Hey!

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

Hope you had a great weekend. I’m finally back in Austin. Travel was fun—I spent the last month or so in Spain—but I’m happy to be back in my routine. And on my regular time zone. CST and EST are superior. Just saying.

Today I want to hit on a touchy subject. LinkedIn reach.

It’s down.

We’ve all noticed the trend. Though most people don’t say anything because they’re afraid to look bad. Good (?) news…it’s not just you.

Let’s clear up what’s really happening, and what you can do about it.

🔎 DEEP DIVE

LinkedIn reach is down. Here’s how to troubleshoot.

An honest update on the state of LinkedIn in 2025, with strategy adjustments, new formats, and more.

I’m seeing it everywhere. Reach on LinkedIn is down. Today I’ll walk you through why it’s happening, what’s changed, and how to adjust your content to account for this trend.

I’ve been posting on LinkedIn for 7 years. It’s the main lead source for my agency, which also produces 150+ LinkedIn content assets for B2B founders every week. I’ve seen “the dip” in my own content, and in client accounts.

It’s not just you.

And being one of those people who responds with “I haven’t noticed…must be a content problem” just makes you some like an insufferable d-bag.

You can both acknowledge macro trends and adapt to them. Sticking your head in the sand and pretending nothing has changed is dangerous. Same vibe as writers who close their eyes and wish AI would go away.

That said, I will say: the hysteria around lowered reach is overblown. So stick with me till the end of this piece so you can walk away with solutions.

First, why is this happening?

The cause of lower reach on LinkedIn.

It’s impossible to say for sure. I don’t have an “insider” at LinkedIn feeding me info. Nor do I have insight into their algorithm, as those people who publish those reports (which are the content strategy version of snake oil salesmen) do.

But, using a few neurons, we can reasonably infer a few causes:

(1) More people are posting. People (myself included) loved to cite the stat that “only 1% of LinkedIn users are posting content on the platform.” While I’m not sure the percentage has gone up, I am sure the absolute amount has.

Supply of content has gone up. So, demand to consume said content—especially content which isn’t particularly notable—is down.

(2) Most social platforms tend to dampen organic reach eventually. Look at Facebook, Instagram, and even TikTok. It’s become harder to win on those platforms. It’s the circle of life.

However, you can still win on those platforms.

The skill bar has raised, but it is still 100% possible to grow with organic content. I know folks who have gone from 0 → tens of thousands of followers on IG in the past year.

The same trend will play out on LinkedIn.

If you are not posting content that drives leads, it is simply a skill issue. This is where the insufferable “must be a content problem” folks are kind of right.

If you keep posting the type of content that “worked” on LinkedIn in 2024, you will not survive the shift.

(3) A shift from social graph to interest graph.

Social graph: content is served to you based on who you follow.

Interest graph: content is served to you based on other content you engage with.

Again, LinkedIn is late to the party. TikTok pioneered this with their “For You Page” (FYP), and Instagram soon followed. X, formerly Twitter, eventually flipped this way as well.

One effect of this shift is a lower average baseline of impressions & engagement, but a higher ceiling. You’ve seen TikToks from average people, not even “creators,” blow up to millions of views. Remember the Ocean Spray skateboard guy? If not, I am jealous that you’re not so chronically online.

LinkedIn is the last bastion of the social graph. This will not last. Eventually, LinkedIn will likely shift to an interest graph. The transformation has already started, with more of your feed consisting of accounts you don’t follow.

These factors are likely to blame for the dampened reach we’re all experience.

Here’s how I would adapt.

Content strategy adjustments for B2B companies.

(1) Increase the quality bar for each post. I am even backtracking on my stance of posting 5x per week, no matter what.

Less posts, which are fully researched and optimized, will perform better. If you can clear the quality bar on 5 posts per week—amazing. But if you need to scale back to 3x, I would do so (at least experiment with it).

The quality versus quantity debate is dumb. The reality: you want to post as much as you can, without lowering the quality of the content. If that’s 5x per week, cool. If that’s 3x per week, also cool. I would be cautious about going below three, though. You do want to get in front of buyers consistently.

