How To Get More Impressions on LinkedIn

Ah, the LinkedIn algorithm. The subject of never-ending complaints in 2025.

Creators create content, and they want your content to be seen. Understandably! Tons of effort goes in, and... crickets. It's the worst.

But simply asking how to get more impressions is a bit like asking how to get more money.

It's something that results from having done other things well, and it's also not entirely in your control!

Let's go through the process step by step: how to LinkedIn decides if a post gets more or less visibility, what to do if your reach has dropped significantly in 2024-2025 vs prior years, and a few tactics to think about today.

By the end of the article, you'll have a good understanding of how you can leverage LinkedIn's algorithm to give you more visibility.

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What LinkedIn "Wants" You To Do

Let's first cover the technical fundamentals of when a post gets reach, as well as how this can depend on the industry and what role LinkedIn's vision plays in all of this.

This part is less actionable, so if you're familiar with the foundations, jump to the tips straight away!

LinkedIn's Mission Statement

"Connect the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful." = LinkedIn wants to encourage interaction between people on the platform.

By knowing what LinkedIn wants, and how its algorithm was designed, we can dig deeper to see how they decide who gets reach and who doesn’t stand a chance at going viral. Impressions are a key metric for evaluating content performance and understanding how well your posts are resonating with your audience. Reach and engagement can vary widely, and this is often due to the different factors affecting LinkedIn impressions, such as post timing, content relevance, and audience interaction.

And what does LinkedIn want?

They want you to stay in the feed, liking and commenting on posts. They know that if you do this, you and others will buy their sales engagement products, their advertising products, and more.

To figure out how to create content that gets seen, reverse that:

You want to create content that has a higher chance of more people reacting to it and commenting on it. Okay, easier said than done, right? But there's a subtlety here: a lot of people DON'T create content that has an inherently high chance of getting a reaction or comment. Instead, they use ChatGPT to write their posts, or they share blogs from their company page, or they just write whatever they feel like.

Later on, we'll talk about how to blend:
1. What message you need to share with the market, and
2. What message is going to resonate with others

How The LinkedIn Algorithm Works

The LinkedIn algorithm works in layers.

The first layer is a detector of "viral spam", and it works like the following chart:

1. Does it match past 'spammy' posts? If so, the post immediately gets sent to jail. It's done. This is sometimes correctly called "shadowbanning".
2. If not, it moves to the "continue displaying" stage (below)

Get Early Engagement Signals

Assuming your post doesn't hit the initial spam checker block, LinkedIn starts by showing your post to a cherry-picked audience of people who are online and most likely to engage with your post. Let's call this your "core network". To maximize the chances of your post getting early engagement, you need three things:

1. To have a strong core network of people who support you
2. To post when your core network is actually online
3. For your post to cause your core network to engage

In short: do you have a "LinkedIn crew", big or small? Are you creating when they're online, and are you creating what they want to engage with?

If you are new to LinkedIn and don't have this yet, go out and make friends. Help people get to know you. Support them. Get to know others. Build community.

Increase Dwell Time & Engagement Rate

The main things you want people to do when they see your post in their feed are:

1. Spend time looking at it, literally to have your post on their screen, aka "you stop their scroll"
2. Engage with it at a high rate

Make 'em stop, make 'em stay, make 'em mash the like button and feel compelled to leave a comment!

Observe yourself for a bit as you scroll LinkedIn. Open up the feed. What makes you stop scrolling? What makes you engage? Do a little self-observation and you'll get more insight into how others engage with you.

Note: LinkedIn impressions refer to the number of times your content appears on someone's feed, regardless of whether users interact with it. An impression is counted each time your content appears in someone's feed, even if they don't engage with it. Every time someone views your post for at least 300 milliseconds or your content is at least 50% in view on their device screen, it counts as an impression. 

Become Their Favorite Show

When you create content consistently, your core group learns to love and in a way, depend on seeing your content. They're watching your posts because you have become a familiar source of infotainment to them, in the way that any of us might watch episodes of a favorite Netflix series as it comes out every week. In this way, you grow your core network over time.

So, assuming your core network is digging your post... what happens then?

It gets shown to a bit wider of an audience.

When LinkedIn runs out of cherry-picked core people to show your content to, it has to reach a little. If their algorithm could talk, it would sound something like this:
→ "Well Mary Tim and Joe have all commented on Bob's post... Danny who usually engages is offline... hmm hey maybe John over here will like it, let's try him."

