Best of LinkedIn: Social Selling CW 11/ 12

00:00:00: brought to you by Thomas Alguyer and Frennis.

00:00:02: This edition highlights key LinkedIn posts on social selling in weeks, eleven and twelve.

00:00:07: Frennis supports clients with identifying target attendees for events crafting outreach that cuts through the noise And driving qualified registrations thru strategic linkedin engagement.

00:00:17: You can find more info in the description.

00:00:20: So imagine logging into your dashboard tomorrow morning right?

00:00:22: Right!

00:00:23: ...and see just lost like ninety-five percent of your reach.

00:00:27: Oh

00:00:27: wow pure panic Just absolute panic.

00:00:29: Exactly, but today we're actually going to look at why one BtoB creator experienced that exact drop and instead of panicking he actually celebrated.

00:00:38: because get this his revenue is shot up by a hundred fifty percent.

00:00:43: Wait really?

00:00:43: Revenue went about a hundred-fifty percent while reach tanked.

00:00:46: Yeah exactly

00:00:47: Okay.

00:00:47: if you are listening to this And your trying generate pipeline right now You absolutely need to understand Why That Happened.

00:00:52: So in This Deep Dive We Are Unpacking The Reality Of What Works In Social Selling Today And we're basing this entirely on the top trends in conversations happening right now across the platform from calendar weeks, eleven and twelve.

00:01:04: Right!

00:01:04: We've got some incredible insights from several strategists to get

00:01:08: through... ...and just a quick note before we jump into the deep end here-we are exploring data & opinions shared by these folks over the past two weeks.

00:01:16: Our goal isn't necessarily to endorse every specific viewpoint but simply break down ideas they bring onto our table.

00:01:23: That way you can decide what actually works for your own strategy

00:01:26: which is super important because, I mean the most dominant conversation over the last couple of weeks has been about this massive fundamental shift.

00:01:34: It's like the ground just shifted beneath the feet every B to B marketing professional.

00:01:38: Oh

00:01:38: completely!

00:01:39: The era that whole reach first thinking... it's essentially dead.

00:01:43: people are waking up checking their stats and seeing distribution as just completely plummeted And

00:01:48: the hysteria around us wild to watch.

00:01:52: Yeah, it really has.

00:01:53: everyone was talking about this rumored AI algorithm update.

00:01:56: I think people were calling it uh... three sixty brew?

00:01:58: Yes!

00:01:59: Three Sixty Brew.

00:02:00: You had these massive panic threads About how Three Sixtey Brew is this omnipotent A-I That was just deliberately tanking Everyone's impressions overnight

00:02:09: Right, which is where we really need to inject a serious reality check.

00:02:12: Because if you look at the research from Suzanne Bungart and Brita Barrens they dug into this... ...and essentially debunked the whole panic!

00:02:20: So it wasn't real?

00:02:21: No, Three Sixty Brew was never actually rolled out as an update.

00:02:24: It's literally just a highly complex theoretical technical research paper published by engineers.

00:02:29: Okay

00:02:30: so The Boogie Man everyone was terrified of wasn't even real.

00:02:33: But I mean that drop in reach Is definitely real.

00:02:36: people aren't imagining that part.

00:02:38: So if it wasn't Three Sixty Brew, what actually changed under the hood?

00:02:41: Well... What really took effect is a new two-stage ranking architecture and the mechanics of this are just fascinating!

00:02:47: In the past….

00:02:47: The system largely operated on a very simple engagement loop

00:02:51: like it just counted likes.

00:02:52: yeah I counted your Likes & Comments quickly to decide If A Post Was Good Enough To Show To More People.

00:02:57: But Now It Acts Much More Like A Strict Semantic Matchmaker.

00:03:00: Okay Let's Break Down What A Two Stage Ranking Architecture actually means in practice.

00:03:07: Stage one is essentially an ingestion and profiling phase, right?

00:03:10: Exactly!

00:03:11: The system isn't just looking at the text of your post anymore.

00:03:14: it is actively cross-referencing that text against your historical profile data to look for congruence

00:03:21: Precisely.

00:03:21: It reads the context, so if your profile explicitly states that you are say a B-to-B saws infrastructure expert but You decide to post a highly emotional viral story about Your morning coffee routine

00:03:35: which people do all the time later

00:03:36: on?

00:03:36: All The Time!

00:03:37: But now the algorithm immediately sees A semantic mismatch.

