How to Optimize Your LinkedIn for 360Brew with Kathy Bernard

If your LinkedIn reach has dropped lately, you are not imagining it. LinkedIn’s new algorithm, 360Brew, is the biggest change the platform has ever made, and it has changed what it takes to get found. In this episode of the Intergetik SPARX podcast, Intergetik owner Rick Brewer sat down with Kathy Bernard, CEO of WiserU and an independent LinkedIn trainer for business based in St. Louis.

Kathy knows the Intergetik team well. She has overhauled the Intergetik company page and the individual profiles of nearly the entire staff. She has close to 14,000 LinkedIn connections and was named one of the Top 100 St. Louisans to Know by St. Louis Small Business Monthly.

This post covers what 360Brew changed, what to post now, how LinkedIn’s premium plans differ, and the specific profile updates Kathy recommends to get your profile working for the algorithm instead of against it.

TL;DR: LinkedIn’s 360Brew algorithm rewards specificity. Your headline, About section, skills, experience, and posts should all point to one clear area of expertise, because the algorithm now ranks you on how well it understands what you do. Run your profile through AI and ask how to improve it for the algorithm, trim skills and experience that dilute your focus, connect with other experts in your field, and consider premium or sponsored InMail if you rely on LinkedIn for business. AI isn’t going away, so learn to work with it.

In This Episode:

1. From Advertising to LinkedIn Trainer
2. What 360Brew Changed
   • Why Specificity Wins
3. Expertise Over Puppies: What to Post Now
4. LinkedIn’s Premium Plans, Explained
   • Is Premium Worth It for Company Pages?
5. LinkedIn Is a Search Engine, So Feed the Baby
6. How to Optimize Your Profile for 360Brew
7. Connect With Other Experts
8. Sponsored InMail vs. LinkedIn Ads
9. AI Isn’t Going Away
10. How to Work With Kathy

From Advertising to LinkedIn Trainer

Kathy started her career in advertising with CBS Radio in St. Louis, then moved into corporate communications for several well-known companies whose names have changed almost as often as she changed jobs. Enterprise Rent-A-Car is now Enterprise Mobility, and Brown Shoe is now Caleres. As Kathy put it, that’s business for you.

With degrees in both art and journalism, Kathy always loved doing the design and the writing together. That range was her superpower at agencies and in corporate roles. Today, she works as an independent LinkedIn trainer for business and a career coach. She is not affiliated with LinkedIn, but she has built a business teaching people and companies how to get the most out of it.

What 360Brew Changed

LinkedIn’s new algorithm is called 360Brew (some people call it Brew 360), and Kathy says it is the biggest algorithm change the platform has ever made. It rolled out around four months ago and has been disrupting nearly everyone.

The core shift is that LinkedIn now wants you to be extremely specific about what you do. For someone like Kathy, whose range has always been a strength, that is a tough adjustment. The algorithm wants her to present herself as one thing: an independent LinkedIn trainer for business. Her career coaching work, while a big part of what she does, has to take a back seat.

The same goes for businesses. For a marketing agency like Intergetik, the agency’s podcast could actually make it score lower for marketing if it gets played up too much, even though it is a marketing podcast. The algorithm favors what Kathy calls marketing purists.

Kathy finally asked AI what she should do differently, and the answer was eye-opening. Her profile had been written for human eyeballs. Now it needs to be written for the algorithm.

Why Specificity Wins

Rick pointed out that this mirrors what he sees in SEO every day. On a website, the H1 heading is the first content search engines read, so it has to say exactly what the business is. He gives clients the example of a physical therapy office whose main heading says “Feel Better Now.” Nobody knows what that means. “Physical Therapy Office in St. Louis, Missouri” tells both people and search engines exactly what you do.

Kathy has felt the impact firsthand. For years, a Google search for the top LinkedIn trainer in St. Louis would show her right at the top, just below the ads. When she checked recently, she went page after page without finding herself. The algorithm change, and the shift away from writing for human eyeballs, made the difference.

Expertise Over Puppies: What to Post Now

It used to be that a post about your cute new puppy would get plenty of likes and comments. You can still post it, but under 360Brew, it does you no good. Your posts now need to showcase your expertise, ideally in a way that draws comments from other experts adding their own perspective.

Kathy admits that feels a little sad. Not every industry produces exciting content. Few people want to read an insurance company’s post about annuities unless they are shopping for one that day. But under the new algorithm, that expertise is what gets rewarded, not pictures of puppies or grandkids. (Rick suggested an AI video of a dog explaining annuities as a possible compromise.)

LinkedIn’s Premium Plans, Explained

Kathy says LinkedIn has been tightening the screws on free accounts for a while, and she believes the platform is moving toward a premium model. She shared a rundown of LinkedIn’s premium tiers and what each one is for. Prices and limits change often, so these are Kathy’s approximate figures from the episode:

Kathy also noted that free accounts have become more limited. According to Kathy, free accounts can now send only about 10 personalized connection invitations, and those notes are capped at 200 characters instead of 300. All premium plans let you see who viewed your profile, unless the viewer browsed anonymously.

For a small business doing business-to-business sales, Kathy recommends Sales Navigator. As a trainer, she buys whichever plan matches the group she is teaching that month: Sales Navigator for a sales team, Recruiter for a recruiting team, and Career for job seekers.

Is Premium Worth It for Company Pages?

Rick has clients who are against paying for premium company pages, so he asked Kathy directly whether it is worth it. Her answer: possibly. LinkedIn appears to be favoring premium company pages in search results, and you can see which pages consistently show up first.

