Reach by content format
We tracked ~50,000 LinkedIn posts in February and measured reach by content format across four performance tiers: typical (p50, median), strong (p75, top 25%), top (p90, top 10%), and breakout (p99, top 1%).
Reach rate is impressions divided by follower count. A 14% reach rate means a typical post reached 14% of the account's followers — or traveled beyond them entirely when it exceeds 100%.
Image and text led on typical and strong reach rates, as they have across every month we've tracked. Video and articles traded similarly at 8% typical. Reposts sit at the floor.
Compared to January, typical reach rates fell across every format. The compression was broad — not isolated to one content format or one tier.
The biggest drop was carousel: -1.02 percentage points at the typical tier. Poll was the only format that held near flat (-0.12pp). Every other format landed between -0.34pp and -0.82pp.
See the full cut below.
The Shield Index
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Full breakdown
Three-month trend: typical reach rate
February's compression looks different depending on where each format started.
The pattern across three months: image gained in January and gave back some in February. Text was essentially flat in January, then fell further in February. Video and article followed image's arc. Carousel never recovered — it flatlined in January and fell further in February. Poll has been drifting down across all three months.
Image: the strong-tier climb
The one consistent positive in the dataset: image's strong reach rate (p75, top 25% of posts) has risen every month.
Strong reach rate: 35.12% in December. 37.55% in January. 38.10% in February.
The typical rate (p50, shown in the table above) moved up then down. The strong tier didn't. Something is improving at the 75th percentile for image posts — and it's held across three months of data.
Video: median down, top up
Video's typical reach rate fell from 8.48% in January to 8.02% in February. But the top tier moved the other way: absolute top impressions (p90) rose from 5,778 in January to 7,442 in February — a 29% increase.
The median-level audience for video got smaller. The ceiling rose. That's a widening distribution, not a uniform decline. A smaller number of video posts are traveling significantly further at the top end.
Carousel: fewer posts, higher breakout
As carousel volume has declined consistently over three months, the breakout reach rate has moved in the opposite direction: 566% → 594% → 653%.
The pool of carousel posts is shrinking. The posts that remain are hitting higher ceilings.
This could be a selection effect — as casual carousel posting drops off, what's left skews toward more deliberate production. It's one month of divergence following a consistent volume decline, so it warrants watching before drawing conclusions.
Breakout multiples by format
How far does a top 1% post travel relative to a typical post, by format?
Text has the widest spread: 83x between a typical post and a top 1% post. Poll has the narrowest: 8x. That's not a performance story — it reflects distribution shape.
Text posts have a compressed floor and a very long tail. Polls are the most consistent format in the dataset: high engagement rate (3.5%), narrow breakout window, relatively predictable outcomes.
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