Digital marketing: LinkedIn has had a glow-up – could it finally be useful?

If done correctly, LinkedIn could now be playing a significant part in your company's digital marketing strategy – Katrina Bell explains how.

Signs are that the mostly B2B platform LinkedIn is undergoing a substantial gear-change, which could herald something best described as an algorithmic glow-up. Those changes could also have an impact on the platform’s value to your marketing efforts.

The recent 2025 ICYMI Predictions report saw marketers choose LinkedIn after Instagram as the second most likely target for their attention. Admittedly Instagram was a 49.4% win as opposed to LinkedIn’s 17.1%, but it’s still a significant gain.

The major changes boil down to the following…

1 - LinkedIn is proactively clamping down on suspicious activity, including what the platform describes as ‘engagement baiting’. Posts that use self-styled hacks such as the comment playbook, where users will promise a PDF for a comment.

Another popular activity is known as engagement pods, where a group agrees to like and comment on each other’s posts. All will see a decline in visibility. In addition, suspected AI-generated comments will come under increased scrutiny and get you on the naughty step.

2 - Chrome automation browser extensions such as those you might be using to send out DMs or lead generation are gradually being turned off. LinkedIn wants to engender a realistic and human element rather than let ‘hacks’ and technical workarounds take over any further. This is another opportunity to leverage in-house knowledge. You will experience a definite drop in each if you keep using them, so it’s worth getting out of the habit sooner rather than later.

3 - There have been suggestions that LinkedIn is the only social platform ChatGPT can completely scrape – the AI is a large language model, which means it trains itself by gathering up every piece of Internet information it can find.

4 - The truer answer seems to be that LinkedIn is comparatively open to AI information-gathering. That does mean that all the rules about writing for AI search results are highly relevant on LinkedIn. Those first 2 sentences are AI SEO gold, as is having one strong message, short paragraphs (also essential for human viewers) and identifiable sources where necessary.

5 - As competition for attention grows, you will have to raise the bar on your content quality. Because LinkedIn is pushing its Thought Leadership Ads as a source of revenue, impressions are getting harder to get. 

You may have noticed a lull where you normally get a quick rush of views on new content. An intended effect will be an eventual slowing of click-baity content in favour of genuine expert insight, something that is often in short supply on the platform. 

For brands this means being much more mindful of headlines, imagery and introductions as well as layering your in-house experts with multiple accounts at the same company. While a founder has undoubted sway and experience, so does a chief designer, showroom manager and junior staff, all of whom can have a voice on the platform.

This approach will only work, however, if the subject is posting from an authentic position – copy and paste corporate blurb will not win any fans and your impressions will still be flat. Think of it as ‘How I operate in my area of expertise’ rather than ‘How we operate in our area of expertise’.