Best of LinkedIn: Social Selling CW 49/ 50

00:00:00: Brought to you by Thomas Allgaier and Frennis, this edition highlights key LinkedIn posts on social selling in weeks forty nine and fifty.

00:00:07: Frennis supports enterprises with enablement and insights, providing data driven sales intelligence, flexible support, team augmentation and data quality improvements.

00:00:17: So social engagement turns into measurable pipeline.

00:00:20: Welcome to the deep dive.

00:00:21: We spent the last couple of weeks digging through dozens and dozens of posts from B to B practitioners on LinkedIn, really just to pull out the essential strategy.

00:00:29: shifts for you.

00:00:30: Yeah our mission today is to cut through all that noise and we noticed this this really clear convergence among the top B to B voices.

00:00:38: The core message seems to be that social selling is

00:00:41: well.

00:00:42: It's past the experimental stage.

00:00:43: For

00:00:43: sure.

00:00:44: It's professionalizing and is doing it fast.

00:00:46: Yeah.

00:00:46: We're seeing a shift away from, you know, random individual effort.

00:00:49: Right.

00:00:50: Toward these structured programs, signal-based outreach, and a much deeper, almost engineered understanding of how LinkedIn's algorithm actually works

00:00:57: now.

00:00:58: Exactly.

00:00:58: This isn't just about asking your team to post once in a while.

00:01:01: It's about building a real internal system.

00:01:04: So we've clustered the key takeaways into four major themes for you.

00:01:07: Okay.

00:01:08: Employee advocacy.

00:01:10: the fundamentals of social selling that still work, the changing metrics thanks to new algorithms, and then how AI and tools are professionalizing the whole execution.

00:01:18: All

00:01:19: right, let's unpack this.

00:01:19: We should probably start with theme one, which feels like the biggest shift right now.

00:01:23: Employee advocacy becoming the main social selling engine.

00:01:27: The consensus is, well, it's overwhelming.

00:01:31: If your company isn't empowering its people to post, you're basically invisible.

00:01:35: You're missing the most authentic marketing asset you have.

00:01:38: And when you look at the data, it really tells the story.

00:01:40: I mean, is it fair to say company pages are officially dead?

00:01:43: Struggling

00:01:44: is maybe the kind of word, but yeah.

00:01:46: Anthony Blatner shared some data showing company page reach has just plummeted.

00:01:50: It's at about one point six percent of followers now.

00:01:52: Wow.

00:01:52: One point six percent.

00:01:54: Think about that.

00:01:54: It was seven percent back in twenty twenty one.

00:01:57: That's a massive drop.

00:01:58: It's essentially pay to play now for any kind of brand visibility.

00:02:02: And Charlotte Gruder had numbers on this too, right?

00:02:04: She did.

00:02:05: She showed that employee shared content gets eight times more engagement.

00:02:09: And it can reach over five hundred percent more people than a brand post.

00:02:12: Yeah.

00:02:12: So you just, you have to shift the visibility lever over to your people.

00:02:16: That makes perfect sense.

00:02:18: If the organic channel for the brand is gone, you have to activate your workforce.

00:02:22: But what's the difference between, you know, advocacy that works and just telling people to repost the company blog?

00:02:27: That is the critical question.

00:02:29: and it's not a casual request anymore.

00:02:31: Amy wants to lay out this really structured guide.

00:02:34: She says brands have to educate, align, incentivize, and then track performance.

00:02:39: It has to be treated like a core, measurable capability, a program, not just an ask.

00:02:45: And the whole message has to flip, doesn't it?

00:02:47: I saw Irina Novoselski and Joe Davies both stressing that it has to be about the individual first, helping employees build their brand.

00:02:54: Precisely.

00:02:55: That's how you humanize the business.

00:02:57: And it's how you get reach into all these niche micro audiences that a corporate page could never ever touch.

00:03:03: Yvonne Botang was also all over this idea of building the individual's brand.

00:03:06: So it's a win-win.

00:03:08: The company gets reach.

