August brought Finland back to work, and the typical post from the accounts we manage still reached more people than in June or July. See which posts earned that reach.
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August is when Finland comes back to work. Out-of-office replies switch off one by one, and by the last week of the month the accounts we manage were posting at their normal pace again.
The reach stayed. The typical August post reached 2,235 people, more than in June or July, across 332 posts.
These are working professionals: founders, executives and specialists at Finnish and Nordic companies, writing under their own names, mostly to a Finnish-speaking professional audience. Most of them have between 1,000 and 5,000 followers.
Everything below describes what that group actually produced in August, at a scale any ordinary profile can reach.
The median post reached 2,235 people, earned 37 reactions and 3 comments, and landed at a 1.67% engagement rate.
Every figure here is a median: the middle post. LinkedIn runs on a power law, where one post in fifty travels far enough to drag an average somewhere unhelpful. The median tells you what a normal Tuesday looks like.
Median reach per post
Posting picked up again as people came back from their holidays, and reach per post kept climbing anyway. By the end of August, the extra room summer left in the feed had not been used up.
Median comments by post length
Reach was almost flat this month. Every length band landed within about 115 impressions of the others. The difference showed up underneath the post: past 1,000 characters, the typical post collected about 60% more comments.
Key takeaway: Posts over 1,000 characters collected about 60% more comments than posts of 600 to 1,000.
What to do with it: If you want replies, make an argument long enough to disagree with. People comment on a point of view, and a point of view needs room.
Median reach by topic
Leadership was still what our accounts wrote about most: well over a third of all August posts. In July it topped this list. In August it settled into the middle, right on the overall median.
The posts that traveled furthest were about marketing and brand, and about the writer's own life and lessons. Sales posts came last, reaching fewer people than anything else.
Key takeaway: Marketing, brand and personal posts reached more than three times as far as posts about sales.
What to do with it: Sales posts don't need to disappear. Tell them through something that happened: the customer conversation that changed your mind, or the deal you lost and what it taught you.
Median reach by format
Four out of five August posts carried an image, and they earned their place. Video did no better than plain text this month.
Key takeaway: A post with an image reached twice as many people as a text-only post.
What to do with it: Add a photo of you, a screenshot or a simple chart. It only has to stop the scroll.
Reach and engagement rate both move with follower count, in opposite directions. Bigger accounts reach further per post and turn a smaller share of that reach into reactions. That is how the platform works, so the useful comparison is with accounts your own size.
Reach per post, by follower count:
Reach per post in August
| Followers | Typical | Strong | Excellent |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,001 to 5,000 | 1,431 | 3,160 | 5,873 |
| 5,001 to 10,000 | 2,985 | 5,886 | 9,349 |
| 10,000 and over | 5,808 | 14,056 | 25,330 |
Engagement rate, by follower count:
Engagement rate in August
| Followers | Typical | Strong | Excellent |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,001 to 5,000 | 1.9% | 2.6% | 3.0% |
| 5,001 to 10,000 | 1.6% | 2.4% | 3.1% |
| 10,000 and over | 1.1% | 2.0% | 2.6% |
Look at the top row again. An excellent post from an account with a few thousand followers reached about as many people as a typical post from an account with more than 10,000.
Key takeaway: The gap between your typical post and your best one is bigger than the gap between you and an account twice your size.
What to do with it: Find your row and read your own month against it, rather than against the loudest account in your feed.
Median monthly reach per account
Key takeaway: Accounts posting three to five times a week reached five times as many people over the month as accounts posting one to three times.
What to do with it: Three posts a week is still the line. Below it, every post has to do all the work on its own.
The accounts we manage added about 4,300 followers in August. The typical account gained 52 of them, the strongest quarter gained 97 or more, and two accounts added more than 500 each.
In July, the same accounts added about 4,000 in total, and the typical gain was 38.
Key takeaway: The typical account gained over a third more followers than in July.
What to do with it: Don't judge a month by its follower count alone. A typical gain of 52 a month adds up to more than 600 people a year who chose to see your posts.
Every September, LinkedIn fills up with people announcing they are back. New plans, a new rhythm, this time for real.
The accounts in this data had nothing to restart. They kept posting through July, picked up the pace in August, and reached more people per post than in any month of the summer. 😎✌️
Written by
Co-Founder & CEO
