Organic reach on LinkedIn is 1/3 what it used to be in Q1

Stop blaming “summer” and use these 7 hotfixes instead

Dear GTM Strategist,

You know that LinkedIn is one of the most important channels if you target B2B, right? You might not know that LinkedIn has recently changed the default placements in the newsfeeds, which now contain: 

• Sponsored Content & Ads: almost 50%

• Preferred Content Creators: almost 24%

• Other Content Creators: 18%

• AI Generated Content by LinkedIn: 6%

• Organic Company Page Content: around 1,5% (almost invisible) 

Richard van der Blom reported these stats by analyzing his content creator network. 

𝗣𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗶𝗹𝗲𝘀:

• Impressions: down to 30 - 40%

• Follower growth: down to 35 - 45%

• Engagement: down to 70 - 80%

• Impact of Top Voice (collaborative articles) on reach: none

𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘀:

• Carousel (aka PDF aka Document): down to 40 - 50% (!)

• Text + Image Post: down to 30 - 40%

• Native Video: down to 75 - 85%

• Polls: down to 40 - 50%

Does that mean the end of the golden era of LinkedIn inbound for B2B is over?

Nope. 

Here’s the evidence of why I think so. 

1) The analysis of my own LinkedIn data (ca. 50-100K weekly impressions). 

I analyzed my LinkedIn reach, and while it is true that it was harder to create viral posts in Q2 than in Q1 2024 and Q4 2023, I also have to admit that I have been swamped with client work and could only spend up to 10 hours a week on creating content.

This is not nearly enough - an average content creator of my size invests at least 20 hours a week creating content, best in best-in-class people, such as product legend Aakash Gupta (211K), is closing in on 40+. The bar is very high. But, when you are in it to win it, you can still break through. Thank you for your incredible support of my GTM Power Hour template. We crashed it! ✌️

Well, you might be thinking: “Maja, we get it. It makes sense for you to do it because you are generating demand for a Go-To-Market Strategist” (that you should totally get if you have not done it already 🤠). Over 6,500 people have read the book so far, and we have only had 6 refunds, so it must be great.

I get it - because, guess what, I am a busy founder too, and I have to make time for client work, working with my team members, developing my products, and everything else that comes in the pack. 

But sincerely, if I built a B2B SaaS or enterprise product, I’d be even more present on LinkedIn because, in crowded markets, people still buy from people. LinkedIn can be one of your business's best demand generation engines if you “get it, " connect with the right people, and create a critical mass there. Here is why: 

2) Multiple founders who adopted building in public reported stellar results. 

I recently interviewed a rising LinkedIn star Adam Robinson, CEO and founder of Retention.com and RB2B - BTW, he has one of the best positionings for products that I have ever seen on LinkedIn. You can grasp what is “in it for you” in 3 seconds. Extremely well done. 

Adam does epic build-in-public videos on LinkedIn that generate tens of millions of relevant impressions. He invests +$50K a month in his LinkedIn demand generation engine:

Here is a copy of his presentation.

This investment created unseen traction for their person-level website identification tool RB2B that “money cannot buy”. For the launch, I have seen teams spend way more than that for events, PR, and media buying to get maybe 1/10 of the traction that RB2B got.

Adam reported: “In 13 weeks, we grew RB2B from $0-$806k ARR with 4 people and zero funding. But we have a *broken* PLG model with a 1.3% conversion rate.” He plans a switch to a Sales-Assisted PLG model.

I’ll publish my interview with Adam Robinson on the GTM Strategist Podcast next week, so subscribe to avoid missing it!

3) Ivana Todorović (founder of AuthoredUp, a content creation tool for LinkedIn) and her team analyzed millions of LinkedIn posts and built data models to analyze current trends. 

Every year, an independent LinkedIn algorithm report study shapes how we think and do LinkedIn. 

Here’s Richard van der Blom’s latest report

This year, I was happy to learn that a person from my region is crunching this data with machine learning. So I met Ivana in Belgrade, and we had one of the best conversations about LinkedIn that I have ever had. 