00:03:40: it basically says hey This content does not align with the established expertise of this user and it halts the distribution right there.

00:03:48: Wow, and then what happens in stage two?

00:03:49: Then at Stage Two it heavily prioritizes dwell time.

00:03:53: It measures how long people actually stop scrolling to read your text rather than just rewarding a quick thoughtless vanity like as they scroll past.

00:04:00: so if I'm understanding this right the platform basically went from being a noisy crowded digital bazaar where anyone with a megaphone could gather a massive crowd- Right!

00:04:09: To an exclusive VIP matchmaking service Where there's a very strict bouncer checking your credentials And the bouncer is checking if you actually belong in that specific conversation.

00:04:19: That's exactly the dynamic, broad virality essentially dead for B-to-B.

00:04:23: but If we pull back and look at strategic implications of this it's a massive advantage which brings us to an incredible data point shared by Christian Krause.

00:04:32: Oh right!

00:04:33: The ninety five percent drop because most creators losing ninety five per cent of your impressions sounds like total career ending disaster.

00:04:41: But you said he reported that his revenue increased by a hundred and fifty percent during that same period.

00:04:46: How does the math on that even work?

00:04:48: It completely comes down to high conversion relevance, replacing empty reach.

00:04:53: so the five percent of impressions he retained they weren't random.

00:04:57: The system stops showing as highly technical content for random scrollers

00:05:02: like people who might hit but would never ever actually buy his services.

00:05:07: Exactly,

00:05:08: instead it served its content exclusively to exact target buyers.

00:05:13: It forced this hyper-concentration of the ideal audience.

00:05:17: Okay there's a massive catch isn't that?

00:05:20: That hyper concentration only works if your existing network actually matches your ideal customer profile, you're ICP.

00:05:27: Yep!

00:05:28: You hit the nail on a head

00:05:29: Because if your network is full of random connections The algorithm gets incredibly confused.

00:05:33: Yeah And Frederick Jerström had a brilliant post about this exact realization.

00:05:38: He noticed his reach was tanking.

00:05:40: so he did deep audit Of his network

00:05:41: and what does he find?

00:05:42: He found that only thirty five to forty percent of its Connections were actually in.

00:05:46: as I CP.

00:05:46: Oh

00:05:47: wow which perfectly explains everything from the algorithms perspective.

00:05:51: Think about it.

00:05:52: If the system runs a test by showing your post to a sample of one hundred people in your network, and sixty-five or those are totally irrelevant to you topic they're going to scroll right past that.

00:06:01: So if the system sees this low dwell time assumes his post is low quality...and just kills the reach entirely.

00:06:07: Exactly!

00:06:08: So Bustram realized he had completely changed his connection strategy.

00:06:12: He'd have stopped accepting every single request to boost his follower count and become highly intentional.

00:06:18: To get that ICP concentration up to seventy percent, That's

00:06:21: a huge shift.

00:06:22: it is yeah which is an urgent action item for you listening right now.

00:06:26: audit your own profile today.

00:06:28: just look at the last hundred people You connected with.

00:06:30: are they actually?

00:06:31: Your buyers because if they aren't there actively dragging down your algorithmic distribution.

00:06:36: That's such a great takeaway.

00:06:37: And if we follow that logic to the next step, If the platform is acting as this strict bouncer evaluating your relevance The natural question becomes well what Is the password?

00:06:48: Right how do you actually write content that preves To both machine and buyer?

00:06:52: You belong in room?

00:06:58: broad emotional hooks that try to cast a massive net to appeal to everyone.

00:07:03: Those are actively penalized.

00:07:04: now, niche depth is the absolute

00:07:06: requirement.".

00:07:06: And Michael Ekby had a fantastic breakdown on the mechanics of this!

00:07:11: He pointed out it is literally parsing your hook to decide your distribution fate right then and there.

00:07:25: And from a natural language processing standpoint, that makes perfect sense.

00:07:29: these semantic parsing models need to categorize the core topic of a document

00:07:33: immediately.".

00:07:34: Right so if you start your post with a generic vague statement like You know I learned a major leadership lesson today The machine categorizes you as just general storytelling.

00:07:44: Exactly but If Your Hook Is BDB saw his founders making under five million.

00:07:50: face this specific enterprise sales trap.

00:07:52: The machine immediately tags the specific industry, the revenue band and the problem.

00:07:57: you have to call out the specific audience

00:07:59: immediately.".

00:08:00: And this demand for specificity ties directly into how you position your entire brand too.

