Best of LinkedIn: Social Selling CW 35/ 36

00:00:00: Provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frennus, based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about social selling in calendar weeks thirty-five and thirty six.

00:00:08: Frenness supports clients with identifying target attendees for events crafting outreach that cuts through the noise And driving qualified registrations to strategic LinkedIn engagement.

00:00:19: You can find more info in description.

00:00:21: So if you are a strategic B to B marketing professional listening to this, our mission today is to unpack the absolute top social selling trends that are currently dominating the platform.

00:00:30: because honestly.

00:00:32: The ground has just completely shifted beneath their feet.

00:00:35: okay

00:00:35: let's unpack this Because um That shift is actually terrifying If you rely on organic reach.

00:00:42: We really need to start with this foundational change in how the feed itself Is working right?

00:00:46: Because the whole era of simply broadcasting out your first-degree connections It's just over.

00:00:52: Yeah, it really is.

00:00:53: I mean understanding that distribution change as the prerequisite for everything else we're gonna talk about today.

00:00:57: Look at the data Richard Vanderbloom shared.

00:00:59: right if you go back to twenty-twenty four like seventy two percent of a user's feed was Just content from their direct connections.

00:01:05: Wow But now in twenty twenty six That number has plummeted to just thirty one percent?

00:01:11: That Is i mean more than half Of your guaranteed audience just vanished.

00:01:14: exactly poof gone.

00:01:16: and what is replacing that real estate is Well its comments.

00:01:20: He found that a massive ninety-three percent of the impressions a comment generates now come from The Other Author's Network, not yours.

00:01:29: Wait I have to push back on That A bit because you can't just Go drop a great post on some VP's timeline and expect that to actually convert.

00:01:37: Oh, no absolutely not.

00:01:38: Yeah like what makes the comment?

00:01:40: Actually do anything for your business.

00:01:41: What's fascinating here is the mechanics of how you add value.

00:01:44: it is not about cheerleading.

00:01:46: It's about Basically showcasing your expertise in someone else's living room.

00:01:51: Like he tracked a week where leaving seven highly strategic comments adding missing data respectfully disagreeing with logic That actually generated more business inquiries than his own standalone posts.

00:02:02: Oh, wow.

00:02:02: You're just barring their audience by being the most interesting person to reply?

00:02:05: Yes!

00:02:06: Exactly.

00:02:07: And that totally lines up with what Eileen Soh found.

00:02:10: She pointed out.

00:02:11: this is a deliberate shift on the platform.

00:02:13: Back in March of twenty-twenty six they rolled out this new ranking system That literally pushes posts To people outside your network Purely based on topic interest.

00:02:22: Right It doesn't care if you've been connected for five years.

00:02:24: Exactly If you write about, say supply chain logistics.

00:02:28: The algorithm finds people reading about supply-chain logistics

00:02:32: which Jonathan Livy summarized perfectly.

00:02:33: I mean he argues we have to stop treating the algorithm like this mysterious math puzzle.

00:02:39: We have to hack.

00:02:40: yeah it's

00:02:40: human behavior right?

00:02:41: exactly?

00:02:42: It's human behaviour quantified into a ranking system.

00:02:45: Whenever marketers find A new format Like those weird carousel hooks and everyone copies it?

00:02:50: The audience adapts they get

00:02:52: bored

00:02:52: They get bored they skip it And boom, distribution for that format dies.

00:02:57: Which makes sense.

00:02:58: and you see that relevance is really everything.

00:03:00: now like Richie Pettauer ran this wild experiment with bilingual posting he took the same technical topic and posted it twice a day German in The Morning English In The Late Afternoon.

00:03:12: Oh did That just totally fracture his audio?

00:03:14: You

00:03:14: would think so?

00:03:14: right yeah but no It boosted His weekly reach by fifty percent and the crazy part was at the time zone mattered way more than the language itself.

00:03:22: Really?

00:03:23: Yeah, even The Late Afternoon posts got steady engagement from non-Ada speakers because they just rely on the translate button if a topic is hyper relevant to their pain point They do not care what language it was written in.

00:03:34: That's

00:03:34: fascinating

00:03:35: But listen I have an analogy here If formats are basically like fashion trends where once everyone is wearing It Is Just No Longer Cool.

00:03:43: Are We Just Chasing Ghosts By Constantly Trying To Hack The Feed?

00:03:46: Yes

00:03:47: hundred percent.

00:03:48: And what's fascinating here is that the smartest teams are stopping this obsession with organic broadcast reach, they're focusing on direct human action which naturally brings us to DMs and outreach.

