✌️ 5 LinkedIn stats in 2026 you probably didn’t see coming

Metricooler, this week we launched our 2026 LinkedIn Study. Our biggest one yet. We analyzed 673,658 posts from nearly 65,000 accounts, including both Company Pages and Personal Profiles for the first time.

Have you read it yet? If so, reply to this email and tell me which stat stood out to you the most. Or you can share it on socials (we’d love that too). But if you haven't read it yet, you’ll find the link at the end.

It’s packed with 40+ pages of insights, so here are some of the findings that surprised us the most:

Likes dropped 13%, comments fell 17%, and shares were down 10%. At first glance, it looks like LinkedIn is losing steam. So... is nobody engaging anymore?

But engagement went up 14%. Wait... what?

No mystery here: the answer is clicks. 

Every time someone:

LinkedIn counts that as an interaction even if no one can see it from the outside. These are the invisible interactions, and they’re growing across accounts of all sizes. 

➔ One move you can make today: stop obsessing over likes like it’s 2016 and start paying closer attention to clicks. They’re the clearest sign your content is driving real action.

Yes, you read that right. One of the biggest myths in social media is that including a link kills your post. But our data tells a different story: Company Pages posts with links get 51% more impressions and 40% more interactions than the average.

That said, it’s the exact opposite for Personal Profiles. Impressions and interactions drop by 27% and 20%, respectively.

So the takeaway is neither “always add a link” nor “never add one”, but rather to understand what kind of account you’re posting from, who your audience is, and whether the content around that link is actually good enough to make it worth clicking.

A link to a relevant study, report, or webinar can be genuinely useful. A link to your website with a lazy text generated by ChatGPT in 3 seconds is probably not. 

➔ One move you can make today: if you manage a Company Page, stop hiding links in the first comment. Put them in the post, and make it crystal clear why they’re worth clicking.

Posts that include a question get 77% more comments, and 80% more if they include a call to action.

LinkedIn is like showing up to a party where everyone’s a stranger. Someone has to make the first move. A direct question or a strong CTA helps break the ice and makes it way easier for people to join the conversation.

➔ One move you can make today: add open-ended questions or clear calls to action to your posts to encourage people to jump into the comments. Another option? Be the first to leave a comment so the post doesn’t look like a ghost town and people can see there’s already some activity.

Schedule your LinkedIn posts with Metricool and include the first comment. That way, when your post, carousel, or video goes live, the first comment will go live with it.

The first 48 hours matter more than you think

This stat surprised me: half of a post’s impressions happen in the first 48 hours ⏳

And the same goes for interactions:

This shows that when to post is almost as important as what to post. That’s why posting strategically really matters.

➔ One move you can make today: use Metricool’s “Best Times to Post on LinkedIn” feature to find the perfect time slot. If you’re looking to post during a high-activity period, use it as a reference. If you’d rather avoid the competition, look for less crowded time slots.

Across both Personal Profiles and Company Pages, the most commonly used formats are single-image posts, video, and multi-image posts.

And still, carousels are driving the highest engagement ( as well as the strongest interactions and reach, right alongside multi-image posts).

Here’s what the data says:

The goal isn’t to treat a carousel like your Instagram photo dump from Saturday night.

The real key is to hook people from slide one with a clear idea, make every slide earn its place, and keep the design clean, useful, and easy to follow. 

And don’t forget to wrap it up with a call to action!

➔ One move you can make today: Are you not posting carousels because turning everything into PDFs feels like a pain? I totally get it. With Metricool, you can upload regular images directly, and we’ll take care of publishing them as a carousel.