Best of LinkedIn: Social Selling CW 27/ 28

00:00:00: Brought to you by Thomas Allgaier and Frennus, this edition highlights key LinkedIn posts on social selling in weeks twenty-seven and twenty eight.

00:00:07: Frenness supports clients with identifying target appendages for events, grafting outreach that cuts through the noise ,and driving qualified registrations you

00:00:24: know, cutting your outreach message by like seventy percent.

00:00:27: Your response rate just skyrockets from four percent to thirty one percent.

00:00:31: or realizing that this rigid sales funnel your team spent I don't know six months building is actually actively preventing your best buyers.

00:00:40: So today we are doing a deep dive into the absolute top social selling trends for B to be marketing professionals.

00:00:46: We've sifted through just a mountain of insights from calendar weeks twenty seven and twenty eight And our mission here is to extract The exact mechanisms like the why?

00:00:55: And how behind what it's actually driving revenue on LinkedIn right now.

00:00:58: It really

00:00:59: Is a fascinating stack of material this week.

00:01:01: I mean when you look at the raw data, and the strategic shifts these practitioners or sharing A massive recalibration Just becomes totally obvious.

00:01:09: Absolutely

00:01:09: social selling has completely moved past, you know random acts of posting or just dropping connection requests into the void.

00:01:17: It is now a highly engineered revenue system.

00:01:20: Yeah But but that system only generates pipeline if you actually understand The new algorithmic rules and while the psychological shifts that are governing B to be buyers today.

00:01:31: Okay So let's unpack this because I think a lot of b-to-b teams they're still operating on a playbook from what three years ago.

00:01:37: Oh, easily.

00:01:38: Maybe five?

00:01:39: Right.

00:01:39: so we need to start at the macro level.

00:01:41: yeah The foundational philosophy of what Lincoln actually is for a B-to-B company has changed.

00:01:47: I mean it's no longer just a digital notice board

00:01:49: Thank goodness.

00:01:50: Yeah David Walsh shared this brilliant post pointing out that ninety percent of their revenue comes from LinkedIn.

00:01:54: But he made a critical distinction.

00:01:56: He said That only happens if you stop treating the platform like a company bulletin board.

00:02:01: Right, the whole excited to announce our new VP stuff.

00:02:04: Exactly!

00:02:04: Excited to announce or look at our team in the bowling alley posts?

00:02:09: He argues you have to treat it as a distribution channel like You need be posting five times per week with this specific intent of seamlessly capturing demand not just creating.

00:02:20: And that distinction, right?

00:02:22: Between creating demand and capturing it.

00:02:23: That's where most marketing teams just totally fail.

00:02:26: Yeah It is the defining line between a social media strategy Which you know Just hunts for likes and a revenue strategy which actually hunts For pipeline.

00:02:35: yeah

00:02:36: that makes sense.

00:02:36: Charles Thompson provided a framework that synthesizes this perfectly.

00:02:41: he pointed out that content So the thought leadership posts, videos and carousels is actually only one-third of our job.

00:02:48: Wait!

00:02:49: Only a third?

00:02:50: Because I know many content marketers who spend forty hours a week agonizing over those carousel.

00:02:56: that's going to sting.

00:02:57: It might sting but data doesn't really care about their feelings

00:03:00: right?!

00:03:01: The other two thirds of the job, according to Thompson are intent and outlawed.

00:03:05: So think about it this way.

00:03:06: content warms the market It gets your name out there so you aren't a complete stranger.

00:03:12: but without tracking buying signals which we call Intent And then actually executing outbound outreach that content is just noise!

00:03:21: So what exactly counts as an intense signal here?

00:03:23: Well, an intent signal is simply a digital footprint of buyer leaves when they're trying to solve the problem.

00:03:29: It could be someone viewing your profile or prospect engaging with competitors post about specific software integration and even announcing new round-of funding.

00:03:40: Intent without outbound just wasted intelligence.

00:03:43: Outbound without content means the prospect deletes message completely forgets you by Thursday!

00:03:49: Okay, I'm gonna heavily push back on you here.

00:03:52: Just representing the skeptics listening right now.

00:03:54: If content is only a third of the battle and it's all about this intent driven outbound Does this mean traditional company pages are completely dead?

00:04:03: Well because marketing teams spend Tens of thousands in dollars polishing these pages Right Because they serve as a digital storefront.

00:04:12: If a prospect looks up a company and the page is a ghost town, doesn't that instantly destroy credibility?

00:04:19: You are absolutely right.

00:04:20: That at Ghost Town destroys credibility.