And so on, and so on.

Eventually, to actually "go viral" with your post, and I mean truly viral like it's seen by millions of people, it has to be confirmed by a human editor, who hits a "go viral" button on the LinkedIn end. I imagine the button isn't literally called that, but you get the idea. There's an editorial team discussing what content themes they want to have on their site, and they make posts that resonate with their goals, go viral.

Pro Tip: When content appears in someone's feed, it can generate different types of impressions: organic impressions occur when your content appears naturally, shared to close audiences and people who are likely to engage with you before; paid impressions result from sponsored content; and viral impressions happen when your content is shared widely and reaches new audiences that haven't seen your content much or at all before.

Play The Algorithm Game

Now that you know how Linkedin's algorithm works, you know that you need to:

→ Create content that your core network loves
→ But that your wider audience can also resonate with

And if you want to go viral?

→ You need to publish what just about anyone can enjoy
→ AND it needs to be on-target with LinkedIn's preferred editorial themes

But wait... hmm.

If that sounds a lot like watering down your content, and playing into the trend of fluffy, popular content that just about anyone can mash the "like" button on... you're right! That's the cost of playing the algorithm game to go viral every time: you water down your core message.

So, what's a creator to do?

We think that 95% of the time, you should try to go semi-viral. Create for your initial core network and your broader industry, but not for the 'general professional public' so to speak. <5% of the time? Play the trends. Knock yourself out. It's fun. Just don't expect to generate pipeline by writing a feel-good post about working from home and expect it to drive pipeline for you.

A Simple Guide To Increasing Reach

There are a lot of things to uncover, when it comes to improving your impressions on LinkedIn.

However, it mainly depends on 2 factors: the technical aspect of posting and your content strategy.

Technical Details

Best time to post: To determine the best time to post on LinkedIn to get the most impressions, you need to research your audience thoroughly. Understand what they do, how often they use their devices (mobiles and laptops), what their schedules are like, and when they’re likely to open LinkedIn. People like to scroll through LinkedIn during weekdays, right before getting seriously into work (a.k.a.during tea breaks and lunch breaks) and Friday mornings. We notice that, for North American professionals with a somewhat global audience, that these times tend to be the best to post:

The kind of connections you have: Your connections greatly impact your reach and impressions. Think about it - if you have lots of connections on your profile who hardly care for what you have to say, they’re most likely to skip your posts in their feed.

As a general rule of thumb, you must always add relevant connections to your profile, and routinely prune connections who are inactive or not part of your main ecosystem:

• People who are from your industry
• People you wish to work with
• Your target audience
• Your peers who do the same work as you
• Decision-makers you would like to impress with your content

Your consistency: Being consistent in posting pays off on LinkedIn - create a posting schedule and stick with it. Plan and batch-create your posts in advance and use a scheduling tool (such as Aware) to stay right on schedule. 

Your LinkedIn Profile: While we’re talking about increasing LinkedIn post impressions, your LinkedIn profile has a lot to do with the way your audience reacts when stumbling upon your posts. You see, people have 1000’s of connections in their LinkedIn profile - they might not remember every single person they’ve connected with. 

When they come across your post and find it interesting, it makes them keen to check out your profile. And your profile helps them form an impression about you and whether or not they would like to further engage with you or contact you for your services. 

• Upload a clear and simple headshot - do not leave the profile picture section blank - it’s a HUGE turnoff!
• Write a proper headline that showcases the work you do, your personality, and your mission statement.
• Talk about your professional journey in your About section and mention all your past experiences in your profile.

👉 Create and optimize a standout LinkedIn profile with our in-depth guide.

Liven Up Your LinkedIn Content Strategy

Content Pillars: It’s always a good idea to have your content pillars ready while strategizing content for your LinkedIn posts. They help you target different pain points of your audience and cater to different target audiences (if applicable). 

Create different content pillars for your LinkedIn posts, such as: 

• Behind-the-scenes content
• Educational content
• Strategic narrative content
• Motivational content
• Thought-leadership content by the founder

And so on!

👉 Learn how to build a winning LinkedIn content strategy!

Content Formats: Different content formats get different impressions and engagement on LinkedIn. Particularly, if you’ve been posting a specific kind of content for a while and still not seeing good results, it’s time for you to spruce up the content format. 

