LinkedIn

Why are my LinkedIn posts not getting likes

October 6, 2026 · Bradley Jacobs

Why are my LinkedIn posts not getting likes? Usually it's one of three things. You're comparing your likes to accounts with way bigger followings, you're posting real expertise (which always gets fewer likes than personal updates), or the post had a good hook but no specific detail. On top of that, a lot of the people reading you will never click like at all. Judge each post against your own follower count, not someone else's feed, and don't change course unless you've gotten basically nothing for two or three months.

Here's what I tell people who are worried about this. People get on calls with me all the time and tell me they've been enjoying my content for the last six months. They have never liked or commented on one thing. Not once. That's just how it goes.

Mylance is a LinkedIn content system that turns what you know and do into LinkedIn posts that sound like you.

Is it normal for LinkedIn posts to get very few likes?

Yes. For most business owners a normal post gets a handful of likes, and that's fine.

Likes scale with your audience. If you have about 2,700 followers, 8, 9, 10 likes on a post is solid. I'd be pretty happy with that. A post on that same account that gets 38 likes, a few comments, and a couple of shares is a really good post.

Now compare that to someone with a million followers. A thousand likes for them might be terrible. So when you scroll past a big creator's post with 1,000 likes and then look back at your 9, you're comparing two numbers that have nothing to do with each other.

For what it's worth, my own typical post scores about 0.06% when you take likes and comments against my roughly 25,000 followers. That's my baseline. Yours is yours. Not the creator in your feed.

Why do my expertise posts get fewer likes than my personal posts?

Because expertise posts are written for a smaller group of people, and that's the point.

Your expertise-driven posts are going to get lower engagement than your click-baity, personal, anecdotal posts. Pretty much every time. The new job post, the promotion post, the picture of your dog. Everybody can like those, so everybody does.

I'm not saying don't post personal stuff. It humanizes you. You're a human, you like your dog, awesome. But you don't get to say your LinkedIn is working because a post about you and your dog got 100 likes. That doesn't do anything for how people see your business. A post about a real customer problem that gets 9 likes from people who actually have that problem does a lot more.

So I try not to worry too much about how many likes something got. I care a lot more about whether it was the kind of post the people I want to reach would care about.

Why do people read my LinkedIn posts but not like them?

Because most of your audience reads quietly. A like is public, reading is private, and a lot of people only ever do the private one.

This is the part nobody believes until it happens to them. Someone gets on the phone with me and says they've been listening to the podcast, reading the newsletter, and following my LinkedIn for two years. Plenty of those people have never liked a single post.

That's why the real signal isn't the like count. It's when people start saying "I've been seeing your content, found it really interesting" on calls. If that's happening, your posts are working, even if the likes look small.

What actually makes a LinkedIn post get no likes?

Most of the time it's missing specifics, not missing a better hook.

When we look at posts that land below someone's baseline, a really common pattern is a strong hook, real emotional pull, and no detail. The client story doesn't say what actually happened. No numbers, no specifics, nothing you could check. So nothing sticks and nobody has a reason to react.

The posts that beat baseline usually do the opposite. A sharp hook, one claim you don't hedge, and concrete detail behind it. Detail is what makes a story memorable, and memorable is what people engage with.

The other cause is being vague about who it's for. LinkedIn shows your post to your network first, and when they like or comment, it starts testing it with their network. If the post doesn't clearly speak to someone, it stalls at step one.

And if your problem is that nobody is even seeing the posts, that's a different issue. I wrote about that in why have my LinkedIn impressions dropped.

How should you measure whether a LinkedIn post did well?

Compare each post to your own baseline after about 48 hours, and weigh comments more than likes.

• Wait about 48 hours before you judge a post. That's when we pull analytics for every post in Mylance, because the first few hours don't tell you much.
• Count a comment as worth two likes. A comment takes real effort, a like takes a thumb.
• Compare against your last 20 or so posts, not one bad day. Your baseline moves as your audience grows.
• Look at who engaged. Is anyone in the comments actually a fit for what you do?
• Check your profile views over time. Honestly, that's the number I'd really want to look at.

The careful thing here is not making rash judgments based on three posts in a week. One post with 4 likes isn't a trend. Twenty posts are.

When should you change what you're posting on LinkedIn?

Change something if you've posted consistently for two to three months and gotten basically nothing: no likes, no comments, and nobody bringing up your posts in conversations.

That's long enough to know. Before that, you're reacting to noise. And when you do change something, don't blow up the whole plan. Look at the posts that beat your baseline, figure out why they worked, and write more like those. Usually that's a slight pivot, not a major one.

FAQ

Why did my LinkedIn post get no likes?

Usually because LinkedIn didn't show it to many people, or it didn't have a specific enough detail for anyone to react to. It happens to everyone, me included. A post nobody likes also barely gets seen, so it doesn't hurt you. Post the next one.

How many likes is good on LinkedIn?

It depends on your follower count. With a few thousand followers, high single digits to low double digits on an expertise post is solid. Judge it against your own average, not anyone else's.

Why are my LinkedIn posts not getting likes today?

One slow day is noise. Give the post 48 hours and look at how the whole week compares to your usual, not one morning.

Do LinkedIn likes actually matter?

A little, because likes and comments push your post out to more people. But they're not the goal. Comments from people who fit, profile views, and people mentioning your posts on calls matter a lot more.

Bottom line

Low likes usually doesn't mean LinkedIn is broken or that you're bad at this. It means you're measuring against the wrong thing. Stop comparing yourself to accounts with a million followers, keep posting real expertise, put the specific detail in, and pay attention to who shows up. Some of the people who matter most will never hit like.

Author: Bradley Jacobs. Published October 6, 2026. Updated October 6, 2026.