To Link or Not to Link?

Jun 22

A lot of my posts on LinkedIn contain links. The reason that I do this is simple: the thing that I want to share exists elsewhere already. It wouldn’t make sense to copy it into a post.

Once, I posted a link to an article that my college wrote about me, and shared it with my followers on LinkedIn by pasting the link to it in my post. It makes sense for me to have done that, instead of copying the whole entire article, and pasting it into the post. No one is going to read the whole thing on LinkedIn. If my viewer is actually interested, they’d click. If not, they have the freedom to keep scrolling.

Apparently, however, links in posts don’t perform well. I recently listened to a podcast episode on this exact topic, called “Why You Shouldn’t Add Links to Your Social Post” on Buffer’s “The Science of Social Media” podcast. In this episode, the host shared that according to Buffer’s research, posts that contain links in them perform worse than those that don’t. The only exception are posts that contain the words “link in bio,” which fare better.

The reason behind the poor performance is because links direct people off theplatform. According to an article by Plus Group, “When users click through to your website, they’re leaving the platform where they can like, comment, or share your post. This exit can reduce the engagement signals that platforms use to gauge the popularity and quality of your content.” Unfortunately, links do not serve users well because they don’t support increased profits for big tech.

I understand the heart behind this point – wanting content to get seen and perform better statistically – but I am torn between maximizing the algorithm for post success rather than catering content to my target audience.

Social media exists to provide a space for people to convey information to other people. Brands and users seek to do the basic task of communicating, but on a computer and smartphone rather than in person.

This idea ironically does not fit the goal of the social media platforms themselves. As long as users stay on the platform, they earn more money. Links don’t help them. Creators and the platforms are not playing on the same team.

To an extent, the algorithms are useful. According to an article by Dorcas Adisa for Sprout Social, “Social media platforms use sophisticated algorithms to prolong user engagement.” In other words, if the content engages the viewer, it will show more of that content. This would be an ideal scenario for a marketer – create engaging content for the audience, and they’ll see more of it. But given that the viewer needs to find the content engaging in the first place, it is the user’s responsibility to create content for people first, and algorithms second.

I’m going to continue putting links in my posts, not because I don’t care about the algorithm, but because I create content for people.

We don’t create content for robots. We create content for humans.