Your LinkedIn impressions tanked. You didn't change anything. Same posting schedule, same type of content, same effort. But the numbers fell off a cliff.

You probably checked your internet connection. Cleared your cache. Wondered if you'd been shadow-banned. Googled "is LinkedIn broken" at 2 AM. (No judgment. We've all done some version of this.)

You're not imagining it. Views across LinkedIn are down roughly 50%. Engagement is down about 25%. Follower growth has dropped 59% on average. These aren't small fluctuations. This is a structural shift in how the platform distributes content.

This is happening to almost everyone. The question isn't why it's happening (we know). The question is what to do about it.

We analyzed 10,222 posts from 494 creators and found clear patterns in what's still working. Here's the full picture.

Why Reach Dropped: The Three Big Shifts

Your reach didn't drop because you did something wrong. It dropped because LinkedIn changed the rules. Three things happened simultaneously, and the combined effect hit creators like a freight train.

1. More Creators, Same Attention

LinkedIn hit 1 billion members. The number of people posting regularly has surged, especially since 2023 when "building in public" and personal branding went mainstream. Every career coach, startup founder and marketing consultant got the memo that LinkedIn was where the B2B audience lives. They all started posting.

More posts competing for the same number of eyeballs means each individual post gets less distribution. It's basic supply and demand. The supply of content went up. The attention budget didn't.

Think of it this way: if LinkedIn shows each user roughly 200 posts per day in their feed, and the number of posts being published doubled, then each individual post has half the chance of appearing in someone's feed. The math is that simple and that brutal.

This affects everyone, but it hits mid-tier creators hardest. If you have 10,000 followers and you're competing with three times as many posts for feed space, your impressions drop even if your content quality stayed the same. Big creators with 100K+ followers still get preferential distribution (the algorithm has always favored established accounts). Small creators with under 2K followers never had much distribution to lose. It's the middle that got squeezed.

Pro tip: Competition increasing doesn't mean your content got worse. It means the bar got higher. A post that would have been "above average" in 2023 might be "average" in 2026 because the overall quality of content on the platform improved. The good news: most of your new competitors will quit within 3-6 months. The people who stick around and adapt are the ones who pull ahead.

2. LinkedIn Shifted from Breadth to Depth

This is the bigger story, and the one most people miss.

The old algorithm rewarded engagement breadth: lots of reactions, lots of quick interactions. Get 500 people to tap "like" and you'd reach thousands more. The algorithm saw volume and assumed quality.

The new algorithm rewards engagement depth: dwell time, meaningful comments, saves, shares. LinkedIn explicitly said they want to promote "knowledge and advice" over generic motivational content. They published a blog post about it. They talked about it at conferences. They made it very clear that the algorithm was being retooled to favor expertise over entertainment.

This is why posts that used to get 10,000 impressions now get 5,000. The algorithm isn't broken. It's measuring different things. If your content generates shallow engagement (lots of likes, few comments), it gets less distribution than before. The algorithm used to count likes as a strong positive signal. Now it counts them as a weak signal. Comments, dwell time and saves are the new currency.

Our data shows this clearly. Categories that generate deep engagement still perform well:

Software Engineering: 2.57% engagement rate
Social Media Marketing: 1.34% with 210 avg comments
Sales: 1.01%

Categories that generate broad but shallow engagement have been hit harder. Personal Development posts average 1,222 likes but only a 0.39% engagement rate. High reactions, low depth. That's exactly the pattern the algorithm now penalizes. Those inspirational posts that used to reach 50,000 people now reach 20,000. Same likes-per-impression ratio, but fewer impressions to begin with.

Pro tip: Check your comment-to-like ratio. If you're getting 100 likes and 3 comments, your ratio is 0.03. If you're getting 50 likes and 15 comments, your ratio is 0.30. The second post, despite having fewer total likes, is algorithmically stronger in the new system. A healthy comment-to-like ratio in 2026 is around 0.15-0.25. Below 0.10 means your content drives reactions but not conversation.

3. External Links Are Punished Harder Than Ever

LinkedIn has always suppressed posts with outbound links. But the penalty has gotten steeper. Posts with external URLs now see roughly 60% less reach than identical posts without links. That's not a gentle nudge. That's the algorithm putting your post in timeout.

The platform wants users to stay on LinkedIn. Every click to an external website is a user leaving the platform. LinkedIn's business model depends on time-on-platform, so the algorithm actively discourages content that sends people elsewhere. From LinkedIn's perspective, a post with an external link is literally helping their users leave. Why would they reward that?

