Best of LinkedIn: Social Selling CW 37/ 38

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

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 description.

00:00:21: So what if I told you that a post with two hundred and twenty thousand views generated exactly zero pipeline?

00:00:28: I mean, that's wild.

00:00:29: Right

00:00:30: but then a post just a few days earlier With only fourteen hundred views actually booked out sales teams entire quarter.

00:00:36: so Welcome to the deep dive.

00:00:38: Yeah,

00:00:38: today's mission is to really unpack The absolute most critical social selling trends across linkedin right now

00:00:45: exactly and we're tailoring this specifically for you This strategic bdb marketer who?

00:00:49: You know actually needs results not just vanity metrics.

00:00:52: yeah We are completely cutting out the fluff Today.

00:00:54: our focus is squarely on what Is actually driving pipeline in this environment

00:00:58: which is so needed Right Now!

00:00:59: We're gonna look at how the platform's underlying mechanics have fundamentally shifted underneath Our feet over last few weeks.

00:01:06: Yeah, and who should genuinely be doing the talking for your brand?

00:01:11: Exactly.

00:01:12: And you know to start that conversation we really have to look at the unseen forces That are currently shaping reach The

00:01:18: algorithm updates?

00:01:19: yeah

00:01:19: because if you are still operating on the advice from last quarter You're playing a game that just doesn't exist anymore.

00:01:26: I mean the rulebook Just got a complete rewrite

00:01:28: so let's get into the mechanics of that rewrite.

00:01:31: Daniel L recently broke down LinkedIn's new three sixty brew language model.

00:01:36: Oh, yeah The Three Sixty Brew.

00:01:38: right and this isn't just a minor tweak to the feed.

00:01:41: We are talking about a one hundred fifty billion Parameter decoder only model

00:01:46: which sounds incredibly technical.

00:01:48: Yeah It does so.

00:01:49: before we go further into the weeds here you know Decoder Only Hundred Fifty Billion parameters for the marketer listening who is in a machine learning engineer?

00:01:57: What has that actually changed?

00:01:58: For the user experience?

00:01:59: Well, it's a think of the old algorithm as an accountant with a clipboard.

00:02:03: Right?

00:02:03: It was essentially a scoring machine that just counted how many characters you wrote How many hashtags You used how any outbound links you included

00:02:10: Just telling up points exactly!

00:02:12: It was a massive pile of separate engineering systems just adding up points.

00:02:17: But this new three sixty brew model acts much more like a literary critic.

00:02:22: A literary

00:02:23: critic, I liked that!

00:02:23: Yeah because it's a massive language model?

00:02:25: It actually reads and comprehends natural language.

00:02:29: It handles over thirty different prediction tasks by you know... Actually understanding context not by counting commas

00:02:35: Which i mean That completely invalidates the playbook everyone was using last year Right?

00:02:40: Completely Like The old advice of uh Post exactly between twelve hundred fifty and three thousand characters

00:02:47: Oh yeah.

00:02:47: or use Exactly Three External Links for a four-hundred and forty one percent reach boost.

00:02:53: Right, that's all garbage.

00:02:54: now it is like moving from high school teacher who grades your essay based purely on word count you know how many times use this specific vocabulary work to college professor.

00:03:04: actually grade you the quality nuance of argument.

00:03:07: just can't key words stuff in an A anymore.

00:03:09: You really cant because system reading meaning value entire engagement hierarchy has basically flipped.

00:03:17: Well, Becca Chambers shared a breakdown of the twenty-twenty six algorithm hierarchy and it reflects this new reality perfectly.

00:03:25: Saves are now at

00:03:26: top

00:03:27: signal.

00:03:28: interesting.

00:03:28: yeah they are reportedly worth roughly five times The weight of A standard.

00:03:32: like and sends Are also heavily weighted because the system views them as a private endorsement.

00:03:37: I mean that makes sense.

00:03:39: ascend means you're literally handing the content to appear in a direct message.

