Best of LinkedIn: Social Selling CW 41/ 42

00:00:00: Provided by Thomas Olliger and Frennis, based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about social selling in calendar weeks.

00:00:06: forty-one and forty two.

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

00:00:18: you can find more info In The Description.

00:00:21: Today we are talking directly To You.

00:00:23: Yes U the strategic B-to-B marketing professional.

00:00:26: We are unpacking the biggest social selling trends that are like completely rewiring LinkedIn.

00:00:31: right now, we're talking massive algorithm shifts ,the whole AI slop backlash and you know... The total explosion of the b to be creator economy

00:00:40: Yeah!

00:00:40: And it's wild because if look around there is this massive panic.

00:00:45: organic impressions across Linkedin just plummeted But then the smartest B-To-B marketers actually seeing their revenue go up

00:00:53: Right, which feels like a total paradox.

00:00:54: Like marketers are staring at their dashboard seeing a thirty or forty percent drop in reach and assuming everything is broken.

00:01:01: Yeah

00:01:01: exactly

00:01:02: But the reach isn't gone It's just being aggressively reallocated.

00:01:06: The foundational mechanics are changing.

00:01:08: Christian Krauss actually pointed this out.

00:01:10: He said we are officially moving out of these social media era And into what he calls the interest-media era.

00:01:17: Oh that's really crucial distinction because I mean, in the old social media model your reach was dictated by your connection

00:01:23: graph.

00:01:23: Yeah who you knew?

00:01:25: Like if you spent five years building an audience of twenty thousand connections You basically owned a distribution channel.

00:01:31: The algorithm just showed yours stuff to those people

00:01:34: But at interest medium-model... ...the algorithm really doesn't care who your connections are anymore.

00:01:40: Wow

00:01:41: So what does it care

00:01:41: about?

00:01:42: It cares about subject the context and, uh...the actual utility of information to a person scrolling.

00:01:49: It's prioritizing hyper-relevance over network size.

00:01:53: And Alyssa Teltz highlighted that LinkedIn is actually formalizing this right now in their user interface.

00:01:58: Oh!

00:01:59: The split feed structure.

00:02:00: I just noticed this on my own app recently.

00:02:02: Yeah,

00:02:03: exactly

00:02:03: yeah.

00:02:03: the default screen is now a for you tab rather than Just a timeline of your network.

00:02:08: right and that changes buyer behavior instantly.

00:02:11: The four u-tab groups users entirely by their historical content interests.

00:02:16: so it serves up highly relevant posts Even if they come from creators entirely outside of your Network.

00:02:22: So your actual connections are just what pushed aside.

00:02:26: Yeah, they're relegated to a secondary network tab and human nature is just to scroll whatever appears on the default screen.

00:02:33: You know?

00:02:34: Okay

00:02:34: let's unpack this.

00:02:36: it's like LinkedIn has transformed from high school reunion where everyone sees your life updates Just because they signed you yearbook a decade ago into a massive hyper-targeted trade show floor.

00:02:48: People are only gonna stop at your booth if you're speaking directly To the specific problem They walked in trying to solve today.

00:02:55: that isn't perfect analogy.

00:02:57: And the drop in legacy reach is staggering.

00:03:00: when you look at the data, Richard van der Blum analyzed over eight hundred thousand recent posts.

00:03:05: Wow that's a massive sample size

00:03:07: right and he found out on average only thirty one percent of your first degree connections actually see your post in their feed.

00:03:13: now

00:03:14: wait thirty-one percent.

00:03:16: what did it used to be?

00:03:17: It used to sit around seventy two percent.

00:03:20: That was a brutal drop.

00:03:22: so if you're relying you know, posting broad generic business advice and hoping your network will blindly engage.

00:03:29: You're literally shouting into an empty

00:03:31: room.".

00:03:32: Exactly the algorithm just doesn't know how to categorize a generalist anymore.

00:03:37: he noted that you really have to stick to two core topics maximum.

00:03:40: so no more B-to-B SaaS marketing on Monday leadership on Tuesday in like your fitness routine on Wednesday?

00:03:47: No because then the algorithm fails to build a coherent interest profile for for you feeds to place you in, so it just places you and none of them.

