Linkedin Strategy Then Vs Now What Actually Works In 2025

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Nov 18, 2025, 3:10 PM

linkedin strategy then vs now what actually works in 2025

Discover how international PR professionals can break into the African media landscape by shifting from generic PR tactics to locally informed strategies. Learn what technical SEO is and how to fix common site issues. Improve crawlability, speed, and security so your website ranks higher and runs smoother. Africa’s AI moment is real, and the foundations are being built. But technology alone won’t decide the future—people will. LinkedIn hasn’t meaningfully evolved since 2016 — the year Microsoft acquired it for $26.2 billion.

At a time when video has reshaped the internet, creators have transformed how professionals learn, and agentic AI is reimagining the future of work, LinkedIn still looks, feels, and behaves like the product we... For a platform with more than one billion users, the stagnation is striking. What makes LinkedIn uniquely powerful is not just its scale but its authenticity. It is the only major social platform where most people are verifiably real — not bots, not burners, not pseudonyms. It holds the cleanest, most trustworthy identity graph on the internet: a network tied to real employers, real skills, real locations, and real career histories. This should have been LinkedIn’s greatest advantage.

It is the foundation every modern professional platform wishes it had. Yet LinkedIn has never built the product layer that fully unlocks that value. Authenticity is treated as table stakes — a security measure — rather than the engine for innovation. Yet LinkedIn has never built the product layer that fully unlocks that value. Authenticity is treated as table stakes — a security measure — rather than the engine for innovation. Meanwhile, the rest of the internet has reorganized itself into specialized ecosystems built for speed, creativity, learning, and AI-native knowledge — and LinkedIn didn’t move with it.

It has the richest data, the highest integrity, and the most durable network effects — but lacks the product ambition to match. Wondering why your LinkedIn views are down or what happened to your reach in 2025? You’re not imagining it. Reach has tanked for nearly everyone. You’re not being shadow-banned. And it’s not just you.

The algorithm has changed dramatically. This article gives you the quick answers and the deeper story. In short: LinkedIn’s new reasoning engine now focuses on meaning, clarity, and relevance, not just clicks and likes. That shift is good news for authentic voices who post with purpose. Drawing from three major studies published in Q4 2025: this article explains how to adapt your profile, content, and commenting strategy to the 2025 LinkedIn ecosystem.

You’ll walk away knowing how to measure success the right way—through trust, connection, and relevance—and how to grow your influence in a world where quality now beats quantity. If you feel that your LinkedIn engagement has dropped in the past few months, you are not alone. Many professionals are seeing fewer impressions, fewer comments, and even fewer profile visits. The truth is, LinkedIn is changing, and what worked last year may not work in 2025. In this article, I’ll share why LinkedIn engagement is becoming more competitive, what the platform is rewarding, and how you can still stand out. I’ll also include a real-life example of someone who turned their low impressions into strong results.

A few years ago, almost any post with hashtags and a nice image could get hundreds of views. But now, things are different. 🔹 More competition. Millions of people are posting every day. LinkedIn is full of job seekers, professionals, creators, and businesses. With more posts, each one gets less attention.

🔹 Algorithm changes: LinkedIn is rewarding content that engages users on the platform. This means long posts, videos, and carousels that spark discussions. Short or “salesy” posts often don’t reach far. LinkedIn's algorithm changed drastically in 2025. If you're still using 2024 tactics, you're leaving thousands of impressions on the table. Here's what the data actually shows.

2024: Posts lived for 24 hours max 2025: Content that sparks conversations stays in feeds for 2-3 weeks This changes everything. You're not racing against time anymore—you're optimizing for sustained, meaningful engagement. Recent studies analyzing over 2 million LinkedIn posts revealed surprising insights about what actually drives reach in 2025: Here's the data on impressions per post: Download the full report now to learn where LinkedIn is headed.

Enter your email to get started. LinkedIn now has 1 billion registered members, with 350–400 million active each month. Visibility is harder than ever. Since 2021, LinkedIn has evolved from a purely professional platform into the definitive space for building authority and trust. But with growth comes noise: generic posts, AI-heavy content, and viral shortcuts are everywhere, and they’re fading fast. Meanwhile, thoughtful, educational, and authentic content consistently rises above.

Professionals are left asking: what actually works anymore? The algorithm shifts, engagement drops, and best practices change seemingly overnight. That’s exactly what we set out to answer with our State of LinkedIn 2025 report. The LinkedIn algorithm in 2025 has changed what engagement looks like on the network. If you’ve noticed your posts getting fewer views, less interaction, or slower follower growth, you’re not alone. According to the Algorithm InSigh ts 2025 report by LinkedIn expert Richard van der Blom, organic performance on the platform is taking a serious hit:

The culprit? A shifting algorithm and evolving user behaviors. In 2025, LinkedIn is doubling down on relevance, quality, and intentional engagement. A whopping 81% of B2B campaigns fail to achieve their basic objective of capturing users’ attention and brand awareness. That means it’s time to rethink your content strategy if you want to show up in feeds and stay top of mind with your audience. Here’s what you need to know (and do) to work with the algorithm—not against it.

Something strange is happening on LinkedIn. You’ve noticed it too, haven’t you? Professionals are logging into feeds that feel… well, broken. Posts from weeks ago are resurfacing. Fresh content is barely there. Engagement is plummeting - and for a while, nobody knew why.

It’s the result of new algorithm and policy changes that are reshaping how LinkedIn decides what shows up - and who gets seen. LinkedIn’s latest update, part of its revamped User Agreement, brings new rules around content recommendations and generative-AI features. Behind the scenes, the platform is now: This past year has been dominated by discussions on Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). However, even if GEO is reshaping the digital marketing landscape, marketers shouldn’t overlook the growing power of the LinkedIn algorithm. On July 30, 2025, LinkedIn boasted 1.2 billion members.

This came with a 30% increase in comments, 20% in video uploads and a 9% revenue increase year-to-year1. These are useful signals for brands considering where to invest their digital marketing efforts. For LinkedIn marketing, these trends matter. AI is changing how people find new content. In Google AI mode, for example, it will still return a ranking of their best websites. Therefore, this shifts the way that brands optimize their website.

They are not just for clicks (SEO strategy) but also now for context (GEO strategy). So where does LinkedIn fit into this? The platform, built for professionals, contains multiple posts about different professional news-related topics. In addition, those posts are made by experts in that field. This helps generative engines cite those posts when returning an answer to a user, as the context of the post is helpful to its feedback. That is the core of generative engine optimization (GEO).

Brands that use that to their advantage can make a data-rich post on LinkedIn and then have an expanded version of it on their website. That would help the brand win discovery and also credibility in a generative engine ranking. According to a recent article by the Search Engine Journal, if you have your brand has a featured snippet on Google search, 60% of the time it will also be found in Google “AI... In 2025, the LinkedIn algorithm had some changes. Clickbait posts are now almost worthless; instead, real conversations are rewarded. For the post to be recommended higher than only first or second degree connections, it needs3 4

Linkedin Strategy Then Vs Now What Actually Works In 2025

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