LinkedIn organic reach refers to the number of people who see your content in their feed without paid promotion. It measures how many LinkedIn users come across your posts naturally through their connections and activity on the platform. Maximizing your organic reach is an important goal for building awareness of your brand, promoting content, and generating engagement with your target audience.
What is organic reach on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn organic reach is the total number of unique LinkedIn members who see your content in their feed or on your Company Page or Showcase Page. It includes users who encounter your posts through normal browsing of their feed and content recommendations from LinkedIn’s algorithm.
Organic reach is driven by factors like the size of your network, how often you post, types of content, relevance to your audience, and overall engagement on the platform. It excludes any views or engagement gained through paid distribution methods like LinkedIn ads or sponsored content.
In contrast to organic reach, paid reach on LinkedIn refers to views and engagement from boosted posts, sponsored content, Text Ads, Sponsored InMail, and other advertising formats. While paid promotion can expand the reach of your content, focusing on organic reach ensures you’re building an audience sustainably over time.
Why is LinkedIn organic reach important?
There are several key reasons why growing your organic reach on LinkedIn should be a priority:
- Increases awareness for your brand and content
- Enables you to reach your ideal audience organically
- Builds credibility as an influencer on LinkedIn
- Promotes engagement and relationship-building with your network
- Saves money compared to paid distribution methods
- Puts your best content in front of engaged professionals
The more people you can reach organically, the greater the opportunity to generate clicks, shares, comments, and new followers. This helps strengthen your brand presence and authority on the platform over time.
How is LinkedIn organic reach calculated?
LinkedIn organic reach is calculated by the total number of unique LinkedIn members who viewed your content in their feed. Some key things to know:
- Reach is counted at the member level, so the same person viewing your post multiple times still counts as 1 reach.
- Only members who actually saw your post in their feed are included in the reach count. Impressions refer to how many times your content was displayed, while reach counts distinct views.
- Reach includes followers and non-followers who viewed your post organically through their feed or content recommendations.
- Each post has its own reach number based on how widely it was organically distributed on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn provides reach data in your Company Page analytics. You can also view reach for specific posts. Comparing your follower count to organic reach helps give a sense for how well your content spreads beyond just your direct followers.
How to increase organic reach on LinkedIn
There are several proven tactics to expand the organic reach of your LinkedIn posts:
Publish Valuable Content Frequently
Posting more consistently helps put your content in front of your audience and signals to LinkedIn’s algorithm that your posts are engaging. Aim to publish 1-2 times per day in order to increase organic reach.
Leverage LinkedIn’s Algorithm
LinkedIn’s algorithm favors content that generates engagement and interaction. Responding to comments and likes helps boost future reach. Asking questions and encouraging shares also improves distribution.
Optimize for the LinkedIn Feed
Tailor content specifically for the LinkedIn audience and feed. Use snippets, hashtags, rich media, and other optimization tactics to make your posts stand out.
Engage With Other Content
Commenting and liking content from others increases your visibility and helps content get distributed to your network. Being an active member of the community pays off.
Connect With More LinkedIn Members
Growing your network expands the potential audience for your content. Connect with those in your industry, engage your existing contacts, and foster quality relationships.
Post at Strategic Times
Pay attention to when your audience is most active on LinkedIn and schedule content accordingly. Morning and midday tend to see higher engagement.
Retarget Cold Audiences
If your content didn’t resonate with a particular audience, try resharing it a few weeks later. Timing and relevance factor into reach.
Promote Content Off LinkedIn
Sharing your LinkedIn posts on other social channels helps drive traffic back to the platform. Encourage followers to further distribute content.
Best practices for optimizing organic reach
To maximize the organic visibility of your LinkedIn posts, keep these best practices in mind:
- Craft attention-grabbing headlines using emotional triggers or curiosity gaps.
- Personalize posts for the LinkedIn professional audience with relevant insights.
- Use LinkedIn post templates tailored for the platform like quotes, polls, or videos.
- Include images, infographics, slides, or videos in your posts for greater visibility.
- Write longer-form posts with actionable takeaways for the LinkedIn community.
- Engage with your posts by responding to every comment and thanking people for likes.
- Ask questions to encourage discussion and tap into LinkedIn Groups related to your industry.
- Analyze competitor content that goes viral so you can emulate their success.
- Repurpose top-performing content, especially evergreen posts that build long-term value.
- Check LinkedIn analytics to identify your best times to post and top-performing content.
How organic reach compares to paid reach
Both organic and paid distribution play an important role in content marketing on LinkedIn. Here’s an overview of how they compare:
Organic Reach
- Free distribution from LinkedIn’s platform
- Earned through valuable content and engagement
- Builds brand awareness and authority over time
- Harder to control exact targeting and scale
- Metrics like clicks and shares signal quality content
Paid Reach
- Distribution by paying LinkedIn for exposure
- Expanded reach by targeting specific demographics
- Faster way to get content in front of audiences
- More budget required but flexible spending options
- Metrics like impressions, CTR, and cost per click
A balanced approach using both organic and paid distribution tends to work best. Paid promotion can help give an added boost to quality content while organic reach builds up over time.
Typical organic reach benchmarks on LinkedIn
How does your current organic reach on LinkedIn compare? Here are some typical benchmarks:
- Company Pages: 100 followers = ~250-500 organic reach per post
- Company Pages: 500 followers = ~750-1,500+ organic reach per post
- Company Pages: 1,000+ followers = ~2,000-5,000+ organic reach per post
- Individual accounts: 500+ connections = ~300-800+ organic reach per post
- Individual accounts: 2,000+ connections = ~800-2,000+ organic reach per post
- Creator accounts: 10,000+ followers = ~8,000-15,000+ organic reach per post
These benchmarks can vary greatly based on your content, industry, engagement levels, and other factors. Monitoring your own typical organic reach will give you data specific to your LinkedIn presence.
Tips for tracking and improving your organic reach
Consistently analyzing your organic reach is key for making data-driven improvements over time. Here are some tips:
- Check follower growth, post reach, and engagement rates weekly using LinkedIn metrics.
- Compare reach between different types of posts like long-form articles vs short snippets.
- See which topics, headlines, and posting times generate the highest reach.
- Set goals for gradual reach increases month over month or quarter over quarter.
- Measure the impact of initiatives aimed to boost organic reach.
- Watch how current events and seasonal trends influence your content performance.
- Audit competitors to see what content resonates most with your shared audience.
- Continuously test new optimization tactics and analyze the results.
By regularly tracking key organic reach metrics, you’ll gain visibility into what’s working so you can do more of it. This helps strengthen your presence on LinkedIn over time.
Conclusion
Growing your organic reach is a proven way to connect with more of your ideal audience on LinkedIn without paid media spend. By publishing high-quality content optimized for the platform and fostering engagement, you can increase visibility and establish credibility with professionals in your industry.
Analyze your current organic reach benchmarks and look for opportunities to boost it through more frequent posting, thoughtful content creation, and relationship-building on LinkedIn. A data-driven, organic approach will serve your brand well in the long run.