00:03:09: The employee gets visibility.

00:03:11: Right.

00:03:11: And we actually saw some real ROI on this, which is rare to see shared publicly.

00:03:16: Garrett Cottle posted results from a pilot program.

00:03:19: they ran.

00:03:20: What'd they find?

00:03:21: Employee posting drove forty thousand dollars in signed MRR and it helped them get three A player hires.

00:03:29: And he made it clear this wasn't like super polished corporate content.

00:03:32: No, he said it was driven by authentic personal stories.

00:03:36: even things like memes and personal stories.

00:03:38: That's the key, isn't it?

00:03:39: Authenticity.

00:03:41: And to get that kind of engagement, companies are really starting to invest.

00:03:45: Seriously investing.

00:03:46: We saw a few examples of gamification.

00:03:48: This

00:03:49: is where it gets really interesting.

00:03:50: Katie Mann and Sarah Chudley, they talked about how BotPress launched this eleven-week internal competition.

00:03:56: Right.

00:03:57: With a huge cash prize.

00:03:58: A

00:03:59: twenty-two thousand dollar cash prize pool.

00:04:01: I mean, when a sauce company is putting up that kind of money, It's a massive signal.

00:04:06: They are expecting a serious return on that visibility.

00:04:09: Right.

00:04:09: They're not just throwing money away.

00:04:10: They must be projecting, what, over a hundred grand in pipeline from

00:04:13: that?

00:04:14: At least.

00:04:15: But wait, you might be thinking, isn't this just paying people to post?

00:04:19: How is this different from one of those old engagement pods?

00:04:22: Yeah, that's a good question.

00:04:24: How do you stop it from just being artificial likes?

00:04:26: Well, it goes back to that structure Amy Watson talked about, the education and alignment.

00:04:31: And Mirapolani made the point that LinkedIn removed the easy button for gaming the algorithm, so the competition has to reward the behaviors that lead to real engagement, not just the volume of posts.

00:04:43: Okay, so if individual advocacy is the new engine, what's the fuel?

00:04:49: This leads us right into theme two, social selling fundamentals.

00:04:52: Why genuine connection beats superficial reach?

00:04:55: Yeah, the common complaint we saw everywhere was just fatigue.

00:04:58: People are so tired of automated outreach and spammy templates.

00:05:01: I get at least five a day.

00:05:02: Exactly.

00:05:03: So practitioners are doubling down on genuine, slow conversations.

00:05:07: Jeremy Bennett shared some insights from Dean Seddon, who says the real game is conversations.

00:05:12: It's a slow, intentional, pressure-free approach.

00:05:15: Seddon even had that great little tip about starting DMs with a light apology for his tropical shirt.

00:05:21: Just a tiny human detail to break the

00:05:24: ice.

00:05:24: It works.

00:05:25: And that same focus on quality over quantity applies to content.

00:05:30: Leslie Venets had what she called an unpopular opinion.

00:05:33: Which was?

00:05:34: That virality should be a surprise, not the strategy.

00:05:38: She found that the content that actually drove the most pipeline for her often had below average reach.

00:05:44: Wait, below average reach, that sounds counterintuitive.

00:05:46: It does, but think about it.

00:05:48: It's because the content was written for a very specific high-intent persona.

00:05:52: A few high-intent lurkers are worth more than thousands of low-intent likers.

00:05:56: Okay, can you give me a quick example?

00:05:57: What does a high-intent low-reach post actually look like?

00:06:01: Sure.

00:06:01: It might be a super detailed post about, say, the specific challenges of migrating data from Oracle to Snowflake.

00:06:07: It could have a checklist of common mistakes.

00:06:10: Very few people care about that topic.

00:06:12: But the five people who do care are the exact VPs of engineering you want to talk to.

00:06:17: The relevance is everything, the likes don't matter.

00:06:19: Makes sense.

00:06:20: So if we're writing for that specific persona, what does that mean for how we structure the content?

00:06:25: Jonathan Levy argues that posts fail because of broken structure, not weak ideas.

