"Post every day." "Video is the future." "Nobody reads long-form text."
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These are phrases repeated in every marketing team. And almost none of them survive when they collide with real data.
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At Magnettu, we manage publishing for hundreds of LinkedIn profiles and brands. That gives us something rare: a real track record of which formats, times, and writing styles actually generate reach. Not an opinion poll or a study from another country with a different audience.
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This is what we found after analyzing 16,790 posts published between January and July 2026, from 689 brands across all sectors.
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Finding 1: LinkedIn reach is not declining

This is perhaps the most widespread belief among those who post on LinkedIn: "I'm reaching fewer people every time." The data does not support it.
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Taking only the 345 brands that posted consistently for four months or more—to filter out the noise of new or intermittent accounts—the average views per post are not falling. They are rising. By 86% between January and June 2026: from an average of 1,678 views in January to 3,129 in June.
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Important nuance: June is a peak, not a new baseline. You shouldn't assume that "the average is now 3,000." But the trend is clear: those who post consistently see their reach grow, not shrink.
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Finding 2: Documents win. Video, surprisingly, loses
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If there is one format that should be at the center of your LinkedIn strategy in 2026, it is the document—carousels and PDFs uploaded directly to the platform.
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The data makes it clear:

• Document / PDF: 2,639 average views
• Image: 2,199 average views
• Video: 887 average views
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Video lags significantly in reach. However, there is a relevant nuance: it is the format with the best engagement rate among those who do watch it. In other words, those who stop to watch a video interact more. But the problem is that it reaches far fewer people.
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For most content teams, the document should be the default format whenever the content allows for it.
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Finding 3: There is one hour that stands out from the curve
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1:00 PM UTC is the time slot that clearly stands out from the rest of the day, with enough volume to make the data reliable.

• 1:00 PM UTC: 3,235 average views
• 5:00 PM UTC: 1,368 average views
• Difference: +137% between the best and worst time of the day
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As for days of the week, Thursday and Friday perform best on average. Saturday is, without competition, the worst day to post.
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A necessary clarification: the times are in UTC. 1:00 PM UTC is approximately 3:00 PM in Madrid or 8:00 AM in Bogotá—the ideal starting point varies depending on where your actual audience is located.
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Finding 4: Long-form text performs better. Much better.
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The "short and sweet" post gets a bad rap in the data. The under-300-character bucket is, by far, the worst performer.
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The numbers are conclusive:

• 0-100 characters: 450 average views
• 1,000-1,500 characters: 2,583 average views
• 2,500+ characters: 3,493 average views
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The top 10% of posts by views have a median of 1,124 characters, clearly above the overall median of 975. The consistently best-performing range is between 800 and 1,500 characters—long but not excessive, with enough depth to provide real value.
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Finding 5: Links in the text and hashtags reduce your reach
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This is one of the patterns most consistent with what is known about the LinkedIn algorithm, which penalizes content that leads users off the platform.
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• Posts with links in the text: the median number of views drops by 57% (from 369 to 157)
• Posts with hashtags: the negative impact is even more pronounced, with a 62% drop
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The operational recommendation: if you need to include a link, put it in the first comment, not in the post text. And with hashtags, less is more—or none at all.
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A nuance: this is a correlation, not proven causality. Less polished accounts tend to overuse links and hashtags out of habit, which can skew the data. However, the trend is consistent enough to take seriously.
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Finding 6: Personal and emotional content clearly outperforms specialized content
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This is the most exploratory of the six findings—only 1,046 posts have tone tags, so it should be read as a direction rather than a certainty. But the gap is too large to ignore.
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• "Personal" tone: 5,822 average views
• "Emotional" tone: 5,186 average views
• "Specialized" tone: 2,616 average views
• "Infographic" format: 438 average views
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Personal and emotional content performs two to three times better than purely technical content. This doesn't mean there's no place for specialized knowledge—it means the way it's packaged matters just as much as the content itself.
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The summary: what we would change first in any account
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If you only apply one thing from everything above, apply this: publish long-form text documents at 1:00 PM UTC on Thursdays or Fridays, with no links in the post body and a personal or emotional focus.
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And if you want the complete operational summary:
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Want to know how these patterns apply to your specific account? At Magnettu, we manage the publishing, distribution, and analysis of your LinkedIn content—using this same intelligence applied to your data.

Talk to our team