andreas jonsson

CEO @Shield: Get all posts from all your people, all in one dashboard. Stats and analytics for LinkedIn. Learn what works. Get in touch 💬

@TheShieldIndex — LinkedIn benchmarks at www.theshieldindex.com ↗

@Shield — LinkedIn analytics for creators, team, and agencies at www.shieldapp.ai ↗

@bootstrap.university — for founders going from zero to ramen without investors at www.bootstrap.university ↗

CEO, Co-founder

Redefining LinkedIn analytics since 2019.

#shieldapp #weareshield

typical impressions per post on LinkedIn:

0–1,000 followers = 167 impressions
1,000–5,000 followers = 466 impressions
5,000–10,000 followers = 733 impressions
10,000–25,000 followers = 1,121 impressions
25,000–50,000 followers = 2,392 impressions
50,000–100,000 followers = 4,484 impressions

what feels weak may in fact just be normal.

TheShieldIndex

CEO @Shield, @TheShieldIndex (LinkedIn follower benchmarks and more @ theshieldindex.com)

LinkedIn profiles with fewer than 500 followers produced the biggest reach outliers in November.

Small accounts. Biggest outliers. That's right.

When we normalized reach vs follower count, this bracket showed 10,000%+ reach rates. By far the most volatile and most viral distribution across any follower group.

My read: No account is "too small" to produce elite-level reach. Small accounts aren't neglected by the algorithm. If anything, the opposite seems true.

I wonder if smaller accounts are where LinkedIn tests viral distribution mechanics? 

I don't know - what do you think?

www.theshieldindex.com

andreas jonsson 🛠

CEO @Shield, @TheShieldIndex (LinkedIn reach & format benchmarks @ theshieldindex.com) | Founder @bootstrap.university

the MORE followers you have, the LESS your posts pop relative to baseline.

here's what our data* shows:

• in the 0–500 follower range, the breakout multiple is 100×, meaning the very top posts see ~100× the typical reach for that size.

• in the 5k–10k range, the breakout multiple drops to ~55×.

• between 100k–250k followers, it's closer to 32×.

• and at 1M+ followers, around 6×.

same platform, very different distribution.

small LinkedIn accounts live in lottery-like outcomes, while large accounts live in more predictable ones.

*december benchmark data from TheShieldIndex

January 2026 edition live: www.theshieldindex.com

LinkedIn reach benchmarks by The Shield Index

One thing does keep increasing as LinkedIn accounts grow.

Baseline reach.

November and December data shows that while reach rates compress, typical (absolute) reach continues to rise with follower count.

Bigger audience → Higher floor.

My personal view: “More followers” shouldn’t be the goal. It should be the byproduct.

Of consistently good work. 
Done in public. 
Over time.

Across ~100,000 posts in November and December, images quietly dominated LinkedIn distribution.

Not on viral spikes, but on baseline reach.

Images consistently led on typical and strong reach. Nothing flashy, just predictable distribution. Maybe that's why the feed is half-full of them.

Sometimes the system doesn't reward what's exciting, it rewards what it can reliably score.

And right now that seems to be posts with images.

You seeing this?

some days i'm deep in the trenches and excited
we're building something real, people pay for it
that's how business is supposed to work
but,
on other days, it rings hollow
does it matter? like, at all?
or do we just pretend that it does?
i don't know which is true
maybe both

Big LinkedIn accounts don't lose reach. They lose volatility. 

November & December data show that once profiles crossed roughly 25k followers, typical reach settled around 5-7% and breakout upside narrowed (fewer true viral outliers).

Compare that to sub-500 follower accounts which continued to show multi-thousand % breakout reach. 

My read for larger accounts: Fewer extremes. More predictability. 

Which might explain why LinkedIn growth feels different at scale.

Why are we building TheShieldIndex?

Because "consistency" isn't a strategy. And "post more" is vague AF. You need more than that. And we're bringing it.

1. Real benchmarks
Is your reach actually good for your follower range? Or just coping?

2. Content format momentum
What's gaining traction right now? And what is LinkedIn quietly dialing down?

3. Reach drivers
What is actually moving distribution? Likes? Comments? Reposts? Something else?

No guru takes. Just patterns from real data.

Next Index: Jan 14, 2026. 
Based on 50,000 posts from December.

www.theshieldindex.com ↗

i have not been talking bootstrapping much lately
mostly because i've been bootstrapping
build ship sell, the full thing, end to end
yeah it went well, thanks for asking
despite all the improvements we didn't ship
once more i learned the valuable lesson of creative restraint: what's most valuable is not what you add, but what you take away - especially for day one. the rest comes later.

i've managed people
but building things hit different
gives me a sense of flow, of bliss
the tangible forward motion
despite the setbacks
that's the thrill
hands in the dirt

In December, most people in the 5k-50k follower range saw reach drop.

There was only one follower bracket in December that gained a broad lift in reach, meaning reach was up across typical (median), strong (top 25%), top (top 10%) and breakout (top 1%) reach tiers.

Guess which one.

PS this is what we track in TheShieldIndex: not what to post but what the system is doing

Reach on LinkedIn posts was down in December.

Did January reverse it?

TheShieldIndex subscribers will be the first to know.

Updated benchmarks drop in <48 hours.

LinkedIn content format reach rates (December, medians):

• Text ~14%
• Images ~13%
• Carousels ~13%

If you were switching formats to beat the algorithm, the algorithm didn't notice.

January data is coming.

TheShieldIndex

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