00:06:31: Yes, the fundamentals still work best.

00:06:33: Consistency, clear thinking, clean formatting, but The purpose matters even more.

00:06:39: Dutika Agarwal shared a great six-themed framework.

00:06:42: Educate, inspire, entertain, show-proof.

00:06:45: But there was a nuance to that, right?

00:06:47: Especially for consultants.

00:06:48: A vital one from Justina Sosierska.

00:06:51: She pointed out that if you only post educational content, you just attract learners who want free info, not clients who are ready to pay.

00:06:57: Good

00:06:57: point.

00:06:58: In the age of AI, information is basically free.

00:07:01: Consultants have to sell judgment.

00:07:02: They have to sell their thinking.

00:07:04: You have to show clients how you would solve their specific messy problem.

00:07:07: So if the content is this focused and this strategic, how does LinkedIn even find the right people for it?

00:07:13: That brings us to theme three, platforms, algorithms, and metrics.

00:07:18: The whole playing field is changing.

00:07:19: It's changing everything.

00:07:21: Ani Petrova and a few others have documented this fundamental shift LinkedIn made in early twenty twenty five.

00:07:27: They moved from the people graph.

00:07:29: to the interest graph.

00:07:30: Okay, people, graph, interest graph.

00:07:33: Sounds technical.

00:07:35: What does that actually mean for me as a user?

00:07:37: So

00:07:37: before, LinkedIn was like your high school reunion.

00:07:40: It showed you content from people you were connected to in the matter of the topic.

00:07:44: Got it.

00:07:44: Now it's like a huge convention center sorted by niche hobbies.

00:07:48: Content is prioritized based on topic and the clusters of people interested in that topic.

00:07:53: It's not just about your immediate network anymore.

00:07:55: That has to completely change how a post performs.

00:07:58: It absolutely does.

00:07:59: Richard Vanderbloom did this fascinating comparison of post lifespans.

00:08:03: On one hand, things are faster.

00:08:05: Forty percent of a post's reach now happens in the first hour.

00:08:08: That's twice as fast as it used to be.

00:08:10: But the total lifespan of the post actually gets longer.

00:08:12: It could be six to eight days because the algorithm keeps serving it to new relevant interest clusters.

00:08:17: So what's the new currency for the algorithm?

00:08:19: What makes a post travel?

00:08:21: It saves and reposts from your second and third degree connections, not just the superficial likes from your inner circle.

00:08:27: Okay,

00:08:27: so that raises a huge question about what we should even be tracking.

00:08:31: If likes are less important, what metrics matter?

00:08:35: The social selling index, the SSI, keeps coming up.

00:08:38: It's becoming the core KPI.

00:08:40: Newman Ahmed called it the secret metric that top sellers are obsessing over.

00:08:44: It basically measures your whole performance on the platform, building your brand, finding people, engaging with insights.

00:08:50: He

00:08:50: claimed it could triple sales conversations.

00:08:52: That's a huge claim.

00:08:54: It is.

00:08:54: But we're seeing people prove it out.

00:08:56: Josh Call reported boosting his own SSI from a thirty to a seventy in just about a hundred days.

00:09:02: It seems to be a real leading indicator of success.

00:09:04: And it's not just your activity being scored, right?

00:09:07: It's your profile itself.

00:09:08: Exactly.

00:09:09: The new Three Sixty Brew reasoning engine is evaluating your profile.

00:09:13: Jacqueline Sargent and MechAdam both stress that the algorithm thinks in concepts, not just keywords.

00:09:19: Thinks in concepts.

00:09:20: What does that mean for optimizing my profile?

00:09:22: It means you need focus.

00:09:24: Are you just a sales coach?

00:09:26: Or are you someone who specifically helps with pipeline velocity in mid-market size?

00:09:31: You have to front load those expertise signals in your headline and about section.

00:09:36: And Crucially, clean up your skills list.

00:09:39: Get rid of the noise so the AI can figure out what your core concept is.

00:09:42: And all of this is happening while the platform is cracking down on the fakers.

