutions engineer's nine posts drew 310,000 impressions, versus 240,000 from 61 company-page posts in the same quarter
• A whitepaper drew 35 downloads across APAC while employee amplification doubled the engagement rate of a global video campaign
• Gap and Starbucks now pay employees to post, Expedia is exploring a fall program, and 46% of consumers want to hear from regular employees
• Gong's playbook traced to ungating a data ebook into Gong Labs; its page passed 200,000 followers as the company grew from 11 to 3,500 customers

‍

Personal Branding and Conversion

• An eight-figure tech company rebuilt its strategy around target-account engagement after realizing its broad-reach audience wasn't its buyer
• 25,017 followers now correlates with one qualified sales meeting booked per business day
• Clients have won more than $100 million of business through organic LinkedIn social selling over six years
• A founder client grew from under 2,000 followers to 7 qualified leads and six-figure pipeline in 90 days without a viral post
• Agencies damaged executive accounts with AI-written content, purchased followers, and templated notes; recovery takes about 90 days
• Most sign-ups for a $120K cohort came from Substack, not the founder's nearly 60,000 LinkedIn followers

‍

AI in Social Selling

• Feeding an AI model existing notes and transcripts to be interviewed for content ideas is displacing direct-draft prompting
• LinkedIn retired "AI Suggested Replies" and introduced an "AI Slop" button that now penalizes what it once encouraged
• After handwriting 700-plus client posts in three months, one agency found Grok, GPT, and Claude output indistinguishable and short on industry nuance
• An analysis of 9.5 million AI citations found LinkedIn second only to YouTube, with 75% of citations from individual profiles
• LinkedIn's own research found 35% of AI citations came from members under 10,000 followers, and 95% from original posts
• A one-click connector lets Claude find prospects, research them, personalize outreach, and manage replies from natural-language prompts
• One operator built an agent from 10,000-plus analyzed posts, reaching $2M ARR from six LinkedIn posts and now writing for VC-backed founders

‍

Thanks to Jasmin Alić, Lara Acosta, Chelsea Olsen, Matt Gray, Diandra Escobar, Dave Gerhardt, Doug Kennedy, Marcus Mauer, Alex Colhoun, Ben Precourt, Conor Paulsen, Chris Cozzolino, Matt Savarick, Daphne Costa Lopes, Tommy Clark, Mandy McEwen, Joe Davis, Dan Smokoska, Katie Hawkins, Islam Midov, Logan Gott, Liora Kern, Dean Seddon,  Eileen Soh, Guillermo Sánchez Jurado, Caitlin O. Bigelow, Omar E., LIAM DARMODY, Ann Zaslow-Rethaber, Qaadirah Abdur-Rahim, Josh Kaplan, James Hanzimanolis, Charlotte S., Jasmine Enberg, Cori Lindsey, Ivonne Kinser, Omaer Rana, Paulina Stricker, Anna-Maria Witzgall, Yonathan Levy, Raik Adler, Darren McKee, Sam G. Winsbury, Britta Behrens, Guillaume Bardet, Luna Chen, Anushka Gupta, Justin Gordon, Birte Boerner, Tyrona Heath, Jenny Force, Ritchie Pettauer, and Ann-Katrin Schmitz for the insights behind this edition. Find the full list of posts and voices on LinkedIn: