The words, defined.

The LinkedIn algorithm

The LinkedIn algorithm is the ranking system that decides who sees a post, testing it first with a small slice of the author’s network and widening distribution based on how that first group responds.

Dwell time

Dwell time is how long a reader spends on a post before scrolling on, used as a ranking signal because it measures actual attention rather than the deliberate act of clicking a button.

LinkedIn engagement rate

LinkedIn engagement rate is the share of people who reacted, commented, or shared a post out of everyone who saw it, calculated as total engagements divided by impressions.

Impressions vs reach

Impressions count how many times a post was displayed, while reach counts how many distinct people saw it, so one person scrolling past a post three times produces three impressions but one unit of reach.

Social Selling Index (SSI)

The Social Selling Index is a LinkedIn score from 0 to 100 that rates an account across four areas: establishing a professional brand, finding the right people, engaging with insights, and building relationships.

Account restriction

An account restriction is a limit LinkedIn places on what an account can do, applied when its activity looks automated or otherwise inconsistent with the User Agreement, and ranging from a single feature refusing to work to permanent closure.

Commercial Use Limit

The Commercial Use Limit is a monthly cap LinkedIn places on how many profile searches and profile views a free account can make, applied when the activity looks like recruiting or prospecting, and reset at midnight Pacific on the first of each calendar month.

Connection request limit

The connection request limit is the cap LinkedIn enforces on how many invitations an account can send in a period; LinkedIn does not publish the number, and an account that reaches it is blocked from sending invitations for a period that typically lasts a week.

Connection limit

The connection limit, which LinkedIn calls the network size limit, is a cap of 30,000 first-degree connections per account; the number of followers an account can have is unlimited.

Message limit

LinkedIn publishes no daily cap on messages to your existing connections; what it meters is InMail, the paid message to someone you are not connected to, which is issued as monthly credits and returned when the recipient replies.

Hook

A hook is the opening line or two of a post, the only part visible before the "see more" cut, whose single job is to make the reader decide the rest is worth expanding.

First comment

The first comment is a comment the author adds to their own post at publication, conventionally used to carry links, sources, or a follow-up question without putting them in the post itself.

LinkedIn carousel

A LinkedIn carousel is a multi-page PDF uploaded as a document post, which the feed displays as a set of slides readers swipe through one at a time.

Content pillars

Content pillars are the three to five recurring subjects a person or company posts about, chosen in advance so that individual posts accumulate into a recognisable position instead of reading as unrelated updates.

Brand voice

Brand voice is the consistent set of choices that makes writing recognisable as coming from a particular person or company: vocabulary, sentence rhythm, how formal it is, what it refuses to say, and which arguments it keeps returning to.

LinkedIn personal branding

LinkedIn personal branding is the practice of publishing consistently under your own name so that a specific professional audience associates you with a specific subject before they ever speak to you.

Social selling

Social selling is the practice of building familiarity with potential buyers through public participation, commenting, posting, and useful replies, so that outreach lands with someone who already recognises your name.

Employee advocacy

Employee advocacy is a programme in which a company’s employees post about their work on their own profiles, reaching audiences the company page cannot and carrying more credibility than the company’s own account.

Content approval workflow

A content approval workflow is the defined route a draft takes from writer to publication, naming who reviews it, what they can change, and what happens to feedback, so that nothing goes public without the right person having seen it.

Content calendar

A content calendar is a forward view of what will be published, when, and by whom, used to turn posting from a daily decision into a plan that survives a busy week.

AI LinkedIn ghostwriter

An AI LinkedIn ghostwriter is software that writes LinkedIn posts in a specific person’s voice, learned from what that person has already published, so the output reads as theirs rather than as generic AI copy.

AI content agent

An AI content agent is software that carries out a multi-step content job end to end, deciding what to make and making it, rather than waiting for a person to operate each step of the tool.

AI slop

AI slop is generated content published with little or no human judgment applied, recognisable because it is fluent, confident, and says nothing that could only have come from the person whose name is on it.

Model Context Protocol (MCP)

The Model Context Protocol is an open standard that lets an AI assistant connect to external tools and data sources, so the assistant can read from and act in another system without that system building a custom integration for each assistant.

LinkedIn automation

LinkedIn automation is software carrying out actions on a member’s behalf, and it covers two mechanisms that are routinely confused: applications authorized through LinkedIn’s official API, which act when a person tells them to, and bots that sign in as the member and click for them.

The LinkedIn API

The LinkedIn API is the set of interfaces LinkedIn publishes for approved applications to act on a member’s behalf: the member grants specific permissions on a LinkedIn authorization screen, the application never receives a password, and access can be revoked at any time.