If you've been including links in your posts and your reach dropped, this alone could explain most of the decline. If you went from averaging 10,000 impressions per post to 4,000, and the main change was LinkedIn's link penalty getting steeper, the math checks out. 10,000 minus 60% = 4,000.

Pro tip: Review your last 20 posts. How many contained external URLs in the post body? If it's more than half, you've identified a major contributor to your reach decline. Switch to link-in-comments or no-link strategies and you should see an improvement within 2-3 weeks.

The Engagement Bait Crackdown

On top of the three structural shifts, LinkedIn improved its engagement bait detection. This one is the cherry on top of the reach-drop sundae.

Posts that use obvious manipulation tactics now get flagged and suppressed:

"Like if you agree"
"Comment YES for the free guide"
"Repost to help your network"
Tag chains and reaction farming
The classic "I'm giving away [valuable thing] to everyone who comments"

These tactics worked in 2022-2023. They actively hurt you now. LinkedIn built (or bought) better spam detection systems that can identify engagement bait patterns, and they don't just reduce distribution: they can flag your entire account for reduced reach on future posts.

If a significant portion of your engagement strategy relied on these patterns, the algorithm changes would have hit you particularly hard. You got a double penalty: the general reach reduction that hit everyone plus the engagement bait detection penalty that hit you specifically.

Pro tip: Go through your last 30 posts and search for phrases like "comment if," "like if," "share this" and "tag someone." If you find more than a handful, those posts may have trained the algorithm to view your account as an engagement bait source. The fix isn't just stopping the behavior (though that's step one). You also need to post genuine, value-rich content consistently for 4-6 weeks to "re-train" the algorithm's perception of your account.

The Engagement Pod Fallout

While we're talking about crackdowns: engagement pods took a hit too. These are groups (usually on WhatsApp, Telegram or Slack) where 15-50 people agree to like and comment on each other's posts immediately after publishing.

In theory, this creates a burst of early engagement that tricks the algorithm into wider distribution. In practice, LinkedIn now detects the patterns: the same group of accounts engaging with each other's content within minutes, every day, with suspiciously generic comments.

Accounts that participate in pods have reported significant reach declines. Some have been soft-shadowbanned, meaning their content gets distributed to a much smaller test audience. If your engagement used to feel artificially high (lots of likes in the first 5 minutes, then nothing) and then suddenly dropped, pod detection might be the cause.

The fix: stop participating. Accept that your first-hour engagement will look smaller without the pod boost. That's actually your real engagement level. Build from there with genuine strategies.

The Data Reality Check

Before we get to fixes, a reality check from our dataset. Because nothing brings clarity quite like cold, hard numbers.

The median LinkedIn post gets 40 likes and 8 comments. That's the middle of the pack for 494 active creators.

The average is much higher (288 likes, 52 comments) but averages are skewed by outliers. A handful of posts with 5,000+ likes pull the average way up. Using the average as your benchmark is like using the average salary in a room that includes a billionaire. Technically accurate, practically misleading.

Top performers are still getting massive numbers. The top 1% of posts in our data hit 3,959+ likes. The most-liked post reached 11,576 likes. Some of our tracked creators still generate hundreds of comments per post. The platform isn't dead. The algorithms aren't broken beyond repair. It's just harder to reach big numbers with mediocre content.

Reach dropped for everyone, yes. But the gap between top performers and average performers got wider. The creators who adapted are pulling further ahead. The ones who kept doing what worked in 2023 are falling further behind.

Here are the five changes that the data says actually work.

Fix #1: Switch from Text to Image Posts

This is the single highest-impact change you can make. If you're only going to implement one thing from this article, make it this one.

In our dataset of 10,222 posts:

Image posts: 0.93% engagement rate, 468 avg likes, 85 avg comments
Text posts: 0.50% engagement rate, 191 avg likes, 33 avg comments

Images get an 87% higher engagement rate. They generate 2.45x more likes and 2.6x more comments.

Image posts also go viral at nearly double the rate. We tracked 142 viral image posts versus 79 viral text posts, despite text having 1.8x more total posts in the dataset. If we normalize for volume, images go viral at roughly 3.2x the rate of text.

Why images work so well:

They stop the scroll. A visual element catches the eye faster than a wall of text. Your thumb instinctively pauses when it sees something that isn't more gray paragraphs.
They increase dwell time. Someone looking at an infographic or carousel spends more time on your post. Dwell time is the algorithm's primary quality signal. More time = more value = wider distribution.
Carousels (counted as document/image posts) are especially powerful. Each slide swipe counts as additional engagement. A 10-slide carousel can generate 10x the dwell time of a text post. The algorithm eats this up.