00:03:44: Exactly,

00:03:44: it's dark social brought into the light for the algorithm.

00:03:47: But what about these standard likes and reactions?

00:03:51: Because people still obsess over those.

00:03:52: Yeah they do but...they are essentially a vanity metric.

00:03:55: now Really?

00:03:56: Yeah, reactions barely move the needle.

00:03:58: The foundational metric-the thing that really underpins this entire new reading machine is dwell time.

00:04:04: Dwell Time okay

00:04:05: Right it's not a separate signal.

00:04:06: It actually qualifies every other action you take.

00:04:09: so A save Is meaningless.

00:04:10: if he didn't Actually read the post

00:04:11: That makes a lot of sense.

00:04:12: But a save happens after users stop their scroll Clicked, see more and read the content for like forty seconds.

00:04:19: That is a massive positive signal to the model.

00:04:22: Okay so since dwell time as The Ultimate Currency that perfectly explains the data we saw regarding video in motion.

00:04:28: Oh absolutely

00:04:29: Because Lori Sloan found that boosted posts utilizing animated gifs are seeing A massive nine-to-twenty percent click through rate right now

00:04:39: Which is huge.

00:04:40: It is, to put that in perspective for you the twenty-twenty six average click through rate sits at around two point six eight to three point forty percent.

00:04:49: Wow!

00:04:49: So gifts are completely shattering the baseline Politically

00:04:52: shattering it and why?

00:04:54: Well...it

00:04:54: really comes down basic human psychology and, you know the environment of The Modern B-to-B buyer.

00:05:00: Right there at work?

00:05:01: Exactly!

00:05:02: A lot of your prospects are sitting in silent open office settings or on muted zoom calls.

00:05:07: motion naturally stops

00:05:09: the scroll.

00:05:09: Yeah that visual hook

00:05:10: right And a looping gif holds human attention far longer than static text and crucially it doesn't require sound like a video does.

00:05:18: Oh That's a great point

00:05:19: yeah.

00:05:19: so that continuous silent loop just racks up dwell time effortlessly.

00:05:24: And this shift to a reading algorithm that prioritizes dwell time destroys some of the most persistent myths on the platform, too?

00:05:32: For sure!

00:05:33: Like Stephanie Moreau noted that hashtags no longer boost visibility at all.

00:05:37: Not At All.

00:05:38: You literally just need to use natural keywords in your sentences because The AI actually understands the context of the paragraph.

00:05:44: Yeah and Gabriella Zutrow proved something really similar with outbound links.

00:05:48: Oh...the old link penalty myth Exactly

00:05:52: in your post body would tank you reach because the platform wanted to keep users on site, but she proved that no longer matters.

00:06:00: Really?

00:06:01: Yeah!

00:06:01: As long as the Post itself provides genuine value and context keeping that dwell time high... The algorithm does not punish for linking out.

00:06:10: Okay so I hear this whole literary critic idea.

00:06:14: But uh..I have push back a little

00:06:15: here.

00:06:16: Go ahead

00:06:16: Because i had hard times believing LinkedIn has suddenly solved the spam problem.

00:06:21: If this a hundred and fifty billion parameter model is so intelligent, and values high quality content.

00:06:28: Why does my feed still occasionally full of junk?

00:06:31: Yeah that's fair

00:06:32: like what happens when the system gets things wrong.

00:06:34: well That Is Definitely The Dark Side Of This Update And It's Something Every Single Creator Needs To Be Aware Of Right.

00:06:39: Richard Vanerbloom issued a really stark warning about the new AI Slop Report button that just rolled out.

00:06:46: The AI Slot Button?

00:06:47: Yeah, and in just the first two weeks over a million people used this button

00:06:52: A million People blindly flagging content.

00:06:55: I mean That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

00:06:57: It absolutely is because if someone clicks that button on your post it can quietly tank.

00:07:02: you reach by forty percent Forty

00:07:04: percent Wow.

00:07:05: And

00:07:05: the worst part there's zero training required To use the button

00:07:09: Right.

