How to Dominate the New LinkedIn Algorithm in 19 Minutes

LinkedIn reach is completely different

to how it was even six months ago. And

this is a new era of LinkedIn. Most

people are still using the same old

tactics that worked last year. They're

creating the same posts using the same

strategies and are confused why their

posts are only getting a fraction of the

reach that they used to. So today, I

want to introduce you to a new strategy

that's working for me in 2026 that you

should take away. Why should you listen

to me about LinkedIn? My name is Chris

Donley and I have built three eight

figureure businesses previously and I've

grown my own following to 1.2 million

followers on LinkedIn. I've put this

into a step-by-step guide for you that

you can take away and start winning on

LinkedIn in 2026. I'm going to break

down exactly what is happening on

LinkedIn. Look at the key changes and

then the seven biggest tactical moves

that you can make to focus on growing

your profile. Okay, so before we get

started, I want you to think about what

you see on LinkedIn. It is full of

carousels. that's full of infographics.

And you might be thinking why? So that

brings me to my first point which is the

LinkedIn algorithm. So last year anyone

could post anything. They could post a

quote, a billboard, some generic

business advice and get thousands of

likes. And that has all changed now. So

LinkedIn has replaced its entire ranking

system for content with a single AI

algorithm called 360 Brew. It is a

language model which is completely

different from before that reads and

understands your content semantically.

So this old system explicitly needed you

to follow someone or engage with

something to be able to show you

content. Importantly, the new system

cares about relevance. The algorithm now

checks that the content that you have

matches the individual profile

experience. So profile optimization is

even more essential than before. So what

does that mean? It means gone are the

days that you can post anything. The

second thing about the algorithm which

has changed is a focus on your content

type. So 80% of your content should now

fall within three core topics. So let me

give you an example. If you are a

marketeteer, you should focus your

content specifically around three core

areas. And that might be digital

marketing, out ofome marketing, and then

B2B sales. But you really do not want to

be posting content for the sake of likes

outside of your core area because it

doesn't work anymore. And even more so

than that, the algorithm is now

specifically giving three to five times

more processing attention to the first

one or two sentences of your profile.

Meaning that your hooks are even more

valuable than they ever were before. So

the first most important lesson there is

that you really need to work on your

hooks and ensure that your hooks are

directional, that they are about your

topic and your area of expertise. And

the second really important lesson

that's come out from the recent

algorithm update is that LinkedIn is now

prioritizing saves of posts. So

importantly, your takeaway is you need

to create content that is useful, it is

valuable, and is educational to your

audience about your topic. So the final

key shift has been the depth and about

being human. The algorithm now factors

in more depth than anything else. So

both your content, but also specifically

your comments. meaning long gone are the

days where people should be trying to

get thousands of comments on their post

saying great post or good work or even

using some terrible AI automation tools.

So, the second most important thing that

you need to focus on to dominate

LinkedIn in 2026 is how to optimize your

profile so that the machine can read it

perfectly and that your audience can

understand exactly what you do, which is

your profile optimization and ensuring

that your profile is becoming a landing

page for your target customer. So, first

things first, who are you making content

for? Who is your ICP? ICP being your

ideal customer profile. So, what is it

that you sell? Do you sell accounting

services? Do you sell marketing

services? Are you selling a SAS

software? Be really specific. And number

two is what pain point do you fix? The

idea here is to get really specific. For

example, I'm an agency coach that helps

agencies build more profitable

businesses or I'm a marketing manager

that helps brands make more profitable

campaigns. So, what is your ICP

interested in? And this is critical.