00:08:05: Carolina Posma offered some really tough love on this exact issue.

00:08:08: she reviewed a profile that used a headline like recruitment expert twenty plus years experience

00:08:14: ouch yeah That's broad

00:08:15: right.

00:08:16: She pointed out that this kind of vague positioning makes you completely invisible today.

00:08:21: Your ideal client is never looking for a generic expert, they're looking for someone who solves their highly specific problem.

00:08:28: Terry Heath echoed that beautifully.

00:08:30: actually He issued really strong warning to niche businesses Stop watering down your language to appeal the masses.

00:08:38: Yes If use specialist's language You attract specialists.

00:08:43: When you oversimplify your terminology to sound accessible to everyone, You actively lose the exact highly qualified people who would actually understand The value of what you sell.

00:08:52: That is so true.

00:08:53: But um we should probably pause here because this does raise a legitimate concern.

00:08:57: if We are highly optimizing our first two sentences and ensuring Our profiles or perfectly aligned with semantic tags aren't we just turning social selling into an SEO game?

00:09:07: Yeah, that's a good point.

00:09:08: Like are we just writing for machines now?

00:09:10: That is the danger right.

00:09:11: yeah it feels like we could just end up stuffing our hooks with keywords so The semantic matchmaker knows where to put us and We just completely lose the human element.

00:09:19: It is a totally valid concern But we have to look at the broader AI ecosystem outside of this one platform.

00:09:27: Jonathan Levy shared a piece of data that puts this completely in perspective.

00:09:31: He noted that LinkedIn is currently the second most cited domain by AI tools like chat GPT and perplexity.

00:09:37: Wait, the second most cited on the entire internet?

00:09:40: Yes.

00:09:41: Because these tools are hungry for professional structured verified data.

00:09:47: so if you're posting original educational mid-length content consistently These off platform AI engines are literally mirroring your exact wording to answer user queries.

00:09:58: That's

00:09:58: wild.

00:09:59: So aren't just writing to appease a social media algorithm.

00:10:02: You were actively feeding intelligence engines that buyers increasingly using for their procurement research.

00:10:08: Okay, that completely reframes the objective.

00:10:10: it means you can't just chase cheap dopamine hits or post-generic motivational advice.

00:10:15: Choy Ahmed was very direct about this.

00:10:17: in his analysis he argued that if your content isn't actively creating persuasive offers and handling complex objections You are just playing a high school popularity game.

00:10:26: You have to use your content To scaffold actual trust

00:10:30: which provides a perfect pivot point.

00:10:31: honestly Let's say you've done everything right so far.

00:10:36: You've written a deeply specific niche targeted post and you've attracted that highly qualified buyer.

00:10:44: How do you actually interact with them without immediately ruining the relationship by sounding like a pushy salesperson?

00:10:50: This is where the actual selling part of social selling happens, And The Consensus Is Shifting Heavily Toward Relationship Building in the Trenches.

00:10:58: Liam Darmity summed this up With A Great Rule.

00:11:01: he said commenting is the new posting.

00:11:04: It's a fundamental shift in behavior

00:11:06: and it makes perfect sense.

00:11:07: when you think about the friction involved, joining an existing conversation on the comment section just strips away of the intimidation factor.

00:11:15: Yeah!

00:11:15: You don't have to craft The Perfect Cold Pitch or interrupt someone's day with direct message.

00:11:19: Exactly...you

00:11:20: find discussion your target buyer already having And add layer value to it Is how you uncover opportunities organically

00:11:27: And Annabelle Pickens made an incredibly sharp observation regarding this.

00:11:32: She noted that modern B to B pipeline generation depends entirely on a concept she calls visibility before outreach.

00:11:40: Visibility before outreach.

00:11:41: I like that.

00:11:42: it's

00:11:42: crucial to understand.

00:11:43: buyers today are essentially lurking.

00:11:46: They're evaluating your expertise in the comments section of other people's posts long Before they ever reply to your direct message or accepted meeting?

00:11:54: They want to see how you think and how you handle professional discourse first.

00:11:58: Okay, let me throw a thought-provoking scenario at you.

00:12:00: The Florian summer posted about.

00:12:02: he asked his audience this question if the algorithm broke up with you tomorrow meaning Absolutely zero reach, zero likes no distribution whatsoever.

00:12:11: Would your network still pick up the phone and call you?

00:12:13: Oh

00:12:13: wow that is the ultimate brutal litmus test isn't it!

