Best of LinkedIn: Social Selling CW 05/ 06

00:00:00: Brought to you by Thomas Alguyer and Frenus, this edition highlights key LinkedIn posts on social selling in weeks five and six.

00:00:06: Frenus supports enterprises with enablement and insights.

00:00:09: Providing data-driven sales intelligence, flexible support, team augmentation, and data quality improvements.

00:00:15: so social engagement turns into measurable pipeline.

00:00:19: Welcome back to the deep dive.

00:00:21: Today we are getting super specific laser focused on calendar weeks five and six of twenty twenty six.

00:00:29: And I have to say if you've been tracking the social selling systems framework you've probably felt the ground shifting.

00:00:33: It really has shifted.

00:00:34: I mean we are so far past talking about just posting for likes or you know building a personal brand in that vague sense.

00:00:40: Right.

00:00:41: If you look at the stack of sources we've got in front of us the theme is just.

00:00:45: It's undeniable.

00:00:46: It's all about operational rigor.

00:00:48: Operational rigor.

00:00:49: I like that.

00:00:49: It sounds less like a fluffy marketing exercise than more like an actual business process.

00:00:53: Exactly.

00:00:54: It's the difference between social selling being, I don't know, a lucky side hustle.

00:00:58: Something you do in your spare time.

00:00:59: Yeah.

00:01:00: Something you do when you have five minutes and it being a scalable, predictable system for business.

00:01:06: We're really seeing that move from just visibility to, well, viability.

00:01:11: And we have a huge stack of insights to get through.

00:01:14: But to keep it organized for everyone listening, we've clustered everything into three main themes.

00:01:20: First up, we're going to tackle the massive shift in employee advocacy.

00:01:24: Right.

00:01:24: The whole mandate model is dying.

00:01:27: And we need to talk about what this new ownership model really looks like.

00:01:30: And we

00:01:30: have to get under the hood of the LinkedIn algorithm.

00:01:32: Oh, yeah.

00:01:33: We're going to unpack the new three sixty brew model.

00:01:36: I mean, this is the twenty twenty six reality.

00:01:38: And honestly, if you're not literate in how this works, you're at a competitive disadvantage.

00:01:42: We'll get into dwell time, the save economy, all of it.

00:01:45: And finally, we'll break down the social selling engine.

00:01:47: This is the part that connects everything to revenue, moving from content to conversation to cash.

00:01:53: So let's not waste any time.

00:01:55: Let's jump straight into that first cluster, employee advocacy.

00:01:58: Let's do it.

00:02:00: So the anchor for this whole conversation really comes from Richard VanderBloom.

00:02:04: He draws this incredibly sharp line between two types of employees.

00:02:09: He calls them volunteers.

00:02:11: and hostages.

00:02:12: Hostages?

00:02:14: I mean, that's a pretty aggressive term.

00:02:15: It

00:02:15: is, but if you've worked in a big corporate marketing department...

00:02:18: You know exactly what he means.

00:02:19: Oh,

00:02:20: absolutely.

00:02:20: It's the compliance model.

00:02:22: You know, the drill marketing writes some sanitized press release, sends it out in an email and says, everyone post this at nine zero zero a.m.

00:02:30: sharp.

00:02:30: And the big rule is... do not change a single comma.

00:02:34: Right.

00:02:34: And then you look at your feed and it's ten people posting the exact same robotic sentence at the exact same time.

00:02:40: It's just creepy.

00:02:41: It's the uncanny valley of marketing.

00:02:43: And Richard's data shows this is a fatal error.

00:02:46: It kills trust.

00:02:47: And without trust, you get zero authentic engagement.

00:02:50: He shared a stat that just hammers this home.

00:02:53: Eighty-three percent of employees are more engaged when they're simply encouraged rather than forced.

00:02:58: Okay, that makes sense intuitively.

00:02:59: But

00:02:59: here's the metric that matters for the CFOs listening.

