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The 2026 LinkedIn Algorithm (Quick Hit) · Mortgage Marketing Radio

• 0:00
  This is Jeff Zimper and I'm back for another quick hit podcast and today I'm going to be
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  bringing you some key takeaways from the state of the LinkedIn algorithm for 2026.
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  If you're going after business professionals, self-employed people or whatnot,
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  LinkedIn is a place that makes sense. So I want to share this with you and then before we wrap
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  up, I'm going to share with you a couple of wins the week from some of the loan officers in our
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  community over at my age and classes and how they are winning agent relationships and referrals.
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  By leveraging a one-to-many approach, I spend a fair amount of time in a digging into data.
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  And one of them is a LinkedIn study benchmarks, trends, and performance data from Metra Cool.
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  And then the other one is from Chris Connelly. He's got over a million followers on LinkedIn
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  and is a very successful business person and he's not in the most business at all. But again,
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  one of those good people to learn from. Metra Cool, I believe, looked at roughly 60,000 posts
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  and Chris Connelly and his team looked at over 200,000 posts. And so each has their own separate
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  and sometimes conflicting data. This isn't supported or backed by LinkedIn. I'm just going to quickly
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  go through this because you might find some of this interesting. So let me start with the biggest
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  kind of controversy that exists out there. And that is, should you post links in LinkedIn posts?
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  The answer is it depends. So Metra Cool, according to their data, say that links drop reach
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  on personal profiles by 27% on impressions and 20% by interactions. Oh, by the way, the other,
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  the company that's actually teamed up with Chris Connelly to do this LinkedIn research data is called
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  say what? Say what is also a posting platform exclusively for LinkedIn. So that's where this data
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  comes from. Say what says that links raise reach plus 43% for one to three links and plus 210%
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  for link heavy posts. So what's the truth? A link in and of itself doesn't necessarily carry a fixed
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  penalty. It amplifies whatever the post already is. So if you are just doing a bare bones link
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  that's applying now, right? The link syncs a thin irrelevant useless post a link to a generally
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  useful resource. The argument is made by say what is that that lifts a strong post. Now here's
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  some additional context for you on this. These posts that from say what were across 50 different
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  industries. So here's the argument of why links still win is because their resources that people
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  actually want. Once again, assuming that you're linking to resources that are what people want and
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  they're not like just a blatant sales picture or whatever, right? Then it is considered high value
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  content. Remember, LinkedIn prioritizes engagement. So valuable content wins despite links. So here's
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  an example for a loan officer, right? A link might be to a 2026 first time home buyer cost breakdown,
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  okay? That has some value. As I said, moment ago, the apply now, right? Or otherwise empty post
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  doesn't. So think about that. The reality is most people are not posting high quality content,
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  not just suddenly tamed, but other other places as well and link or not. That is why it suffers.
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  Now, let's talk about going the most likely formats to go viral are videos, infographics,
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  and carousels. And by the way, just because it goes viral doesn't mean it's the same for conversion
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  depends on what your goal is, right? So an interesting side note is that viral vertical videos don't
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  typically result in much follower growth. So people may see your video, but that doesn't mean they're
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  going to follow you, right? So, and then there's quotes. Everyone posts quotes, few go viral,
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  right? Now regarding carousels, what helps carousels go viral are carousels that tell stories.
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  Old carousels were listicles, right? Now what they are is they're educating with pictures,
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  contrast, and stories, right? So obviously people love stories and you can never go wrong with
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  educating. So video, of course, does go viral. Like I said, however, the ones that go viral
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  are typically feel good stories and don't even include the person who's posting them. They don't
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  really build a personal brand. Interesting data from say what says that horizontal videos perform
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  a 36% better than vertical video. How could that be? People use LinkedIn at work and a content
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  quality trumps format orientation, but pick the format that's easiest for you. Test it yourself,
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  but don't assume vertical is better. So what gets the most reach carousels are the safe bet five
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  times greater than images, okay? With a 4x increase in reach versus text posts, only text posts,
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  right? So carousels are great for getting reach. Infographics come in at about second,
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  but they actually go viral more often. Okay, so how long should your posts be? Once again,
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  I'm pulling this from say what long post perform best to 150 that's 3000 characters. They perform
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  31% better than short posts. And again, this assumes that you've got good quality content in there.
