Best of LinkedIn: Social Selling CW 19/ 20

00:00:00: brought to you by Thomas Allgaier and Frennus.

00:00:02: This edition highlights key LinkedIn posts on social selling in weeks nineteen and twenty.

00:00:07: Frenness 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.

00:00:20: You're essentially flying blind.

00:00:28: I mean, you are basically invisible at this

00:00:29: point.".

00:00:30: Yeah that's a tough pill to swallow for a lot of B-to-B marketers but it's true.

00:00:35: today we're taking a deep dive into the top social selling trends seen across LinkedIn in

00:00:41: Right, and it's just a totally different landscape now.

00:00:43: It really is!

00:00:44: So to give you an idea of what we're unpacking today We are looking at the shifting mechanics of B-to-B pipeline generation Recent algorithm updates And what content actually works right now.

00:00:54: No fluff Just strategic realities.

00:00:56: Exactly...and honestly..we have start with this algorithm reset Because before anyone can generate Pipeline You need understand new rules of distribution.

00:01:05: The biggest shift Is that LinkedIn It's just no longer a relationship network.

00:01:10: it operates as an interest

00:01:11: graph now, which is huge distinction.

00:01:13: Yeah

00:01:14: I mean in the old model if we were connected.

00:01:16: you saw my posts period but We both and Richard van der Blum have been charting how that.

00:01:22: well?

00:01:22: Its entirely dead.

00:01:24: The algorithm doesn't care who you know anymore.

00:01:31: Brutal statistic.

00:01:32: he found that the algorithm has structurally capped company page reach at a dismal one point six percent.

00:01:39: wait One

00:01:40: point six.

00:01:40: Yeah, so if your brand has like ten thousand followers Your post might legitimately only hit a hundred and sixty people in the feed.

00:01:47: Wow That's basically rewrites The entire playbook it

00:01:50: forces is total reset because the platform is heavily prioritizing individual creators who match what they call a semantic fingerprint.

00:01:59: A

00:01:59: semantic finger... Okay, break that down for us!

00:02:01: So every time you post the AI is essentially mapping the conceptual territory of your content if You're known for say supply chain logistics and then suddenly you post about inspirational leadership quotes Your fingerprint breaks.

00:02:16: The algorithm sees that mismatch between your semantic history And what your followers actually engage with and it just kills the reach.

00:02:23: That is wild.

00:02:24: And Bliss Oyoie and Justin Oberman actually broke down the technical reality of how this system evaluates it.

00:02:31: Like

00:02:31: The Token Rule?

00:02:32: Yes, Oberman isolated that thing called the Sixty-Token Rule!

00:02:36: When you hit publish... ...the AI doesn't wait for human reactions.

00:02:39: It instantly evaluates the first two hundred forty characters in your post

00:02:42: Which is nothing by the way.

00:02:44: Two or three short sentences

00:02:45: Exactly.

00:02:46: It uses those first tokens to form a semantic impression on your intent & originality.

00:02:51: It's like the algorithm is this incredibly strict professor grading your essay thesis statement based on just the first two sentences.

00:02:59: That's a great way to put it.

00:03:01: Yeah, if you sound like everyone else You just instantly fail the distribution test.

00:03:05: So If start with I am so thrilled and honored To announce that you've wasted Your whole sixty token allocation On generic filler

00:03:12: And The AI reads that Find zero original value Tags as corporate spam And down ranks before human even sees though there is a really fascinating debate about the exact architecture doing this grading.

00:03:25: Oh right, The Three Sixty Brew Rumor!

00:03:27: Yeah

00:03:28: well McTye actually visited LinkedIn headquarters recently and he says his three sixty brew algorithm which creators have been treating like the ultimate boogeyman was just a scrapped engineering test from last year.

00:03:39: oh really so it's not even active

00:03:41: according to his sources.

00:03:42: no He says the filtering is now purely driven by pure LLMs.

00:03:46: Just reading your post intent,

00:03:48: I mean whether it's three sixty brew or just standard LLM The outcome for B to be marketers Is the exact same?

00:03:54: The machine is aggressively punishing generic corporate speak.

00:03:58: throwing agency money at five sanitized posts a week is basically A black hole Now.

00:04:02: so because the algorithm is filtering So heavily what actually survives.

00:04:07: Bianca call its frame this beautifully.

00:04:09: she Says we're in the era of un-googlable content.

00:04:12: I

00:04:12: love that too!

00:04:13: Right,

00:04:13: it means if a user can take your premise type into chat gpt and get the exact same framework in three seconds Your post will fail

00:04:21: because there's just no proprietary value.

00:04:23: Yeah you need concrete observations from your actual workday.

00:04:27: You know personal case studies unmistakable opinions.