As a founder, Ivana strongly encourages knowledge sharing. Instead of impressions, we should be chasing relevant attention and actions taken from our ICP. I also wanted to bring the insights from our conversation to you, so we recorded a podcast episode to recap the main lessons learned about why you should pay attention to LinkedIn in 2024 and how to get above-average results on the platform. 

It’s a value-packed interview. I especially recommend listening to the second half, in which Ivana shares numbers and many tactical recommendations.

Listen here:

 You can also find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or other podcast platforms. 

7 LinkedIn Hotfixes: My commitment to up my LinkedIn game this summer 

From interviewing Ivana and Adam, it became clear that I could also step up my LinkedIn game. Here are my 7 hotfixes based on research:

1. Value commenting: LinkedIn wants you to “act normal” on the platform, not to post and disappear. Your post will gate a base level of impressions, the rest is strongly associated with your ability to spark conversations in comments. Value commenting to other content crreators posts is also a great strategy to grow your audience. How about 5-10 value comments to selected content creators before you post? I have tested this tactic by commenting on the creators of The VC Corner Ruben Dominges Ibar’s post (112K followers) and the immediately got engagement and sales (thanks bro 🙏)

2. Post from personal profiles instead of (only) company pages: this one is more for my clients than for myself. Based on my data, the reach of personal profiles is 10-30x bigger than company pages. If you still rely on sharing your blog posts and company team-building pics on LinkedIn, it is about time to consider something else.

   

3. Experiment with more formats: if a certain % of newsfeed impressions is reserved to a certain format, I must diversify my content formats even further. ATM I do image+text, carousel and video. I should start adding text only and use other LinkedIn features such as polls more othen. Ivana says that polls once a week could be great for engaging with the audience on weekends. I will give it a shot. 

   

4. Get better at writing hooks: Adam said that he spends most of his content planning meetings thinking about hooks for the week. 🪝Hooks are the magic first two lines of posts that will determine if the reader will click “see more” or continue scrolling in the feed. Posts should be optimized for mobile where the majority of LinkedIn content is consumed and should be easily readable (enough white space). Ivana shared her list of hooks tested to work. I will also try AuthoredUp to get better at this. 

5. Do content creator collabs: “Stronger together” is so true. In May, I was lucky to work with Aakash Gupta (110K Substack) on this epic post, and I am so happy with the results. Sure, we spent more than 30 hours on this article (both of us), it was quite an intense collaboration, but it was so good. When you work with content creators with an audience that is close to yours, you can both benefit. I am a shrimp in comparison with Aakash, but I was happy to engage strongly and provide additional models for the content collab. Incredibly grateful for this chance 🙏 

   

6. Use LinkedIn groups: if you find high-quality LinkedIn groups (10K+ members) that are active and relevant to your ICP, you could generate a lot of extra impressions if you post valuable content there. 

7. Talk about AI 😅: it seems that lately, LinkedIn is favoriting specific content topics around AI. Also, engagement (your comments) on AI-generated content gets more visibility than the average comment you leave on content from your network. 🤖

To test my newly acquired knowledge, I collaborated with growth expert Jim Huffman, CEO of GrowthHit agency, and I love using it for our campaigns … 

It did not immediately go viral just because I mentioned AI, but hey - learning by doing.

Fighting AI-generated content seems like

While, to my best knowledge, AI agents cannot yet transact with each other without human-set rules, business transactions are still done human to human. Optimize for high-quality human relationships, do well in business and use tools to your advantage to increase operational efficiency. 

And you will have plenty of business opportunities during and beyond your go-to-market journey. 

See what best in class content creators are posting - I analyzed 199+ posts and their profiles.

If you are just getting started, here are 5 LinkedIn post templates you can start with.

No excuses. 

Let’s go to market.

And win! ✌️

Maja 

TEASER: We have an exciting launch coming up next week, and as a subscriber to this Substack, you will get a special promo code for early access as a token of appreciation for following my content. Ensure that we are connected on LinkedIn and that you are subscribed to this Substack. 

If you enjoyed this one, I’d appreciate it if you recommend it to someone who could benefit from it to spread the word or restack it. 

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