Transcription
LinkedIn really isn't the same platform that it was 6 months ago. From sneaky pay-to-play maneuvers to changes in the algorithm and, of course, always new features.
This week, listeners, we're going to be talking about all things LinkedIn and the state of play as we are right now. And it's interesting because I think right now people are more confused rather than upset or excited by LinkedIn. We're left wondering, "What is going on? What is driving LinkedIn? Why do they keep making changes that don't really make sense to us mere mortals?"
As I always say, listeners, this is LinkedIn's sandpit. It's us that chooses to play in it. So, it's their rules. And so, I wanted to have a look into, like, well, what's going on for LinkedIn? What is driving some of these decisions for them? And we're going to go into that today.
So, a couple of the big shifts. One is the quiet and subtle move towards pay-to-play. The other was a change to the LinkedIn algorithm in June this year. And both of those things are definitely having an impact. Of course, we've got new features, which I'm going to cover those later in the episode. But it's all well and good to understand all of these things, but really, what do I think you should be doing about it? I'm going to save that till last. So, stick around, and I'm going to share exactly what I think you should pay attention to, what things you should change, and what I think people really need to focus on to get results and business growth towards the end of 2025.
Whether you're a B2B marketing manager or a business owner or CEO that needs to stay up to date with what's happening on LinkedIn, I've got you covered. I've done the research so you don't have to.
If you go to the LinkedIn About page on their website, it shows their vision and mission and other things about LinkedIn. But one of the things that you need to be really clear about is what's driving them right now. So, the vision, which is "create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce." That is what they're out to do right now. Whether you're a job seeker, whether you're a business owner, they are trying to connect opportunities for people, obviously, to try and make some kind of money out of it. Like, I like that idea. I love that that is kind of driving LinkedIn is to connect opportunities for people. To be honest, that's exactly why I'm there. B2B Growth Co. We help our clients have a LinkedIn strategy that generates opportunities for growth. I'm in exactly the right place. My clients are in the right place. This is where we come to do business. So, from that perspective, I'm on team LinkedIn as far as that goes. No surprises.
But there has been a subtle shift over the last 6 to 12 months, and especially the last 6 months, where LinkedIn is definitely a pay-to-play platform. I don't think it ever was before. I don't begrudge them for turning it into that. We've had a pretty good ride for the best part of over 20 years. And so, from that perspective, I can see where they're coming from.
What are these shifts that I'm talking about? So, little things like features not being available unless you have a premium account for your personal profile. Of course, LinkedIn company pages also have a premium option, which is slowly but surely improving over time. We're seeing a lot more focus on, "Hey, you can boost your post over on your company page." When we look at, you know, some of the ad structures that they've rolled out, like the thought leadership ads, where companies can pay for individuals to have their posts promoted, I hope that the future of that is all to do with B2B brand partnerships. I would love to see that blow up on this platform directly through LinkedIn without the use of other third parties. I think that would be amazing. You know, that's the kind of opportunity that I would love to see, and I would certainly pay for features that helped me along those lines.
So, from this perspective, pay-to-play, what does that mean for you? Well, ultimately, I think unless you're willing to invest some money with the platform, we are going to see more and more features stripped back and put into some of the more paid options, whether it's Sales Navigator or just Premium. But if you are going to be leveraging LinkedIn for business growth, I think a paid account is a non-negotiable. So, thinking about that for your team. I'm still not on team Sales Navigator just yet. I think that's a waste of money for most businesses who don't have good social selling processes in place.
What else do I think has changed significantly that will have an even bigger impact on your business growth on LinkedIn for the rest of this year and beyond? Let's talk about that next.
In June this year, there was a shift with the LinkedIn algorithm. Now, I almost missed it because I had a few weeks off, and then I came back, and all I saw was posts that were two to three weeks old, and I thought, "Hang on a minute. What's going on here? It's a bit of a glitch in the matrix. Don't worry, these things happen from time to time. LinkedIn must be testing something." And I'm just waiting for it to fix itself. And I waited, and I waited some more. And it never really changed. I'm still, at the time of recording this podcast, which is towards the end of July 2025, I'm still seeing lots of old posts.
So, I did some investigations to find out what was going on, and I found an article that LinkedIn had answered some questions through Business Insider. That this is actually by design. LinkedIn announced in this article that they are making the move away from vanity metrics. Vanity metrics are impressions on your posts, likes, these types of things. So, engagement, the things that we're addicted to, the things that we've been taught: the more impressions, the better. The more likes, the better. And LinkedIn are now saying, "Actually, no, we don't actually think that generates opportunities for you. We're more interested in making sure that you see content that is really aligned with what you've been engaging with, that is on your topic, that they think you'll find valuable." And timing isn't as important. They call it recency versus relevancy. So, the more relevant it is to you, they're not really looking at actually the timing of that post. So, if you think about it, that is a monumental shift in how we use LinkedIn.
