Executive Summary: What's Changed in the LinkedIn Algorithm, and What To Do About It In 2026
LinkedIn’s becoming less like a content platform and more like a networking conference with a long memory. Your post isn’t being judged in isolation anymore. It’s being considered in context: who you are, what you’ve done, what you talk about the most, and how you behave when you’re not the one holding the microphone.
So the winning approach in 2026 isn’t to post more, it's to show up better.
If you want the LinkedIn algorithm to favor you in 2026, you need to do three things well: clarify what you’re known for, prove it in your profile, and earn attention through comments that actually move conversations forward.
Do that, and the right people will find you faster, even if the raw impression count never returns to what it used to be.
Picture a hotel ballroom.
Bad coffee. Name tags. A sponsor table with a fishbowl of business cards. Clusters of people doing the same dance we’ve all done a hundred times. Smile, small talk, “So what do you do,” and then a quick scan to decide if this conversation’s worth the next five minutes.
That scene isn’t a metaphor for LinkedIn.
It’s LinkedIn in 2026.
And if your reach has fallen off a cliff lately, it’s not because you “lost the algorithm.” It’s because LinkedIn changed what the algorithm favors, and for the better in my opinion.
Recently, I was listening to the Sales Hunter Podcast and heard a conversation that put words to what a lot of us have felt without being able to quite explain. LinkedIn’s no longer handing out distribution as a reward for publishing. It’s handing it out as a reward for professional participation. And that’s a very different game.
The LinkedIn Strategy Nobody Wants to Admit Using
For years, a lot of people treated LinkedIn like a stage.
Write something punchy. Trigger quick reactions. Collect comments and hope the network effect does the rest. If your content performed well, you received more distribution. If it didn’t, try again tomorrow.
Thankfully, it looks like that era’s fading because LinkedIn’s new algorithm's incentives changed. But then, if you're paying attention, that shouldn't really come as any surprise.
LinkedIn only makes money when professionals keep paying for Premium, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter. Yes, I know, they also sell a lot of ads, but ask any investor, subscription income drives EB ITA and valuations because it's projectable.
These paying customers don’t pay for noise. They pay for signal. Which means LinkedIn has every reason to suppress the low-effort, largely AI-slop content and surface the people who consistently add value to a definable group of people.
So if your goal is to be seen, you’re now optimizing for the wrong outcome. But if your goal is to be helpful to the right people, you and LinkedIn are finally aligned. 🙌
Understanding How LinkedIn's Algorithm Evaluates You Now
The first thing to understand is that LinkedIn is evaluating you, not just your posts.
It treats your profile and behavior not as separate activities, but as a combined reputation system. When you publish now, the platform doesn’t just read the post. It analyzes you and, based on the outcome, decides where your content belongs and who else should see it.
So what's a boy to do about this change? As it turns out, a lot of the things we already teach in our Prospecting in Pixels course. Such as...
- Your About Section and headline shape what LinkedIn thinks you’re qualified to talk about. You should give it a thorough review and ensure it reads like a supporting document that positions you as a topical authority on what you sell.
- Your work history either supports your expertise or undermines it. Don't just list your jobs; show what you accomplished at each job. You need to prove you did more than show up and take a lunch break for x number of years.
- Your recent activity teaches LinkedIn whether you’re contributing or just broadcasting. Instead of asking, How many posts should I make a week?, ask How many comments should I leave a week.
- The quality of your conversations matters more than the volume of the engagement. Those drive-by "great post" comments won't cut it anymore. LinkedIn wants what the rest of us want: quality over quantity.
- Your opening lines matter because the system reads “top-heavy” before it decides what to do next. Those posts designed to make people dwell longer, but work harder to get the value of your knowledge... stop that. Write like a reporter. Stop burying the lead.
About Section as AI Training Document
For a long time, people treated their LinkedIn About Sections like resumes they updated when they changed jobs and then promptly forgot about them.
You need to rethink that approach immediately.
Your About Section is the evidence file LinkedIn's 2026 algorithm uses to determine whether your content should be shown to people who care about the topic. If your profile is vague, generic, or written like a motivational poster, you’re making it harder for the platform to place you in the right conversations.
Unfortunately, the fix isn’t to add more keywords. The fix is creating depth and clarity.
- What problems do you solve? Too many and you'll likely be slotted as a generalist. But, don't feel like you need to niche down to just one or two, unless of course, you really only solve one or two.
- Who do you solve them for? Here again, be descriptive and thorough but stop short of "everybody." 😉 And when you describe them, use the terms they use to describe themselves to make it easier for LinkedIn's algorithm to connect the two.