There are different content formats you can try:

• Text posts in the form of listicle or a narrative - something that’s intriguing to read and easy to follow.
• LinkedIn newsletters are another great way to repurpose your blog posts, social media posts, videos, etc, especially when you need more length to really unpack your ideas. Sometimes, a short post is too constricting!
• Polls generate curiosity around a topic, where you can ask people about their opinions, likes, dislikes, and preferences. 
• LinkedIn videos help you stand apart from the crowd and get noticed by your target audience quickly. You can make a video online and create an engaging LinkedIn presence.

• Image posts and carousels have a lasting impact on people. These are the kind of posts that urge people to save and share the content with their connections. By the way, we have a free carousel generator you can use if you like!
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• Posts that showcase your wins and achievements of any sort - pair these posts with a relevant photo, and you'll increase visibility on your post quite a bit.
  

• Short one-liners drive engagement like nothing else - just bring your personality to your posts, or bring out your funny side!
  

How To Increase Impressions By Boosting Your Content Performance

All of the following tips can’t guarantee your post to take off, but they are designed to help you achieve more LinkedIn impressions over time. Increasing LinkedIn impressions should be a key metric for anyone looking to grow their presence and boost visibility on the platform. These strategies will help you increase LinkedIn impressions and improve your content performance in the long haul.

Create Content That People Engage With

Engagement is important. Remember: You can have a lot of impressions but reach people who aren't relevant to your goals.

People only engage with posts that are valuable to them - either entertaining or educational. Post content that aligns with your content pillars and positively showcases your personal brand. 

For example: You might post a funny cat GIF. Does that help you with your personal brand/business? I doubt it.

How to write engaging content?

• Use active voice, write in a simple language that’s easy to skim through, and use short sentences to make your posts more readable.
• Experiment with different content types for your industry/ audience (text only, video, image, pdf...) and measure what works best for YOU.
• At the end of the post, ask a relevant question.
• Tag 1-3 connections in the post or comments to ask for their opinion. If they're influencers, even better! But, make sure these are people who ARE going to comment (if they don't, you'll get dinged a bit)

👉 Learn how to leverage LinkedIn storytelling to increase your popularity.

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Increase Your Post Dwell Time

Dwell time is the time a user spends on your post-viewing it, reading the comments etc. You want that time to be as long as possible.

Why?

Because it indicates LinkedIn that your content is relevant, so it rewards you with more potential reach.

How to increase the Dwell-time?

• Engage with the comments you receive - as quickly as possible. Avoid writing generic comments and replies - be more engaging, share valuable insights, ask open-ended questions, or compliment your audience.
• Experiment with writing a little longer content - share an engaging story with a moral that everyone can take something away from, share a concept that you have a lot of opinions about, share detailed case studies, etc.
• Use line breaks to make your content more readable and extend the scroll duration. Leverage bullet points, shorter paragraphs, emojis, and format sentences with bold and italics when possible.
• A video, PDF carousel, or an infographic might also increase the dwell time. Your objective is to grab the user's attention right at the beginning of a video/pdf to make them click through.
• Bonus tip: Images or infographics that are intentionally chock-full of information and hard to read at a glance, work very well for maximizing dwell time!

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Psst... Skip The Hashtags!

Hashtags used to help expand your organic reach and make your content reach your target audience. It used to be that the best way to add hashtags to your LinkedIn posts was to let LinkedIn suggest its top hashtags for a keyword. However, as of 2024 and beyond, this is no longer a factor in post reach.

Repurposing Content To Multiply Your Impressions

One of the smartest ways to increase your impressions on LinkedIn is by repurposing your existing content. Instead of always starting from scratch, take your best-performing blog posts, articles, or videos and adapt them into new LinkedIn posts, infographics, or even short video clips. This approach allows you to reach a wider audience by presenting your ideas in different formats that appeal to various types of LinkedIn users.

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Summary: How To Write Content That Generates Reach

In the end, it all comes down to two things:

• Did I write content appealing to my target audience?
• Have I made the effort to optimize my content technically?

When you can tick both boxes, chances are that your post will generate a fairly good amount of impressions.

But don't get fooled: even if you did write great content and made sure that you used the right hashtags, your post can disappear in the feed.

In this case, you can repost your content (Yep, that's possible), or you can repost it via one or more of your brand pages.

Write content that matters and make sure it's easy to interact with.

And if you want to multiply your results and accelerate your research process I recommend checking out our LinkedIn Analytics Tool for personal Profiles.