00:04:22: The digital storefront still needs the lights on, obviously.

00:04:24: But there is a massive difference between keeping the light's on and expecting the store front to generate its own

00:04:31: foot traffic.

00:04:31: All

00:04:32: right.

00:04:32: Elite Dotson actually touched on this perfectly.

00:04:35: she works with established women entrepreneurs And noted that they often treat LinkedIn like a passive bulletin board.

00:04:41: you know just waiting for inbound leads.

00:04:44: She used this incredible phrase.

00:04:45: he said visibility without strategy Is Just Noise With Better Lighting

00:04:51: lighting.

00:04:51: Wow!

00:04:52: That is brilliant, it means you look professional but you aren't actually guiding the buyer to do anything.

00:04:57: Precisely if a company page is just broadcasting polished faceless updates...it's dead weight in todays algorithmic landscape.

00:05:05: Zayin Sayali shared massive success story.

00:05:08: that proves how Yeah, his team closed over four hundred twenty thousand dollars in new monthly recurring revenue.

00:05:17: And they didn't do it by waiting for Inbound Leads to magically appear from a company page graphic!

00:05:22: They combined founder-led content warm outbound messaging and a weekly newsletter.

00:05:27: Okay so multi layered approach

00:05:29: Right.

00:05:30: The Founder posts real stories and gritty data every day To build the audience.

00:05:35: Then they use the news letter to capture emails.

00:05:37: Finally...and this is key They monitor who is clicking the links in that newsletter, so that's an intense signal.

00:05:43: And they trigger highly personalized outreach to those specific individuals.

00:05:47: So you're actively connecting dots?

00:05:49: They aren't throwing a net into the ocean and hoping fish jumps in... ...they are using radar to find the fish warming water then casting a very specific line Exactly.

00:05:58: Which brings up a fascinating point from Waka's co-car about how we view buyers' journey.

00:06:02: Because for decades, marketers have relied on these elaborate linear funnels.

00:06:06: You know the ones that classic T-O-F-U M-O F U B O F U structure.

00:06:11: top of funnel middle a funnel.

00:06:13: bottom of funnel.

00:06:14: Oh yeah The assumption that buyers act like obedient sheep walking through a gate.

00:06:17: Exactly we assume they view A broad awareness ad right?

00:06:22: Top of funnel.

00:06:23: then a few weeks later They magically graduate to an educational webinar.

00:06:27: so middle of funnel and finally when they are perfectly ripe We serve them a pricing case study, bottom of funnel.

00:06:34: And Kochar argues that... trying to gatekeep content by those traditional stages actually actively blocks ready buyers.

00:06:42: It blocks them.

00:06:43: Yeah, because BDB buyers today do not move in a straight line they wander They research totally out of order.

00:06:48: Let's say a buyer visits your pricing page Because a colleague recommended you but they haven't engaged with any of your top-of-funnel awareness ads.

00:06:55: A rigid CRM system keeps him locked In the awareness bucket Right So they never receive The case study that would have closed the deal That very afternoon.

00:07:03: Wow so Traditional TOVU MOF BOF U marketing is basically like a forced theme park ride.

00:07:11: You have to sit through the slow haunted house before you are allowed to get on the roller coaster.

00:07:15: That's a great way to put it,

00:07:16: but co-car is saying modern buyers treat It Like an open world video game.

00:07:21: they want to wander straight To The final boss?

00:07:23: You know the pricing and implementation details without doing all the side quests.

00:07:28: That is the perfect analogy.

00:07:29: You have to stop defining the funnel by who sees the ad and start defining it, but what the content actually does you run awareness education in conversion contents simultaneously so buyers can self-select based on their immediate need.

00:07:44: But here's a major friction point we ran into.

00:07:46: if buyers are skipping straight To The End And We've established that outbound as the crucial engine to capture them.

00:07:52: How do I reach out without turning them off like If you were listening this right now?

00:07:57: Think about your own inbox this morning.

00:07:58: How many three hundred word pitches did you instantly delete without reading past the first sentence?

00:08:03: Probably all of them, yeah and that is exactly what Connor Paulson addressed.

00:08:08: he shared this dramatic data point from sending a thousand LinkedIn messages.

00:08:12: He changed one single variable And took his response rate from four percent to thirty-one percent.

00:08:17: I mean A jump From Four Percent To Thirty One Percent Is The Kind Of Metric That Makes A Career In The Secret.

00:08:24: He just cut his messages from two hundred words down to a sixty seven word framework.

