Everyone's complaining about the LinkedIn algorithm and their engagement going down but the truth isn't what you think it is. 

LinkedIn isn't on a mission to demolish your engagement and they're not making changes to the algorithm with this outcome in mind. That would go entirely against their best interests, which is for engagement to go up for all creators. 

What's actually taking place is a transition from LinkedIn being a "content deficient platform" to becoming a "content saturated platform". 

Content Deficiency is how most  successful social media platforms begin, it means they have less content being created than they have viewership available. In other words, as a social media platform begins to grow successfully, they tend to acquire more viewers than creators. This is why it's always best to gain traction as a creator when the platform is early and there's less competition.

During the content deficient era of a social media platform, it's generally easier to acquire a large amount of engagement and followers because there are fewer content creators that you're competing against and in many cases you can be the first (or one of the first) creating content in your specific niche. 

That said, it's not all sunshine and rainbows because in the early days there's no proven playbook, you have no clue what will work and won't work, and people will laugh at you as you try to figure it out. But if you stick with it, you can grow very quickly. 

These glory days can't last forever though, because eventually what you're doing becomes a mainstream approach and more creators join the party, which takes us into the Content Saturation era. which is when you begin having more content available than viewership on the platform. In other words, the economics of supply and demand get flipped upside down. 

When this happens, even if the algorithm isn't changed at all, everyone's views will go down because there's too much content. This will call for changes in the algorithm to rethink how content is distributed, and will cause many weeks, months, or years of the platform feeling "different" than it was in the past because they have to figure out how to continue prioritizing the best and most relevant content, in a world where there is now simply too much content.

This is not an easy battle to go up against and we'll see many iterations over time. The best thing you can do as a creator today is the same thing I did from day one, which is listen to the data, see what works and what doesn't, and stick with what does work. 

One major change that creators should be seriously considering today, is that we're no longer in a world where "more is better". The days of posting once or twice a day on LinkedIn should likely be behind you (with few exceptions). You're better off posting fewer times and focusing on quality. 

On a content saturated platform people don't want to see too much of the same person, so posting twice a day or even once a day can be too much and may be a contributing reason to your engagement going down. 

For example, posting 4 times a week is still very frequent, and may reap better average engagement per post than posting 7 or 14 times per week. Today I believe less is more on LinkedIn. Focus on quality over quantity and it not only works better for you, but it makes the platform a better place since it reduces the saturation problem, which is in part a result of people posting too frequently. 

In summary, the algorithm may change and evolve but it's not the real reason your overall engagement is down in comparison to a few years ago. This is just a game of supply and demand. It's the evolution of a social media platform transitioning from content deficiency to content saturation. It's competition and supply growing at a rate that's faster than the total viewership is growing.

You'll see this pattern on every successful social media platform. It's always been this way.

Happy Selling,