00:03:02: Employee shared content gets eight times more engagement than brand content.

00:03:07: Eight times?

00:03:08: Wow, that's nearly an order of magnitude.

00:03:10: It is, but, and this is the huge caveat, that eight X multiplier only kicks in if the content feels human.

00:03:17: If it smells like a compliance task, the audience just scrolls right past.

00:03:22: Richard's whole point is you can't algorithmically fake personal belief.

00:03:25: So if we know the hostage model fails, Why do so many companies still do it?

00:03:29: Is it just laziness?

00:03:31: I think it's mostly a fear of losing control.

00:03:33: But Paige Andrews and Emily Neal suggest the problem really starts at the top.

00:03:37: They flag senior leadership absence as the number one red flag.

00:03:41: So a classic do as I say, not as I do.

00:03:43: The bosses tell everyone to post, but their own profiles are just ghost towns.

00:03:47: That's it, exactly.

00:03:48: If the C-suite isn't visible, the whole thing feels hollow.

00:03:51: But there is some good news here from week six.

00:03:53: Emily Neal highlighted a really positive trend.

00:03:56: Seventy-nine point five percent of senior leaders are now actually involved in these programs.

00:04:00: That's a forty percent jump from last year, right?

00:04:02: A forty percent jump?

00:04:03: That's significant.

00:04:05: It signals a shift from this is just a marketing task to this is a strategic priority.

00:04:10: It has to be.

00:04:11: And Iulia Splatska added a really critical nuance here.

00:04:14: She argues that a program's success isn't just about having it, it's about who holds the reins.

00:04:19: If the CEO and the chief people officer are leading by example, that gives everyone else permission to engage.

00:04:25: But if you delegate it to a junior marketing manager.

00:04:28: It's dead on arrival.

00:04:29: It just becomes another chore to ignore in your inbox.

00:04:31: Okay, so let's say you've got buy-in, leaders are posting.

00:04:34: Why do programs still crash and burn?

00:04:37: Because Patrice Orenzlerma talks about this six-month wall.

00:04:41: The six-month wall is so real, you have the big launch, excitement is high, everyone posts for a few weeks, and then by month six, it just flatlines.

00:04:49: Patrice says it's almost always a recognition issue.

00:04:51: People stop doing things when they feel invisible.

00:04:53: So what's the fix?

00:04:54: Are we talking bonuses?

00:04:56: Gift cards?

00:04:57: Surprisingly, no.

00:04:58: Her advice is much simpler.

00:05:00: Public shout-outs in team meetings and... This is crucial.

00:05:03: Leadership commenting first on employee posts.

00:05:06: That makes perfect sense.

00:05:07: If my CEO comments on my post, you can bet I'm gonna post again next week.

00:05:11: It's immediate validation, but if you want a more... systematic approach to this, something a bit more engineered.

00:05:19: You have to look at the case study Emma Pajanin shared about Matt Minor.

00:05:22: This was just brilliant.

00:05:23: This was the scoreboard idea,

00:05:25: right?

00:05:25: Yes.

00:05:25: So Matt didn't just ask people to post.

00:05:27: He actually built a custom employee advocacy scoreboard.

00:05:30: He used Directus, which is a headless CMS, and then connected it with Zapier to automate all the tracking.

00:05:36: I love when we get into the tech stack.

00:05:37: Yeah.

00:05:38: So he basically gamified it.

00:05:39: He did, but in a way that wasn't toxic.

00:05:42: It just created this friendly rivalry.

00:05:43: People would check the board, see where they ranked, and that sparked so much organic activity.

00:05:48: It wasn't about hitting quota.

00:05:50: It was about owning their brand and seeing how they stacked up.

00:05:53: And that ownership translates into hard currency.

00:05:55: We can't skip Yvonne Boten's contribution.

00:05:58: She used her foresee methodology, clarify, communicate, connect, craft, and the pilot she ran generated.

