Linkedin was kicking my behind. I mean I went from 10,000+ impressions per post to less than 2,000 impressions 🥶.
I went into a slump, wondering what I was doing wrong. And “Why me?” was a question that crossed my mind at least once a day.
It wasn’t that my clients’ posts weren’t performing. If anything, 7 out of the 10 Linkedin personal accounts my team & I consult on were named Linkedin Top Voice. Of the other 3, 2 have been invited to contribute and work is in progress. But me? I don’t even have an invitation to contribute! And believe me, I have tried to be patient.
Then, I realized it wasn’t just me. There are so many who are complaining about the drop in impressions. So, what is happening?
Clearly the algorithm had changed. That is evident. But there is more.
In October ‘23 Linkedin fired 668 of its employees*, of which 563** were from R&D. And as you might have known, it’s the people who make the organization. So when these people left, they took a part of the company with them.
Recently, there seems to have been some recruitments, and enthusiastic ones, I would venture to say. I mean, you have seen that LinkedIn introduced games, haven’t you?
And these new people, they are what the new Linkedin is becoming. So, love it or hate it, this is what you have from Linkedin.
Now, some people may jump ship when such a big change happens. Afterall, change is not easy. But the issue is, where would the said people jump and go to. It’s not like there is another equally good professional networking platform they could hop on to.
So what’s ahead? In my opinion, here is what the various possible scenarios look like:
a) As B2B Marketers, we try out newer platforms and see if anything works. Some options that one could explore would be Quora, Reddit, and maybe, just maybe, Instagram can be given a chance though personally I am not optimistic about it.
b) Accept that LinkedIn is changing and adapt quickly. Agility will be key here. E.g. when I was invited by the new Linkedin team to attend a workshop, some of the feedback I got was in line with what I had been doing and yet, different. Here is a snapshot of what they said:
Basically, it asks me to make my post more detailed, provide more insights. And reduce line breaks. I was not originally comfortable with this part of the feedback. My logic: People read on the phone and when you make long and lumpy content, it is not user-friendly.
But if that is the advice being doled out, we better test it out before we decide to follow/ ignore it. And so, that is what I am doing.
c) Own your platform. If you watch Shark Tank, you probably have heard this advice before, albeit for D2C businesses. I think it is equally applicable for B2B businesses: Instead of depending on third-party platforms, it is prudent to build a platform you own and control. I recall one episode where the owner spoke about how they had a thriving page on Facebook from where they were getting massive business orders until one fine day Facebook decided to take down their page and no matter what they did, it was not coming up.
In a way, this is what happened to many businesses. LinkedIn pulled the rug from under us. And we had nowhere to turn to.
That raises the question, which of these is the best way forward? If you ask me, I will always talk about a balanced approach. I don’t think it should be either/or. I am strongly of the opinion that it needs to be all of it.
Need to explore this further? Book a 30 minute FREE consultation with me on https://calendly.com/benitadua/interaction-with-benita