00:04:31: Speaking of unmistakeable, Noam Nisan shared this brutal humanizer prompt for AI written posts.

00:04:37: if you use LLMs to draft content he says You have to command the AI to strip out all TED Talk energy.

00:04:43: Oh that's hilarious.

00:04:44: It is so necessary.

00:04:45: Yeah

00:04:45: He completely bans words like Pivotal or Landscape Or Delve Because those are mathematically most probable words.

00:04:53: an AI selects when trying sound professional

00:04:55: And LinkedIn pattern recognition flags these words instantly.

00:04:58: But this push for real human authenticity is also changing.

00:05:01: how often we should post.

00:05:03: Chiyamaka Harrison pointed out that dwell time is king now,

00:05:06: meaning the actual second someone spends frozen on your posts.

00:05:10: It's exactly!

00:05:11: Dwell Time mathematically dominates.

00:05:13: posting frequency Pumping out average content daily just trains the algorithm.

00:05:18: you're ignorable.

00:05:19: Fewer high value posts are way to go

00:05:22: Which explains the massive organic numbers Morgan Carey and Lara Acosta are seeing.

00:05:27: They pointed out that sharing mistakes in personal stories drives exponentially higher impressions.

00:05:32: It builds trust so much faster than corporate updates

00:05:35: it does but I have to push back on this for a second.

00:05:37: Okay, go for

00:05:38: if every B-to-B marketers start sharing their personal failures And vulnerable moments aren't we just turning LinkedIn into Facebook like where is the line between?

00:05:47: Vulnerable storytelling and losing our professional b-tob edge?

00:05:51: It's a fair question, and the risk of oversharing is definitely real.

00:05:55: But Ann Marie Jungluth has really practical take on this.

00:05:58: She argues that personal branding isn't about treating your network like a therapist right?

00:06:02: it's about multi-dimensionality.

00:06:05: If you only ever post about sauce pricing models You look like a robot

00:06:09: because nobody is exclusively obsessed with Sauce Pricing Models.

00:06:12: twenty four seven

00:06:14: exactly.

00:06:15: John Bluth points out that having diverse interests Maybe you're an SEO expert who volunteers at a food bank or I don't know, a leadership coach who keeps bees and doesn't make you unprofessional.

00:06:25: It just proves that you aren't an AI bot!

00:06:27: It's basically proof of life for the algorithm.

00:06:29: Yeah Human buyers build trust with multi-dimensional people.

00:06:33: That makes total sense.

00:06:34: But while we're trying to prove we are human to the buyer there is this whole other battle happening.

00:06:39: We literally have to prove our relevance To machines reading out profiles to serve

00:06:44: to buyers.

00:06:45: Oh your talking about GEO Generative Engine Optimization.

00:06:48: Yes

00:06:48: Melissa Rosenthal shared some mind-blowing data from SEMrush.

00:06:52: They analyzed three hundred and twenty five thousand prompts, right?

00:06:56: LinkedIn URLs appear in eleven percent of all AI responses.

00:07:00: it's beating Wikipedia.

00:07:01: that

00:07:01: is insane.

00:07:02: but here Is the kicker for you listening.

00:07:04: fifty nine percent Of those cited linkedin links come From individual profiles not company pages.

00:07:10: Wow so The ai views an Individual profile as a highly verified source of primary Data.

00:07:15: Timothy Hughes actually tackles this in his twenty-twenty six book.

00:07:18: He notes that GEO is the new foundational strategy

00:07:21: because buyers are changing how they research

00:07:24: exactly, They aren't going to a corporate website there asking Claude or chat GPT To build of vendor shortlist before they ever talk to sales.

00:07:33: so wait.

00:07:33: Optimizing a profile isn't just for human recruiters or prospects anymore.

00:07:37: We are literally doing SEO for chat, GPT and Codd.

00:07:41: we absolutely are.

00:07:42: I left.

00:07:42: chili has this fantastic framework where he says your profile is Literally a prompt.

00:07:46: now if it gives the algorithm weak signals Your outbound content has to work ten times harder

00:07:52: And Polish media suggests defining three to five semantic hooks that you want LLMs to permanently associate with your brand, right?

00:08:00: Yeah.

00:08:00: Hyper specific phrases in your headline and about section.

00:08:04: so if company pages are capped at one point six percent reach an individual profiles drive fifty nine percent of AI citations.

00:08:11: businesses basically have no choice but to activate their employees and executives.

00:08:15: It sounds like a difference between forcing your team to wear really uncomfortable corporate uniform versus giving them a budget to express their own professional style.

00:08:23: That

00:08:23: is perfect analogy,

00:08:25: right?

00:08:25: The Uniformer makes everyone look the same which just triggers that AI spam filters.