So, things aren't as urgent now. You know, that first hour after a post doesn't mean anything. Even the first few hours isn't going to mean anything if our posts are showing up to people two to three weeks later. Now, of course, there have been lots of complaints because we're seeing posts on LinkedIn which are showing up two to three weeks later. The event's already been and gone. So, you know, they haven't quite got it right. They say that and they're doing some adjustments to find where that line is. So, hang in there while they figure it out.
I like this idea now that I understand how it works. And I will be changing how I take action on LinkedIn in relation to this, and I'll be instructing my clients on those changes as well. But ultimately, I think if LinkedIn's out to try and help me get more opportunities and connect my content, which will help other people discover opportunities, then I'm all for that. But it's obviously not me that has to go and report to someone higher up and justify why all of a sudden your impressions on your post have like, just taken a huge nose dive. You're crashing and burning, and you're thinking, "Wow, what is going on here?"
I used to get, let's see, two and a half thousand impressions on a post like pretty typically, pretty easily. Of course, they go up and down, but that's been the way for me for years. I'm talking, you know, the best part of the last 5 to 10 years, roughly, those numbers now. If I have a look now, a lot of my posts would be sitting at around half that. So, 1,000 to 1,200 on most days. Now, of course, that felt like a punch in the gut because I was thinking, "Oh my god, what is going on? If people don't see my content, what hope have I got in growing my business?"
Now, what's actually happened is it's had no impact because the right people are seeing my content. Still hard to swallow, not going to lie. But what I've discovered is when you write a very valuable and helpful post for your audience, those numbers go crazy high. So, numbers like 6,000 impressions start to pop up. So, that's two to, you know, two and a half, three times more what I was averaging. And so again, I need to rethink my content strategy around what kind of content helps other people, and how can I create opportunities for them to learn, how can I create opportunities for them to grow, and I believe that LinkedIn will reward that for me as time goes on.
Now, what do we do in the meantime? I don't know. Save this podcast, share it with your bosses, but have some storytelling to go with the numbers because it's going to feel pretty bumpy in the meantime until we get that new level where that becomes the new normal. And yeah, it's easier said than done, right?
So, they are the two main shifts. We've got this quiet pay-to-play approach, and we've got shifts in how the algorithm is focused. Next, let's take a look at the features that have rolled out that I think you should pay attention to.
What are the new features that I think you should be paying attention to that are worth keeping an eye out for and experimenting with? To be honest, that list is going to be pretty short in today's episode. It's been super duper quiet pretty much this year compared to last year with how many new features we had rolled out. Now, I'm not sure whether that's by design because LinkedIn have had a lot of layoffs over the last few months, but ultimately, I hope that it's kind of stable and locked in for a little while because change for change's sake is not helping any of us.
What have they been focused on? Actually, analytics is probably one of the pieces of the puzzle that has changed more recently. And some of this aligns with those two big changes that we just spoke about. So, if you're no longer measuring yourself on impressions and likes and comments and that kind of stuff, what are you going to measure on? And LinkedIn is now showing you, "Hey, as a result of the work you're doing, we can now show you how many people went to your profile after your post or how many people became followers after your post." And so, from this perspective, they're trying to get you to focus on what matters: driving people back to your profile.
So, if your profile hasn't been updated recently, I really recommend that you go back and spend some time on doing that and make sure that people are really clear what you do, who you do it for, and what makes you different. And it's been so cool to see some of my listeners have implemented that in their About sections, and I can immediately and obviously see that that's what they've been doing. Shout out to any of you who might be listening that have done that.
We've got some analytics on your personal profile, typically only show up when you're on a premium account. We're now seeing that you can record a video that will go as the cover image on your LinkedIn newsletters or articles. Now, everyone knows that I am such a huge fan of LinkedIn newsletters. Like, I'm probably the number one fan girl for LinkedIn newsletters. I love them. If you don't have one and want to know why I'm so passionate, reach out. Drop me a message on LinkedIn and ask me. There's also an episode of the podcast I did a little while back that I can share, which shows you the difference between my LinkedIn newsletter strategy and my email newsletter strategy, which my email newsletter is only brand new. So, if you haven't checked it out yet, the details are in the show notes.
So, from this perspective, videos, will it make a huge difference? I don't know. Play around with it. Test it. Let me know what you discover. But realistically, is there anything else? I'm sure there's some shifts in the AI tools within the platform that LinkedIn are trying to encourage you to use, but honestly, that's not my jam. I don't see that they're really that good right now. So, for me, I'm just focusing on using AI tools off the platform.