If you're currently posting mostly text, switching even half your posts to images should noticeably improve your reach. This isn't speculation. It's the clearest signal in our entire dataset.

What counts as an image post: photos, infographics, screenshots, data visualizations, memes, carousels (PDF/document uploads). You don't need to be a designer. A clean screenshot with a framework or a simple data chart works. Canva templates are perfectly fine. Even a phone photo of a whiteboard sketch can work if the content is genuinely useful.

Pro tip: The fastest way to create image posts without design skills: take your best-performing text posts from the past 3 months, turn the key points into a simple carousel (5-8 slides, one point per slide), and repost as an image. You already know the content works because it performed well as text. Adding the visual format is pure upside. Some creators see 2-3x the engagement on the reformatted version compared to the original text post.

The Carousel Power Play

Within the image category, carousels deserve special attention. Industry data shows they generate 596% more engagement than text posts and 11.2x more impressions. Those numbers aren't a typo.

The psychology behind carousel engagement is interesting. Once someone swipes to slide 2, they've made a micro-commitment. They've invested effort. That investment makes them more likely to continue to slide 3, then 4, then all 10. It's the same psychology behind "just one more episode" on Netflix. Each swipe feels small. The cumulative engagement is enormous.

Best-performing carousel structures:

Numbered lists (7 mistakes, 5 steps, 10 tools)
Before/after comparisons (your outreach before, your outreach after)
Framework breakdowns (one component per slide)
Mini case studies (problem, approach, result, takeaway)

Fix #2: Hit the 500-1,200 Character Sweet Spot

Post length directly affects engagement rate. And unlike some of the other factors (like algorithm changes, which you can't control), this one is entirely in your hands.

Length	Engagement Rate
Under 500 chars	0.48%
500-1,200 chars	0.83%
1,200-2,000 chars	0.77%
2,000-3,000 chars	0.66%

The 500-1,200 character range delivers the highest engagement rate at 0.83%. That's 73% higher than short posts under 500 characters. Same creator, same topic, same day: the medium-length version outperforms the short version by 73% on engagement rate.

This length is roughly 80-200 words. Enough to make a real point with some supporting detail, but short enough that people actually read the whole thing. It's the LinkedIn equivalent of a well-constructed email: makes its point, provides enough context and doesn't overstay its welcome.

Very long posts (2,000-3,000 chars) have a lower engagement rate but generate the most comments (74 per post average). If you're writing for a niche audience that likes deep content, long posts can work. But for most creators trying to maximize reach, the medium range is optimal.

The fix: before you publish, check your character count. If you're under 500, add more substance. Give an example. Add a data point. Explain the "why" behind your "what." If you're over 1,200, see what you can cut. Find the zone.

Pro tip: A quick character count hack: on most platforms, Ctrl+A (or Cmd+A on Mac) then paste into Google's "character counter" search (just Google "character counter" and use the built-in tool). Alternatively, paste into a Twitter/X draft: if it's over 280 characters but fits in about 4-5 tweets, you're in the zone. Not scientific, but a reasonable gut check.

The "Under 500" Exception

There is one scenario where ultra-short posts work: when you already have a large, engaged audience and you're sharing something highly relatable or funny. The "Classic" post that got 2,965 likes and the "I can retire now" post at 2,415 likes were both under 500 characters. They worked because the brevity was the point. The humor didn't need context.

If you have under 10,000 followers, short posts are rarely your best bet. You need to demonstrate value to earn follows, and it's hard to demonstrate value in 400 characters. Save the one-liners for when you've built the audience that appreciates them.

Fix #3: Post on Tuesday Through Thursday

Day of the week makes a surprisingly large difference. Surprisingly, as in: you can get a 2x performance improvement by changing nothing about your content except the day you post it.

Day	Engagement Rate
Tuesday	0.92%
Monday	0.72%
Thursday	0.71%
Wednesday	0.64%
Sunday	0.55%
Friday	0.52%
Saturday	0.46%

Tuesday's engagement rate (0.92%) is double Saturday's (0.46%). That's a 2x difference from just changing your publishing day. Same content. Same format. Same creator. Double the engagement rate.

The reason: LinkedIn is a professional platform. People check it during work hours on weekdays. Tuesday through Thursday captures the peak of the professional work week: people are past Monday catch-up and haven't mentally checked out for the weekend yet.

Monday is solid (0.72%) but people are catching up on email and getting oriented for the week. They scroll LinkedIn but they're less likely to stop and write a thoughtful comment. By Tuesday, they've cleared their inbox and are in "learning and engaging" mode. By Friday, they're mentally packing for the weekend.

If you're posting on Saturday or Friday afternoon, you're working with half the potential engagement. Move those posts to Tuesday or Thursday morning and you'll likely see an immediate improvement.

