LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 750 million members worldwide. For businesses and professionals, LinkedIn can be a powerful platform for establishing connections, building brand awareness, and driving leads and sales. One important metric on LinkedIn is reach, which refers to the number of unique LinkedIn members who saw your content in their feed or via other discovery surfaces on LinkedIn. Understanding how LinkedIn calculates reach is important for measuring content performance and optimizing your LinkedIn marketing strategy.
What is reach on LinkedIn?
Reach refers to the number of unique LinkedIn members who saw your content. This includes members who saw your posts in their feed, via search, or on other surfaces across the LinkedIn platform. Reach only counts unique views, so if a member sees your post multiple times, they will only be counted once towards your overall reach.
Some key things to know about LinkedIn reach:
- Reach counts unique viewers, not total views
- It includes feed views, search views, and other discoveries
- It only includes people who are logged into LinkedIn
- It does NOT include clicks or post engagements
So in summary, reach reflects the size of the audience that saw your content on LinkedIn. A higher reach indicates your content was shown to more members and had wider exposure.
How is reach calculated on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn uses proprietary algorithms to determine reach and visibility of posts. While they do not share details publicly, here are some key factors that are understood to impact reach:
Network size & composition
Accounts with more LinkedIn connections tend to have higher reach potential. In addition, having connections with more varied backgrounds and industries can increase reach to different audiences.
Member engagement
Content from accounts that members regularly engage with is more likely to be shown in feeds. Active engagement in the form of likes, comments, and shares can all help boost future reach.
Post relevancy
Posts that are timely, relevant, and aligned to a member’s interests are more likely to be picked up by LinkedIn’s algorithms and shown to wider audiences. Staying on topic for your industry or role types helps.
Post timing & frequency
Posting consistently at optimal times when your audience is most active on LinkedIn can increase the chances of your content being seen. Too much or too little activity can diminish reach over time.
Post formats
Using native post formats like images, videos, and documents may help increase reach versus simple text-based posts. However, text length and quality still impacts performance.
Keywords
Using relevant keywords in your posts and properly optimizing images with alt text ensures your content is discoverable in searches. This expands reach beyond just your immediate connections.
Targeting options
Using options like Relationship Targeting allows you to target posts to specific audiences beyond just your own connections, which can significantly boost reach.
Paid promotion
Using LinkedIn’s advertising products like Sponsored Content and Sponsored InMail lets you proactively push your posts to wider groups. This guarantees more reach, but at an added paid cost.
Company Page followers
Having more followers for your LinkedIn Company Page means posts will be automatically shown to a larger member base. Company Pages have access to more reach and targeting options.
How to check your LinkedIn post reach
To view the reach data for your LinkedIn posts, follow these steps:
- Go to your LinkedIn homepage and click “My Network” at the top.
- In the left sidebar menu, click “See all”.
- Click “Posts”.
- Scroll to find the post you want to analyze.
- Click on the post to open it.
- Scroll down to the post analytics and locate “Total reached”.
This “Total reached” figure shows you the unique number of members who saw that specific post. You can compare performance for different post types and formats.
Additional Tips
- Check reach shortly after posting for the most accurate estimate.
- Reach may continue to accumulate over time after posting.
- Click “See all activity” to view feed visibility and reach over time.
Analyzing this reach data over time can give you valuable insights into what content resonates most with your LinkedIn audiences.
Factors that impact your LinkedIn post reach
There are a number of factors that can influence the reach of your LinkedIn posts. Being aware of these factors can help you develop an effective strategy to maximize your reach on LinkedIn.
Your network size
The number of 1st-degree connections you have directly impacts how many people will see your posts in their feed. More 1st-degree connections means greater reach potential.
Engagement from your 1st-degree network
LinkedIn’s algorithm favors posts from accounts that your 1st-degree connections regularly engage with through liking, commenting, and sharing. Prompting engagement on your posts helps boost visibility.
2nd and 3rd-degree network connections
While 1st-degree connections will see your posts most reliably in their feeds, posts can also become visible to your 2nd and 3rd-degree networks, expanding your potential reach.
Content relevance to your network
Posts with content directly relevant to your audience’s interests and industries are more likely to be ranked favorably by LinkedIn’s algorithms. Tailor your content.
Keywords in your copy
Including relevant keywords in your posts, especially in the first 100 characters, can help surface your posts in LinkedIn search results. This expands reach beyond just feed views.
Images & other rich media
Posts with eye-catching images, videos, presentations, and other multimedia tend to achieve greater engagement and reach. But ensure quality over quantity.
Post length
Longer posts with more text tend to perform worse in reaching LinkedIn audiences. Try to keep posts under 250 words when possible.
