What's Happening to LinkedIn?

LinkedIn has always been a little weird.

Is it just “Facebook for professionals”?
Is it the best sales prospecting platform ever?
Is it an acceptable form of brainrot / doomscrolling because it feels like work?

Yes.

As weird as its been, it’s only getting weirder. Keep reading and let me know what you think.

Be good. Thanks for reading.

Eric Boggs
CEO @ RevBoss

PS: As a reminder, you’ve received this email either most likely because you completed a form on revboss.com or (less likely) because we’ve interacted on LinkedIn. The unsub URL is in the footer if you don’t want to hear from us any more.

LinkedIn is feeling different these days. Heck, my “best performing” post over the past few weeks was a joke about an MCP card I found while cleaning out a closet.

But as frustrating / unpredictable / fickle as the platform has become, it is still a must and there are still big wins to be had.

Here’s a quick rundown of what we’re seeing / thinking.

There are changes afoot on the platform.

Spam and slop are everywhere. I’ve basically given up on my LinkedIn inbox — it’s all ham-fisted DMs asking for something. And 75% of my feed is junk — see above. It’s tough because the market is doing exactly what the incentives are encouraging it to do. It costs basically $0 to fire off an automated DM or publish a poorly AI-authored post.

The content game has changed. The way I see it, there are 3 flavors of content on LinkedIn:

Our thesis is that your best play is to consistently stay out of the “Bad” category, ignore the “Amazing” category, and stay in the “Good” category. Show that you have a pulse, that you have something to say, and that you’re smart, authoritative, trustworthy, etc.

Consistent beats perfect. What used to be a clear effort-to-outcome calculation has gotten out of whack because…

Impressions are down. I don’t even need to provide a citation for this. Algorithms are gonna algorithm…and social networks are going to become ad platforms.

The tools crackdown is ongoing. Apollo, Seamless, and several other data providers have been de-platformed — which from all I can tell means that their brand page is gone and their LinkedIn plug-in is gone. (We still use Apollo data FWIW — the core data product is fine.) Our friends at Aware shut down after getting a cease and desist from LinkedIn. My friend that works at LinkedIn suggests that there will be more of this, especially targeted at scrapers.

The shakedown. Here it is, the shakedown that we all saw coming: LinkedIn is clearly positioning itself as the next ad platform. The updated TOS make it explicit: your profile data, feed activity, and even ad engagement will be shared more broadly with Microsoft products to fuel personalized targeting and AI-driven ad experiences. Every click feeds an ad platform. Want more reach? Gotta pay the toll…

If you’re wondering why everything has gotten a little weird, this is why: the platform wants you to pay to play.

There are still moves that’ll work.

LinkedIn is still the best place on the planet to prospect if you’ve got something useful or interesting to say. The workflow that works for us — and that we’re standing up for our clients — is this:

…all from a LI interaction that started with some pretty good content.

A little media spend goes a long way on LinkedIn, especially compared to other retargeting tools. If you’ve got as little as $500 in media budget to spend each month, you’ll probably get more brand awareness with LinkedIn retargeting ads than with the site visitor tracking app du jour. The trick is not trying to jam the pipe full of new leads, but instead staying visible to the people already circling you.

LinkedIn events are a surprisingly effective way to generate good content quickly. They’re a little easier to pull off than a podcast, they feel native to the platform, and they have some built-in growth loops that help new people find you. I’m not blowing the doors off with mine yet, but the effort-to-outcome trade off works for me…and it’s fun. At the very least, you get content you can repurpose and a reason to invite your network into a live conversation.

This newsletter has always done more heavy lifting for me than my LinkedIn posts. Algorithms are fickle, but email is durable — and the people who subscribe are telling you they actually want to hear from you. The two channels obviously play together (events feed subscribers, posts point here), but email is the foundation. If you want something that compounds over time, your newsletter is the best long-term bet.

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