00:12:18: It really tests whether you are actually doing social selling or if you're just doing content broadcasting exactly.

00:12:23: it strips away all the vanity metrics enforces you to look at whether you've actually built real one-on-one relationships Or If You've Just Been Renting Temporary Attention From A Machine.

00:12:32: Martín Holtz emphasized this dynamic as well.

00:12:35: He pointed out that impressions don't sign contracts, trust does.

00:12:39: Having sky-high reach but incredibly low trust is the most expensive mistake you can make in B to B because you are basically burning through your total addressable market without converting anyone and a huge part of establishing that trust is how you handle the inevitable sales objections when those conversations finally move.

00:12:59: Speaking of objections, I know Daniel Disney shared an analogy about handling objections recently the bagel analogy.

00:13:06: Let's unpack that because it totally shifts.

00:13:08: The mindset around pushback.

00:13:09: It is such a great visualization.

00:13:11: So he uses a story.

00:13:12: but finishing along race in Central Park at the finish line There was a table stacked with free bagels.

00:13:18: But there is a massive winding line of tired people waiting to get one.

00:13:22: okay most People look at that mass of lines sigh and say oh its too long i'm not waiting for That.

00:13:26: And they just walk away.

00:13:28: But one person in his story, it was Simon Sinek will just walks right up to the side of the table reaches between two people who are waiting and grabs a bagel.

00:13:37: So he just bypassed the line?

00:13:38: Yeah He didn't focus on the line.

00:13:40: He only focused on the bagel.

00:13:41: Okay so to map that onto B-to-B sales The massive line of people represents the defense mechanism of the buyer.

00:13:49: It's this standard pushback like we don't have budget or now isn't a good time.

00:13:53: And most salespeople hit that wall, see the obstacle and just give up.

00:13:57: They walk away

00:13:57: exactly.

00:13:59: Disney is arguing that sales objections are not roadblocks.

00:14:02: they Are The Bagels at the end of the race?

00:14:04: Oh I see an objection simply means the buyer Is still talking to you.

00:14:08: it is them handing You a map To their actual underlying concern.

00:14:12: if they say they don't have budget They're really saying they need you to prove the ROI more clearly before they can secure funding.

00:14:20: The best sellers don't see the line, they just figure out how to navigate the obstacle to uncover the real opportunity.

00:14:26: So an objection is actually an invitation to deepen the trust.

00:14:29: I really like that reframing but let's look at a bigger structural picture here.

00:14:35: building individual trust through commenting and handling objections is incredibly powerful But founder led marketing or relying on one of two-star salespeople has a hard ceiling

00:14:46: For sure.

00:14:46: There

00:14:47: are only so many hours in a day for one executive to be visible.

00:14:51: To truly scale this, companies need to activate their entire team.

00:14:55: They absolutely do But the internal corporate language around how we do that is rapidly changing.

00:15:01: Andy Lambert suggests We Need to Retire The Term Employee Advocacy Entirely

00:15:05: Which Is Completely Fair Because advocacy sounds like a chore.

00:15:09: It Sounds Like An HR Mandate Where Corporate Is Forcing You To Do A Favor For The Brand.

00:15:13: it just feels incredibly unnatural

00:15:15: Right.

00:15:16: It frames it as a corporate obligation rather than a personal benefit, so Lambert suggests replacing the concept with personality-led growth.

00:15:23: Personality led growth?

00:15:24: Yeah!

00:15:24: The focus shifts entirely to empowering individuals' unique voice and career which then naturally creates a halo effect that lifts the company brand.

00:15:33: And when you look at the math of personality lead growth...it is just undeniable.

00:15:40: Taz Browace laid out the numbers clearly.

00:15:43: A founder might have a very respectable, highly curated network of say five thousand connections

00:15:48: which is great

00:15:49: it is.

00:15:49: but if you can get just ten employees actively engaged and posting combined they bring a network of twenty-five thousand connections that scales the surface area your trust exponentially.

00:16:02: You turn a single corporate megaphone into a massive choir.

00:16:05: That's a great way to put it And we saw a perfect real-world execution of this shared by utzoff patelle at super grow.

00:16:12: They launched their internal program and actually managed to hit hundred percent adoption in week.

00:16:16: one weak one Every single team member started posting.

00:16:19: Every single one, and the secret was that they completely ignored virality.

00:16:23: They didn't ask their team to write viral thought leadership.

