Hi BOLDies,
Now I’ve been building my own personal brand on LinkedIn for a long time, and for the past 18 months, I’ve helped multiple founders and creators to grow theirs too.
I’m so sick of bro’s shouting at me on the internet, about how I’m going to be ‘left behind’ if I don’t get this AI tool and that AI tool. But the ones that p*ss me off the most are the LinkedIn gurus who claim to know everything about the new algorithm update. They don’t know, I don’t know, LinkedIn barely knows. The only ones who truly understand it, are the machine learning engineers who built it. I’ve spent months trying to figure it out - to the best of my non-techy brain’s ability.
So I’m not going to claim to have all the answers - but I am going to do the best job I can of breaking it down for you, in the simplest, least bro-like language that I can.
First of all, we all know LinkedIn is wild; I don’t need to tell you that. I mean, let us never forget this absolute lunatic Bryan..
Poor girl.
Anyway, even though it drives me insane, it’s still the platform and enabled me to make close to six figures in my first year of business, even without a website. It is incredibly powerful if you know how to use it.
So, here’s what you need to know about LinkedIn’s new 360 Brew Algo update.
The TL:DR is:
Human first high-value content is best: give people something real, with a ‘golden nugget’ you can serve up in their newsfeed to make their life easier.
Relevance is everything: have you carved out your pillars and decided what you want to be known for? Are you creating content that represents that?
Your keywords and content pillars matter: the new algo groups us, by scanning our profiles, content and keywords. It uses that to determine which themes we represent (which determines who they show our content to).
Positioning is a must: they’re focused on people adding value, and not those pushing out AI slop. Position yourself as the voice of authority that you are - and do not compromise your reputation by using AI to write content for you. No.
In short, the new LinkedIn algorithm works as 1-AI-system, (compared to multiple systems in the past). Your profile, topics, comments, connections and consistency now blend together to decide whether you’re “worth showing” on the newsfeed - the AI system scans it in seconds, and makes a call. That means now more than ever before, you need to consider what you want to be known for, because your activity, profile and posts need to all be aligned.
Important questions to ask yourself.
1) Are you known for something?
LinkedIn is heavily categorising creators. If your content jumps from marketing to productivity to gym to matchas, the platform will struggle to understand who to show you to. People should be able to describe you in one sentence:
“Oh, that’s XXX, she talks about ___ and I trust her on it.”
2) Do professionals interact with you?
The platform is weighing who engages with your content now.
Ten thoughtful comments from relevant people now beats 100 likes from passive scrollers. I like this, because it means goodbye engagement pods and bots. However, it does mean you need to really consider everything I said above, and really put the time into it.
3) Do you behave like a real person?
LinkedIn is moving away from “content creators” and towards “professional identities”. It’s also become very good at picking up text that is AI-generated (yes, even those of you who just run it through Chat for ‘formatting’) - trust me when I say that your content is far better off written in your own format, using your words.
360 brew looks at:
How clear your profile is
What conversations you’re having
Whether people come back to you in comments/the inbox
LinkedIn Profile Checklist:
□ Banner that clearly states who you help + outcome (it’s worth asking for help with this if you don’t have a good eye for design, if you do - than Canva is your best friend)
□ Headline that says what you do in simple terms (this is one of the key things the algo scans)
□ The ‘About section’ explaining who you help and how you help them (focus on metrics and impacts)
□ Featured section that showcases your expertise
□ Professional headshot (no sunglasses guys) go to Candid if you’re a Londoner and use CANDIDISBOLD for 10% off your first shoot.
If all of this overwhelms you, I’m currently offering a LinkedIn profile audit at a reduced rate here - where I’ll send you some pre-work, and we get on a call to do it together.
With the content side of things, I’m personally finding that less is more, and high-quality, colourful, kind-to-the-eye images are working best. Quality is really better than quantity with this new update (which is good news for those of us who value that).
In other words, wipe your phone camera with your sleeve, get outside and take some selfies/BTS shots of you out living your life. I’ll do more on content in the next newsletter - so keep those eyes peeled. More to come on the content side of things :)
Other BOLD news:
The doors for The Bold Community are open again for March. You can join the waitlist here. We’ve had the most incredible 3 months of building our businesses together in the Beta version of this community. I can’t wait to welcome the next cohort.
We have our BOLD Comeback event this evening in Bristol, and a couple of tickets left for any last-minute folks, grab your spot here.
Have a great end to the week, and remember - stay BOLD.
Amy xox
P.S. Need help with LinkedIn? Let’s have a chat.
