Best of LinkedIn: Social Selling CW 21/ 22

00:00:00: So, to kick things off today brought you by Thomas Allgaier and Franus.

00:00:04: This edition highlights key LinkedIn posts on social selling in weeks twenty-one and twenty two.

00:00:10: Franis supports clients with identifying target attendees for events crafting outreach that cuts through the noise And driving qualified registrations Through strategic LinkedIn engagement.

00:00:20: You can find more info In the description

00:00:22: Right, and we have a really, really packed agenda for you today.

00:00:26: Our mission in this deep dive is to unpack the top strategic B-to-B marketing and social selling trends that we've been seeing across LinkedIn during calendar weeks twenty one and twenty two.

00:00:36: Yeah And were going cut right through the fluff.

00:00:38: We want reveal exactly how top btb professionals are navigating these wild new algorithmic rules How they're actually building pipeline and turning their employees into massive corporate influencers.

00:00:50: Exactly and B to be social selling.

00:00:53: right now, you first have to understand the invisible referee that is governing the entire platform.

00:00:58: Oh for sure because it's not just an update right?

00:01:01: It's a total replacement of The Rules.

00:01:02: Yeah!

00:01:03: A complete replacement.

00:01:04: James Constance actually brought this up...and its wild.

00:01:07: LinkedIn hasn't just updated his algorithm they entirely replaced with a massive hundred fifty billion parameter AI model.

00:01:14: One Hundred

00:01:14: Fifty Billion Right

00:01:15: And They Dubbed It Three Hundred and Sixty Brew Which, just for context puts it on a similar scale to something like GPT-IV.

00:01:22: Wait really so.

00:01:23: the feed is basically being curated by an AI that understands actual contexts.

00:01:27: now?

00:01:27: Exactly!

00:01:28: It's not just counting keywords anymore...it understands semantic meaning.

00:01:32: And because of this, there are some really heavy new penalties.

00:01:36: Like if you use overtly salesy language or you put external links in your post Or even and this is a big one If you post more than once a day You can see your reach suppressed by up to sixty percent.

00:01:48: sixty percent as brutal I mean.

00:01:49: it completely destroys the old volume-based playbook.

00:01:52: It

00:01:52: really does

00:01:53: and Michael Ekbet actually observed something even scarier about this.

00:01:57: you notice that every single post You publish now gets dropped into sort of micro testing phase.

00:02:02: all the test pool.

00:02:03: Yeah, exactly it's a sixty to ninety minute test pull And The AI only shows your Post To About five percent Of Your Network.

00:02:10: Just Five percent right.

00:02:11: so if You have Ten Thousand Followers Only Five Hundred People See it Initially?

00:02:16: If The Post Fails With That Specific Five Percent Group if They don't Engage it just dies.

00:02:22: It completely stops distributing.

00:02:24: Yep,

00:02:24: and never reaches the other ninety-five percent.

00:02:26: But Eggbeak did suggest a really interesting workaround for this if you absolutely have to guarantee distribution.

00:02:33: Oh!

00:02:34: Using my thought leadership ads?

00:02:35: Yeah so he says that You just pay to force it through.

00:02:45: Which is a smart tactical play, but for your day-to-day organic strategy you have to understand how this AI categorizes you.

00:02:52: Omairana and Palpatine both brought up the concept of semantic authority or cluster clarity.

00:03:00: What does that actually mean in practice?

00:03:02: So, the algorithm literally reads your first two hundred and forty characters.

00:03:07: Your headline...your title to categorize you.

00:03:09: It doesn't judge you post by post anymore.

00:03:11: You are judged as a pattern across your entire profile.

00:03:15: Oh wow!

00:03:16: so it's looking at that whole picture

00:03:18: Exactly points out that if your headline says, you know, sauce founder but then you just post about your morning routines or weekend hobbies.

00:03:27: You just get buried.

00:03:28: the AI gets confused...you have to stay in a specific topic lane for like ninety days straight.

00:03:37: Okay, let's unpack this because it's like getting typecast in Hollywood.

00:03:40: All

00:03:40: right That's a good way to look at.

00:03:42: yeah Like if the AI decides you're an action star and he suddenly tried to do romantic comedy about your weekend hobbies The algorithm just refuses to distribute the movie.

00:03:50: Right?

00:03:51: You are on wrong genre

00:03:52: But doesn't kill authenticity.

00:03:54: I have push back here little bit If i had stick one strict corporate topic To please machine Doesn't make me robot.

