Transcript
LinkedIn just killed AI content. Most people don't even realize that their reach is getting cut in half. Let me show you exactly what I mean. One of my clients was literally getting 40 views [music] per post. Then 28 days later, when she started implementing everything we're about to talk about in this video, she hit 747,000 impressions. Same person, same effort, just one simple thing that changed. By the end of this video, you'll see exactly what that one thing was. You'll see her real results, and you'll understand how LinkedIn's rebuilt algorithm for 2026 changes how people see you. And this is coming straight from their own research papers. Plus, the exact test that gets your post pushed to thousands of people on LinkedIn rather than getting buried. Let's get into it. Here's what actually happened. Researchers analyzed thousands of LinkedIn posts just to realize that over half of them were written by AI. Since ChatGPT launched, that number rose by 190%. Everyone reached for the same tool, so everyone sounds identical. And in 2026, LinkedIn did something bigger than just a tweak. They rebuilt the algorithm from the ground up. The old system ran on simple engagement signals, which is exactly why the old tricks used to work. That includes things like engagement pods and also like engagement baiting content, like lead magnets. [music] That whole playbook is completely dead now, because there's a completely new engine underneath it. The new engine is an AI model called 360 Brew. LinkedIn published this research themselves, and instead of counting likes, it actually reads your post, your profile, and the viewer's history like a person would. And predicts one simple thing. Will a real human engage with this? And yes, we sit with the irony. LinkedIn's answer to too much AI was using AI to filter out other AI. Takes one to know one, I guess. And here's the sneaky part. Flagged posts don't get deleted. That would be way too obvious. They just quietly stop reaching anybody new. So, the second your post sounds like it came out of a prompt, like every other post in the feed, the system knows, and it stops showing you to out-of-network connections. We already know what this is. It's AI slop and you can smell it in a second. The {m-dash} no human actually types, the it's not this, it's that kind of line. And the biggest giveaway of all, the short incomplete sentences that no human write. That's AI literally trying to sound human and completely missing. But here's the part that actually kills your reach. These new models read your post as language and classify it from your opening. Your first line or two literally decides who it gets tested on. So, when you open your post with a generic AI filler, you don't just sound like a robot, you hand the system nothing to work with. And it sorts you into the wrong pile before anyone reads a word. So, if the old tricks are dead, what actually works? Well, I didn't guess, I went to LinkedIn's actual research papers, two separate papers their engineers actually published, and pulled out what the new system is literally built to reward. This is their language, not mine. In their feed retrieval paper, LinkedIn says their number one target is growing something that they call professional interactors, members who take real action on a post, well time, comments, reposts. But notice what's missing, a like and the baby AI sounding kind of comments. That doesn't move it at all. In our experience, the single strongest signal right now is a save. Think about what it means when someone actually saves a post. It's someone saying, "I need to come back to this. It's so valuable, I'll come back to it later." That's the highest intent signal a human can give you. So, we optimize every post to be save-worthy and the reach follows. And check this out, same paper, but this one flips what everyone believes. The new system leans hard on showing your content to people that aren't connected to you. And their own test data showed the biggest gains went to the people with fewest connections. Read that again. Having a smaller account is now an advantage because the new system is hungry to fill those feeds with good outside content. Reaching strangers isn't the hard part anymore, it's literally the entire point. And here's something you can fix within the next 5 minutes, your headline. Because these models read your profile as plain language, your headline is one of the strongest signals telling the algorithm who to show you to. And sadly, most people write it like a resume. Founder, investor, speaker, advisor. That's four job titles and it tells the model nothing. If anything, it confuses it so it can't match you to anyone and it just stops showing you. And if you have a headline like that, I'm sure you're seeing 200 impressions, 400 impressions, very low impression count. Now, watch the fix. I help seed stage founders turn LinkedIn content into book demos. Same person, but now the model knows exactly who you're for and who to put you in front of. Your headline is not just about a job title. It's literally targeting the people you want to be seen by. So, rewrite it to name who you help and the outcome you get them. And now, you've added the algorithm a map. Your content works the same way. Go specific and the models show you to the right people's eyes. Stay vague and it shows you to no one. So, line it up. The system wants real interactions from strangers on specific content it can actually read. Now, picture the average AI post. Generic, stuck inside your own network, lucky to get maybe a like from your friend, lucky to maybe get a like from your coworker. It just completely fails the new algorithm test. That's not bad luck, that's just by design. So, to actually win with this algorithm, you need to do two things at once. Sound human enough to clear the filter and earn the real interactions the system rewards. I call this the human test. There's three signals. Signal one, an original point of view. Not here are five productivity [music] tips, but the productivity advice I followed for