00:07:09: The user doesn't even have to provide a reason or context, just a click and you are penalized.

00:07:14: That's terrifying for creators!

00:07:16: It

00:07:16: is.

00:07:17: Richard actually ran a test.

00:07:18: he found A real obvious scam profile And reported it

00:07:22: and

00:07:23: it sailed right through the moderation system without a violation found.

00:07:27: they're kidding nope.

00:07:28: meanwhile honest B-to-B creators who Are You know Just using AI To maybe outline or structure their own original thoughts, they risk being flagged into silence.

00:07:39: So it's essentially like a fire alarm in a school where anyone can pull the handle.

00:07:43: there are no security cameras watching to see who pulled it and The principal just automatically suspends whichever student happens to be standing closest to the alarm.

00:07:53: that is A perfect analogy.

00:07:54: yes you

00:07:55: Can get punished?

00:07:56: Just because a stranger scrolling past was having a bad day.

00:07:59: That

00:07:59: Is exactly how It's functioning right now.

00:08:01: so

00:08:01: if the algorithm is this volatile where one troll can tank your reach by forty percent with a single click, then relying on viral reach as the primary business strategy feels incredibly dangerous.

00:08:13: It really does

00:08:14: which forces us to look at it deeper.

00:08:15: issue right?

00:08:17: Does massive reach even correlate with revenue anymore

00:08:21: and this is a crucial pivot for any strategic marketer listening right now.

00:08:25: A massive audience means absolutely nothing.

00:08:27: if you're conversion system has broken we have to separate attention from acquisition

00:08:32: which brings us back to that hook you mentioned at the very beginning of The Deep Dive.

00:08:36: Right, the Jeffrey Zhao example?

00:08:37: Yes it's a perfect example of this disconnect.

00:08:39: he had a post that went totally viral hitting two hundred and twenty thousand impressions

00:08:44: Which for a lot of marketers That is a champagne popping moment

00:08:47: Exactly!

00:08:48: But the pipeline impact It resulted in zero deals Absolutely nothing.

00:08:53: Wow.

00:08:54: Yet just few days prior He shared a highly specific, very actionable post about how BDB SaaS teams can turn LinkedIn into pipeline.

00:09:04: And that one only got fourteen hundred impressions.

00:09:06: But the people who saw those fourteen hundred impression were The Right People

00:09:09: Exactly!

00:09:11: Those fourteen hundred Impressions booked numerous demos for his product Ordinal.

00:09:15: That's incredible.

00:09:16: Yeah almost everyone on the platform scrolled past it.

00:09:18: but the seven people Who actually needed that specific solution read every single line Got the value and book time

00:09:25: Because reach and pipeline are two completely different scoreboards.

00:09:28: Yes, an optimizing for reach can actually blind you to the fact that your pipeline is drying up.

00:09:34: Charlotte Lloyd shared a cautionary tale that echoes this perfectly too.

00:09:38: Oh what happened there?

00:09:39: Well

00:09:40: she was speaking with a founder who Was incredibly proud of a thirty nine percent response rate on their outreach sequences.

00:09:47: Thirty-nine

00:09:47: percent!

00:09:48: On paper getting nearly forty percent Of cold prospects To reply sounds phenomenal.

00:09:54: Right It sounds amazing, but when you look under the hood at the actual acquisition it only resulted in two sales calls.

00:10:01: Ouch!

00:10:02: Two Calls?

00:10:03: Yeah getting someone to reply a message or look at post is just not the same as acquiring them As A Client...

00:10:08: It's classic trap of optimizing for The Wrong End Of Funnel.

00:10:12: By the way quick reminder For You Listening If you're finding this analysis helpful and want to stay ahead of these shifts, make sure it's subscribed the deep dive.

00:10:19: so don't miss our future additions.

00:10:21: Yes definitely hit subscribe!

00:10:23: So if we know that highly specific targeted messaging works better than broad virality It brings up a real operational challenge.

