IS YOUR BUSINESS CHASING THE WRONG NUMBERS ON LINKEDIN?

If your LinkedIn posts aren’t getting the reach they used to, don’t panic.

You may not be doing anything wrong.

A new report looking at LinkedIn in 2026 suggests that the rules of the game have changed – and there are some useful lessons for businesses using the platform to attract customers and build their reputation.

For years, success on social media has often been measured in numbers.

How many people saw our post? How many liked it? How many followers have we got?

But increasingly, those aren’t necessarily the numbers that matter.

Research highlighted in the report suggests average LinkedIn views per post have fallen significantly. There are several reasons for that. LinkedIn has changed the way it distributes content, while the sheer volume of material being posted has increased enormously.

AI has accelerated that. It’s now possible to generate five LinkedIn posts in the time it once took to write one.

But does anybody actually want to read them?

That’s where things get interesting.

LinkedIn is increasingly looking at relevance. Rather than simply showing your post to lots of your followers and seeing what happens, it is getting better at understanding what your content is about and finding people who might genuinely be interested in it.

For SMEs, this is potentially good news.

If you’re an accountant in Inverness, for example, you don’t necessarily need 20,000 people across the world to see your post about changes affecting Highland businesses.

You need the right 200 people to see it.

Likewise, a post with 50 likes isn’t necessarily more successful than one with five. If one of those five people subsequently picks up the phone, which was the better post?

The report suggests we should pay greater attention to actions requiring a little more effort – someone saving a post, sharing it with a colleague or contributing meaningfully to the conversation.

There are some simple lessons for businesses.

Know what you want to be known for. Talk consistently about the subjects where you have genuine knowledge. Use language your customers understand rather than industry jargon. And above all, give people something useful.

There’s another lesson too.

Don’t allow AI to make you sound like everybody else.

AI can be an incredibly useful business tool, but if it produces bland content that could have been written by any business in Britain, why should anybody stop scrolling to read yours?

Your experience, opinions, stories and personality are what make your business different.

LinkedIn may be changing.

But perhaps the best strategy for succeeding on it is remarkably old-fashioned:

Know your audience. Know your subject. Have something worthwhile to say.

And worry a little less about how many people clicked the thumbs-up button.