Calls-to-action in posts
Clear calls-to-action can boost post engagement, which signals to LinkedIn’s algorithm that a post is resonating and should be shown more broadly.
Post timing
Pay attention to when your target audiences are most active on LinkedIn and aim to post during those windows for maximum visibility. Track performance by day and time.
Best practices for increasing your reach on LinkedIn
Here are some top best practices to follow for increasing your reach potential on LinkedIn:
Grow your network strategically
Focus on making quality connections with audiences relevant to your content and industry. Avoid spam connections.
Engage regularly with your network
Like, comment on, and share content posted by your connections. This helps boost the visibility of your own posts over time.
Post consistently
Establish a consistent content cadence, like 2-3 times per week, so your audience expects and sees your content.
Experiment with different post formats
Try different types of posts like long-form text, videos, images, polls, and more to see what your audience responds to best.
Use relevant hashtags and keywords
Include keywords and hashtags tailored to your content topic so your posts can be discovered outside your immediate network.
Analyze performance data
Check your post analytics regularly to see which posts generate the most reach and engagement. Double down on what works.
Leverage targeting options for Company Pages
Use Company Page admin targeting options like Relationship Targeting to reach beyond just your followers.
Promote high-value posts
Boost the best performing organic posts periodically with LinkedIn’s advertising products to expand reach.
Follow Company Pages & influencers
Staying on top of content from influencers and brands can provide inspiration for high-quality posts that resonate.
Common mistakes that hurt reach on LinkedIn
It’s also important to avoid some common mistakes that could limit your reach on LinkedIn:
Irrelevant or low-value content
Posting content that does not interest your target audience will lead to poor reach and engagement over time.
Overposting
Posting too frequently can cause your followers to disengage, reducing your future reach.
Automated or duplicated content
Low-effort automated posts are easy for LinkedIn’s algorithms to identify and demote in visibility.
Spamming connections
Making spam connection requests reduces the likelihood of quality profiles engaging with your posts.
Using stock images
Stock photos are generic and less likely to capture attention vs. custom graphics and images.
Long text-heavy posts
Big blocks of text tend to underperform compared to posts broken up with images, videos, or graphics.
Poorly optimized images
Using images without proper sizes or alt text metadata prevents them from being found in search.
Using too many hashtags
Hashtag overload looks spammy and can turn off audiences. Stick to 1-2 max in most cases.
Posting without a call-to-action
Posts should inspire audiences to engage in some way to maximize reach and visibility.
Tips for measuring & tracking your LinkedIn reach
To effectively optimize your content strategy on LinkedIn, it’s important to closely monitor the reach data for your posts. Here are some tips:
Check post reach regularly
Make it a habit to check the reach metrics on your posts at least 2-3 days after posting to give them time to accumulate visibility.
Compare reach between post types
Track how text vs. video vs. image posts perform in reach to identify what resonates most with your audience.
Look at trends over time
Analyze reach data over weeks and months to spot positive and negative trends as you refine your content approach.
Set benchmarks
Establish goals for minimum reach thresholds per post based on your audience size and industry norms.
Check audience demographics
Review reach by job role, industry, location, and other traits to better understand who your content reaches.
Consider organic + paid reach
Combine the reach from your organic posts with any paid promotion to calculate total reach.
Use LinkedIn’s analytics tools
Leverage free analytics tools like LinkedIn’s Content Hub and LinkedIn Page Insights for more high-level data.
Analyze competitors too
Check the reach of competitors’ posts to compare against your own performance and goals.
A/B test content variations
Try different post content, formats, and topics and track reach on each version to identify what optimizes visibility.
Conclusion
In summary, reach is a key metric reflecting the visibility of your content to LinkedIn members. While LinkedIn uses complex algorithms to determine reach, focusing on quality content, audience targeting, engagement, and analytics will help you maximize the impact of your LinkedIn strategy. Analyzing your reach data over time provides valuable insights to keep refining your approach. With consistent optimization, you can continually expand the visibility and influence of your LinkedIn presence.
Post Type | Reach |
---|---|
Text Update | 250 |
Image Post | 500 |
Video Post | 750 |
LinkedIn Article | 1000 |
This example table displays comparative reach data for different LinkedIn post types, showing how multimedia posts tend to outperform text-only posts in driving visibility to LinkedIn audiences.
Time of Post | Reach |
---|---|
Monday 7:00 am | 100 |
Tuesday 12:00 pm | 250 |
Wednesday 5:00 pm | 500 |
Friday 10:00 am | 300 |
This sample table displays hypothetical reach data by time of posting, indicating how posting during peak engagement hours mid-week may drive higher LinkedIn reach.