Your content needs to match their

interests. So if you are an accountant

that is targeting business owners and

you want to get them to read your

content, you have to be creating content

on tax, on strategy, on cash flow

management, you know, reduction of

liabilities. If you're a marketing

manager, then the content needs to be

campaigns. It needs to be frameworks. It

needs to be examples of great marketing

that's done at scale. So make sure that

your profile mirrors this and satisfies

the algorithm and the customer. So here

is an example of my profile. Founder of

Searchable. I help businesses increase

their traffic and their revenue from AI

SEO. The about section is a chance then

to give greater depth into myself, my

business and my background and to try

and build credibility. And then you have

the features section which is a prime

spot to direct customers towards your

key offers. These two buttons that you

can see on my profile can be designed to

look like they are clear call to

actions. Always be aware that there is

an opportunity to pick topics that fit

your audience, but already know that

they perform incredibly well. So, this

is just smart topic choices. And if you

do this, the algorithm will know who you

are, what you talk about, and that you

are clearly communicating to your

audience. So, when you're picking your

topics, obviously, you want to pick the

things that match your profile, that

match your customer. We've already

talked about that. Importantly though,

you can pick topics that are already

performing incredibly well, and just

make sure that they also align with your

audience. So if you check this out, you

can actually see which topics on

LinkedIn are performing the best right

now. And so this is where you can use

data to back up how you build your

profile. So this brings me on to point

three, which is which formats are most

successful on LinkedIn today. And so if

you look at this data, you can see that

infographics and carousels are the

highest performing content on the

platform. And so you as a creator and as

a business owner should be thinking to

yourself, if I'm going to do a

presentation about marketing or a

presentation about my business, you want

to wrap that in the format that is

working best for the platform at that

time. And so if you're choosing to post

in different formats moving forwards,

you are actively choosing a harder route

towards success. People struggle with

the idea of taking really complex

educational content and turning it into

visuals. And that is a skill set. And I

want you to learn that skill set. Look

at my content. See how we are able to

take big ideas and distill them down

into easy to follow framework. And so

you can see here that infographics,

carousels and videos are the most

successful format. The reason I'm

pointing you towards infographics and

carousels is that they are the formats

that convert the highest into followers.

And so why is that? The reason is that

people spend more time on carousels and

infographics digesting the information,

taking away the value, saving them down

for later, which results in a behavior

of following. Whereas videos, people

view the video and move along. So if I

was in your position today, how would I

create content? I would focus very much

so on infographics and carousels and

trying to build as much education and

value into my content. So before we move

on to step four in how to create

educational content, I want to double

click on something which is so important

about how you build a successful

LinkedIn profile which is adaptability.

Now the platform changes, the content

changes. When carousels are the most

successful piece of content, you want to

be posting carousels. When that shifts

to video being the most successful

format on the platform, you as a creator

and as a business owner, you need to

shift because you want to always be

posting the most successful format. And

so previously we talked about how

infographics, carousels and videos, like

the format of your content is very

important, but even more important than

that for me has always been the type of

content. And so now you might be

thinking, what content am I creating? Is

it about myself? Is it about my

business? Is it education? Is it

selfies? And so importantly, step four

is that education content [music] drives

the most followers and it drives the

most views. And so what do I mean by

education content? Simply put, you want

to take the skill that you have and the

knowledge that you have and package it

in a way that your audience is easily

able to read your content to work

through your framework and therefore get

value immediately. The one thing I think

that the world has got confused about

content is that personality is the only

way to drive growth. Whereas in reality,

I am far more likely to get value from

reading someone's step-by-step guide as

to how to do lead generation or to how

to build a business rather than seeing

someone pose in a photo and tell me

their story. So, I'll give you a very

clear example of how you can actually

brand and create frameworks based on

really well-known pre-existing topics.

And the example I'm going to use is

James Clear. So, James Clear talks about

habits and how many books through the

history of time have talked about

habits. However, he was able to put in

place a few very clear frameworks that

are specifically his and that he is

known for. One is obviously the title

atomic habits. Two is you get

incremental gains by making a 1%

improvement every single day. And as a

result, immediately James Clear has been

able to brand the idea of habits as his

own. And every single conversation that

happens about habits references James

Clear. So my perspective on personal

brand runs counter to almost every

personal branding expert I've ever seen.

My theory is that it is much easier,

much more scalable, and much more

systemizable to be creating highquality,

highv value education content as opposed

to personal content. So why is that the

case? I believe that education content

when branded properly is far more

memorable, will lead to far more saves,

will lead to far more value than

anything else that you can create. And

so the prime example I can give you is

that Simon Synynic created start with Y.