00:09:46: Yeah, Jasmine Knowledge and Brita Barron's both described the ongoing crackdown on engagement pods.

00:09:51: It just underscores that being human and building real relationships is the only safe, long-term strategy.

00:09:58: Right, so this level of intentionality, you can't do it all manually.

00:10:02: Yeah.

00:10:02: Which brings us to our last theme, theme four.

00:10:04: how tools, AI, and systems are professionalizing the whole thing.

00:10:08: We said it at the top.

00:10:08: Systemization is the big differentiator for twenty twenty six.

00:10:11: Marketers are building internal infrastructure to scale all this.

00:10:14: And we saw some great examples of AI being used as a catalyst, not a crutch.

00:10:18: For sure.

00:10:19: Carolina Posma shared how she built an entire AI content studio.

00:10:23: It compressed her daily LinkedIn production time from like sixty or ninety minutes down to just a few minutes.

00:10:28: Okay, but how do you do that without sounding like a generic AI bot?

00:10:32: That's the fear, right?

00:10:33: That's the key.

00:10:34: She did it by training the AI model to extract unique insights from her own existing knowledge base and then critically to match her voice perfectly.

00:10:45: So it's about systemizing the production of your own expert ideas, not generic ones.

00:10:50: And that systemization is moving into outreach too.

00:10:53: Max Mitchum detailed his seventh step all-bound signal flow.

00:10:57: This is the exact opposite of spam.

00:10:59: It's a signal-based engine.

00:11:01: It uses AI to read posts, verify that the intent is high, and then screep the people who engaged.

00:11:06: So

00:11:06: what's the output?

00:11:07: The output is an outreach email that's custom written based on the exact topic the buyer just engaged with yesterday.

00:11:13: It replaces that generic automation which NIASSEC are warned against with total hyper-relevance.

00:11:18: Okay, and let's touch on external influence too.

00:11:20: Justin Levy made the point that your own channels can only take you so far.

00:11:24: Right.

00:11:24: Creators take you further.

00:11:25: They get you into communities and interest clusters you just can't access on your

00:11:29: own.

00:11:29: And it's not about the biggest names anymore, is it?

00:11:31: It's

00:11:32: not at all.

00:11:33: Brett Stapper highlighted Limelight's success with niche creators people with maybe ten to twenty five thousand followers.

00:11:40: They often outperform the macro influencers because their audience has such deep trust in them.

00:11:45: It's targeted community reach over massive, untargeted impressions.

00:11:49: So if we pull this all together, all these systems and tools are turning social selling from an art into a structured, repeatable process.

00:11:57: That is the core takeaway.

00:11:59: Cornelius Modus-Colm's social selling OS is a perfect example.

00:12:02: He broke the whole thing down into component steps from treating your profile like a landing page to these structured micro flows for conversations.

00:12:10: And this whole shift encourages leaders to stop just throwing headcount at the problem and start improving the actual systems and workflows.

00:12:17: Kerry Gard suggested that the future is system led, not just personality led.

00:12:22: Precisely.

00:12:23: So what does this all mean for you, our listener?

00:12:25: The B to B marketing world is clearly moving toward a more professional, more systemized, and funnily enough, a more human-centric approach on LinkedIn.

00:12:32: It really is.

00:12:33: It's all about building real authority and connecting with your specific tribe, like Barney O'Killey suggested.

00:12:39: It's not about trying to appeal to everyone anymore.

00:12:41: The future belongs to those who prioritize authenticity at scale, leverage their own internal experts as their best marketing channel, and apply real strategic discipline to their conversations and their content.

00:12:54: And of course, keeping a very careful eye on how those algorithms and profile engines keep evolving.

00:12:59: If you enjoyed this deep dive, new additions drop every two weeks.

00:13:03: And you can also check out our other deep dives on account-based marketing, field marketing, channel marketing, MarTech, GoToMarket, and AI in B to B marketing.

00:13:12: Thank you so much for joining us for this deep dive.

00:13:14: And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss the next one.