Four years of formats: what changed

The 12-month table is a snapshot. The movie is more interesting:

• Video is the format of the decade so far: 20 median likes in 2022, 38 in 2026. Nearly doubled, and in 2026 it overtook image posts for the first time.

• Image went from 23 to 35, the steady compounder.

• Carousels jumped in 2024 (23 → 34) and froze there. The format matured.

• Text never moved: 15 in 2022, 16 in 2026. Four years of platform growth and the median text post gained one like.

And what people choose to post moved even more than what it earns:

• Image took over the feed: 44.8% of posts in 2022, 60.8% in 2026.

• Text-only collapsed from 27.7% to 16.3%. Creators abandoned the format that never paid.

• Link posts halved their share (16.4% → 6.1%): the reach penalty got learned, the hard way.

• Carousels peaked in 2024 (6.9%) and slid to 5.0%, even though their engagement held. Fashion faded faster than performance.

• Polls never crossed 1.2% of the feed. Some formats die loudly; polls died quietly.

(History note: our corpus grows over time, so year-to-year comparisons use medians within each year and should be read as directional. Every claim above survives that caveat comfortably.)

Where do you stand against these numbers? MagicPost's LinkedIn analytics break down your own posts the same way: formats, reach, engagement, best posts. And if you want these benchmark numbers refreshed in your inbox every month, subscribe to the MagicPost Benchmark.