00:08:29: he stopped writing these massive novels explaining every single feature His company offers and instead focused entirely on the prospects problem.

00:08:37: He used a phrase that perfectly encapsulates The psychology of social selling.

00:08:41: right now, you said short messages whisper confidence.

00:08:44: long Messages scream desperation.

00:08:47: man I want to linger around for a second because it's so powerful.

00:08:49: Yeah Why does along message feel desperate?

00:08:52: psychologically mean shouldn't more info be better?

00:08:54: Well because a long message assumes the buyer owes you their time, it demands that the prospects stop what they are doing and read five paragraphs about A Stranger's Company.

00:09:03: It signals that you don't respect their inbox... ...and worse…it signals that your trying to close massive deal in just one breath.

00:09:09: Right!

00:09:10: Like proposing on first date?

00:09:11: Exactly!

00:09:12: True experts do not need three hundred words to prove value—they only want one sharp insight.

00:09:17: And this aligns flawlessly with what Nicholas Siljanowski found.

00:09:22: His team at growth today analyzed fifty thousand LinkedIn direct messages.

00:09:29: Fifty thousand.

00:09:29: That's

00:09:29: a huge data set.

00:09:31: Yeah, and they found that the inbox preview on linkedin is incredibly harsh.

00:09:36: On mobile The app only previews the first sixty characters of your message.

00:09:39: if you do not earn the open right there?

00:09:41: The rest of your carefully crafted pitch Is totally irrelevant.

00:09:44: yeah he also found a massive red flag If you use a Calendly link or meeting link in that very first message, reply rates drop by a staggering sixty percent.

00:09:55: Because dropping a calendar link and the First Message instantly flags as salesperson trying to take something from them – namely their time before they have offered any value… it triggers all of their defensive walls!

00:10:06: To combat this, Siljenowski advocates for a very strict highly engineered

00:10:12: six-line structure.

00:10:14: Because I've definitely been guilty of writing the terrible how we are a leading provider of enterprise synergy solutions.

00:10:19: Here is my link message.

00:10:20: Yeah, How does this actually work mechanically?

00:10:22: Okay.

00:10:23: So line one is a signal opener.

00:10:25: This is where you prove You aren't an automated bot by referencing something specific.

00:10:29: They actually did.

00:10:30: in the last thirty days for example saw your team just hired three new SDRs.

00:10:35: okay

00:10:36: very specific right

00:10:37: then line two Is a relevance bridge.

00:10:39: You connect that signal to a common pain point, like usually onboarding that many reps strains the training budget.

00:10:46: Line three is a single credibility line with a concrete data point.

00:10:50: we helped company X cut ramp time by forty percent.

00:10:54: so no fluff just fact-pain proof what are?

00:11:01: You do not ask for a meeting, you just asked permission to share resource.

00:11:05: Mind if I send over the onboarding checklist.

00:11:07: we used them?

00:11:08: Line five is secret weapon and optional out.

00:11:11: Oh i like that!

00:11:11: You literally give them permission.

00:11:13: say no worries this isn't our priority right now.

00:11:15: in line six it's simple sign off.

00:11:17: Giving them an optionout is fascinating because by telling they can say NO YOU LOWER THEIR DEFENSES AND HANDING THEM BACK THE AUTONOMY.

00:11:27: BUT HERE'S WHERE IT GETS REALLY INTERESTING.

00:11:30: If you are selling a highly complex million dollar B-to-B software package, how do you possibly sell that in sixty seven words?

00:11:38: Well...you don't.

00:11:39: And that is the trap most marketers fall into!

00:11:42: You're not trying to fit George R Martin novel onto single post.

00:11:45: it note The goal of direct message isn't to sell the software…the goal is to sell conversation.

00:11:52: A highly complex sale is going to require multiple meetings, deep discovery calls and stakeholder alignment.

00:11:58: You cannot bypass that process in a DM.

00:12:01: Your only job in the initial outreach is to prove you understand their specific world enough not to warrant.

00:12:14: If we are stripping our pitches down to just sixty-seven words, We lose the space to explain why we're credible.

00:12:20: How do you get a buyer To trust a six line message from a total stranger?

00:12:24: I mean they have already know who You Are before you hit send.

00:12:27: Familiarity is required prerequisite.

00:12:30: Abhishek GP made a brilliant point about this.

00:12:33: He said that in B to be familiarity is the new permission slip for sales.

00:12:38: Yes, he referred it as The Stranger Tax.

00:12:40: The stranger tax?

00:12:41: Yeah That concept.

00:12:42: Your brain naturally files an unfamiliar brand wanting my attention In the exact same mental drawer As a pop-up ad and It just shuts down.