00:04:01: Oh man!

00:04:02: The inbox?

00:04:02: Yeah...the inbox has completely fundamentally broken by automation.

00:04:06: right now we have to look at how top performers are fixing it.

00:04:09: It is a disaster zone of spam.

00:04:11: but look at Connor Paulson.

00:04:12: test.

00:04:13: this is precision over volume.

00:04:15: He sent a thousand direct messages, started with the standard two hundred word pitch.

00:04:19: you know here's our company.

00:04:21: hear are features right

00:04:22: the

00:04:22: usual?

00:04:22: and he got a dismal four percent response rate.

00:04:25: so he scrapped it and built this tight sixty seven-word framework instead

00:04:29: just sixty seven words.

00:04:31: yes

00:04:31: an eight-word pattern interrupts twenty five word problem statement of fifteen word solution at twelve word permission based call to action.

00:04:40: His response rates skyrocketed to thirty-one percent.

00:04:43: Wow, from four to thirty one because long messages just scream desperation.

00:04:48: it demands too much cognitive load and Chris Cosolino back this up too.

00:04:52: he found average BtoB teams get a sub five percent reply rate Because they use these like dead phrases Like

00:04:58: classic templates.

00:04:59: Yeah

00:04:59: thanks for connecting or I notice you're the VP of whatever Or the absolute worst.

00:05:03: i'd love To hop on a quick call.

00:05:04: instantly.

00:05:05: delete those

00:05:05: everyone does.

00:05:06: By just eliminating those dead phrases, one of his clients jumped their reply rate from three percent to twenty-eight percent in two weeks.

00:05:13: Just by removing the spam triggers!

00:05:15: That is incredible and honestly this a good time to say if you were finding that deep dive valuable for your strategy make sure you subscribe so we catch our future additions.

00:05:24: We love breaking stuff down.

00:05:25: Definitely.

00:05:26: it's so

00:05:27: actionable.

00:05:27: And speaking of actionable Daniel Disney has an amazing tactic To avoid cold pitches entirely.

00:05:34: He uses the sales navigator posted on LinkedIn filter.

00:05:37: Oh, so you only see active users?

00:05:39: Exactly!

00:05:40: It filters out the ghost town accounts.

00:05:42: he found a VP of sales who literally just posted about struggling with her pipeline.

00:05:48: So instead of pitching here in the DMs...he Just left to really thoughtful comment on her post

00:05:52: right joining The conversation.

00:05:54: she replied In an hour and they booked a call two days later.

00:05:58: zero cold-pitching

00:06:00: Because it's human.

00:06:01: But, you know we also have to remember that even ignored messages have value if they are done well.

00:06:06: Omar E had this great example.

00:06:08: Oh

00:06:08: the delayed timeline thing.

00:06:09: Yeah

00:06:10: He cold called a prospect weeks after sending a DM.

00:06:12: That was completely ignored but The prospect actually remembered Omar name on the phone.

00:06:17: The social selling laid the groundwork On A Delayed Timeline.

00:06:21: It builds that subtle mental real estate Precisely

00:06:24: and This is why automation kills trust Islam.

00:06:27: Midav talked about a founder trying to raise capital for real estate using a massive bot farm for legend.

00:06:33: A Bot Farm For Real Estate?

00:06:34: Yikes!

00:06:35: Right, Midav flat out rejected the pitch he told him.

00:06:38: automated bots destroy human trust and deliver negative ROI.

00:06:41: You just cannot automate high value relationships.

00:06:44: Okay.

00:06:44: So if humid-to-human is what wins how do you scale that?

00:06:48: because you can't Just have your CEO writing fifty bespoke DMs every single day.

00:06:51: no

00:06:51: you Can't.

00:06:52: this shifts us right into our third theme moving from corporate broadcasting to employee advocacy, because people trust people.

00:07:00: They do not trust

00:07:01: logos.".

00:07:01: The data on this is wild.

00:07:03: Reggie Azevedo shared a story about ahead of marketing proving it's their CEO.

00:07:07: The official company page posted sixty-one times and got two hundred forty thousand impressions.

00:07:12: Okay, pretty standard But

00:07:13: a single solutions engineer posted just nine times from his personal profile And he got three hundred ten thousand impressions.

00:07:20: Wait...nine posts beat sixty one corporate posts?

00:07:23: Yes Because buyers know a logo is just polished PR

00:07:27: Right!

00:07:28: And Corey Lindsay saw the exact same thing.