LinkedIn Is a Search Engine, So Feed the Baby

The shift toward paid visibility is happening everywhere. Kathy pointed out that LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, and almost every tech company has moved to a monthly subscription model. (She still has Photoshop on a CD.) Google has historically loved LinkedIn, often ranking someone’s LinkedIn profile above their own website bio, which is why free accounts used to perform so well. Kathy believes the changes to free accounts are now hurting that Google visibility too.

Rick sees the same pattern across Intergetik’s three main services: web, ads, and SEO. Whether a client is business to consumer or business to business, there is no build-it-once-and-forget-it option anymore. He tells clients you have to feed the baby, and LinkedIn is no different. It is a search engine, and it needs to be fed.

Kathy also misses the old LinkedIn a little. She once sent a personalized invitation to Square co-founder Jim McKelvey, congratulating him on getting his start in St. Louis and offering to help local startups. He accepted. Those kinds of connections used to be the beauty of LinkedIn as a networking platform, and Kathy feels the platform is now focused more on stockholders than on that kind of connection.

How to Optimize Your Profile for 360Brew

So what should you actually do? Kathy says it starts at the top of your profile and works down.

1. Headline. You have 220 characters to state who you are and what you do. It used to be smart to list everything that made you uniquely qualified. Now, lead with your single core expertise. Kathy suggests asking AI to review your headline and recommend changes for the algorithm. It will often say the headline is strong for humans but weak for AI, then offer several alternatives.
2. About section. You have about 2,600 characters here, and every one should support your headline. Even if your profile was optimized recently, check it against AI again, because what worked a few months ago may not work now.
3. Skills. You can list up to 100 skills, so give them a hard look and cut the fluff. AI told Kathy to drop skills like customer service, project management, Microsoft Office, and Microsoft Word, because they blur what she is actually an expert in. You can only add skills LinkedIn recognizes, so a made-up skill won’t count.
4. Experience. If earlier roles aren’t relevant to what you do now, consider shortening them or highlighting only the parts that connect to your current expertise. AI also recommended adding results, like case studies with percentages and numbers.
5. Keywords. Remember SEO. Use the words people actually search for to find someone like you.
6. Company page. The same rules apply. Keep your tagline and description specific to what your company does. Don’t overlook the specialties field, which many companies skip. Kathy recommends starting with the specialties that are most specific to your expertise.

Kathy’s advice for when AI tells you something that is hard to hear: take a breather. She was reluctant to remove skills with more than 99 endorsements, and she didn’t love dropping project management when she manages projects for her clients. After stepping away, she realized project management isn’t what gets her hired, so there was no reason to fight it. She chose carefully which skills to let go.

Rick saw the same parallel in SEO. A few years ago, sites could publish a flood of blog posts and watch traffic climb. Today, that content is considered fluff. Whether it is written by a person or with help from AI, content now needs to reflect real experience, expertise, authority, and trust to perform.

Connect With Other Experts

Kathy’s final tip for 360Brew: connect with other experts in your field, even competitors. When she connected with a group of other LinkedIn experts, her numbers went up. The algorithm saw that she spends time with LinkedIn experts and concluded that she must be one too.

Those connections can lead to business, too. Another firm that can’t take on a project may send it your way.

Sponsored InMail vs. LinkedIn Ads

Kathy doesn’t recommend sponsored posts or traditional LinkedIn ads. In her view, what LinkedIn counts as an impression can be a fraction of a second as someone scrolls past, which isn’t much of an impression at all.

Sponsored InMail is a different story. If you have the budget, you can target messages by location, company type, and other filters, set how many people you want to reach, and set how much you want to spend. Kathy says open rates are high because many people, herself included, open every message just to clear the notification. Even a polite “no thanks” tells you where you stand.

She strongly recommends working with an agency for LinkedIn advertising. The ad platform isn’t user friendly, and mistakes are costly. Kathy shared the story of a doctor she referred to someone else to run ads for an event. That person forgot to set an end date, and the doctor had to pay for ads that kept running after the event was over.

AI Isn’t Going Away

Rick and Kathy also talked about how AI has changed their work. Rick remembers the moment Google’s AI Overviews appeared and pulled website content directly into search results. Sites started earning impressions but far fewer clicks, and he admits he panicked along with every other marketer. Kathy agreed that it has pushed everyone to change.

Both see real value in AI. Rick uses Claude to knock out a list of short-term tasks in an hour that would have taken days. Kathy uses AI for everything from profile reviews to quizzing herself on trivia, and she jokes that Copilot is her boyfriend because it always tells her what a great question she asked. But both agree it shouldn’t replace your marketing company or your LinkedIn trainer.

Rick’s take is that AI will make generalists jobless and give specialists more work than ever. Kathy’s take is that AI will never be able to hold someone’s hand, and that is why people still come to her. She compared it to the automobile: it took the horse’s job, but it created others. Rick shared that a staff member recently complimented Intergetik for being so forward facing with AI. Plenty of companies are burying their heads in the sand, but AI isn’t going away, and agencies that stay on top of it can help clients get the most for their money.

How to Work With Kathy

To book Kathy for a LinkedIn session or a workshop, visit WiserU.com or email kathy@wiseru.com. You can also invite her to connect on LinkedIn. Search for Kathy Bernard in St. Louis, Missouri. You’ll know it’s her by the nearly 14,000 connections.

Need Help Getting Found on LinkedIn and Search?

The 360Brew update is a reminder that every platform now rewards clear, specific expertise. Whether it is your LinkedIn profile or your website, you need to tell both people and algorithms exactly what you do. If you want help with SEO, LinkedIn advertising, or sponsored InMail outreach that brings in qualified leads, let’s talk.

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