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  That doesn't mean you can ramble, right? So why is this happening? Well, trust is that at all time
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  low, people want depth and connection, not fluff authenticity beats polished longer posts show real
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  thought thoughts, vulnerability and mistakes. This is again, where you showcase your real human,
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  you've made mistakes, share those stories, but you've got to spend some time, right? Putting and
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  crafting your post together, conversational writing will win. This the key is sounding exactly what
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  like, you know, when you see that person on video, the same phrases, the same energy and voice.
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  That's why it's important. If you're going to leverage AI to help you brainstorm or conceptualize,
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  not right for you, but help you at least come up with some of the frameworks for some of your
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  content on social media. You've got to train the AI on your voice, your brand voice. Shout out Katie
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  Shive. If you're listening, she's one of the best in the industry that does that. She's got a
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  whole process to take you through about building your personal brand book. She's been the guest
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  host of my podcast multiple times. Katie Shive, K, A, T, K, A, T, I, E, S, H, I, V, E,
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  calm, look her up. Hey, here's a quick side note on blocks of text. Do not do huge blocks of text.
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  Sounds obvious, but some people still do. People won't read them, right? Posts with fewer than
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  seven paragraphs performed 71% worse than posts with greater than 14 paragraphs. What does that mean?
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  It means people are spacing out the text when it's written text format to give people white space
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  to be able to read and allow the eye to flow. Does that make sense? And of course, avoid complicated
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  language. Long words, lower engagement. One of the ways you can leverage AI is to take the
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  post that you've got written once again, making sure you have a hand in writing it. And
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  put that into chatchipsy or Claude and say, please rewrite this at a seventh or eighth grade reading level.
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  Now, what about questions? Should I put questions in my post posts ending with questions
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  performed slightly worse? Why it's not working like a one but was before? Because everyone asks
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  generic questions now. Let's pin your biggest career mistake, right? Like that's vague. And,
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  you know, people have to spend some time thinking about that users are tired of fake conversation
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  starters and they can sniff them out probably because they've been burned before, right? What works
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  now? Specific questions. Genuine. For example, I'm heading to a conference, right? Maybe it's a
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  conference in your industry. Hey, I'm heading to the ice conference to the digital mortgage conference
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  too. Whatever, right? Ask a question that's relevant to that. Who's one of the vendors that I
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  definitely must see? Hey, who here's a list of speakers? Who's a speaker that I definitely should
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  sit in on? Right? Do emojis help my posts? And the data is the same on this from both sources.
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  Posts with emojis perform better than posts with amount without emojis significantly better. Why?
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  They had color to posts linked in text is all gray making posts more likely to stop the scroll
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  with emojis. They help break up text and they draw attention to key points but avoid emojis that
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  are often used by AI models such as the rocket ship, right? Don't overuse them though. That can
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  you look unprofessional. You use them to highlight key points specific examples, right? They're there
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  to draw attention to the actions that you the writer want that you the reader to take. Follow share,
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  save, sign up for newsletter, right? Use them sparingly get more emphasis on your call to action.
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  Our hashtags helping on LinkedIn. Well, again, similar data here from both sources posts with
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  greater than three hashtags perform 70% worse than posts with none. LinkedIn's algorithm already
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  defines relevant keywords in your post content, experienced creators recognize this and have avoided
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  hashtags newer creators with typically worse performing content tend to overuse the hashtags.
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  That could explain the performance gap now. What what day should you post? Well, you can look at
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  your data in your LinkedIn analytics to check that. But there's a weekend advantage actually according
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  to this data from say what post on Sunday and Saturday get higher reach than weekdays and as far
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  as weakest day, there is no clear bad day to post. But interestingly enough, people have a little bit
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  more free time on weekends, right? So versus being in the office and busy at work. So what are they doing?