00:06:06: What was it?

00:06:06: Three hundred and seventy thousand pounds in earned media value.

00:06:10: And that's the takeaway.

00:06:12: We are not chasing likes for a dopamine hit.

00:06:14: We're chasing earned media value that would otherwise cost a fortune in ads.

00:06:19: Three hundred seventy K from a pilot is not a small number.

00:06:22: Okay, let's pivot.

00:06:24: We have the people motivated.

00:06:25: They're owners, not hostages.

00:06:27: But now we have to talk about the machine they're feeding.

00:06:30: This brings us to theme two.

00:06:32: algorithm literacy.

00:06:33: And in twenty twenty six we are dealing with a new beast called Three Sixty Brew.

00:06:38: It sounds like a cool coffee shop, doesn't it?

00:06:41: But Lorenz von Seher did a great breakdown.

00:06:43: It's the central AI model LinkedIn is using now, a massive, hundred and fifty billion parameter model.

00:06:49: And the key difference for twenty twenty six is that it analyzes content semantically.

00:06:53: OK, so unpack semantically.

00:06:55: for those of us who aren't data scientists.

00:06:56: It

00:06:56: just means it understands context and meaning, not just keywords.

00:07:00: In the old days, you could stuff the word sales into a post ten times and the algorithm would think, great, this is about sales.

00:07:05: Right.

00:07:05: Now, three sixty brew.

00:07:07: like a human, it gets the nuance.

00:07:09: And because of that, the whole metric hierarchy has flipped.

00:07:11: as Laurence points out, dwell time is king.

00:07:14: Dwell time.

00:07:15: So the AI is literally holding a stopwatch on our posts.

00:07:19: Essentially, yeah.

00:07:20: It is measuring how many seconds someone spends reading your post, not just if they hit the like button,

00:07:24: which explains why clickbait is finally dying.

00:07:27: If I click your link, realize it's garbage and bounce back to my feet in two seconds, that's a negative signal.

00:07:33: A

00:07:33: huge negative signal.

00:07:35: That's a bounce and three hundred sixty brew hates it.

00:07:39: The new currency of relevance is saves and shares.

00:07:42: A save is the ultimate compliment you can give the algorithm.

00:07:46: It tells the AI, this content is so valuable, I need to come back to it later.

00:07:50: So

00:07:51: how do we actually engineer a post for saves?

00:07:54: I know Bianca Colitz had a playbook for this.

00:07:56: She did.

00:07:57: She calls it the Spick-Settle strategy.

00:07:58: Which is German for cheat sheet.

00:08:00: Exactly.

00:08:01: To get a save, you have to solve one specific problem entirely within the post itself.

00:08:05: You give the reader a mini-guide, a checklist, a framework.

00:08:08: You know, no one saves a happy Monday.

00:08:10: Go get them.

00:08:11: Post.

00:08:12: But if you write five steps to fix your SDR handoff, people save that.

00:08:16: It's a utility.

00:08:17: It's a resource.

00:08:18: And Stefan Wetzel added the visual component to that, right?

00:08:22: For PDFs or carousels, the first page has to be like a magazine cover.

00:08:25: It has to stop the scroll.

00:08:27: Yes.

00:08:27: If that visual hook isn't there, you lose the dwell time instantly and three sixty brood just buries the post.

00:08:34: Now, there's another metric that sparked a bit of a debate this week.

00:08:37: The SSI, the social selling index.

00:08:40: Is it a vanity metric, or does it actually matter?

00:08:43: It's a fierce debate.

00:08:44: Margo Ivanenko came with the math, and it's pretty stark.

00:08:48: She basically sees SSI as a visibility cap.

00:08:51: What do you mean by that?

00:08:52: Her analysis shows that if your SSI is high, say, between seventy and eighty, the algorithm kind of uncaps your networking.

00:09:00: You can send a hundred and eighty to two hundred and twenty connection requests a week.