00:04:02: Well that is big trap.

00:04:04: Alexander Weck and Bjorn Tantow argue AI without strategy actually just makes everyone the same kind of average.

00:04:10: Right, because everyone is using AI to right now

00:04:13: Exactly!

00:04:14: Since the algorithm forces us into these strict lanes.

00:04:17: The next challenge is standing out when every other B-to-B marketer Is using AI To generate content on your exact same topic.

00:04:25: Generic thought leadership like those five tips for more reach posts.

00:04:30: They are dead.

00:04:31: A free AI can write that better and faster than you.

00:04:34: Which perfectly lines up with what Annabelle Pickens was saying, she advises everyone to just stop trying to sound like a McKinsey article?

00:04:41: Yes

00:04:41: because buyers see right through it.

00:04:43: now

00:04:43: Exactly!

00:04:44: She says the best content actually comes from real client conversations.

00:04:48: It's The Handled Objections.

00:04:49: You know the things we said on sales call That made the buyer pause And think...It

00:04:54: is the messy reality of job.

00:04:55: Yeah and Mandy McEwen had cool tactics for this.

00:04:58: She says AI Can Be Useful but you have to feed it your own transcripts.

00:05:02: Right,

00:05:02: Your Own Voice

00:05:03: Exactly!

00:05:04: Give me your old post and actual sales calls so that I can learn how actually talk rather than defaulting into the generic internet voice.

00:05:11: That

00:05:12: is so smart because once you get that authentic voice You still need people stop scrolling.

00:05:18: Shoei Bum-Ed broke down a formula for top performing hooks.

00:05:21: that is just fantastic.

00:05:23: I

00:05:23: saw this, it's not just the clickbait line

00:05:25: right?

00:05:25: No!

00:05:26: Not at all.

00:05:27: he says A real hook requires five specific ingredients time character context stakes and cliffhanger Time

00:05:35: Character Context Stakes Cliffhanger

00:05:37: Right.

00:05:37: so instead of saying here are my thoughts on sales which is boring.

00:05:40: you say At four p.m.. On a Friday My biggest enterprise client called to cancel one hundred thousand dollar contract.

00:05:47: Here is the three-word phrase I use to save the deal.

00:05:50: Oh,

00:05:51: that's so good!

00:05:52: The stakes are immediately clear.

00:05:53: right.

00:05:53: you have to click see more.

00:05:55: So here's where it gets really interesting.

00:05:57: if this secret sauce as our messy real world experience does That mean?

00:06:01: The most valuable asset a B to be marketer has today Is actually their failures like there things that go wrong behind the scenes.

00:06:08: Absolutely, because an AI can fake success but it cannot fake the highly specific nuance of a real-world failure.

00:06:16: That lived experience is your moat.

00:06:18: Okay.

00:06:19: so let's say you do all this You nail your niche.

00:06:21: Your content is cutting through the AI sameness and start getting tons attention.

00:06:26: The profile views start rolling in

00:06:28: But attention is in pipeline.

00:06:30: How do we translate those profile views into actual business without, you know totally ruining the relationship?

00:06:36: That's

00:06:36: a big question and Terry Heath offered a really harsh reality check here.

00:06:40: he says A profile view as just curiosity alike Is just relevance.

00:06:44: neither of those means they are ready to buy.

00:06:47: Yeah treating a profile view has explicit permission To pitch is where so many sellers go wrong.

00:06:52: They immediately fly it Into the DMs with calendar link.

00:06:55: It's insane.

00:06:56: So what does this all mean?

00:06:58: Treating a profile view like buying signal is basically like proposing marriage to someone just because they glanced at your shoes in the grocery store.

00:07:05: It's totally misreading that

00:07:06: room.".

00:07:06: That

00:07:06: is perfect analogy, and Elisa Beleniuk really reinforces this... Real social selling means engaging organically and offering value way before you ever ask for meeting.

00:07:17: Takes time!

00:07:19: She says it takes four-to six months.

00:07:21: actually show efficacy from a social

00:07:25: Right.

00:07:25: And Pierre Herobel has a great golden rule for this, he says content and social selling are two sides of the same coin.

00:07:32: He recommends dedicating just thirty minutes per day to manually starting conversations.

00:07:37: Manually?

00:07:38: Not automated.

00:07:39: Right.

00:07:39: Manually you turn actual intent signals like someone downloading your resource into real dialogue.

00:07:45: And Zait Sayed Ali added some really strict tactical guardrails from outbound outreach as we look toward twenty-twenty six because absolutely have to keep your social selling index, your SSI above seventy.