00:12:51: Yep immediate block.

00:12:52: Every unknown company pays This stranger tax when they do outbound But A buyer will stop scrolling For person They recognize.

00:13:00: Abhishek noted that a mediocre post from a recognizable human completely beats a polished, highly-produced post form a faceless logo.

00:13:07: What's fascinating here is how this human first behavior isn't just the psychological preference anymore.

00:13:12: it has now been hard coded into platform itself.

00:13:15: Chris Stephens outlined major new LinkedIn algorithm update codenamed Three Sixty Brew which rolled out alongside an authenticity update.

00:13:23: The platform is actively penalizing generic AI slop and engagement bait.

00:13:27: By engagement bait, you mean those terrible posts that end with.

00:13:31: Do You Agree?

00:13:32: Comment your thoughts below.

00:13:34: just to artificially inflate the comments.

00:13:35: Exactly,

00:13:36: those are getting heavily throttled now.

00:13:38: instead The three sixty brew algorithm is heavily rewarding saves and sends via direct message interesting think about the mechanics of a save.

00:13:47: when he user bookmarks a post it tells the Algorithm that this content isn't Just A quick hit Of dopamine.

00:13:52: you know It Is a reference tool?

00:14:03: utility, not just a scrolling addiction.

00:14:06: It is optimizing for deep niche

00:14:08: expertise.".

00:14:10: So what does this all mean for the modern marketer?

00:14:13: If the algorithm bdb marketer?

00:14:20: not necessarily because

00:14:21: i mean are we supposed to completely abandon tools like claude and chat gpt when we build these social selling systems?

00:14:27: Because earlier, We talked about meeting a highly calibrated revenue machine.

00:14:30: And you really can't build that by hand.

00:14:32: it is Not About Abandoning AI at all.

00:14:34: It Is About Understanding Its Proper Placement in the Workflow.

00:14:38: AI is incredible for backend operations.

00:14:41: Vanessa Ponce and Sergio Alfaro both detailed how they are using Claude to build highly sophisticated automated lead generation engines.

00:14:49: Okay, so back end not front-end Right!

00:14:51: They use AI agents to track those intent signals we talked about earlier.

00:14:55: AI scrapes the data, it filters ideal customer profiles and drafts initial variations of those six-line DM templates based on specific triggers.

00:15:04: It handles all heavy lifting lists building and initial targeting.

00:15:08: Right, Avacek GP mentioned that too.

00:15:09: actually having agents handle grunt work nobody misses.

00:15:13: like list enrichment scheduling first three follow ups

00:15:16: Precisely.

00:15:17: But, and this is the critical distinction we really have to make here.

00:15:20: Heather Adkins pointed out that AI completely commoditizes generic content.

00:15:24: Oh well absolutely Polished

00:15:25: prose And clean perfectly structured arguments Are now free & infinite.

00:15:30: Anyone can ask chat GPT To write a thought leadership piece.

00:15:34: Therefore An unfiltered specific uniquely human voice Is The only true differentiator left on the front end The brands that win the feed will win on conviction, specificity and a point of view...

00:15:53: He advised executives to stop making flashy Lamborghini content.

00:15:58: And start making functional Toyota Prius content.

00:16:00: Oh explain the mechanics for the listener because it's such great visual.

00:16:04: So Lamborghini Content is highly produced corporate approved thought leadership video.

00:16:08: You know, it looks expensive.

00:16:09: It sounds profound and gets tons of likes from your peers in other marketers but doesn't actually help a buyer.

00:16:15: Toyota Prius content is gritty and functional!

00:16:18: Its like the screenshot of a messy spreadsheet showing exactly how you've fixed a pipeline bottleneck…it isn't pretty...but it actually gives the buyer to their destination….the Lamborghini get's attention from wrong people while the Prius actually give them the closing table.

00:16:33: I love that.

00:16:34: And this brings us into our final major shift we saw on weeks twenty-seven.

00:16:39: If gritty, authentic human voice is the ultimate algorithm hack right now forward thinking B to D companies realize they have a scaling problem.

00:16:47: You cannot manufacture authenticity from a corporate marketing desk.

00:16:50: No you definitely can't.

00:16:51: So their completely restructuring there.

00:16:53: employee advocacy programs.

00:16:55: They are moving away form forcing corporate reposts To actively funding and enabling internal creators.

00:17:01: Mike Adams shared a highly relatable insight on this.

00:17:04: He compared successful employee advocacy to the Norwegian football fans.