Now forever in company building we have

talked about purpose and vision and

mission as being the things that drive

companies and drive entrepreneurs. And

yet he was able to take that exact idea

and brand it as start with why and give

you a very easy to follow framework as

to how to find your why. Now he is

memorable for that framework and people

use that to implement within their

companies. And so I'll give you a

smaller example of myself. When I teach

people how to think about sales, I teach

them the serve framework, which is how

you show up for and how you help your

customers. And so, instead of just

saying that me and my company are good

at sales, I'm able to give you a very

easy to follow, actionable step-by-step

guide. And so, the difficulty for most

entrepreneurs is showing up on camera.

It is creating personal stories. It is

creating, you know, vulnerable moments.

But is it difficult to package up what

you already know, give it a very clear

title, give it its own intellectual

property, and then post about that

consistently every single day? Which

leads me to a point that I think most

people don't think about with content,

which is you have to post content almost

every single day to satisfy the

algorithms on most of the platforms. And

so by having very clear, definable

frameworks and education content, your

team and yourself are able to do that in

a much more systemized and scalable way

than if you're having to create personal

stories the entire time. And so my

guiding point to all of you is that

education content wins based on the

stats, based on the evidence it wins.

But it becomes easier for you to do it

if you focus on creating frameworks and

step-by-step guides that your customers

can follow. Now, in 2026, another thing

that's going to be so important to the

success of your LinkedIn profile is the

depth and the length of your post. And

that is because the algorithm is

favoring deeper and longer content. But

let's take a step back and think why

does deeper and longer content perform

better which gives so much evidence and

credence to what we were talking about

with education content which is that if

people spend more time on your content

it signals to the algorithm that it is

valuable content. Whether they like it

or they comment on it doesn't matter.

It's the fact that someone has dwelled

on a video. And to give you a really

nice frame to think of here, if you're

on Instagram and you hover over

someone's video and you watch it for a

few seconds, how often are you then

distributed that person's content five

or six videos later? And so it's the

exact same theory here. If someone

spends time on your content, reads it,

gets value from it, then the algorithm

decides that content is good and

distributes. So if you want to guarantee

your success on LinkedIn in 2026, you

need to focus on pre-validating your

content based on outliers. So first and

foremost, what is an outlier? And what

is pre-validated content? So an outlier

is when a certain piece of content that

another creator post or yourself posts

receives 5 to 10 times more views than

their ordinary piece of content. So why

is this really important? So, if a

creator or yourself are getting a

thousand likes per post every single

time and then suddenly you have a post

that gets 5,000 likes or 10,000 likes,

it's most likely that the content and

what was said in the content is the hero

as opposed to the creator themselves

being the reason why it was successful.

And so, it's very important when you

think about your content that you give

yourself a head start on creating

highquality, high performing content.

So, what you don't want to do is you

don't want to focus on big accounts. Big

accounts have massive audiences already

and as a result they get a very natural

lift with their content. So you want to

focus instead on studying creators that

have similar ICP audiences to yourself.

So similar audiences, similar followers

and you want to focus on their videos or

their posts that have done incredibly

well already. So I'll give you a really

good example of this for myself. When I

started my journey in creating content,

one of the things I spoke about most was

delegation. I always think that

entrepreneurs underindex on delegation

and so I post about it all the time.

However, instead of just writing what I

thought about delegation on day one, I

instead studied every single piece of

content I could find on the internet

that had performed well in that

delegation space. I found cheat sheets.

I found infographics, carousels, I found

videos. And by studying that content and

the content that had already done so

well, I saw there was a very clear

framework within those pieces of content

about how to teach delegation. I took

that framework, I adapted it to myself,

I renamed it, I gave it my own unique

spin and we started running that content

on delegation from my account. And as

you will see here, my delegation content

has been successful on almost any

platform we put it on. And that is

because it's based on a pre-validated

idea. A lot of people have a problem

with this because they think to

themselves that you are stealing other

people's content. But the reality is

that content and stories and literature

have worked the same way forever. And so

let's take the bestselling author ever

James Clear Atomic Habits. Atomic Habits

talks about the incremental gains that

you make every single day by working on

your project or yourself and he has

branded it atomic habits. However, how

many books predated Atomic Habits and

focus specifically on that core concept.