00:10:31: How do actually convert attention in direct messages without sounding like spambot?

00:10:36: Well Connor Paulson brought some hard data to answer That.

00:10:39: He analyzed conversion rates in DMs And The difference is pretty staggering.

00:10:44: What did he find

00:10:45: So?

00:10:45: problem-focused social selling messages where you are entirely focused on the prospects pain points convert at a rate of twenty to thirty percent.

00:10:55: That's solid,

00:10:56: very solid.

00:10:57: On the flip side solution focus pitches Where?

00:11:00: You basically just talk about the features of your product sit in a dismal five two eight percent conversion rate.

00:11:06: I mean it's basic human psychology right?

00:11:08: yeah

00:11:08: How do we

00:11:09: if you walk into a doctor's office and they immediately hand you a prescription for a drug They sell before even Asking where it hurts or you know taking your blood pressure.

00:11:18: You would walk right

00:11:19: out Exactly, you wouldn't trust them.

00:11:21: Social selling requires the exact same bedside manner?

00:11:24: You have to focus on their pain not your pill.

00:11:27: Focus on there paying not your bill.

00:11:29: I love that yeah But let's be realistic about the workload here.

00:11:32: Okay

00:11:32: Let's

00:11:32: doing that at scale Diagnosing individual pain points for hundreds of prospects area owns exhausting.

00:11:40: How do teams actually systemize this level of personalized problem-focused outreach without their sales reps spending twenty four hours a day manually typing on LinkedIn.

00:11:51: Well this is where we get into advanced modern tech stacks.

00:11:54: Okay, I'm listening?

00:11:55: Alex Vaca shared a brilliant system that gets around the manual labor bottleneck by utilizing three tools Claude Code Apify and Origami.

00:12:04: So how does that work mechanically?

00:12:06: Well, instead of blasting a cold list of random titles he uses apify which is the data extraction tool to scrape the commenters from his competitors posts.

00:12:14: Oh wow so he's pulling lists of people who are already actively engaging with this specific problem.

00:12:19: space right they're already warm

00:12:21: precisely.

00:12:22: and once you have that list He feeds it into clod code Which acts as The AI brain Of operation.

00:12:27: That

00:12:27: do what exactly?

00:12:28: To qualify

00:12:29: these leads And sort them Into tears.

00:12:31: This Is where magic happens.

00:12:32: Tier one might be the heads of sales or chief revenue officers at high value target companies.

00:12:37: The big fish?

00:12:38: Exactly, those tier ones get highly personalized manual outreach from a senior rep.

00:12:43: Makes sense!

00:12:44: Then tier two might be standard go-to market roles and they get a human account executive reaching out manually.

00:12:50: And tier three?

00:12:51: Tier Three is everyone else and they funneled into an automated sequence via origami which handles the messaging completely automatically.

00:12:58: So this dynamic tiering system It's basically like a hospital triage.

00:13:03: Yes, tier one is the emergency room.

00:13:05: They get the top surgeons The highest touch the manual outreach.

00:13:09: Tier three is the urgent care clinic.

00:13:13: they just need a basic automated prescription.

00:13:15: That's exactly it.

00:13:16: you match the labor cost to the value of the prospect.

00:13:18: So what were the actual results of running that stack?

00:13:21: From a single campaign that exact setup yielded it eight hundred and thirty qualified leads, at five point five percent reply rate.

00:13:28: Wow!

00:13:29: Yeah in the world of cold outreach where one percent reply-rate is often considered standard Five point five per cent at that volume Is just incredible.

00:13:37: That's definition.

00:13:37: working smarter.

00:13:39: But you know there isn't massive trap here.

00:13:41: we need to warn people about.

00:13:42: Oh for sure.

00:13:43: Former LinkedIn employee Doug Campbell John specifically warned About danger relying on metrics tools generate.

00:13:50: He pointed to the social selling index for the SSI.

00:13:53: The SSI score, it has been infamous in sales circles for years.

00:13:57: reps treated like a video game.