- What outcomes have you produced that prove you can say what you say? This is a big difference. The algorithm doesn't just want to know you've done something; it wants to know you've successfully done it. Again, anyone can say they worked for a client in a specific industry. But, the algo really wants to find the folks who created X growth in Y industry for Z client.
When writing your About Section, think outcomes over adjectives and specificity over vibe. You want to make it easy for humans to understand quickly, yet structured enough for a machine to correctly classify without guessing. That's the sweet spot.
Which Lunch Table Do You Sit At Each Day?
You're judged by the company you keep. And from what I'm hearing and reading, LinkedIn's 2026 algorithm is paying attention to who you talk to, what you say to them, and whether or not they reply. Not unlike the high school lunchroom, what you do every day on the platform basically tells the algorithm which table you sit at and who else is at that table.
But, if you “like” everything, congratulate everyone, and comment on whatever rolls by, LinkedIn thinks you’re the new kid on the block, desperately seeking a table -- any table. It’ll keep showing you a general mix of content, and you’ll end up with a feed full of noise. Eventually, you’ll become a permanent part of the noise, or more likely, an invisible part of the noise.
A real networking event has structure, even when it’s casual. You can socialize, sure. You can be human. But you also know why you’re there. You have your go-tos, your wingmen and wingwomen, and colleagues that you have to say hello to, but you also have those folks you want to meet. And a brilliant networker finds a way to strike up a conversation with those folks and, if possible, spends the majority of the time with them.
LinkedIn’s paying attention to what kind of networker you are. That doesn’t mean you can’t be personable. It means your personality works best when it supports a clear professional narrative.
If you want LinkedIn to understand what table you belong at, reinforce the same themes through what you post, what you comment on, what you ignore, and what your profile says you’ve actually done.
Longform LinkedIn Content is Back
Long-form writing is back in style again, and it’s not because LinkedIn wants to be Medium.
It’s because long-form is easier to evaluate for depth and detail.
Remember, in 2026, you’re not only writing for a busy executive scrolling between meetings. You’re also writing for machines, trying to decide whether you’ve earned the right to show up when someone asks, Who should I talk to about agency business development programs and training?
That changes how you should write. Don't just give an answer, show your work. Explain the tradeoffs. Define the terms. Walk through the reasoning. Use real examples from real situations. Make the reader smarter by the end of your post without having to click through to a blog post or podcast.
That’s what credibility looks like in a great LinkedIn post.
Video Didn't Kill the LinkedIn Text Star
To be clear, I’m not anti-video. Heck, I've been trying for the last few years to do more video because someone told me, "You give good video." Video creates trust fast when it’s done well, and LinkedIn has been pushing video hard over the last year...
But, based on everything I'm reading, and more importantly, our own LinkedIn Paradox Research Study, if you post a video with a vague teaser and expect people to do the work, you’re setting yourself up to be ignored by both humans and the platform.
On LinkedIn, the written setup isn’t optional. It’s the bridge between you and the viewer, and it’s also the piece the system can quickly assess for coherence and relevance. One important thing to understand about AI, it's trained to be lazy. It costs more computational power for an AI agent to watch a video than to read a script. And because AI favors cheap, it is more likely to read the entire script before watching the video.
So if you publish a video, pair it with text that stands on its own. Let the video reinforce the point, not carry it.
A Practical LinkedIn Engagement Model You Can Use Today
If you want LinkedIn to work like it used to, I think you’re going to feel frustrated for a very long time. Once LinkedIn lets this genie out of the box, I doubt users will ever want it put back.
The solution is to treat LinkedIn like a virtual networking event that never ends. To do that, here’s the operating model I’d use:
- Pick a brand for 90 days. Not forever. Long enough for humans and machines to recognize a pattern.
- Rewrite your About Section to match that brand. Make your credibility obvious. Outcomes over adjectives. Details over fluff.
- Upgrade your experience entries. Titles aren’t proof. Deliverables, results, and specificity are proof.
- Spend more time commenting than posting. Add value where the right people already gather.
- Open strong. Your first lines should say what the post’s about and why it matters. Don’t bury the lead.
- Write at the level of the prospects you want. Skip the jargon. Write with clarity and depth, even if it takes more time and effort.
- Stop chasing reach. Chase relevance instead. Fewer impressions in front of the right people beats a viral moment that attracts the wrong ones every single day. Like I always say, awesome gets shared, but helpful gets bought.
If your impressions go down while your inbound conversations grow in volume and quality, you’re winning.
LinkedIn is less interested in making you famous. It’s more interested in introducing you to the right people and them to you.
Act like you got the memo.
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This post was originally published on Painless Prospecting, the weekly sales and marketing blog created by the fine folks at Converse Digital. If you want to learn how to create, engage in, and convert conversations into new clients and customers, give them a call.