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  They're checking their phone and their social media on the weekends when they got some more time.
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  So think about that. Now, here's a really important one. Top creators comment a lot more
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  top the top 1% of creators reply 741% more 286 replies a week versus 34 for average content creators.
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  Now that number skewed based on comments and how many how much engagement you're getting, right? So
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  just take your engagement. The real question is, are you replying at all? As a matter of fact,
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  one of the best practices is this for you to before you post your content engage on other people's
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  content because you're kind of priming right in LinkedIn and priming the algorithm and remember
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  the people who follow you your content is going to show up. And so a recency of commenting will
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  help keep that top of mind. So why does this work? Well, by the way, first of all, more comments
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  equals faster growth and it works because comments build relationships, but quality matters.
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  I'm so tired of seeing great posts. Right. This is a comment. Great post. You know, one word post,
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  emoji comments, things like that. Guys, strategic commenting in your niche compounds growth.
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  Take the time. Take a few minutes to give a thoughtful, relevant comment, not a generic. Wow,
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  thanks a lot for that generic week comment that anybody could post. All right. Let's talk about
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  lead magnets. I'm going to be experimenting with lead magnets coming up soon, but so the old
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  winning lead magnet formats were playbooks, one pageers, you know, kind of walkthroughs and they do
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  still work. But what appears to be crushing right now is GPTs are top of the performing lead
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  magnets unlinked in for small accounts. So a GPT, what do I mean? I mean, a custom GPT.
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  If you don't know what that is, a custom GPT is simply purpose built to achieve and perform
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  a certain task. I've built a half a dozen of them. We work, we use those a lot in my community
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  of loan officers. We share them obviously with LOs, but we also have purpose driven purpose
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  built custom GPTs that our loan officer share with real estate agents. What would be an example
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  of some of those? Some glad I'm glad you asked. One of them is a seller credits listing booster
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  custom GPT. It helps agents turn every seller credit into a high converting marketing campaign.
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  Another one is the seller seminar playbook for realtors. This is helping realtors co-host
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  educational events to tend to be over 50 years old, understand their selling and financing options,
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  and attract more listings. It's already the used toolkit to host high impact events, build your
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  brand, generate seller leads. What else? We have open house expert custom GPT, the next gen buyer,
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  custom GPT, the YouTube custom GPT. The Google business profile optimization cup to custom GPT.
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  Those are tools that are free to use. What's cool is you can share those with agents, with
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  peripheral partners, with consumers. I know some of you listening have probably created a few,
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  and if you haven't, start doing the research on how to create those. You can drive leads with
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  your lead magnet. Unlike them, maybe you're going to have to financial advisors or something like that
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  or divorce attorneys or CPAs, real estate agents as well. They do have profiles just matter of
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  do they have and are they actually going there? It's got to be something valuable. It becomes a
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  hook that you offer on your post, LinkedIn posts. Obviously, these workouts were as well,
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  including Instagram. You could repurpose this idea or strategy over Instagram. What you do
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  is just say, hey, comment or DM me right for a link to the thing. How long does a post live?
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  Now a post can obviously get picked up and continue to grow over time. According to this data
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  from Metricool, half of a post's lifetime impressions land in the first two days.
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  For personal profiles, 40% of all interactions happen on day one. That's why it's important to
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  publish at the right times, right? At the windows of where the post has its greatest chance
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  of building momentum. The most crowded slot time on LinkedIn, 9am to 12am. Okay, so that's my
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  quick rip on some of that LinkedIn data. If you guys like this kind of content,
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  let me know. Message me if you're listening on Spotify. Leave a comment or question. If you want
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  more of this kind of data, I can definitely cover it and even share some of these resources with
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  you guys as links so you can dive deep into the data yourself. Before we go, real quick,
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  listen, are you in a situation where you are tired of chasing agents? You're tired of being treated
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  like a vendor and you want to understand how to move through the referral gap. Because there's
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  a thing that exists called the referral gap, which is too many loan officers are seen as the
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  solicitor and vendor because they're leading with every, you know, whatever else leading with,
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  which is product and price, right? And so what you want to do is shift away from leading with
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  product and price and pitching and you want to be seen as a partner and appear. How do you do that?
