LinkedIn’s feed shows you relevant content based on a variety of factors, including your connections, interests, job title, and interactions on the platform. The aim is to show you content that sparks meaningful conversations and opportunities.
Overview of the LinkedIn Feed
The LinkedIn feed has evolved over the years and now consists of several different sections:
- My Network – Recent posts and activity from your connections
- Recommended for you – Posts LinkedIn thinks you may find interesting
- Hashtags you follow – Recent posts containing hashtags you follow
- LinkedIn news – Curated news selected by LinkedIn
- Jobs recommended for you – Job recommendations from LinkedIn
- Companies you follow – Updates from companies you follow
- LinkedIn Learning – Course recommendations
- Ads – Sponsored content
While you see various types of content in your feed, the majority tends to be posts from your connections and recommendations from LinkedIn. Next, let’s look at how LinkedIn picks the content to populate these key sections.
Factors That Influence What You See in Your Feed
LinkedIn considers several factors when selecting content for your personalized feed:
Your Connections
Content posted by people in your network is heavily weighted and likely to show up in your feed. This includes posts, comments, likes, profile changes, recommendations, and network updates. Seeing familiar faces helps keep you engaged on the platform.
Your Interests
LinkedIn pays attention to the types of content you view, like, comment on, and share. These interactions provide signals about your interests. More weight is given to recent activity. Content relevant to your inferred interests is more likely to appear in your feed.
Your Job Title and Industry
Having your job title and industry filled out in your profile allows LinkedIn to cater content. For example, someone working in marketing may see more industry-related posts from influencers and companies.
Relevance Score
LinkedIn calculates a relevance score for each potential post to show you. This score considers how relevant the content is likely to be for you based on the above factors. Posts with higher relevance scores are shown more prominently.
Engagement
How other members are interacting with a post also impacts its placement. Content receiving lots of comments, likes, and reshares may appear more frequently. Engagement helps surface popular discussions.
Recency
LinkedIn favors more recent posts in your feed. Staying current keeps the content lively. You are most likely to see interactions from the past week.
Publisher
Who posted the content also matters. For example, posts from close connections tend to be weighted more than distant connections or publishers you don’t follow. Paid partnerships and sponsored content are clearly labeled as ads.
Location
Your location and language settings can lead to seeing more regionally relevant information. However, content from connections remains the priority.
How the LinkedIn Feed Algorithm Works
LinkedIn uses sophisticated machine learning algorithms to personalize your feed. The general process looks like:
- Gather all recently published content from your network, publishers you follow, sponsored posts, etc.
- Analyze each post to extract signals like keywords, topics, mentions, links, etc.
- Apply relevance models to estimate a relevance score for you.
- Rank and select the top scoring posts for your feed.
- As you interact with your feed, those signals are incorporated back into the models.
The relevance models are trained on member activity patterns across the platform. The system gets smarter over time based on what sorts of posts you and others engage with.
Of course, not all activity is public. LinkedIn states they do not use your private data to personalize your feed. Private activity like profile views, inbox messages, and browsing history remain private.
Ways You Can Influence What You See
While your feed is largely curated for you, there are some ways to influence what gets shown:
Connections
Growing your network exposes you to more potential content. Engage with your top connections and their posts. This signals to LinkedIn to prioritize their activity.
Interests
Tailor your interests under profile settings. Join relevant groups and actively participate in discussions. Follow influencers, publishers, hashtags, and companies you care about.
Interactions
Commenting, liking, sharing, and viewing different types of posts trains the algorithm over time. Use bookmarks to flag posts to revisit later.
Feed Preferences
Filter your feed under feed settings to see more of certain post types and less of others. For example, you can see more posts from your connections and less from companies.
Sponsored Content
Limit ad exposure by adjusting your advertising preferences under account settings. Note that completely removing ads may degrade the experience.
Tips to Improve Your Feed Relevance
Here are some tips to get more value out of your LinkedIn feed:
- Complete your profile – Helps determine relevant content, especially adding current job title and industry.
- Follow companies and influencers relevant to your field. Check who your connections follow for ideas.
- Join industry-related LinkedIn groups and actively participate. Helps LinkedIn understand your interests.
- Engage thoughtfully with posts from connections by liking, commenting, and sharing.
- Provide feedback to LinkedIn on mismatched content using the “I don’t want to see this” option.
- Visit the feeds, pages, and groups you want to see more content from.
- Filter your feed to adjust the amount of content from connections, companies, groups, etc.
- Be selective in who you connect with. Quality over quantity.
- Watch for signs of feed irrelevance and redirect by engaging with different content.
- Periodically revisit profile and feed settings to control your experience.
The Pros and Cons of a Personalized Feed
Filtering content based on your preferences and behavior has advantages and disadvantages:
Potential Pros
- Seeing more relevant content keeps you engaged on the platform.
- Personalization helps cut through the noise.
- Allows discovering new people, companies, groups, and influencers matched to your interests.
- Machine learning frees up time to focus on meaningful content.
- Curated news provides exposure beyond your immediate connections.
Potential Cons
- Filter bubbles limit exposure to alternative viewpoints.
- Markets personal data for targeted advertising.
- Algorithms can reinforce bias if not properly monitored.
- Visibility depends on engagement metrics, disadvantaging less viral posts.
- Gaming relevance models with engagement bait distracts from quality.
Conclusion
LinkedIn’s feed curation aims to strike a balance between relevance and diversity. While not perfect, the platform does surface helpful content you may otherwise miss. Monitoring what you see and providing ongoing feedback helps improve recommendations over time. Ultimately, thoughtfully cultivating your network and interests goes a long way in shaping the value you get from LinkedIn.
