🗃 LinkedIn is a mess

What’s going on? (plus what to do about it)

Tommy Clark
September 21, 2026

Hey!

Welcome to Social Files—your no-BS guide to generating demand for your B2B product using social & content.

Spent my weekend celebrating my upcoming birthday. Turning 27 on Wednesday. Officially in my late 20s… WTF?

The current state of the LinkedIn algorithm triggers the same question in me (what a segue, huh?).

So, I figured I’d use today’s edition to walk through:

What’s going on with the platform
How to adjust your approach to get more distribution going into Q4

Shall we?

🔎 DEEP DIVE

WTF is going on with LinkedIn?

Field notes from 150+ content assets per week across 20+ clients

LinkedIn is acting weird. And no, it’s not just you.

In the past week:

I’ve seen posts stuck at <100 impressions for hours after publishing, on otherwise healthy accounts.
I had a client post stuck at <5 likes and ~1000 impressions for half a day catch fire and fly up to 150,000+ overnight.
That same post had ~100 likes on 150K impressions. I will take the impressions, of course. But that math does not add up.
Another content agency friend had a client kick off (~2k follower account) and content that should have performed was pulling 50-100 impressions.
It seems like LinkedIn nuked the “Comment for X” giveaways. About time. But still, another change to account for.
I had two posts of my own land at 35K and 35.1K impressions, respectively. Another two posts hardly cracked 1K. Quite volatile for an account with 52K followers.

In a meme:

My read on what is happening:

Post-by-post performance is spiky. The “ceiling” on organic reach is higher than it has been in recent memory (posts ripping 30, 50, 100K+ impression counts). The “floor” has also plummeted. You may see posts you believed to be “good” stall out at 500 impressions.
There is a barbell distribution. While what “works” is somewhat of a mystery, I have noticed that outliers tend to be either VERY high-production/high effort content assets (think: launch videos, sharing edited YT videos natively on LinkedIn, IRL stunts) or scrappy stream-of-consciousness posts (think: X screenshots, <500 character text-only quips/rants, memes). The middle ground where “value content” once thrived is a desolate wasteland.
Despite the top-of-funnel volatility, demos booked from LinkedIn has remained steady (5-7 per week for Compound, for reference).

So. What should you DO in the current state of LinkedIn?

The basics still matter. Use 2-3 hook levers in the first 1-3 lines. Make sure each post is targeted towards one specific person. Pair each post with a relevant, social-native media asset when possible. Etc etc.
I would ratchet down your output to 3x per week - IF you have been posting 5x per week and have noticed worse performance. Lower your output; raise your bar on each post.
Of those three posts you have per week:
- One ‘high production’ post that requires a lot of your effort. This could be an in-depth talking-head video, a data visualization, an infographic (a good one, though), or an IRL stunt.
- One scrappy, low-lift “stream-of-consciousness” piece. This should be faster to create.
- One timely reaction to a trending news story. There is still an arbitrage in newsjacking. If there is nothing worth commenting on for the week, then use this as an audible slot to do whatever you’d like.
Of course: this ^^ is a STARTING POINT. The ideal mix will depend on your situation; as a reset, this will work well. Iterate from there.
You’ve got to be sending 20x connection requests per day and getting active in the LinkedIn DMs. We’re doing this for Compound clients now, because we are adamant that organic content on LinkedIn is no longer enough to book demos. You are not above LinkedIn outreach.
- Use tools like Traxy and Apollo to source accounts, and then pipe the profiles into HeyReach for automated connections. Works well. I’ve spoken on this at length in my YouTube videos.

Ok, I know this one wasn’t a prettily written piece. But I hope it is helpful.

(1) If you want more in-depth walkthroughs on how to execute this playbook, my YouTube channel is up to date with all you would need. I’ve no time to make a course, so it’s all there for you.

(2) If you look at this and think, “How am I possibly going to have time to do this along with everything else on my to-dos?” … that’s why Compound exists. You can book a call with us if you’d like.

Back to the mines (the LinkedIn timeline) I go!

See you there :)

TOMMY’S BOOKSHELF 📚

Current read: The Ships of Merior by Janny Wurts. I’m on book 2 of The Wars of Light and Shadow now. Loving this series so far. Great for any fans of epic fantasy. Though I have a LONG way to go (there are eleven books total).

Evergreen reminder: if you haven’t yet, do yourself a favor and read Red Rising. This is the gateway drug to fiction reading as an adult.

If you want more book content, I’ve built a little audience on Instagram where I post about fiction and writing.

BEFORE YOU GO…

As always, thanks for allowing me into your email inbox every week.