00:17:08: row, roe chant.

00:17:10: have you seen that?

00:17:10: I

00:17:10: think so.

00:17:11: yeah

00:17:11: it's thousands of fans doing a simple unified rowing motion together in The Stands.

00:17:18: It is simple its unforced and it's a repeatable ritual.

00:17:22: he argues that most companies fail because they ask their employees full-blown thought leaders overnight, you know write original posts build a brand find topics.

00:17:31: That is way too much friction.

00:17:32: instead companies need to find one simple unified LinkedIn behavior.

00:17:38: everyone can repeat every

00:17:39: week and we are seeing massive corporate shifts proving that the old model of forced robotic compliance Is just

00:17:45: dead.

00:17:46: So Linda Appleby noted that visa just launched an employee creator network.

00:17:50: Wow Misa.

00:17:51: Yeah,

00:17:51: they realize that employees building their own audiences and sharing their granular expertise humanizes the brand in ways corporate channels simply cannot.

00:17:58: They are treating employees as creators providing coaching and resources not just emailing a weekly calendar of approved links to share.

00:18:06: And Bonnie Dilber shared an even more radical step.

00:18:08: Starbucks is actually piloting a program where they pay baristas who have large followings to create content.

00:18:13: It's exactly like a major record labeled deciding to fund independent indie artists who already have a grassroots following instead of trying to artificially manufacture a sterile boy band in the corporate boardroom.

00:18:26: It's perfect comparison,

00:18:27: but how do companies handle that loss?

00:18:29: Of control because marketing teams historically love to control every syllable of the message.

00:18:35: if you let hundreds of employees post whatever they want doesn't That risk brand safety

00:18:41: while They handle it by providing frameworks not scripts?

00:18:44: Lexi Graham pointed out that handing the mic to your team without a framework doesn't get you authenticity.

00:18:49: It gets you chaos, right?

00:18:51: You define the tone of voice The Corp Hillers and the guidelines up front And then you trust your people to run with it.

00:18:57: But there's also a game-changing new platform feature That addresses this exact dynamic mentioned by both Charlie Whitehead and Alexandra Rinn and that's LinkedIn's collaborative posts.

00:19:07: Oh This feature completely changes the game.

00:19:10: How does it work?

00:19:10: mechanically?

00:19:11: on the feed

00:19:12: It fundamentally changes the architecture of company content.

00:19:15: Instead, of the Company page posting an update and then begging employees to awkwardly repost it days later members in Company pages can now co-author a single post when Both profile pictures and both names appear at the top of a post.

00:19:30: The feed distributes it to both audiences

00:19:32: simultaneously.".

00:19:33: That

00:19:33: is massive!

00:19:38: It solves that terrible feeling where an employee feels like an unpaid marketing intern just echoing corporate PR.

00:19:52: Yeah,

00:19:52: nobody wants to feel like that.

00:19:53: it builds a shared reputation natively

00:19:55: Exactly!

00:19:56: It turns isolated voices into a unified credible chorus.

00:20:00: the friction has entirely moved from content creation To content resonance.

00:20:04: well we have covered and immense amount of ground.

00:20:06: today We moved from understanding why LinkedIn must be treated as an integrated revenue engine to the exact six line framework that takes outreach response rates, From four percent to thirty one percent.

00:20:18: we unpacked how The new three sixty brew algorithm punishes AI slop and rewards the messy authentic Toyota Prius content And we looked at How collaborative posts are turning employees into empowered creators.

00:20:30: If you enjoyed this episode New episodes drop every two weeks.

00:20:33: Also check out our other editions on account-based marketing, field marketing channel marketing, MarTech go to market and AI in BWB marketing.

00:20:41: Thank you so much for joining us On this deep dive.

00:20:43: make sure you hit subscribe So you never miss an edition.

00:20:46: Before you go consider This one final unexplored nugget.

00:20:49: from the sources we analyzed Rpet Singh shared some fascinating data that should reframe how You think about all of this?

00:20:55: LinkedIn has just become The number two most cited source In a I search right behind YouTube.

00:21:00: When buyers use tools like Perplicati or ChatGPT to research a problem, they aren't just scanning ten blue links in Google anymore.

00:21:07: They are asking AI and the AI is heavily citing LinkedIn creators as the primary experts.

00:21:13: so as you optimize your BtoB content strategy this week ask yourself Are You Just Writing For The Fleeting Attention Of The LinkedIn Feed Today?

00:21:20: Or Are You Structuring Your Deep Expertise So That AI Engines Sight You As A Definitive Answer Tomorrow?