00:07:59: Above Seventy

00:08:00: or what happens?

00:08:01: Or the platform

00:08:02: starts viewing you're account as spammy.

00:08:03: he also says You Have To Keep Your Pending Connection Requests Under Seven Hundred.

00:08:07: Wait seven hundred pending requests.

00:08:09: yeah if you just blast connection request and they sit unaccepted at your reach plummets.

00:08:14: And Ali Also Recommends Using Micro Commitment Calls To Action.

00:08:18: so instead of pitching a thirty minute demo Just Ask To Send Over A Free Resource.

00:08:22: Lower The Friction

00:08:23: Exactly, keep the friction as low as possible.

00:08:26: Okay so we've established how individual experts can master the algorithm and how they can convert that attention to sales.

00:08:34: but BDB marketing isn't a solo sport.

00:08:37: No it's team effort

00:08:38: Right.

00:08:39: So How do companies scale this across their entire workforce?

00:08:43: Especially when it feels like traditional employee advocacy programs are just totally failing right now.

00:08:48: Iksin Kehal had a very blunt assessment of this.

00:08:51: He says, traditional employee advocacy is just

00:08:54: dead

00:08:55: Dead because employees have no skin in the game.

00:08:58: If you ask them to share branded content it only builds the company's brand not theirs.

00:09:03: So his solution Is You Have To Start Treating Employees Like Creators?

00:09:07: You Literally Compensate Them Or Even Pay External Corporate Creators To Advocate For You.

00:09:11: Wow Okay.

00:09:12: But Victoria Ivanova over at Fatcho and Bhuvana Shankar had some really interesting observations on that too.

00:09:18: You can't just tell people, you know post twice a week.

00:09:20: Right?

00:09:21: That never works!

00:09:22: No it falls flat in gamification.

00:09:24: Victoria actually built the custom app where she used a weighted scoring system.

00:09:28: so basic impressions were just the baseline.

00:09:30: comments got you silver but reposts for gold

00:09:33: which makes sense algorithmically because reposts are the hardest to earn.

00:09:37: Exactly, and Pavana Shankar added that to sustain engagement past week eight because everyone drops off after week eight you need leaderboards streaks in time box challenges.

00:09:47: Yes, the Sprint model works so much better than telling someone to post forever.

00:09:52: But there is a huge bottleneck in corporate programs and Richard van der Blum nailed it!

00:09:56: It's compliance fear.

00:09:58: Oh

00:09:58: legal on HR?

00:09:59: Exactly companies are terrified.

00:10:01: employees will say the wrong thing.

00:10:02: So they demand manual reviews of every post which just kills them momentum.

00:10:07: but Van Der Blum says The solution Is using tools like Narify.

00:10:11: How does that work?

00:10:12: It basically builds the social media policy directly into The Drafting editor.

00:10:17: it catches mismatches or restricted keywords before the post is even published.

00:10:21: so you don't need manual HR reviews.

00:10:23: Oh, that's

00:10:23: brilliant!

00:10:24: It just removes friction completely and we know this works at scale.

00:10:28: Annalora McGranahan shared a huge success story about this.

00:10:31: She built a scalable framework for over six hundred fifty employees And generated over three hundred fifty thousand dollars in earned media value In less than three months.

00:10:41: That is massive ROI for just organizing your employees.

00:10:45: It really is, but I have to ask you if we are gamifying this and we're literally paying employees that act like creators at what point does B-to-B marketing?

00:10:55: Just become an internal talent management agency Like Are We Managing Marketers Or Are We managing influencers At This Point?

00:11:02: That

00:11:02: Is the Reality We Live In Now.

00:11:03: You Were Managing Influencers.

00:11:05: The People Inside Your Company Are Your Media Channel And you know, we've moved from renting attention via ads to owning this semantic identity on LinkedIn.

00:11:14: But I want to leave the listener with a final concept.

00:11:17: really mull over.

00:11:18: Okay, belate on us.

00:11:19: If your digital footprint is training this AI To lock into specific expertise cluster How difficult will it be for you to pivot career or rebrand company five years now?

00:11:30: Are building digital assets Or are our own algorithmic cages?

00:11:34: That's fascinating thought.

00:11:36: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:11:39: Also check out our other editions on account-based marketing field marketing channel marketing MarTech go to market and AI in BDB Marketing.

00:11:48: Thank You so much for listening And don't forget to subscribe.