How to Unfollow on LinkedIn: An Analytical Guide

As a professional networking platform used by over 722 million members, LinkedIn produces a staggering amount of content. Over 52 million articles and links are shared here daily alongside regular profile updates created by connections.

Keeping up with these endless updates in your crowded feed often seems next to impossible for time-crunched professionals. No wonder 59% of users feel overwhelmed by their feed and end up missing critical insights or opportunities.

This is where LinkedIn’s unfollow feature comes in – allowing you to remove clutter selectively and reveal only the most relevant content. But to utilize it effectively, a deeper analytical understanding is helpful.

In this guide, we take an in-depth, data-backed look at unfollowing on LinkedIn specifically for marketing professionals and recruiters seeking more value.

LinkedIn Feed Usage Statistics and Challenges

As per LinkedIn’s 2022 data, here are some key statistics around feed consumption:

• 72% of members check LinkedIn daily
• The average time spent per visit is 27 minutes
• 93% of professionals use it to gather industry insights
• But only 22% feel their feed provides sufficient value

Additionally, here is how often different types of update are posted, contributing to information overload:

With feeds playing such a vital role in knowledge sharing, their limitations significantly impact ROI. Cluttered feeds lead to lower dwelling time on meaningful posts and difficulty spotting relevant opportunities – aspects that directly hurt marketing and recruiting efforts.

This highlights the value of selective unfollowing in improving signal-to-noise ratio. But how exactly does this feature work and what should you consider when using it?

Functionality: How Does Unfollowing Work on LinkedIn?

Unfollowing is the action of removing a connection’s future posts from your feed whilst keeping them in your network. This is an anonymous action – no notifications are sent out when you unfollow someone.

By unfollowing rather than removing connections, you can avoid damaging relationships or causing offense. But their potentially irrelevant or distracting updates will stop showing up in your feed.

You can unfollow three main types of profiles on LinkedIn:

• Individual connections
• Company/brand pages
• Groups

Unfollowing can be done easily via desktop or mobile in a few steps as outlined below:

Unfollowing via Desktop

1. Visit the profile that you wish to unfollow
2. Click on the “Following” button below their name/photo
3. Select the “Unfollow” option in the popup menu

Unfollowing via Mobile App

1. Go to the profile that you wish to unfollow
2. Tap the “Following” button under their picture
3. Confirm unfollowing in the pop-up

Additionally, bulk unfollowing multiple connections is also possible through the “Manage my network” option.

Now let’s analyze the impact of judicious unfollowing.

Profiling Ideal Unfollowing Candidates

Which types of connections should you consider unfollowing first? Prioritize based on aspects like relevance, post frequency and intent.

For instance, as a marketing professional, unfollow connections that rarely post meaningful industry insights or career openings. Recruiters can remove fellow recruiters crowdsourcing resumes outside their function area.

By studying your feed’s content for a week and tagging low-value connections, you can create an unfollow list. Additionally, here are some common unfollow targets:

• Connections posting too frequently causing noise
• Connections sharing irrelevant niche posts
• Inactive connections who haven’t posted in years
• Competitor company pages tracking your firm’s content
• Recruiters from unrelated industries or seniorities

Construct this initial list judiciously. You can always refollow if you change your mind later.

Now let’s analyze the pros and cons of selective unfollowing.

Cost Benefit Analysis of Unfollowing

Unfollowing underutilized LinkedIn connections has some tangible benefits but also a few limitations to factor in.

Potential Advantages

• Declutters feeds to spotlight meaningful insights
• Saves time otherwise spent on low-value posts
• Surfaces more relevant content and opportunities
• Improves signal-to-noise ratio considerably
• Lets you discover new voices and perspectives
• Maintains existing professional relationships

As per LinkedIn’s 2022 Creator study, 60% of professionals ranked “relevant content” as their top expected outcome. By aligning feeds better to your needs via unfollowing, significant value can be unlocked.

Potential Disadvantages

However, some risks around unfollowing exist as well:

• Possible FOMO from missing minor updates
• Chance of unfollowing valuable connections by mistake
• Need to re-build feed filters if interests change
• Missing updates from wider industry circles

Hence, you need an optimal long-term feed curation strategy combining unfollowing with relevancy-based filtering and grouping. Let‘s analyze what that entails next.

Crafting an Optimal Feed Strategy

While unfollowing aids short-term feed de-cluttering, additional tactics are needed for sustainably maximizing value as your needs change.

As visualized above, a multi-pronged approach can help optimize feed relevancy in the long run:

• Categorize connections into key professional groups or by seniority to consume updates accordingly
• Unfollow irrelevant connections falling outside current focus areas
• Mute low-priority connections to temporarily reduce their updates
• Limit notifications based on update types via feed settings
• Re-assess connections quarterly to identify new potential unfollows as your interests evolve

This organized framework powered by unfollowing minimizes noise while lowering the risk of losing touch with valuable contacts.

Additionally, social media management tools like Hootsuite can also help streamline feed curation across platforms. Let‘s explore a cross-platform comparison next.

Benchmarking Unfollowing Best Practices Across Social Networks

While extremely helpful on LinkedIn, unfollowing features vary across leading social platforms as analyzed below:

As evident from the analysis:

1. All platforms allow easy refollowing if mistakenly unfollowed.
2. Only Facebook sends notifications about unfollowing due to tighter friend connections.
3. Useful alternative options like "Restrict" or "Snooze" are offered for temporary muting.

Based on your objectives, you can optimize feed management across networks using the appropriate settings combo.

For recruiters and marketers focused on professional networking, however, heavy use of LinkedIn’s seamless unfollow + refollow capabilities is recommended.

Key Takeaways on Unfollowing

To summarize the key points on effectively using LinkedIn’s unfollow feature:

• Study your feed’s content for a few weeks to identify ideal unfollow candidates
• Unfollow outdated, irrelevant and disengaged connections first
• Remember you can easily refollow if mistakenly unfollowed someone valuable
• Use muting for temporary filtering rather than permanent unfollowing
• Re-assess unfollow choices quarterly as your interests evolve over time
• Combine with grouping, notifications settings and external tools as part of an optimal long term feed strategy

Conclusion

As discussed through multi-faceted analysis in this guide, targeted unfollowing allows professionals to extract much higher value from the strategic LinkedIn feed.

By judiciously removing noise through data-backed unfollowing, recruiting and marketing productivity can spike considerably. But a balanced approach also prevents losing touch with serendipitous insights.

With these best practices in mind, continue optimizing your LinkedIn feed via ongoing curation based on relevance. This will ensure you remain well-tuned to meaningful connections and opportunities over time.