Part 2 of RG’s LinkedIn Strategy Guide for Financial & Professional Services Marketers

The State of Play: What's Actually Happening on LinkedIn Right Now

If your LinkedIn content feels like it's working harder for smaller returns, you're not imagining it.

According to Richard van der Blom's recent Algorithm InSights report, organic performance took a serious hit platform-wide in 2025: views are down roughly 50%, engagement has dropped 25%, and follower growth has declined by nearly 60% year-over-year.

But here's the nuance most marketers miss: reach hasn't declined across the board. It's declined for content that no longer meets LinkedIn's evolving standards. The platform has shifted away from rewarding viral, high-volume posting toward consistent, expertise-driven engagement. That's actually good news for financial services and professional services brands…if you know how to use it.

So how does the algorithm work now?

The Core Shift: From Recency to Relevance

The most significant update LinkedIn rolled out in mid-2025 was a fundamental pivot away from recency-based ranking toward relevance-based ranking. Previously, the feed heavily favored the newest posts from your connections.

Now, LinkedIn is far more likely to show older posts - even two to three weeks old - if they're more relevant to your professional interests than something posted an hour ago.

This changes the demand for constant content churn. A well-constructed post with real staying power - practical insight, a genuine perspective, a thought-provoking question - can continue building reach and engagement over a multi-week window. For financial services and professional services firms where content production is resource-intensive and compliance-reviewed, this is a meaningful strategic opportunity.

Four principles sum up what the new LinkedIn algorithm rewards: quality over quantity, relevance beats recency, authority outweighs activity, and depth of conversation outperforms number of comments.

The New LinkedIn Post Ranking Signals

LinkedIn's algorithm now evaluates every post against four primary factors.

1. Content Quality and Expertise Depth

LinkedIn's AI has grown significantly more sophisticated at distinguishing genuine subject-matter expertise from surface-level commentary. The algorithm now performs deep content analysis, examining linguistic complexity, information depth, and originality, and uses this to build a "digital fingerprint" that determines where and to whom your content gets distributed.

Posts with original insights, proprietary data, specific frameworks, or uncommon perspectives are measurably rewarded. Reposts, generic hot takes, and lightly-edited PR announcements are not.

2. Consumption Rate (Dwell Time)

One of the most important new signals is how long users actually spend with your content, not whether they clicked a reaction button. Dwell time is now a major ranking signal: the longer people spend with your content, the more valuable the algorithm considers it.

This is precisely why carousels, thoughtful long-form text posts, and native PDFs are currently outperforming quick-hit posts. They hold attention longer.

3. Relationship Depth

The algorithm update places substantially more weight on the depth of the relationship between content creator and viewer. Content from someone you've recently engaged with, exchanged messages with, or regularly interact with is far more likely to surface in your feed than content from a distant connection, regardless of how many reactions that post has.

Building a genuine, engaged network of relevant contacts matters far more than raw follower count.

4. Meaningful Engagement Quality

LinkedIn has become significantly better at detecting engagement bait - those "Like if you agree" prompts - and actively discounts it. Thoughtful comments are approximately 15x more valuable as an engagement signal than likes.

A post with 15 substantive, multi-sentence comments now meaningfully outperforms a post with 200 emoji reactions. Comments that trigger back-and-forth dialogue are treated as a particularly strong signal of content value.

The Four-Stage Distribution Process for LinkedIn Posts

Understanding how LinkedIn distributes a post helps you optimize when and how you engage after publishing.

• Stage 1 (0–60 minutes): Your post is classified as spam, low quality, or high quality and shown to a small initial sample of your network. Early engagement, particularly comments, in this window has outsized influence on how far the post ultimately travels.
• Stage 2 (1–24 hours): Based on Stage 1 performance, distribution either expands to second-degree connections and relevant hashtag audiences or gets throttled.
• Stage 3 (24–48 hours): Higher-performing posts may continue expanding beyond your network based purely on topical relevance.
• Stage 4 (2–3 weeks+): Top posts can continue resurfacing in feeds for weeks, particularly when new comments are added. This is where evergreen content with practical, durable value gets its biggest advantage.

Be available in the first 60–90 minutes after you post. Responding to early comments is itself a positive engagement signal that helps extend a post's life. Don't publish and disappear.

What's Being Penalized

The algorithm now applies account-wide distribution restrictions to flagged accounts, not just individual posts, making short-term visibility tactics significantly more costly in the long run.

Steer clear of the following:

• External links in the body of posts, which suppress initial reach by approximately 30% - put links in the first comment instead
• Engagement bait phrases like "Comment if you agree" or "Tag someone who needs this"
• More than 3–5 hashtags, which can trigger spam filters
• Publishing new content while a previous post is still actively gaining impressions
• Tagging people who aren't genuinely connected to the content
• Low-value AI-generated content lacking a distinct human perspective, which LinkedIn's systems are increasingly effective at flagging

Key Numbers to Know

Metric

Benchmark

Organic reach decline (2024–2025)

~50% platform-wide

Evergreen content lifespan

Up to 2–3 weeks in feed

Comments vs. likes as engagement signal

Comments are ~15x more valuable

Individual profile vs. company page reach

2–3x more for individual profiles

Native video boost (brand in first 4 sec)

+69% performance

External links in post body

~30% reach reduction

Optimal hashtag count

3–5

Best posting windows (exec audiences)

Tue–Thu, 6–8 AM or 7–9 PM

Compliance recovery timeline

60–90 days of quality posting

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Have we piqued your interest? Let's talk.

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