How LinkedIn decides
who sees your post.
LinkedIn shows your post to a small group of people, watches what they do, and decides whether to show it to more. Most of what is written online about how this works is guesswork presented as fact. Below, every claim is tagged by how well supported it is, so you can tell the difference between a rule and a rumour.
Confirmed by LinkedIn
Stated by LinkedIn engineering, its Help Centre, published LinkedIn research or a named executive on the record.
Credible research
Large independent studies with disclosed method. Directionally reliable, not auditable against LinkedIn's own logs.
Folklore
Repeated everywhere, sourced nowhere. Some of it is probably true. None of it should drive a decision on its own.
What we know, ranked by how well we know it.
Tap a row to open the detail, the source and what it means for a draft.
LinkedIn's Feed AI team published how it measures the time a member spends on a post in-feed, even with no like or comment, and uses it as an implicit quality signal. It was built specifically to separate genuinely engaging content from clickbait that gets a fast skip.
Source: LinkedIn Engineering blog, 'Understanding Dwell Time to Improve LinkedIn Feed Ranking'
So what, for your draft
Not all engagement is worth the same.
An indicative ranking, built from LinkedIn's own statements where they exist and the best independent research where they do not. The exact numbers are ours, not LinkedIn's. The order is the point.
Dwell time
Confirmed. Time on the post in-feed.
96
Substantive comments
Long replies outrank one-word ones.
88
Topic relevance to the reader
The interest graph, not just who you know.
84
Sends and saves
Private shares show strong interest.
78
Reshares with commentary
Reshares with no added text count for much less.
66
Author expertise on the topic
Posting regularly on one subject builds reach over time.
60
Reactions
Easy to give, so they carry little weight.
30
Hashtags
Confirmed as no longer helping discovery.
8
Choosing a format.
Text only
Stories, opinions, observations, anything where the words are the value.
The most reliable format. Quickest to produce and tends to get the best comments.
Text plus one image
A photo that is genuinely from the moment described. A screenshot as evidence.
Stock imagery adds nothing and can cost you. If the image is decoration, cut it.
Document carousel
Frameworks, checklists, teardowns, before-and-after work.
Consistently top of format studies. Six to ten slides, one idea per slide, portrait or square.
Native video
Anything where tone of voice or a demonstration does the work.
Strong in every recent study. Subtitle everything. First three seconds matter as much as a hook line.
Newsletter
Recurring, substantial pieces with a subscriber base worth building.
Publishing notifies every subscriber directly, which is the only guaranteed distribution on the platform.
Poll
Rarely. Only when you genuinely want the answer.
Performance has fallen sharply since 2024 across every tracker.