00:08:29: anyway

00:08:30: exactly and we're seeing this shift from copy-paste distribution To authentic employee led visibility.

00:08:37: Leah Haberman Steph late Kristen Lombard They've all highlighted This.

00:08:41: the financial upside of doing it Right Is huge.

00:08:44: Bradley Keenan and Jody Leon shared this case study from Aptean.

00:08:48: They generated three hundred fifty seven thousand dollars in ROI, In just two months for employee advocacy.

00:08:54: That's incredible!

00:08:54: For two months

00:08:55: Yeah.

00:08:56: but the secret sauce wasn't having junior reps post.

00:08:58: it was executive buy-in

00:08:59: Which is huge because LinkedIn actively rewards senior thought leadership.

00:09:04: Annabertal Dini observed that LinkedIn created a specific top voice category just for executives.

00:09:10: Right, and Dino Delac had this great insight from comms leaders.

00:09:13: since seventy-five percent of what LLM site comes from individuals you have to brief your employees like journalists not billboards.

00:09:19: let them interpret the data in their own voice.

00:09:20: okay.

00:09:21: so visibility an AI training are great.

00:09:23: but for the BDB marketers and account executives listening The ultimate goal is pipeline.

00:09:28: how do we turn this attention into revenue?

00:09:30: well?

00:09:30: This brings up the whole debate around the social selling index the SSI school.

00:09:33: oh yeah This is a hot topic.

00:09:35: For sure, Adam Leico and Norfar Jad have noted that a low SSI quietly throttles your account.

00:09:43: it literally limits your connection requests to maybe twenty or thirty-a week.

00:09:47: but

00:09:48: on the flip side Nakukaye and Michael Scott Cohen who reached the top one percent of ssi they argued that obsessing over this score It's just a lagging indicator of genuine relationship building, not some growth hack.

00:10:02: Right if you're just clicking around to game the algorithm You aren't actually selling.

00:10:06: Anthony Natoli shared tactical pipeline advice.

00:10:08: instead He uses the five by five method for AEs.

00:10:12: How does that work?

00:10:13: Basically you pick Five accounts and five prospects And use real-time engagement signals like comments or job changes To craft hyper specific outreach.

00:10:21: Quality over quantity.

00:10:22: Steve Osborne has great strategy too Using LinkedIn newsletters as high intent audience filter You move prospects out of the noisy feed and into a dedicated subscriber base.

00:10:31: And the ROI on this kind-of targeted activation is just undeniable.

00:10:35: Olga Bondareva shared a case study from Harbinger, a commercial EV startup...

00:10:40: Oh I saw this one!

00:10:41: Yeah

00:10:42: they generated one point two five million dollars in closed deals and four hundred percent ROI in seven months Just through target contact activation authentic posts about leaving the diesel industry

00:10:53: And Jonathan Levy backs this up with data.

00:10:55: He notes inbound leads convert at fourteen point six percent compared to outbounds one point seven percent,

00:11:01: which begs the question if Inbound converts eight times better than Outbound why do we still see so many AEs relying on pitch slapping and tracking vanity metrics like SSI?

00:11:12: Is it just impatience?

00:11:13: honestly yes It's impatience.

00:11:16: Building trust through un-Googleable content takes discipline, but as the algorithm changes show it is actually the only scalable way to penetrate a B-to-B market right now.

00:11:24: It's true!

00:11:25: The machine is basically forcing us be better more human marketers.

00:11:29: But before we wrap up I want leave you with one final forward looking twist.

00:11:33: So

00:11:33: we've been talking all about optimizing profiles for buyers and AI Right?

00:11:38: Well Richie Pettauer just posted about massive legal battle brewing in Europe.

00:11:43: Oh...the privacy one.

00:11:45: Yes, the privacy group NOIB just filed a GDPR complaint arguing that LinkedIn's paywalling of profile visitor data is fundamentally illegal.

00:11:55: Wait

00:11:55: so the premium feature where you see who looked at your profile?

00:11:59: Exactly they are arguing that hiding that tracking data behind a paywall violates privacy laws.

00:12:05: So if this lawsuit succeeds in anonymity reigns or if premium tracking data is completely stripped away How will social sellers identify warm, intense signals in the future?

00:12:16: Man if we lose profile views that is a huge blind spot for social sellers.

00:12:20: It's

00:12:20: massive.

00:12:21: it's definitely something every B to B marketer needs to keep very close eye on

00:12:24: Absolutely!

00:12:25: If you enjoyed this episode new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:12:28: Also check out our other editions on account based marketing field marketing channel marketing Martek go-to-market and AI in btb marketing.

00:12:36: Thanks so much for hanging with us today.

00:12:37: Yeah And don't forget to subscribe So You Don't Miss Our Next Deep Dive.