LinkedIn algorithm · plain English
How the LinkedIn algorithm
actually decides.
Not LinkedIn’s engineering blog. Not a growth-hack thread. This is Byokli’s decoder: what the feed rewards, what it kills, and why a unique carousel beats a viral-post template.
Dead
Loud & broad
Follower count. Engagement pods. “3 lessons I learned.” A link in the first line. Same 12 slides, new words.
Alive
Targeted authority
One topic. Dwell time. Saves. A deck people actually swipe. Voice that doesn’t sound like every other AI.
01 · the shift
Loud is dead. Targeted authority isn’t.
The feed used to push you to people you already know. Now it pushes you to people who care about the topic. A huge disconnected network is worse than a small one that actually reads you. Pick a lane. Stay in it.
02 · the test
You don’t hit “everyone.” You hit a tiny cohort first.
Publish → a small test group sees it. If they stop, save, or reply like a human, it expands. If they scroll past, it dies. The first line is the whole job. A ChatGPT hook fails this test on purpose.
03 · depth score
Likes are almost noise. Dwell is the signal.
A save, a DM, a comment that isn’t “Great post!” outweighs a pile of thumbs. Time on the post — especially time on slide 3 of a carousel — is what the feed actually multiplies. That’s why template decks lose: nobody stays.
04 · format
Formats that make people stay win.
Text is cheap to skip. Video keeps people if you upload it native (no YouTube link) and caption it. Document carousels win because swiping is dwell. Same 12-slide Canva pack still loses — the format isn’t the cheat code, the unique slides are.
05 · penalty box
Links, pods, and “comment ‘guide’.”
External links in the post itself get throttled. Engagement pods and generic comments look like fraud. “Comment GUIDE and I’ll send the PDF” is the same trick. Put the URL in the first comment if you must. Don’t buy comments.
06 · topic DNA
The profile is a corpus, not a billboard.
The model is matching your post to people who already linger on that topic. If Monday you’re a founder, Wednesday a recruiter, Friday a life coach, you have no entity. Write the weird idea in your actual field. Repeat.
Knowing this is free.
The blank page isn’t.
Byokli writes from a voice dump, designs a carousel that isn’t a template, and can queue it on LinkedIn’s API — so the post can actually earn dwell.