Post by Resonaze

LinkedIn views are down 50%. Engagement dropped 25%. Follower growth? Down 59%. And most creators are blaming the algorithm. But the algorithm isn't broken — it just changed what it rewards. I spent the last few weeks deep-diving into every credible 2025/2026 LinkedIn algorithm study I could find. Richard van der Blom's research, LinkedIn's own engineering signals, and data from millions of posts. Here's what actually matters now — and what most people are still getting wrong: 𝟭. Dwell time is the #1 ranking factor. Not likes. Not shares. How long someone actually stays on your post. That means short paragraphs, visual breathing room, and hooks that earn the scroll — not walls of text. 𝟮. Saves beat likes. Saves have become the most powerful engagement signal. Posts structured as frameworks, checklists, or reference-worthy processes get extended distribution. "Interesting" isn't enough anymore — your content needs to be worth bookmarking. 𝟯. Comments are weighted 8x more than likes. And comments over 15 words carry 2.5x more weight than short ones. Ending your post with "Agree?" doesn't cut it. You need specific questions that invite real, thoughtful responses. 𝟰. AI-sounding content is now a spam signal. LinkedIn explicitly flags "overly AI-sounding phrasing" as a quality issue. Words like "delve", "leverage", "game-changer", and "in today's fast-paced world" are red flags. So are perfectly parallel sentence structures and predictably formatted listicles. 𝟱. The first 60 minutes decide everything. LinkedIn shows your post to 2–5% of your network first. If that small group doesn't engage meaningfully, your post dies. Only 5% of underperforming posts in the first hour ever recover. 𝟲. Your hook gets ~200 characters. LinkedIn truncates at roughly 210 characters. If your first line doesn't create genuine curiosity before the "See more" button, nothing else matters. 𝟳. Niche expertise > broad advice. The algorithm now identifies your "topic DNA" and distributes content to interested audiences — even outside your network. "5 LinkedIn tips" gets drowned out. A specific insight for a specific audience travels further. The biggest takeaway? The creators winning right now aren't posting more. They're posting with more structure, more specificity, and more intention. This is exactly what we're building at Resonaze. Every post generated through our platform is assessed against the latest algorithm best practices before it ever gets published — from hook length and dwell-time structure to AI-detection risk and comment-generation potential. Because great content shouldn't just sound like you. It should be engineered to perform. What's the biggest shift you've noticed in your own LinkedIn reach this year?