00:16:26: They just focused strictly on habit building and consistency.

00:16:29: Start incredibly small focus in the behavior And build them muscle over time.

00:16:34: But you know anytime You talk about getting a hundred percent of work force To start producing content we have to address The elephant room.

00:16:40: automation yes automation Because the temptation for a marketing director is to just buy an AI tool, generate the post of employees and set up auto commenting scripts.

00:16:52: Which is the single most dangerous thing that a marketing team can do right now.

00:16:56: Richard Vanderblean issued very stark warning about this specific tactic using browser extensions fake engagement or scrape profiles getting accounts permanently restricted Completely banned.

00:17:08: Yeah,

00:17:09: let's explain why that happens specifically regarding browser fingerprinting.

00:17:13: LinkedIn isn't just looking at the text you post.

00:17:16: They are actively monitoring how your browser behaves right.

00:17:20: if their security systems detect superhuman clicking speeds or invisible background script scraping profile data faster than a human could read they flagged The accounts.

00:17:28: digital fingerprint A browser extension is essentially like picking the lock on the front door.

00:17:33: Wow

00:17:33: So what does the alternative?

00:17:35: If company wants to scale safely

00:17:37: The architecture of the tool matters immensely here.

00:17:40: Vanderblum points out that the safe route is using approved APIs, he mentioned tools like Narify as an example of an official partner and API is essentially a designated VIP side door that the platform officially allows software to use.

00:17:54: it integrates safely without triggering those security flags and risking your entire Dames accounts.

00:17:59: Okay so technically you can use approved tools But let me push back on the broader strategic philosophy of using AI here.

00:18:09: Sure, even if we use safe APIs... If we give every single employee an AI teammate to write their posts and draft their comments?

00:18:17: aren't We just flooding the internet with an absolute sea of bland identical robotic thoughts?

00:18:22: Doesn't that destroy the personality part or personality lead growth?

00:18:26: That is the exact risk that Noam Nissan addressed.

00:18:29: his core argument Is that AI can help you package an idea.

00:18:32: It can structure your post, fix your grammar and make it readable for a digital audience.

00:18:37: But it cannot give you an original point of view.

00:18:39: The blandness we see on the feed doesn't come from AI itself-it comes from lazy users who are outsourcing their actual thinking rather than just their writing.

00:18:47: So

00:18:47: if you don't inject your own lived experience like this specific friction that you saw in client calls last morning... ...the AI has nothing real to work with

00:18:54: Precisely!

00:18:55: And Timothy Tim Hughes added some great nuance here.

00:18:58: He advocates using what he called AIAgentic Teammates.

00:19:02: The goal isn't to set up a bot, to blast generic noise into the void.

00:19:06: It's use AI to operate strictly within established brand guardrails.

00:19:11: Right!

00:19:11: The AI helps sales reps monitor massive feeds synthesize complex information quickly and drafts the skeleton of thoughtful comment.

00:19:19: but core insight-the actual value being added in conversation must come from human rep.

00:19:25: it is about using AI scale your listening & presence not replace brain.

00:19:30: We have covered a massive amount of ground in this deep dive.

00:19:33: we've gone from dissecting the semantic matchmaking of new two-stage ranking architecture to understanding why niche depth is only way right, power commenting before reaching out and finally how scale all through personality led growth without falling into automation trap.

00:19:52: It represents completely new playbook for BtoB professionals.

00:19:55: The old tactics simply do not work anymore.

00:19:58: They really don't, and as we wrap up I want to leave you with one final slightly provocative thought to mull over.

00:20:04: We have spent this entire deep dive talking about optimizing your profile and writing your content so that human buyers trust you.

00:20:12: We want to build relationships, we wanna be the person calmly handing out the bagel at the end of the race.

00:20:17: but as we discussed earlier AI engines like Proplexity & Chat GPT are increasingly scanning this platform to answer complex BDB queries literally mirroring our exact words.

00:20:29: Are we fast approaching a reality where your primary social selling target isn't But the AI assistant, they've tasked with doing their procurement research.

00:20:41: That is a fascinating question because it completely redefines who or what our target audience actually use moving forward

00:20:48: something to keep in mind as you go audit your own profile today if You enjoyed this episode new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:20:55: also check out Our other additions on account-based marketing field marketing channel Marketing Martek Go To Market and AI in BDB marketing.

00:21:02: Thanks for joining us this deep dive.

00:21:04: Hit that subscribe button and we'll catch you on the next one!