00:07:30: Her company had this highly produced corporate white paper.

00:07:34: You got a measly thirty-five downloads across the entire APAC region.

00:07:37: Ouch!

00:07:38: I know, but then employees just started amplifying a post about a new Singapore office opening —just sharing their own thoughts—.

00:07:46: it doubled the engagement rate of massive highly produced global video campaign.

00:07:51: It

00:07:52: proves the point But the secret that employees shouldn't be out there shilling products?

00:07:58: Right, they shouldn't just be copy pasting marketing materials.

00:08:01: Exactly!

00:08:02: Advocacy only works when the employee talks about their personal experience actually doing their job.

00:08:07: That authentic day-to-day reality generated tens of thousands free impressions for his software company.

00:08:13: The

00:08:13: big brands are definitely catching on to this.

00:08:15: Jasmine Enberg highlighted that Gap and Starbucks were literally paying employees to post.

00:08:20: now Expedia is exploring it too.

00:08:22: Wow...paying

00:08:23: them directly.

00:08:24: Yeah, because research shows forty six percent of consumers actively want to hear from regular employees.

00:08:30: So what does this all mean?

00:08:31: It's like having fifty relatable mini billboards walking around a city instead of one giant corporate billboard in the deserted alley.

00:08:38: I love that analogy

00:08:40: but i gotta ask What if you invest all this time and money building up their personal brands And then they leave?

00:08:46: Well,

00:08:46: they leave either way.

00:08:48: But while they are there the company's customer acquisition cost drops significantly.

00:08:52: You're essentially borrowing their trust and this leads perfectly into our final theme

00:08:56: Which is... And this blew my mind The fact that this individual trust isn't just about human feeds anymore.

00:09:03: It's about AI.

00:09:04: Yes, content strategy and conversion architecture in the age of A.I.

00:09:08: Search.

00:09:09: Jenny Forrests and Tyrone Heath broke down this meltwater data that is just

00:09:12: staggering.

00:09:13: The nine point five million a I citation study right?

00:09:16: That's

00:09:16: the one.

00:09:17: they found that seventy-five percent of LinkedIn citations an AI search come from individual profiles not company pages.

00:09:23: That is insane chat.

00:09:24: GPT has literally bypassing the brand page to quote your engineers

00:09:28: Exactly.

00:09:29: And even crazier, thirty-five percent of those citations come from people with fewer than ten thousand followers.

00:09:34: AI rewards relevance and specific expertise.

00:09:37: It does not care about.

00:09:38: your follower count

00:09:39: is now looking for influencers.

00:09:40: it's looking for answers precisely

00:09:43: which Is why Matt Savick says audience size?

00:09:45: Just a vanity.

00:09:45: metric conversion architecture is the actual business For him.

00:09:49: having exactly twenty five thousand seventeen Followers perfectly correlates to generating exactly one qualified sales meeting every single business day.

00:09:58: He has it down to a science?

00:10:00: Yes, the profile is built to convert

00:10:02: and reach isn't everything.

00:10:03: anyway.

00:10:03: Alicia tells proof that she has nearly sixty thousand followers But when she launched one hundred twenty-thousand dollar cohort.

00:10:10: The vast majority of signups actually came from her sub stack email list

00:10:14: because direct access beats algorithmic luck Every time

00:10:17: every single time

00:10:18: And this is exactly why you cannot outsource us to AI.

00:10:21: Darren McKee in James hands Manolis issued a dire warning about Oh

00:10:25: the AI slop.

00:10:26: Yes.

00:10:27: Agencies using AI to write posts and comments are ruining these twenty-year executive brands.

00:10:34: They're getting algorithm penalties, losing leads And it takes ninety days of manual human activity just to repair the damage.

00:10:41: It

00:10:41: takes a full quarter Just to fix their reputation Because

00:10:44: AI cannot do it.

00:10:45: Hunza Minales Tested Grock GPT Clotter.

00:10:48: None of them could match Handwritten Human Nuance in Humor.

00:10:51: It just falls flat.

00:10:52: Always sounds like a robot.

00:10:53: Well, this has been an incredible breakdown.

00:10:55: So we've talked about algorithms the sixty seven word DM humanizing content.

00:11:00: but here is something to mull over before.

00:11:03: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:11:29: Also, check out our other editions on field marketing, Martek AI and B to be go-to market ABM.

00:11:36: And channel marketing in partner ecosystem.

00:11:38: Thank you so much for joining us and definitely remember to subscribe So you don't miss the next one.

00:11:42: we will catch you next time.