00:13:59: highscore

00:14:00: Exactly and Campbell John revealed that internally at LinkedIn.

00:14:03: they knew the SS.

00:14:04: I had absolutely zero correlation to rev Euro

00:14:07: correlation

00:14:08: Zero.

00:14:09: yet you had sales reps wasting hours of their week trying boost this arbitrary vanity score instead of actually communicating value to buyers.

00:14:17: That is painful here!

00:14:19: It IS, just because you have a fancy AI tool or high platform score does not mean that your executing strategy will close deals.

00:14:27: You really cannot confuse tool usage with selling

00:14:30: Which brings us into critical juncture.

00:14:32: We know the algorithm now favors deep nuanced reads problem-focused content to build real pipeline rather than just chasing vanity metrics.

00:14:42: Right,

00:14:43: but the elephant in the room is who should actually be delivering this message?

00:14:47: Because if you look at data brand pages and corporate logo accounts are becoming completely invisible.

00:14:52: Invisible!

00:14:53: We're seeing a massive shift toward employee advocacy and practitioner led thought leadership.

00:14:59: The Corporate Logo is kind of dead as primary communication vehicle

00:15:03: And statistics back that up heavily.

00:15:05: Melissa Rosenthal highlighted a Forrester projection noting that seventy-five percent of enterprise B to B firms are expected to raise their influencer spending in twenty, twenty

00:15:16: six.

00:15:16: But they aren't paying traditional lifestyle influencers?

00:15:19: Are they?

00:15:19: no not at all.

00:15:20: They're redirecting that spend to their own employees and external niche practitioners.

00:15:24: Why the sudden pivot two employees though Like, why give up control the message?

00:15:29: Well it's largely because of the rise of AI assistance embedded in search engines.

00:15:33: So right!

00:15:34: If a buyer asks an AI for software recommendation or solution to problem those models do not cite corporate home pages anymore.

00:15:41: They don't Nope.

00:15:43: they pull from practitioners analysts and individuals.

00:15:46: The model has learned trust based on their nuanced content over time.

00:15:50: So if all of your company's insight is locked behind a faceless corporate logo, Your brand is entirely absent from the

00:15:56: A.I.'s

00:15:57: answer.

00:15:58: The machines basically trust humans.

00:16:00: The machines trust humans.

00:16:01: I mean that is beautifully ironic.

00:16:03: It

00:16:04: really

00:16:04: is.

00:16:05: And we see this exact same preference play out in traditional web traffic too.

00:16:09: Haik Young shared some interesting data From a workshop.

00:16:12: she ran for major B to B Company.

00:16:15: What did you find?

00:16:16: Well They launched a massive, highly researched thought leadership report.

00:16:21: And you would naturally think the CEO or the main brand page would drive the bulk of traffic, right?

00:16:26: You'd assume that the corporate megaphone is the loudest...

00:16:30: But data proved otherwise!

00:16:32: Non-executive employees drove the absolute highest quality traffic.

00:16:35: Non executives?

00:16:36: Yes, when traffic came for the profiles of regular day to date practitioners sharing their report it resulted in an incredible seventy percent site engagement rate.

00:16:45: That's massive!

00:16:46: They crushed the executives.

00:16:47: they crushed the official brand page and completely crushed paid ads.

00:16:51: buyers want to hear from peers on the trenches not The C-suite.

00:16:55: That is a fascinating insight, but you know I want to look at this from the perspective of The Listener who was actually trying to implement This tomorrow.

00:17:02: Okay

00:17:02: let's do

00:17:02: it!

00:17:02: It all sounds great in theory To say oh just have your practitioners post right?

00:17:07: But how Do You Actually Get Busy Engineers Product Managers or Sales Leaders To Sit Down and Post Consistently?

00:17:15: Yeah that Is the Million Dollar Operational Question.

00:17:18: Aelia Sploska Has A Very Counterintuitive Approach to This Actually.

00:17:22: Oh

00:17:23: She Says Don't start with content training.

