LinkedIn has recently changed its algorithm. Before this change, the playbook was simpler. Post consistently. Use a hook. Ask a question at the end. Repeat. And it worked (at least when I started building founder brands on LinkedIn more than four years ago.) Back then, consistency was almost enough on its own, because there weren't that many people posting seriously yet.

This has changed. Rather than relying on older signals like likes and comments, it uses a large-scale model to interpret content semantically (basically reading meaning, context, profile history, and inferred user preferences.)

The TL;DR: the formula for visibility shifted away from frequency and volume toward coherence, clarity, topic relevance, and genuine value. Generic engagement bait became significantly less effective.

And I'm still recalibrating.

9 likes. 7 comments, those were the results of this post I made 👇

In isolation, that sounds fine. But comments without likes is a specific signal - it means the content made people react without endorsing it. The post intended to start a conversation and did manage to do that. Perhaps there needed to be more for people to like.

Since then, I have been experimenting (a lot) most of my posts have tanked, but some have done quite well. This, layered on top of repositioning Spryngbase (more than once), has made for a complicated few months.

I also tested a radical, totally out-of-character post: think classic ragebait, built around a topical ChatGPT controversy.

It got the conversation going. A big catch was that the engagement wasn't from my target audience at all. It was mostly from people who felt negatively about AI. Basically not the people I'm trying to reach.

Lesson: Ragebait can generate engagement from entirely the wrong room.

I want to name three creators I pay attention to mainly because they understand what it means to show up for their audience on LinkedIn.

Jess Cook writes about her experiences heading marketing for a young company (Vector.) From hiring decisions to experiments with content formats to being transparent about results they got. She engages her audience and makes them feel like they are a part of the company.

Lesson: If you are a founder building-in-public, there is a lot you can take away from her and Joshua Perk's (CEO of Vector) playbook.

Nikola helps founders build brands on LinkedIn, constantly varies her content, a lot of it is flashy and out there (including the creative use of LinkedIn banning her account) but it is engaging and grabs your attention.​

Monica Abrams is building a community for women in AI. She exudes warmth and celebrates community members, giving build-in-public a whole new angle.

What they share: clarity, a defined perspective, and the willingness to say when something isn't working.

That brings me to the three things I still believe hold, even under the new algo.

Consistency: not the post-daily-at-all-costs kind, but showing up with a coherent identity over time. The algo now rewards signals that align. Scattered topics produce scattered reach.

Clarity: being specific about who you are and what you're for. I find it easier to do this for clients than for myself.

Communication: and this is the part a lot of people skip - honest communication. There is sometimes a gap between what I'm observing and what I'm saying out loud, particularly when I'm trying to create posts that favor the algorithm. I always try to prioritize authenticity over performativeness. But "trying to" is not the same as doing it.

I'm mid-transition from an old career to new path. My audience is being built from the ground up, in real time and I have given myself until June to figure this out and build a LinkedIn presence that actually works for the people I want to reach.

I have grown LinkedIn accounts from 2000+ followers to 8000+ and with others I have helped double engagement and reach. However, in the last 5 years I have not focused on building a significant LinkedIn presence for myself. So I have decided to change it this year.

The algorithm changed. So did the game. But most of the people complaining loudest about the new algo were the ones playing the old game.

So if you are someone who wants to build a personal brand on LinkedIn you have three real options:

Option 1: Continue the same way. The obvious risk is that it won't work.

Option 2: Run structured experiments on LinkedIn, drawing from the best resources and tracking what actually moves the needle — not vanity metrics, real ones.

Option 3: Hire a LinkedIn content strategist who will experiment for me. (And yes, if you're a founder or operator who'd rather outsource this entirely, that's exactly the kind of thing I help with. Reach out to me on LinkedIn.)

The deeper shift isn't technical. It's that the platform now rewards the thing that was always supposed to matter: a clear voice, a consistent perspective, and the willingness to actually say something.

I'm still working on that for myself. I know what it looks like. I've built it for other people.

Now I'm building it for me.

Grow-th Architect is where I (Shreya Vaidya) think out loud about brand-building, positioning, and the slow work underneath the visible stuff. If this resonated, subscribe, or share it with someone who needs to hear it.