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Zero Click Marketing is a marketing strategy podcast about content marketing, audience research, and how brands grow when clicks matter less. Hosted by Amanda Natividad, Chief Evangelist at SparkToro, the show explores how marketers reach audiences, build influence, and earn attention in a zero-click internet.
ZCM Field Notes: Why LinkedIn Has Two Algorithms (And Why That Matters)
Or… “The LinkedIn Algorithm Is Basically a Party”
Hey, it’s Amanda. This is an episode format I’m trying out called ZCM Field Notes. These are short reactions or observations of what’s happening in the field. Overall, these will be less polished but I’m trying my best. Today, I want to talk about the Unofficial LinkedIn Algorithm Guide by Christopher Penn. Christopher sent this out on his Substack last Friday. Almost timely dot substack dot com. (almosttimely.substack.com).
This LinkedIn algo guide is 150 pages, so there’s a lot to get through but we only have like 7 minutes so here we go… The first thing I thought was really interesting is that the report says LinkedIn doesn’t really have one algorithm anymore. It has 2 systems working together.
Distribution happens in two stages.
Stage one is something called retrieval.
This is the system deciding:
Should this post even be considered for someone’s feed?
Before ranking and engagement.
Then comes stage two: ranking.
Now the system asks:
Out of the thousands of posts that could appear in someone’s feed… Which ones should show up first?
Ranking looks more like what we usually think of as “the algorithm.”
It evaluates signals like:
engagement patterns
interaction history
Dwell time
relationship strength
But the key idea is this: If retrieval fails, ranking never even happens.
And when I read that, it reminded me of something I already tell people about social media.
Social media is… a party. When you walk into a party, you don’t climb onto the coffee table and start shouting over everyone.
Or at least, you shouldn’t.
Instead, you do what normal humans do. You walk in. You find your friends. You settle into conversations.
You walk the room and meet someone knew, joining existing conversations. After you’ve warmed up a little bit, that’s kind of when you start your own conversation.
That’s normal, sociable party behavior. And that’s kinda how social media works too.
And this is where Christopher Penn’s report clicked for me.
Because for years, the advice around LinkedIn has been stuff like: post at the right time, warm up the feed, comment before you publish, all of that.
And I’m not saying that stuff does nothing.
But this report argues that before any of that can help you, LinkedIn first has to understand who you are, what you talk about, and who should care. That’s the retrieval part. That’s the “do you even get invited into the conversation” part.
Which is why I think the party analogy works.
At a party, people don’t need your full life story. But they do need a rough sense of your deal.
Oh, Amanda? Marketing. Audience research. Zero-click marketing. Got it.
That context helps people know where to place you in the room. And according to this guide, LinkedIn is doing something pretty similar. It may be using your profile, your post language, and your engagement behavior to figure out your professional identity and what conversations you belong in.
That also means your profile matters more than a lot of people think.
Not just because humans look at it. But because the system may be using it to understand what topics you’re associated with, what expertise you signal, and what kind of audience is most likely to care about your posts.
And then there’s topic consistency, which I think is one of the most useful takeaways in the whole report.
If one day you post about marketing.
The next day you post about parenting.
The next day about crypto.
Then personal productivity.
Then sourdough bread.
The system — and honestly, your audience — might struggle to know who your content is actually for.
Again, think about the party.
If someone keeps manically jumping between totally unrelated conversations, people start wondering:
Wait… what’s your thing? What do you actually care about? And why are you trying to sell me your NFT? NFTs aren’t even a thing right now.
But if someone consistently contributes to the same conversations…
People start associating them with those topics. And so do the systems.
Other interesting things from Penn’s report:
LinkedIn is constantly learning patterns like: who interacts with your posts, how often, and for how long. Their system is learning your audience graph over time.
Relevance matters more than timing. It matters less that you optimize for the time your audience is online, and more about whether your post is relevant.
Your own, daily regular engagement is important. LinkedIn’s systems track specific behaviors that constitute “Professional Interactions” (PI). These behaviors include: long dwell time (so time spent reading, not just scrolling), reactions, comments, and reposts.
Now I want to be clear about something.
This report is not official LinkedIn guidance.
It’s an interpretation of more than 30 current LinkedIn engineering publications — including
Research papers and their blog.
So I wouldn’t treat it like gospel.
But the broader idea still makes sense.
Modern recommendation systems are looking for predictable relevance.
Which brings us back to Zero-Click Marketing.
The most important thing you can do is to be easy to understand. If people — and systems — can quickly understand: who you are, who you help, what you talk about, and why your perspective matters, then your content becomes easier to distribute.
So if you want a simple strategy for LinkedIn…
Think about the party.
Don’t walk in shouting.
Walk in and join the room.
Talk to your friends.
Introduce yourself to new people.
Join existing conversations.
And over time…
People will start listening when you start one of your own.
And if this analysis is even partially right…
The real LinkedIn strategy isn’t gaming the algorithm. It’s becoming easy for the algorithm to understand.
That’s today’s ZCM Field Note.
Thank you for listening. More to come on Zero Click Marketing (zeroclickmarketing.co) tomorrow. Or maybe the day after. I haven’t recorded the next episode yet, so subscribe so you don’t miss it.
Here’s a link to Christopher Penn’s Unofficial LinkedIn Algorithm Guide: https://almosttimely.substack.com/p/the-unofficial-linkedin-algorithm-b02/comments