The buzz that keeps pinging around my inbox this week is that LinkedIn have updated their algorithm. Reach is down, likes are dwindling, comments are swapping places with proverbial tumbleweeds…
In all honesty, I actually haven’t noticed. I haven’t seen any knock-on effects on my content, and I post pretty randomly. Not everything is about my business – a lot of my content is focused on me being slightly silly, because a) I am, and b) I like people to know what it might be like to work with me.
There are thousands of social media peeps out there to choose from, and if I tried to compete with all of them on skill and knowledge alone, I would drown very quickly. So I “compete” on personality and chameleon wrangling. I take what makes me different and I market that.
I’ve never been one to “hack” algorithms. I think if you spend all of your time trying to work out the best time and place to post, and what content performs best (video or carousel, anyone?), then you miss out on the opportunity to actually talk to your audience and the people you want to join your audience.
Of course, planning and content strategies have their place, as do analytics and data points – but they shouldn’t be the only thing driving your social media. Let’s look at how we can balance the data without losing the human touch.
Slave to the (algo)rhythm
What times should I post?
How long is a piece of string? A quick Google tells us that the best times to post on LinkedIn are between 9 am to 6 pm, Monday to Friday. That’s delightfully specific, isn’t it?
The best way to tackle posting times is to take a look at your target audience: what times are they most likely to be looking at their phones?
If you’re working with medical professionals, you might want to try posting at odd (to us) hours of the morning. A surgeon might finish an operation at 3 am and feel the need to doom scroll for a while before trying to sleep. A builder might have started work at 5 am and finished by 11 am, so you want your content to go out mid-morning to get the best chance of them seeing it.
What time you post depends on who you’re trying to speak to.
And if you’re unsure, try to hit these points:
- The morning commute
- The mid-morning slump
- Lunch
- The mid-afternoon slump
- The evening commute
- The post-kids-are-finally-in-bed doomscroll
As with all marketing, test these times out, and see when you get the highest engagement. Then use those times as your baseline for future content. Et voila!
Quick note – test these times on a quarterly basis. Human behaviour changes with the seasons, and so should your marketing.
What kind of content should I post?
What kind of content does your target audience enjoy? What kind of content are you comfortable with producing for them? There’s no point posting hundreds of videos because a blog somewhere told you that’s the best way to appease the Algorithm Daddy (shudder), when you look absolutely terrified in each video and are talking like a robot in mid-software upgrade.
If you hate doing videos and it shows, then don’t do them. Figure out the best and most comfortable way for you to engage with your target audience so that they still respond. That could be:
- Long-form blogs (700 words+)
- Short-form blogs (350 words or so)
- Short and snappy post captions
- Photos (of you, your team, projects you’re working on etc)
- Polls
- Ask me anything posts
- News articles
The list could go on and on! The main thing is to find the happy medium between what content you can consistently offer and what your audience enjoys getting from you. And again, as with all marketing efforts, test it out! Post different kinds of content and see what performs best. Or you could just… ask them what they want to see from you.
The Takeaway
At the end of the day, it’s audience over algorithm.
Yes, we’d all love to go viral, rack up the reach, and watch the enquiries roll in, but let’s be honest with ourselves: if that happened tomorrow, would your business be ready for it? Do you have the time, systems, or capacity to handle a sudden flood of new clients?
Chasing visibility is important, but so is sustainability. Your social media strategy should serve your business and your audience, not overwhelm them. Focus on building genuine connections with the right people, at a pace that works for you. That’s what leads to long-term success, not just fleeting viral wins and appeasing algorithms.
