People keep asking me why they don't see posts from their actual connections anymore.
The answer is not complicated. LinkedIn optimized your feed for reactions, viral content, and ads. Not for the people you actually know. The same logic that drives every social media platform drove LinkedIn in this direction — engagement metrics, not network value.
That is a problem if you are on LinkedIn to do business.
If you are not seeing your connections in your feed, they are probably not seeing you. You are both scrolling past strangers while your actual network goes quiet. That is not a feed. That is a missed opportunity running on autopilot.
At Intero Advisory, we have always been big on a proactive strategy. The platform will not fix this for you. You have to fix it yourself. The good news is it takes about five minutes.
The Feed Is Not Broken. It Is Just Not Yours.
LinkedIn is not malfunctioning. It is doing exactly what it was built to do — surface content that drives engagement and keeps you on the platform longer.
That content is often from people you do not know, about topics that are somewhat relevant to your industry but not your work, your clients, or your business. Anecdotally the mobile app feed skews slightly more toward your actual network than the browser version. Neither is optimized for what most business professionals actually need.
You can try to train the algorithm. Unfollow people, click "not interested in this post," and hope the feed adjusts. That works slowly and imperfectly.
Or you can curate your own feed directly. That works immediately.
Two Ways to Take Back Your Feed
Search Posts From Your First Connections Only
This is the fastest way to see what the people you are actually connected to are posting right now.
- Click the Search field at the top of LinkedIn
- Hit Enter without typing anything
- Click Posts
- Click Sort by
- Click Latest
- Click Show results
- Click All filters
- Click 1st connections
- Click Show results
Bookmark that search. It will always open to this view, and you can check it anytime without repeating the steps.
What you are seeing now is your actual network, posting in real time, sorted by recency. Not by what LinkedIn thinks you want to engage with. Not by what is trending. Your people.
Search Posts From a Specific List of People
This one is more targeted. Use it when you have a list of clients, prospects, or partners you want to stay close to — people whose activity you need to see consistently, not just when the algorithm decides to surface them.
- Go to your LinkedIn homepage
- Click the Search field
- Hit Enter
- Click Posts
- Click Sort by
- Click Latest
- Click Show results
- Click All filters
- Click the person's name field and type the names of the specific people you want to follow closely
- Type their names one at a time
- Click and add each person
- Click Show results
You can bookmark this search, too. It will save the list and reopen it to the same filtered view every time.
This is how you build a custom feed of the ten or twenty people whose activity actually matters to your business right now — without relying on LinkedIn to show them to you.
What This Actually Changes
Most people scroll LinkedIn and feel vaguely frustrated. They are seeing a lot of content, not much of it relevant, much of it AI generated noise and almost none of it from the people they were hoping to hear from.
These two searches fix that. They put your network back in front of you. They also put you back in front of your network — because when you engage consistently with the right people, LinkedIn registers that activity and starts surfacing your content to them more often.
Proactive distribution works in both directions. You see them. They start seeing you.
Five minutes to set up. Compound returns if you use it consistently.
Start Here
Run the first connection search right now. Spend five minutes in that feed today. See who is posting that you have not seen in months.
Then build your short list. The clients, prospects, and partners whose activity you should never miss. Save that search. Check it weekly.
Your network is there. You just have to look in the right place.
Colleen McKenna is the founder of Intero Advisory. For fifteen years, she has helped professionals use LinkedIn as a business development tool, not a social media channel. It's Business, Not Social™ is the methodology. Centers of Influence are where it starts. She is also an advisor, investor, and reseller of Anchor, the video-first introduction page that makes business development easier.
