LinkedIn analytics now split in-network and out-of-network reach

LinkedIn is finally telling creators what every serious distribution analyst has wanted for years: how much of a post's reach came from people who already follow you, and how much escaped the bubble. Social Media Today reports that the platform is rolling out a more detailed analytics view that splits post impressions into in-network and out-of-network audiences, alongside richer breakdowns of who saw the content.

That distinction is the only one that matters for anyone trying to grow on the platform rather than perform for the same 4,000 colleagues.

The metric that exposes the truth

Until now, LinkedIn analytics presented reach as a single, flattering number. A post showing 18,000 impressions could mean two very different things: a piece that travelled across the feed into new buyer networks, or one that ricocheted around an existing follower base for 48 hours. The strategic implications are opposites. The reported number was the same.

Splitting the figure forces an uncomfortable audit. Most "high-performing" executive posts at large institutions, the ones that get celebrated in internal Slack channels, are almost entirely in-network. They reach employees, alumni, vendors, and the same dozen peers who comment on everything. Out-of-network reach, the share that lands in front of strangers who might become buyers, donors, members or candidates, is typically a thin slice. Now that slice has a number next to it.

What this changes for B2B brands

For a CFO at a global bank, a director at a UN agency, or a comms lead at an industrial group, the in-network/out-of-network split rewires how to judge a content programme. Three shifts follow.

First, executive ghost-written posts will be re-evaluated. A post that pulls 60,000 impressions but 95% in-network is, in distribution terms, an internal memo with a like button. That has value: cultural signalling, employee pride, recruiter halo. It is not, however, reaching the procurement directors, finance ministers, or programme officers the brand actually wants to influence. The new data makes the gap legible to anyone reading the dashboard.

Second, format choice gets sharper. Document carousels and short native video tend to over-index on out-of-network reach because LinkedIn's feed pushes them past first-degree connections more aggressively than plain text. Posts heavy with @-mentions of colleagues, or that read like internal announcements, tend to stay penned in. Teams running content for senior leaders at Holcim, Adecco or ISO can now A/B the two against a metric that maps to commercial intent, not applause.

Third, the comparison with paid changes. A sponsored post's whole job is to reach out-of-network audiences. When organic out-of-network reach is invisible, paid always looks like the only way to find new buyers. When it is visible, finance teams can ask the harder question: what is the cost per qualified out-of-network impression on organic, and does the paid budget beat it? For multilaterals and policy institutions running tight comms budgets, that calculation has been impossible to make properly. It no longer is.

The audience breakdown matters more than the totals

Alongside the network split, LinkedIn is surfacing more granular audience data: industries, seniorities, company sizes, locations of the people who saw the post. This is the part that should interest CMOs more than the headline reach numbers.

A philanthropic foundation publishing a post on climate finance can now see whether it reached fund managers and asset owners or, more likely, communications staff at peer foundations. A development bank can see whether its CEO's post on private capital mobilisation actually reached private capital. The gap between intended and actual audience is, in our experience auditing executive accounts, routinely 60 to 80%. Closing it is worth more than another 10,000 impressions.

The harder conversation this enables

The uncomfortable consequence of better analytics is that programmes which looked successful will stop looking successful. Executive content teams will have to defend posts that previously sailed through on impression counts. Agencies will be asked to optimise for out-of-network share, not total reach. The internal politics of "but it got so many likes from the leadership team" will become harder to sustain when the dashboard shows that 92% of those likes came from people three desks away.

That is, on balance, healthy. LinkedIn's value to a serious B2B brand has never been the size of the echo chamber. It has been the moments when a well-constructed post puts a managing director in front of a buyer she has never met. The platform has now given marketers the number to prove when that is happening, and when it isn't.

Expect the better content programmes to lean into it within a quarter. Expect the weaker ones to quietly stop sharing screenshots.