Followers

Following is a different relationship from connecting: when you follow someone, you don't become part of their network and they won't automatically see your posts.1 LinkedIn's blog says connections are people you have relationships with, such as coworkers, alumni, business partners and friends, whereas people you follow are those you don't know but want to learn from.7 A 2019 post on LinkedIn's blog adds that following removes the hurdle of sending a connection request first, you can still react and comment on their content, and there is no limit to how many people can follow you.3 A Microsoft patent from September 2025 describes the same split: in a one-way follow the followed person does not need to follow back, while a mutual connection needs both people to agree.8 LinkedIn's Help Center also separates following from subscribing: following a person or company brings some notifications about their content but no automatic newsletter subscription, and subscribing to a newsletter does not necessarily make you a follower of the author's other content.9

Members set who can follow them in Settings & Privacy: click the Me icon, select Settings & Privacy, choose Visibility, then click Followers under Visibility of your LinkedIn activity.2 Your 1st-degree connections automatically follow your posts and articles, and under Who can follow you the choice is Everyone on LinkedIn, which also lets your posts be shared off LinkedIn, or Your connections.2 Choosing Your connections removes followers outside your network, makes your follower number equal your total connections, removes the Follow button next to your posts and articles, and can take up to 24 hours to apply.2 The Make follow primary toggle decides whether people viewing your profile see Follow or Connect as the main action.2

Followed accounts are one of the inputs to a member's LinkedIn feed, which LinkedIn's blog says is built from the members you are connected to and those you follow.10 LinkedIn's Help Center lists the feed's contents as updates from your network, companies and interests you follow, along with recommended and sponsored content, and members can unfollow or mute people or companies from the feed's control menu.11 Tim Jurka wrote in August 2025 that the feed is highly personalized, with many factors LinkedIn looks at, depending on your preferences, interests, who you're connected to and the posts you've engaged with.6 For companies, LinkedIn's Marketing Blog said in June 2024 that each Page follower is a direct channel to a broader network that amplifies a Page's reach, and that organic followers are members who choose to engage because of the content's value and relevance.12

LinkedIn's Help Center describes Audience analytics as a feature it is gradually rolling out, available on desktop only, that shows creators demographic information about their followers.5 In the Analytics dashboard, click Audience analytics, then choose a date range under New followers; the range applies to the New followers graph and the Top demographics section but not to the Total followers count at the top.5 Top demographics shows the top five results by job title, location, industry, seniority, company size or company, and the Export button saves the data as an.XLSX file.5 Microsoft patents from 2024 and 2025 describe a method for keeping fake follows out of follower counts, though patents do not confirm how LinkedIn counts followers today.141516 In the method, a follow from a trusted account is added to the followers directly, while a follow from an untrusted account is held in a separate set so it does not affect the count.141516 When the held set passes a threshold, such as five entries or 2% of the metric in the patents' example, each account is rechecked: trusted ones move to the followers and untrusted ones are removed, and repeated removals can flag an account that is controlled by a program for corrective action.141516