two years that quietly killed my business. A real take or a real story is what makes someone engage for real. Signal two is real evidence. Screenshots, real numbers, names, dates, etc. Proof is what makes people save your post and tag a coworker. Signal three, a human voice, a real story, a real rhythm. No em dashes. This is how you sound like a human, not just like a prompt. And that's how you clear the AI filter in the first place. Do all three and you stop getting buried and start getting pushed to strangers. I know it works because I've watched it happen over and over. Let me show you. I didn't learn from a course, I built my own business from LinkedIn content. And then I started doing it for clients. Between me and them, that's over $4 million in pipeline and more than 900 inbound demos booked. All of it from LinkedIn content, not one single cold message. Remember the client from the start of the video? This is her actual results. She's a founder of a startup, 747,000 impressions in 28 days. That's up 206%. But, here's the number that actually mattered, and it should sound familiar by now. 93% of that reach came from outside of her network. Total strangers. That's not luck. That's just the exact thing LinkedIn's papers describe. Human-specific content earns real interaction, and the system pushes it to people she's not connected to. I wrote this post for the client last month, in July, after all the algorithm changes. On its own, it did 276,000 impressions, and 96% of that came from out-of-network connection. By that, I mean literally people who don't follow her. Three moves made that happen. You can copy all three. Move one is the hook. "I was 23 when Deloitte offered me a job." That's a single-line bomb. When you look at "I was 23," right away, you unintentionally started to think about what you were doing at the age of 23. At that age, most of us were broke, applying everywhere, waiting to get an answer from somebody that has all the power. So, you are not just remembering an age, you are literally remembering how it felt. The job you wanted, the offer you were waiting on, the one that came through, or the one that got rescinded. That memory shows up before you even read the second line. Then, comes the brand. Deloitte. Everybody knows that name, and Deloitte itself has hundreds of thousands of employees. Now, add everyone else who ever interviewed there, everyone who got rejected there, and everyone who works at a firm just like it. That is an enormous pool of people who see that word and feel something. At this point, we are playing brand association on purpose, because a name that big pulls its own audience with it. So, by the end of sentence one, a stranger is thinking about their own memories at 23, and their own version of the big firm that said yes or rather said no. And they still have no idea where this is going, because she opened with a win. Deloitte offered her the job, but something clearly went wrong, and now you have to keep reading to find out what. Move two, the three-beat drop. Watch how fast this story turns. Paragraph two is the dream. I remember reading the offer letter and thinking this was the moment that my career finally cracked open. Paragraph three is the reversal. Someone at Deloitte realizes she never went to college and they pull the offer after five interviews. Paragraph four is the landing. The offer that was going to change my life disappeared in one single email. The dream, the reversal, the landing, three paragraphs, maybe 60 words, and do you feel all of it? Move three is the payoff. Watch how she ties the whole story together. Paragraph five is the cost. My path to the C-suite table was physically and emotionally brutal. She does not skip the years she spent proving herself to people who had half her experience. She names them. Paragraph six is the reliability factor. Somewhere out there is a Latina in HR who doesn't have a college degree. If you're that exact person, she's calling you out. They have no choice but to hit follow and engage with the post. Paragraph seven is the promise. None of it is her ceiling. Her career is possible. Her seat is coming. It's short, it's certain, no hedging. Paragraph eight is the address. Keep going, amigos. I promise we make it. No link, no pitch. She names exactly who this is for and speaks straight to them. Cost, reliability, promise, address. That is why a stranger saves this and sends it to somebody. And every line in it came out of a real conversation with her. My job was choosing what to cut, not what to invent. Sure, AI can write you a story about resilience, but it can't write that story for you. And the proof is in the pudding. 96% of Adam Network connections saw this post, 249 new followers, all because it passed the human test. So LinkedIn handed it to strangers. So no, the algorithm did not kill your reach because this post just ran after it. So let's pull this all together. LinkedIn didn't just tweak the algorithm, they rebuilt it. And the whole thing now asks one single question for everything that you post. Did a real human make this? And will real people actually care? AI slop fails on every level. It's sounds generated, it stays trapped in your own network, and earns nothing but a couple impressions here and there. Human content does the opposite. An original story, real proof, your actual voice. It gets read, it gets saved, it gets pushed to strangers. And that's not theory, you just watched it do 276,000 impressions. 96% to strangers, too, on a post written literally right after the algorithm change. Now, if you want to learn how to build a LinkedIn content system that actually converts into pipeline, or you just want to build your personal brand, join the 4-week LinkedIn Accelerator that we run monthly. If you'd rather we just run your LinkedIn for you, that's what we can help you handle. Both are linked below, or send me a DM on LinkedIn. And if you want to see more content like this, don't forget to hit the subscribe button, like the video, and go ahead and comment. See you on the next one, guys.