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  How do you leapfrog bottom tier and go to the middle and top tier? How do you fill the referral gap?
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  You lead with value and education. You help build your self problems. The primary way that I've
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  been helping loan officers for a decade do that is by leading with educational content and classes
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  in your local market, becoming five mile famous, building your personal brand.
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  And I just wanted to share with you, as I always like to share a couple of shout outs for our
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  members who are doing the work and getting results. Here's Tiffany Saxon. What's up Tiffany? She
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  taught the AI search blueprint class a few weeks ago and it is still attracting agents to reach out
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  to her and wanting to center business. She shared in our group a copy of an Instagram DM. She got
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  the agent said that she wasn't able to attend the AI series that taught, but she would love to
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  send her future clients. By the way, Tiffany had never worked with this real estate agent before.
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  She didn't chase her. She didn't make, you know, do the awkward coffee. This agent reached out to
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  her after the fact. Here's my man Armando, who actually won our win of the week weekly gift card
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  giveaway. He was also teaching one of our AI classes, which by the way are very simple to teach
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  once you follow our proven system and process to become a facilitator. You are the messenger.
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  You're not the subject matter expert. But for Armando, Armando thought that class and he was able
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  to have real conversations met two new agents booked a one-on-one and reconnected with an agent
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  who hadn't seen in quite a while. And on top of that, three agents who couldn't make the class
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  want him to come present the classes at their offices. Once again, no chasing, no awkward coffee
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  meetings. So small crowd, big connections, real momentum. If you've ever heard the phrase that
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  little hinges swing big doors, that's exactly what's happening there. I got one more for you. This
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  is from a man, a Zenon who's in Hawaii. What's up Zenon? Good to see a man. So Zen has only been
• 15:23
  alone for several about a year. And so he's obviously in ramp up mode and right doing all the things
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  he can. And so he really got after it and put in the work. And he taught several of our classes
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  through the cohort that cohort that we do. And so of the attendees that he recently had, one of them
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  was a past president of the Realtor Association and a high end realtor who had been avoiding Zenon
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  for over a year. Zenon also had a couple second time attendees show up for his class. What does that
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  say? People come back for a second time. They saw value and they want to learn more now soon after
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  Zenon gave his most recent presentation. He was invited to give that same presentation to another
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  office, which he did. And from the presentations, he's done. He's got several new close relationships
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  with good performing agents. He's been able to follow up with all the attendees and included them
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  on his follow up drip sequence emails. This is opened up a dialogue with the past president who
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  had previously been emailing. Zenon got his foot in the door with a new office three to four top
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  producing agents that he's now engaged with. And the cool thing that I love that he says here at the end
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  is this isn't so much about giving presentations to groups, right? Even though that's valuable.
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  It's really been about laying the foundation for an amazing outreach option, which has been
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  opening doors that Zenon didn't have open to him before. What was he doing before? The hustle,
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  the grind, the chasing. And now he's reversed that and he's got new relationships with productive
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  agents. And as he says, I'm confident the deals will come with time. Now we have lots of people who
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  are getting deals and closing business, whether that's my man Kevin Dwyer, who his first class got
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  a $700,000 loan within the next 12 months. He added $20 million additional fundings to his business.
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  Now, if this sounds of interest to you and you want to be part of our next cohort, so we're not
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  launching the next cohort until September. But if you want to get on the list because it fills up
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  fast, I need you to reach out to me and just DM me once again, if you're listening on Spotify,
• 17:18
  you can leave a comment there and I'll see that comment. I will have my announcement that I've
• 17:22
  been brewing for some time about the shift we're making in this podcast in my business and so forth.
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  I just want to have everything ready to go for that. So that's it for now. Thanks for listening,
• 17:31
  guys. Appreciate you and we'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.