Time of day matters too. Generally, early morning (7-8 AM in your audience's timezone) or lunchtime (11 AM-1 PM) performs best. You want to catch people during their first LinkedIn scroll of the day or the midday break when they're looking for a mental reset.

Pro tip: Create a posting schedule and stick to it for at least 4 weeks before evaluating. Tuesday/Thursday is a great starting point for creators who post twice a week. Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday for those who post three times. The algorithm learns your patterns. If you post at 8 AM every Tuesday, your regular readers start expecting it and engage faster, which boosts your first-hour performance. Consistency of schedule is almost as important as consistency of quality.

The Sunday Wildcard

Sunday is worth discussing separately. It has the highest raw engagement numbers (377 avg likes, 69 avg comments) despite a mediocre engagement rate (0.55%). This creates an interesting strategic question.

Fewer people post on Sunday, which means less competition in the feed. The people who are on LinkedIn on Sunday tend to be highly engaged (they're choosing to be there). But the total audience is smaller.

For some creators, Sunday works well as a "bonus" post day. Not your best content of the week (save that for Tuesday) but a personal story or lighter take that plays well with the Sunday crowd. Think of it as open-mic night: lower attendance, but the audience that showed up is really paying attention.

Fix #4: Remove External Links from Posts

This one is simple. Stop putting URLs in your post body. Full stop.

External links reduce reach by roughly 60%. If your post would normally get 10,000 impressions, adding a link drops it to about 4,000. You're paying a 6,000-impression tax for the privilege of sending people to your website. Unless that website traffic is extremely valuable (like, directly converting to high-ticket sales), the math doesn't work.

Instead:

Put links in the first comment. Not perfect, but significantly better than embedding them in the post. The algorithm penalizes links in the post body more aggressively than links in comments.
Use "link in comments" as your CTA. Tell people where to find it. They'll scroll to the comment. It's one extra click. Most people who actually want the link will find it.
Even better, stop linking altogether. Deliver the full value in the post itself. If you're sharing an article, summarize the key insights directly. If you're promoting something, describe it and tell people to DM you. If you're referencing research, quote the stat and cite the source by name.

LinkedIn rewards content that keeps people on the platform. Every outbound link works against you. This feels unfair because sometimes you genuinely want to share something useful that lives on another website. And you can. You just have to accept the reach penalty or use the workarounds.

Pro tip: For content marketers who are used to "drive traffic to the website" as their primary LinkedIn goal, this requires a mindset shift. Your LinkedIn post IS the content. It's not a teaser for the "real" content on your blog. The creators who are winning right now are the ones who give away their best thinking directly on LinkedIn and build their reputation there, rather than using the platform as a traffic funnel. The reputation you build on-platform eventually drives more traffic to your website than any link ever would, just through name recognition and DMs.

The Landing Page Workaround

If you absolutely need to drive traffic somewhere (for a product launch, event registration, etc.), here's a less-punished approach:

Write a genuinely valuable post about the topic (no link)
Get engagement flowing for 30-60 minutes
Edit the post to add the link (yes, you can edit LinkedIn posts)
Or: put the link in a pinned comment

This isn't a perfect solution. LinkedIn may still detect the link after editing. But the initial engagement window gives the algorithm time to evaluate the post based on its content quality, not its link.

The better approach: mention the destination by name without linking. "We published a full breakdown on the ViralBrain blog" gives people enough information to Google it. No link needed. No penalty.

Fix #5: Write for Comments, Not Reactions

Comments carry roughly 8x the algorithmic weight of likes. This is the most important ratio in LinkedIn's algorithm, and it's the one that most directly impacts your reach.

A post with 30 likes and 15 comments will outperform a post with 200 likes and 2 comments in algorithmic distribution. The second post looks more popular but the algorithm sees it as shallow engagement. In algorithmic math: the first post has 30 + (15 x 8) = 150 "engagement units." The second has 200 + (2 x 8) = 216. Okay, so the second post is still slightly ahead in this simplified example. But factor in dwell time (comment-heavy posts generate more of it) and the balance tips.

The real advantage of comments is compounding: each comment is a conversation opportunity. When you reply, that's another comment. When commenters reply to each other, those count too. A post with 15 genuine comments can easily generate 30-50 total comment interactions, which blows away any amount of passive likes.

How to generate more comments:

Ask genuine questions. Not "Agree?" tacked onto the end. Real questions that invite different perspectives. "What's worked for you?" or "Am I wrong about this?" when you've taken a position. The question has to be something people can answer from their own experience without doing research.