00:09:03: And

00:09:03: if your score is low.

00:09:05: Yeah.

00:09:05: Like below fifty.

00:09:06: You're

00:09:06: in the penalty box.

00:09:07: You're limited to maybe thirty to fifty requests.

00:09:09: That's a four to six times difference in your ability to build a network just based on that score.

00:09:13: That is a massive throttle.

00:09:15: But Michael Yellen pushed back on this.

00:09:17: He did.

00:09:18: And I think his perspective is a healthy one.

00:09:20: He argues that SSI measures intention and platform usage, not business results.

00:09:25: You can have an SSI of ninety play the game perfectly and still sell absolutely nothing if your strategy is wrong.

00:09:30: That's a fair point.

00:09:32: A high score means you're good at using LinkedIn.

00:09:34: not necessarily good at closing deals.

00:09:36: But, and this is a big but.

00:09:39: You can't just ignore the platform mechanics.

00:09:41: James Keel added a warning about consistency that ties right back to three-sixty brew.

00:09:46: He warns against niche drifting.

00:09:48: Confusing the AI.

00:09:49: Exactly.

00:09:50: The AI builds a profile on you based on your niche pillars.

00:09:53: If you post about B to B sales today, crypto tomorrow, and then share cat videos on Wednesday, the AI has no idea who to show your content to, so it just defaults to showing it to no one.

00:10:02: So consistency is the foundation.

00:10:05: Okay, let's move to the penthouse.

00:10:07: Theme three.

00:10:07: the social selling engine.

00:10:09: How do we turn all this literacy into actual revenue?

00:10:12: This is where we leave the influencer mindset behind and really enter the commercial mindset.

00:10:18: Niels Van Mellek laid out a content program for twenty twenty six.

00:10:21: that's purely research based.

00:10:23: It completely eliminates the what do I post today

00:10:27: problem.

00:10:28: No more guessing games.

00:10:29: None.

00:10:30: His workflow starts with interviewing your top ten customers.

00:10:33: You find their actual pain points in their own words.

00:10:36: Then you go interview your own subject matter experts internally to solve those specific pains.

00:10:41: And that becomes your content roadmap.

00:10:43: It's

00:10:43: your entire roadmap.

00:10:44: You turn those SME interviews into articles, videos, LinkedIn posts.

00:10:48: But here's the engine part.

00:10:50: You run that content organically for three months.

00:10:53: You see what resonates then and only then do you amplify the winners with thought leader ads.

00:10:58: It's a validation funnel.

00:10:59: You don't waste ad budget until you know the organic message actually works.

00:11:03: It's so smart.

00:11:04: But let's not pretend this is easy.

00:11:05: Christian Kras came in with a serious reality check for anyone who thinks social selling is passive income.

00:11:11: He called it slow manual labor.

00:11:13: I think a lot of people needed to hear that.

00:11:14: He totally debunked the magic pill myth, the routine of the top one percent of social sellers.

00:11:20: It's a grind.

00:11:21: Connect with fifteen twenty-five ideal buyers daily.

00:11:25: Comment on ten buyer posts and send ten fifteen personalized video DMs every single day.

00:11:32: Fifteen personal videos a day.

00:11:34: That's not a copy-paste job.

00:11:36: That's real production time.

00:11:37: It

00:11:37: is.

00:11:37: But that is the operational rigor we talked about at the top.

00:11:40: It's the difference between hoping for a lead and actually prospecting for one.

00:11:43: It's not happening in a vacuum.

00:11:45: Mia's lockdown made the point that this digital grind actually makes the analog channels work better.

00:11:51: The LinkedIn and phone strategy.

00:11:53: I love this.

00:11:53: People always try to pit them against each other.

00:11:55: Bink's point is the goal of social is often just familiarity.

00:11:59: So when you finally make that call, the prospect thinks, wait, I know that name.

