Last week, I watched my impressions and followers on LinkedIn significantly increase leading me to suspect my personal and opinion posts were doing better than the posts promoting Network Momentum and the rest of the Momentum suite. To confirm my suspicion, I pulled the data.
The Question
I ran analysis from the pulled data so I could determine whether posts with a personal or opinion angle outperformed posts with a direct product link, or was I only noticing the wins and forgetting the losses?
Method
I reviewed posts for the last three months (36 posts) from my activity feed, sorted each post into one of two categories: personal/opinion content, and direct call to action pointing to a product (Network Momentum, Mission Momentum, and so on).
A caveat: this is a sample of one account over one stretch of time. It’s not a controlled study, and 36 posts is not a significant sample to generalize to how LinkedIn’s algorithm behaves for every account. In other words, this as a personal case study, not a white paper.
The Finding
It turned out that my hunch was correct: personal and opinion posts averaged about 3.5 times more impressions than posts with a direct product link.
What surprised me: the engagement rate per impression — likes, comments, and shares — relative to how many people saw the post, was nearly comparable between the two categories.
Putting those two numbers together, a pattern emerged. The content with a product link wasn’t performing worse because it wasn’t capturing users’ attention, it wasn’t performing well because not many people were seeing the content.
What it Means
I can’t confirm the specifics how LinkedIn’s ranking system works internally. But what I noticed was that the result is consistent with a widely discussed pattern: posts with external links tend to get less organic reach than posts that keep people on the platform. I can’t confirm this is algorithm behavior but noting that my data lines up with what a others posting on LinkedIn have observed.
Next Steps
When it comes how I post about the Momentum suite, instead of including in every post a link out to the app, I’ll lead with the idea, the problem it solves, or a lesson from building it, and place the link in a comment or a follow-up post instead of the body. The goal is to let the post earn reach on its own merits before asking anyone to leave the platform.
Caveats
A few reminders: this is one account, 36 posts, and no control group. However, I can’t rule out other explanations. Were my personal posts more genuine and better written? Did I post at an optimal time? Or did I cover more interesting topics? I can point to the pattern, but I can’t prove what’s pushing it. At this point, this is a working hypothesis not a firm conclusion. For a better idea, my plan to re-check periodically rather than treat it as forgone conclusion.