When it comes to company pages, besides the changes to the premium options and what's included with premium, honestly, I haven't seen anything come through on pages for a while outside of that. So again, if you pay to play, you'll get new options. Unfortunately, it doesn't help your content get seen by more people, but it certainly is designed to help you grow your followers quicker. I do love that the company page premium is geared towards helping you grow your followers fast on your company page. I love that idea. So, I'm going to go back and I'm going to test it again and report back in on my learnings about whether I think now Company Page Premium is a worthwhile investment or not. I've got some people trying to convince me around the world that I should go back and take another look. So, I promised that I would and I would report back and let you know what I think. But hopefully, it is doing enough now to justify the spend. But for those of you who think if you pay for it, your content gets seen by more people. Unfortunately, that's not the case.
So, there are major shifts and there are new features. So, after this, let's talk about what I think makes an even bigger difference than understanding all of these features and functions on LinkedIn and what I think you should be doing for the second half of the year to make sure that you can leverage LinkedIn to really grow your business.
Anybody that's been listening to this podcast for long enough will know that I am going to go back and say to you, strategy beats features every single day of the week. If you're new here, you are going to get sick of me reminding you that we need to go back to the foundations of marketing, the foundations of branding, and really have a LinkedIn strategy that's aligned with your business goals. Why do I keep going back to this? Because every time I'm connecting with people on intro calls, the discussions we're having, they've skipped over this step. We skip straight to content, and they're wondering why it's not working. One of the things that we fix with the B2B Growth Masterclass is making sure that you have a game plan in place. It's G is for game plan. Making sure that you actually start in the right place.
And so, from that perspective, content is still king, but ultimately, it's content in service of your audience. How are you connecting them to opportunities? How are you creating opportunities between you and your ideal audience? So, that is something to think about.
On LinkedIn, I think consistency is better than novelty. This week has been horrendous. If I see one more post that is totally unrelated to anything that people do around the Coldplay CEO drama on the Kiss Cam, I'm going to go crazy. Ultimately, that has been a huge distraction on the platform, and one I have some pretty strong opinions on, which I won't go into in this episode. But ultimately, from that, getting back to consistency and persistency over the long term. So, none of this "go hard because you've got an event and then disappear" or hot and cold. And it's a game of hide-and-seek most of the time with people or their brand. And I get you're busy, like we all are. Find me somebody that's not busy. But your audience will notice when you're there and not there. So, you need to come up with ways to be able to stay present but not drain all of your time and resources. And my clients love that I give them strategies on how they can actually get around this.
What do I think B2B marketers should be doing for the rest of 2025? Ultimately, I think you shouldn't be relying on new features and algorithm changes as the lifeboats to try and save you. That is not what they are designed to do. They are designed to help LinkedIn and LinkedIn alone. So, yes, they want you to keep coming back, but it's up to you to experiment and figure out how you can do this.
Last week's podcast episode was all about team alignment. If you do not get your internal teams aligned and on the same page, be it sales and marketing, employee advocacy and company pages, leadership and employees, all the different ways that companies interact when it comes to LinkedIn, you have to all be on the same page and understand what you're all trying to achieve. I don't care what your KPIs are for each individual team. You will not grow your business on LinkedIn if you're not all on the same page. So, it's time for some new KPIs that align the whole business so that they're going in the right direction and not against it.
You know enough about the LinkedIn algorithm, but please don't ever get distracted and make that your primary focus. Understanding what content you can create in service of your audience will have a bigger impact in the rest of 2025 than anything else. And probably the last thing that I would say that I want people to start thinking about is how can you put some personality into your content? Most content is so boring and so bland and blends in with every other piece of content that I see. It is not having an impact. So, it's a tick-and-flick exercise where people play it safe. They play it professional, but they're not getting results. Why? Because I can't even remember you. I probably scrolled straight past because there was nothing remarkable about it.
What will you do in the second half of the year to change things up? Doing what you were doing 6 months ago will not work. So, my challenge to you is: it's time to take a moment, walk away from LinkedIn, sit down as a team, and work out what is your new strategy for the second half of this year and what things will you be trying for your brand. And I highly recommend the power of two: bringing employee brands and company brands and working together. That is where you will get the big results.
So, if you don't have a game plan that goes beyond "let's just do three posts per week," then we really need to talk because I would love to show you how you can grow your business leveraging LinkedIn with all of the things that we've discussed today taken into account in our new growth strategy. So, if that sounds good to you, reach out to me. All the details are in the show notes.
If we're not connected on LinkedIn, please make sure that you do that. I love hearing from you, listeners. It makes my day. So, until next week, cheers.
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