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LinkedIn has once again changed the way it ranks and serves up content to users. Here, The Scott Partnership examines how and why the algorithms have changed, and how labs can adjust their approach to stay one step ahead.
As LinkedIn’s new AI-powered ranking system, 360Brew, changes the way that LinkedIn shows content, labs and businesses must adjust their LinkedIn strategy to stay visible. Encouraging employee interaction, changing post formats, and ensuring consistent messaging across your ‘about’ page and posting are all key to avoiding suppression of your organic posts.
What’s changing on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn algorithms are constantly evolving to serve up content that users will find most appealing. LinkedIn recently introduced an AI-powered ranking system called 360Brew, which has caused a shift in the way LinkedIn’s algorithms work.
Rather than assessing and ranking a post based on its content and response in isolation, 360Brew now ranks posts based on how well they align with the rest of your content; how well they align with your ‘about’ section’; and also what format your post takes (with certain formats being suppressed and others being amplified).
How does this impact my lab’s page?
If your lab has been set up as a company page, these changes to the algorithm will massively impact your visibility on LinkedIn. This is because the type of account / post you are making will dictate how much space is allocated to your post in the average feed, as van der Blom’s InSights reports:
- 31% to top creator content
- 28% to promoted company content
- 11% to LinkedIn ads
- And just 2% to organic company content
If your lab is competing with every other lab and all company pages for just 2% of the feed space whenever you post, the impact is clear: fewer impressions, less engagement, and overall less visibility.
How does 360Brew rank content?
360Brew ranks your page on a few different factors:
- Profile: content alignment: your page’s ‘About’ section and posting history should match the content you post now. If 360Brew picks up topic changes and inconsistency, it will reduce your visibility.
- Post consistency: 360Brew looks for consistent posting over 60 days across related topics before recognising a page as a topic authority. Infrequent posting and mixing topics means content will be actively suppressed rather than simply not amplified.
- Number of saves: saving a post has a much bigger impact than liking/reacting or reposting.
- Comment quality: comments with 10+ words that result in conversational threads under a post have a much bigger impact that shorter comments that don’t open up a discussion.
- ‘Golden hour’ interaction: 360Brews early distribution signal picks up posts that have engagement in the first 60 minutes – and especially the first 15 after posting.
- External link usage: LinkedIn’s priority is keeping users in the platform, so if 360Brew detects an external link in the body of a post, it will actively suppress it – even to your page followers.
LinkedIn algorithm changes example – why post format is now crucial
One area where we’re already seeing the impact of the algorithms is how it’s affecting different post formats.
Where the previous LinkedIn model favoured single image posts, 360Brew is amplifying specific post formats in different ways.
Document and PDF posts remain the highest engagement driver of any format on LinkedIn, and video continues to grow in the platform – particularly short-form videos that are less than 30 seconds.
The most significant change is how LinkedIn now treats text-only posts vs single-image posts. Where the previous algorithms favoured single image, which led to many labs using single stock image photos of lab settings, this format of post now vastly underperforms text-only posts by roughly 30% – a complete pivot from previous years. As such, pure text posts are growing in popularity, as these are more likely to be amplified while single image posts are increasingly suppressed.
If you want to use an image, it is best to build a carousel with multiple images: since one image only will underperform other post formats.
What should a lab’s LinkedIn strategy look like in 2026?
- Roll out a follower strategy: your content is served up to new followers at the top of their feed for a brief period after they follow your page. Regular posts + robust follower strategy = higher impressions. Unfortunately, organic following is down because of company posts being so limited, so contact us to discuss how to proactively increase your followers using the available LinkedIn tools.
- Ditch single stock image posts: vary your post formats to see which resonate more with your audience. Short-videos or PDF carousels that summarise recent research highlights, or multi-photo posts of the lab team at work are all more likely to be amplified than posts with a single stock image.
- Keep links in the comments: avoid suppression by changing your CTA to ‘link in the comments’ and adding the link as a comment, rather than including it in the body of the text where 360Brew can detect it.
- Post regularly and consistently: focus on the same 2-3 topics, and post between 2-5 times per week for at least 60 days so the algorithm can acclimate and begin to position your page as a topic authority.
- Encourage employee advocacy: 360Brew prioritises individuals over companies, so encourage your lab staff to comment, like, and save posts, and repost to their own networks to maximise reach. As the algorithm now favours ‘creators’, using strong voices within your organisation to communicate for the lab, to engage with all your company posts, and to tag the company in their own posts will maximise visibility. Doing this within the first 15-60 minutes after posting is especially useful to achieve that ‘golden hour’ impact.
- Be mindful of tags: Tagging relevant companies and including hashtags is still important to visibility – however, tagging more than 5 accounts and including excessive or irrelevant hashtags can have the opposite effect, so ensure you only tag up to 5 x individuals and companies who will engage with and like your posts.
Staying ahead of ever-changing algorithms can be a monumental task for labs, especially when that time could be better spent on science. Enlisting a scientific marketing agency can alleviate this, helping to keep your lab visible while your lab teams can focus more the science that matters.
The Scott Partnership supports labs globally every day with scientific marketing strategies, from LinkedIn organic and paid to website management and more. Visit our website and contact us to learn more.
Glossary
360Brew: LinkedIn’s new unified AI ranking model
Follower strategy: Using LinkedIn credits to grow followers, to expand a company page’s audience
Golden hour: The first hour after a post goes up on LinkedIn, where meaningful interactions such as comments, saves, and reposts have the biggest impact
Post format: The different types of posts that LinkedIn allows – these include text-only, video, document (PDF), single- and multi-image, and polls.