(2) Hooks hooks hooks. Hooks were important to begin with. Now, you cannot get away with a lazy hook.

Understand, if you're playing the game of audience growth and lead generation, you need to lean in. You cannot let your artistic vision keep you from filling your pipeline.

If you’re worrying about coming across as cringe, read this essay. I’m not asking you to go full online extremist here. I am asking you to turn up the dial on your assertions by roughly 20%.

A few tactics we’re seeing work well in hooks. You’ll notice these haven’t “changed,” though there importance has increased.

• Use names of popular figures, companies, and events in your category to “borrow” credibility.

• Use specific numbers (ideally monetary figures or business results) in the hook.

• Use narrative & storytelling in the hook, rather than basic “how-to” angles.

• Use Negativity Bias and polarization (tastefully).

This essay is a great one to read next for a more in depth exploration of hooks.

(3) I am seeing long-form, fleshed-out text posts perform well again. Video still has its place. As do visuals.

But the posts must be meaty. I do think the days of whipping up a “70% of the way there” post in 20 minutes and letting it rip are mostly gone.

Look at a creator like Gal Aga, CEO of Aligned. He’s on record saying every one of his posts is thoroughly researched. Each one could be a newsletter. And they rip.

(4) Consider boosting your best organic performers with Thought Leader Ads.

I haven’t played around with TLAs a ton, yet. But we are working with some clients whose demand gen teams will take top performing organic posts and run some spend behind them.

It seems to work well. I’ll work on getting some hard numbers for you in the coming weeks here.

It makes sense though, right? Organic reach is down, so more folks are being pushed towards paid distribution. I don’t think this requires a tin foil hat.

(5) Create a Content Ecosystem—get more team members posting on LinkedIn.

You can compensate for the lower reach per account by activating more accounts. Math!

Most of the companies you see winning on LinkedIn already have several accounts active. For example, Exit Five has all of their team members posting. Beehiiv’s founder, Tyler Denk, is active with founder content—but so is the rest of their team. LinkedIn content strategy should be multiplayer.

This ecosystem approach creates an echo chamber for your company.

Your ICP is not able to log in to LinkedIn without seeing something from your company. This keeps you top of mind, all the time.

You also have more lottery tickets—more chances for a post to hit. LinkedIn is a bit volume constrained. You can’t really post more than one, maybe two times per day. I mean, you could. But that’s aggressive.

So, more team members active unlocks more volume.

I’d recommend nailing one account (the founder) first, then layering in the rest of the founding team and whoever on your team wants to be active.

Here is a great resource for learning more about how to build a Content Ecosystem. It’s one of my most-referenced-to pieces.

Ignore the hysteria.

Finn Thormeier wrote another great post on this trend. Inspired me to sit down and weigh in with this one. One line I loved: “Even 1,000 impressions are still 5 movie theatres full of people seeing what you have to say.”

LinkedIn is still the best platform for B2B companies to reach customers with content. Though I have a financial interest in hoping it stays that way—I do genuinely believe it will.

And if at any point another platform took the lead, I’d just pivot my clients in that direction (great content is great content regardless of platform). We’re not there yet. Not even close.

I’d be curious to hear what your experiencing on LinkedIn right now. Have you felt the downturn in reach? Has it actually affected business results from the platform? Let me know.

Last thing. If you could share this with a founder who’s freaking out about their content not doing as well, that’d be lovely.

🗃 FILE CABINET

Here’s my favorite marketing and business content I bookmarked this week.

• THE shortest LinkedIn course you’ll ever need by Tommy Clark 🎥

• Business was hard until I learned this by Alex Hormozi 🎥

• Learn a new way of storytelling in 72 minutes by David Perrell 🎥

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

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

More from Social Files:

• Read the rest of my essays

• Work with my agency in 2025

• Try my LinkedIn content writing SaaS

• Steal my founder-led content templates

Talk soon,

Tommy Clark