Share an opinion people can debate. Controversial (but professional) takes generate the most discussion. The ex-LinkedIn employee post about algorithm changes in our dataset got 688 comments because it gave people something specific to agree or disagree with. You don't need insider information. You just need a genuine opinion that some people will agree with and some won't.

Leave gaps in your argument. If your post covers everything perfectly, there's nothing to add. Leave room for people to contribute their experience. "I've seen X, but I'm curious if others have had different results" invites commentary. The completist instinct (covering every angle, addressing every counterargument) actually works against you on LinkedIn. Leave the door open for your audience to walk through.

Reply to every comment in the first hour. Each reply from you counts as additional engagement. It also signals to the algorithm that there's an active conversation happening, which triggers more distribution. And from a human perspective: when someone takes 30 seconds to comment on your post, responding within an hour builds loyalty. Those people will comment again next time.

Pro tip: Keep a list of 5-10 "comment prompt" templates that you rotate. Things like "What's your experience with [topic]?" or "I'm curious: has this changed in your industry?" or "The counterpoint I keep hearing is [X], what do you think?" Having these ready means you never publish a post that accidentally dead-ends the conversation. Every post should have at least one clear invitation for the reader to contribute.

The shift from likes to comments is the single biggest algorithmic change of the past two years. Everything about your posting strategy should orient around generating genuine discussion.

The Reply Strategy That 10x's Your Comments

Here's a technique that top creators use: don't just reply with "thanks" or "great point." Ask a follow-up question in your reply. If someone comments "I've seen similar results with my email campaigns," reply with "Interesting. What kind of open rates are you seeing? I've been testing a new subject line approach that's been working well."

Now the commenter has a reason to reply again. And their notification about your reply might bring them back to the post, where they might engage with other comments too. One thoughtful reply can cascade into 3-5 additional interactions. Multiply that by 15 comments and you've turned a 15-comment post into a 50-comment post.

What About the Top Performers?

Here's what makes the current situation frustrating: while average reach dropped, the best creators are doing better than ever. The rich get richer. LinkedIn content is becoming a winner-takes-more system.

Our dataset shows a P99 (top 1%) of 3,959 likes. The top post hit 11,576 likes. These numbers are massive. They're actually larger than what P99 posts were getting 2-3 years ago, despite the overall reach decline.

The gap between the median (40 likes) and the top (3,959+) is nearly 100x. That gap is widening. LinkedIn's algorithm increasingly concentrates distribution toward creators who generate deep engagement, leaving less for everyone else. The algorithm is effectively saying: "If your content generates real conversations, we'll give you more reach than ever. If it doesn't, you get less than before."

This is actually good news for people who adapt. The bar for "average" dropped, which means even moderate improvements in your content strategy can move you well above the median. You don't need to be exceptional. You just need to be better than the large number of creators who haven't adapted to the new rules.

Going from 40 likes per post to 80 is a 100% improvement. Sounds hard. But switching from text to images, posting on the right days and writing for comments can get you there within a few weeks. These aren't radical changes. They're small adjustments that align your strategy with how the algorithm actually works today.

Pro tip: Track your progress weekly. Create a simple spreadsheet: date, post type, character count, day of week, likes, comments, engagement rate. After 4 weeks, you'll have enough data to see which of the five fixes had the biggest impact for your specific content and audience. Everyone's results will be slightly different, so your own data matters more than any benchmark.

The Reach Drop Isn't Permanent

Here's the thing most "LinkedIn is dying" articles miss: your reach didn't drop because LinkedIn is punishing creators. It dropped because the platform matured. The algorithm got smarter. The standards got higher. And the strategies that worked in the wild west of 2022-2023 don't work in the more sophisticated environment of 2026.

LinkedIn's algorithm changes aren't random punishment. They're a shift in what the platform values. The creators who understand the new rules are already recovering their reach. Some are getting more reach than they ever had, because the algorithm is now better at surfacing genuinely good content to the right audiences.

The five fixes above aren't hacks or workarounds. They're alignment with what the algorithm actually rewards: visual content, optimal length, good timing, platform-native behavior and genuine conversation. None of these are tricks. They're all just "make better content and present it well." The algorithm is rewarding quality more consistently than ever before. That's not a bug. That's the system working as intended.

Your reach dropped because the rules changed. These are the new rules. The creators who learn them will do better than they did under the old rules. The ones who keep playing by the 2023 playbook will keep watching their numbers decline.

The choice is yours. The data is clear.

The data in this article comes from ViralBrain's analysis of 10,222 LinkedIn posts across 494 creators. ViralBrain helps you track your engagement against real benchmarks and optimize your content strategy based on what's actually working right now.