There are dozens of these books. So what

I am saying to you is try and be more

strategic about your content. Try and

base it on things that have already done

well previously. And I give the same

advice to business owners. Rather than

starting a new business or a new concept

based on something completely new, often

my advice is let's study businesses that

have already succeeded. Let's look at

business models that have already

performed and then try and build based

on that road map. So now you have done

the hardest part. You have learned how

to create views and how to grow

followers on LinkedIn. Now it is about

turning attention into revenue for your

business. And so step five is how do you

actually sell on LinkedIn? Selling

effectively on LinkedIn is about

establishing a very clear funnel. People

fundamentally buy when they recognize a

brand or an individual. And to be

recognized, you have to be experienced

five to seven times in the same way that

if you go into a supermarket and you see

a brand, you are likely to buy it if you

have seen it multiple times before. And

so what we're doing with personal brand

and with LinkedIn content is we're

giving people the opportunity to

understand who we are and what we sell

and giving some repetition so that they

recognize us. So let's think about a

funnel for a moment. So at the top of

the funnel is awareness content. This is

the sort of content that people are able

to easily understand, easily able to

interact with and as a result get a

sense of who you are and what you stand

for. However, in the middle of the

funnel is what we were talking about

before. It's that education content.

It's the consideration phase. And we

want at this stage for people to be

experiencing our frameworks, our

lessons, our step-by-step guides. And so

at this point, we have two different

types of content. We have awareness to

drive top-end awareness of who we are.

And then we have consideration content,

which is about how to get a greater

sense of what we stand for and what our

product delivers. However, at the bottom

of the funnel is a very important type

of content, which we've called

conversion content. And conversion

content is very rarely going to perform

well in and of itself. However, it is a

signal and a call to action to those

people you have caught in the funnel

already who will now go on to make a

purchase and will now buy from you. And

so conversion content is much more

niche. It is focused on exactly how you

deliver your service. So this is a time

that we delivered this service for this

brand. It is a case study. It is look at

the results that we drove for this

person. look at the results we drove for

this brand or it is a testimonial. Here

is what a client said about our brand.

Here is what a client said about our

campaign. And so this type of content

very rarely ever performs. But because

you have driven awareness content and

you have driven education content in the

middle, you have a big audience of

people who are interested and recognize

you. And so the conversion content is

your opportunity to convert them from

being followers into being customers. So

the biggest difference to selling in

2026 versus any other time previously is

that saturation of content is much

higher. More and more and more people

are selling. And so what you need to do

as an individual is to try and create

highquality lead magnets that give

people value there and then in the

moment so that they associate that value

with you and are more likely to buy from

you than they are from your competitor.

Think about two exact same sales

situations. It's you versus your

competitor. Both of you are saying you

do the same thing. However, you have

given your customer an incredibly useful

tool, a calculator, some sort of

framework that they now use every single

day in their lives. You tell me who you

think the customer is more likely to

purchase from. And so, an example I have

is I have something called the creator

OS, which is a notion template with

accompanying videos that shows creators

how to create content at scale focused

predominantly on education. And so, that

lead magnet for me brings people off

social media, gets them subscribed to my

list, and then I am able to sell to them

afterwards. And so I want you to go

check that out, reverse engineer it, and

think how you can create highquality

resources that your audience can

download and get value from. I've been

working in social media for 16 years.

And in 16 years, I have seen the

algorithm on various platforms change

enormously. From Facebook to Twitter to

LinkedIn to Instagram, everything

continuously changes. And so the most

important thing for you to take away

from this video is that you do not want

to leave yourself at the mercy of the

algorithm. The last piece of the puzzle

to winning on LinkedIn in 2026 is

deplatforming your audience. So you

might be thinking, how do I deplatform

people? And it can be as simple as you

should set up a newsletter. You can use

kit and set up your own newsletter and

then give people a reason to leave

social media and subscribe to you, which

means you need to create something

called a value exchange, which could be

I have packaged up all of my content

into a downloadable resource for you, or

I have created a framework that you can

download. I've created a notion template

that you can use. Give people a reason

to give you their email and give them

something back in return. And my final

point on exchanging value is make sure

that if you're giving away something for

free, it feels like it's worth something

they would have paid for. And if you're

charging for something, make sure that

it feels like it's two or three times

the value of the thing that you've sold.

If you enjoy this video, make sure you

check out this deep dive which goes far

beyond LinkedIn on how to become famous

within your specific industry.