00:17:26: don't sit your engineers down and teach them about hoax or formatting Or the algorithm.

00:17:31: well, what do you start?

00:17:32: With

00:17:32: that?

00:17:32: start with time management training

00:17:34: Time Management.

00:17:35: how does that help them write a better post?

00:17:38: because it creates The capacity to write at all.

00:17:41: hmm she teaches them they eat That frog principle.

00:17:44: okay

00:17:44: remind me What that is.

00:17:46: for anyone unfamiliar that's the concept of taking Your hardest most dread-inducing high impact task, the frog and doing it first thing in the morning before day gets away from you.

00:17:56: If your employees genuinely do not have a calendar skills to block out twenty minutes at eight AM Your brilliant content strategy literally does not matter

00:18:06: Right?

00:18:07: because never get executed.

00:18:08: Exactly!

00:18:09: You need fix that calendar before ever hope to fix this content.

00:18:13: That is incredibly practical.

00:18:14: if time isn't there or post doesn't exist And once they do have the time carved out, how does a marketing team manage the voice of all these different employees?

00:18:24: Well

00:18:24: Anum Hussein shared The Playbook for company called Ashby which successfully grew from under six thousand to over one hundred thousand followers on LinkedIn.

00:18:33: That's huge jump!

00:18:34: What was their secret?

00:18:35: Radical decentralization

00:18:37: meaning no central market and copywriters polishing every word

00:18:40: Correct.

00:18:41: Every single marketer and practitioner writes there own posts.

00:18:44: If a technical question comes up about partnerships in the market, it doesn't go to a PR person to craft a sterile committee-approved response.

00:18:52: Who does it go?

00:18:53: It goes directly to the head of Partnerships Kat Ferguson who answers that from her own perspective.

00:18:57: Oh I love

00:18:58: That!

00:18:58: It is authentic its raw and it's coming From The Person Actually Doing The Work.

00:19:05: Buyers Can Smell A Manufactured PR Scrub Brand Voice From A Mile Away

00:19:10: And you know To Build On That.

00:19:11: You Cannot Fake this authenticity by just handing the reins to an AI or a ghostwriter either.

00:19:18: Right, Lee Denzmer made a brilliant point about this.

00:19:20: he said that Ghostwriters cannot be ghost thinkers.

00:19:23: Ooh!

00:19:23: That is a fantastic distinction.

00:19:25: Ghost thinkers?

00:19:26: Yeah if a company chooses a specific executive to be their thought leader but that executive actually lacks original thoughts or unique industry viewpoints yeah The whole program will fail

00:19:37: because you can hire someone to polish your grammar But You Cannot Outsource Your Actual Expertise.

00:19:42: The human element, the specific hard-earned point of view is only thing that algorithm, AI search engines and the human buyer actually care about right now.

00:19:51: It really brings this entire discussion full circle.

00:19:53: to a final very provocative thought for you listening to Mollover.

00:19:57: Okay hit me!

00:19:58: Melissa Rosenthal made a chilling point at this massive shift toward employee led brand building.

00:20:03: Think how Brand Risk has evolved?

00:20:06: Evolved

00:20:06: How?!

00:20:07: Ten years ago, Brand Risk lived in your corporate messaging.

00:20:11: It was about making sure the PR team approved the press release so you didn't say the wrong thing today.

00:20:17: Brand risk lives in your employee retention numbers because

00:20:20: employees literally are the brand

00:20:22: exactly if you're top practitioner or lead engineer someone like Kat Furgers and leading partnerships is brands most trusted.

00:20:29: voice on market.

00:20:31: algorithm inherently favors them over company page.

00:20:35: What happens to your pipeline if they get poached by a competitor tomorrow and take the entire audience with them?

00:21:02: Thank you so much for joining us on this deep dive into the true mechanics of social selling.

00:21:07: Yes, thank you!

00:21:09: Take these insights reevaluate your pipeline strategy.

00:21:12: don't forget to subscribe and we'll see next time.