00:12:02: I saw their post.

00:12:03: It just warms up the entire interaction.

00:12:05: It does.

00:12:06: But there's a hidden layer of sales conversations that Brookby Sell has brought up.

00:12:09: This idea of pre-purchase intent, this really struck me.

00:12:12: Oh,

00:12:12: this is huge.

00:12:13: It's huge for anyone in customer success or community management.

00:12:17: Her data shows that eight out of ten social conversations actually reflect purchase consideration before a sale happens.

00:12:23: But they look like support questions to the untrained eye.

00:12:26: Exactly.

00:12:27: Someone asked, hey, does this integrate with Salesforce?

00:12:30: or how does the reporting export work?

00:12:32: Those look like support tickets.

00:12:34: But Brooks says they are buying signals.

00:12:36: If you treat them like caretickets, you solve a problem.

00:12:38: If you treat them as sales opportunities, you uncover revenue.

00:12:41: That requires a massive mindset shift for whoever's managing the social inbox.

00:12:45: They need to be sales aware, not just polite.

00:12:48: And they need to be human.

00:12:49: Which brings us to the last point.

00:12:51: With Three Sixty Brew being an AI and everyone using chat GPT, The human element is now the premium asset.

00:12:58: Carolina Posimo offers what she calls the postivit.ai system.

00:13:01: It's a fifty-fifty rule.

00:13:02: Fifty percent AI, fifty percent you.

00:13:04: Use AI for the structure, the speed, the first draft.

00:13:07: There's no shame in that.

00:13:08: But the stories, the weird anecdotes, your specific voice, that has to be fifty percent you.

00:13:13: If you go a hundred percent AI, you just get ignored.

00:13:15: And on that note, Franz Wegener gave us a hilarious but very tactical tip to avoid sounding like a bot.

00:13:22: The ban on the rocket ship emoji.

00:13:25: It's the dead giveaway.

00:13:26: Every

00:13:26: time.

00:13:27: It really is.

00:13:28: Franz says you have to explicitly prompt your AI to remove those filler phrases, those flocks going like in a world where, and to ban the emojis that just scream, I was written by a large language model.

00:13:40: If you don't strip that stuff out, you're telling the reader you didn't care enough to write it yourself.

00:13:44: And if you don't care, why should they?

00:13:46: That's the bottom line.

00:13:47: So let's recap the operational rigor here.

00:13:49: Right.

00:13:49: We need employee advocacy that moves from hostage to owner.

00:13:53: We need to master a three sixty brew by optimizing for dwell time and saves.

00:13:58: And we need a daily engine that combines manual outreach with smart research backed content.

00:14:03: That's the system.

00:14:05: The winners in twenty twenty six are the ones who treat this with the same discipline they treat their CRM.

00:14:10: Not a random act of marketing anymore.

00:14:12: The lazy era of social selling is officially over.

00:14:15: The bar has been raised.

00:14:16: It really has.

00:14:17: Before we go, I want to leave you with one final thought.

00:14:19: We talked a lot about dwell time and how it's the metric the algorithm loves.

00:14:23: But let's flip that for a second.

00:14:25: As a seller, are you giving your prospects content enough of your dwell time?

00:14:31: That's an interesting way to look at it.

00:14:33: We're so focused on getting them to stop scrolling on our posts.

00:14:36: But maybe the best way to understand your buyer isn't to pitch them, but to actually stop and read what they're writing, to understand our context.

00:14:44: If the AI is prioritizing listening, maybe we should too.

00:14:48: Deep work, not just broad reach.

00:14:50: I like that.

00:14:51: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:14:54: Also check out our other editions on account-based marketing, field marketing, channel marketing, MarTech, go-to-market, and AI in B to B marketing.

00:15:03: Thanks

00:15:03: for listening.

00:15:04: Go build those systems.

00:15:05: And don't forget to subscribe.

00:15:06: We'll see you in the feed.