00:03:58: That makes total sense

00:04:00: plus the actual mechanics of what counts as engagement have completely flipped comments now drive over half of all your total impressions.

00:04:08: wait I need to challenge that

00:04:10: mm-hmm

00:04:11: because we've all seen executives drop like a fire emoji or A quick great post on colleagues update.

00:04:18: does The algorithm really view?

00:04:20: Two word comment is a signal to boost reach?

00:04:23: Not anymore, no.

00:04:24: The algorithm is ruthlessly filtering out low-effort engagement now.

00:04:28: Comments have to be over ten words... ...to carry any real algorithmic weight.

00:04:32: Really?

00:04:33: Ten words!

00:04:33: Yeah.

00:04:35: LinkedIn's machine learning models are trained to prioritize dwell time and conversation depth.

00:04:40: A fire emoji doesn't keep anyone reading the comments section You know but a fifteen word debate does.

00:04:46: Ah

00:04:47: I see.

00:04:47: What about those AI generated comment tools?

00:04:50: Oh, the platform actively punishes your reach if you use those generic AI comments.

00:04:54: Which totally explains the sudden death of that ultimate B-to-B engagement hack You know?

00:05:00: Those posts are like.

00:05:01: I just built a new ABM framework comment The word growth and it'll DMU free template.

00:05:06: Oh yeah!

00:05:07: Neeraj Shah actually ran a live diagnostic on that exact tactic.

00:05:10: The keyword for template growth hack is officially dead.

00:05:14: Wow Did trigger a penalty

00:05:17: An immediate penalty.

00:05:18: He documented a forty-two percent drop in reach for posts that explicitly trade or resource

00:05:48: wild.

00:05:49: And at the same time, LinkedIn is putting its traditional networking utilities behind a paywall.

00:05:53: Tony Restill pointed out that manual Outbound is getting so much harder

00:05:57: All right like searching for prospects by job title?

00:05:59: Yeah That's largely locked behind premium or sales navigator now.

00:06:03: and if you want to send a personalized note with a connection request that requires a premium subscription too.

00:06:09: So If The Algorithm Demands Hyper Relevance To Get Organic Reach And the platform demands a premium subscription just to manually build and network.

00:06:18: Your organic content has to be flawlessly relevant to survive

00:06:23: absolutely flawless,

00:06:24: but this creates a massive problem.

00:06:25: right because every single brand is using the exact same generative AI tools to write their content Right now.

00:06:31: how are you supposed to stand out in an ocean of generic chat GPT summaries?

00:06:37: Well LinkedIn is very aware of this content dilution.

00:06:39: Mike Adam noted that they are actively testing A Seems like AI slop flag.

00:06:45: Wait, I need to understand the mechanism behind that.

00:06:47: is it purely algorithmic or Is it user-driven?

00:06:50: It appears to be a combination But it relies heavily on community flagging.

00:06:56: users can click The three dots on a post and literally report as low quality machine generated content.

00:07:02: Oh wow.

00:07:03: And what happens then

00:07:05: if a post gets flagged?

00:07:06: its signals To the algorithm that this content degrades the user experience and just kills the distribution.

00:07:12: But wait, if we are using AI tools to pre-test our posts... ...to avoid the AI slop filter aren't we right back where we started optimizing for a machine instead of human buyer?

00:07:24: Exactly.

00:07:25: It's complete trap!

00:07:27: You're training yourself to write for a filter which is how you got the sanitized slop in first place.

00:07:32: So what's the fix?

00:07:34: Nancy G made a brilliant point here.

00:07:36: First hand lived experience is ultimate competitive advantage Because it's the one thing a large language model cannot hallucinate.

00:07:44: Give me an application to that.

00:07:46: How does a B-to-B marketer actually change what they're doing?

00:07:49: You have to stop prompting AI for educational listicles.

00:07:53: so instead of posting five ways To hire a growth lead which a bot can write in two seconds

00:07:58: right

00:07:58: you post.

00:07:59: I hired A growth lead at a hundred and fifty thousand dollars last year.

00:08:03: They failed In six months.

00:08:04: here is The exact onboarding mistake i made.

00:08:07: oh, That Is So much more compelling because AI can easily copy best practices, but it can't replicate your scars or specific missteps.

00:08:15: Exactly!

00:08:17: Humans are wired to learn through narrative.

00:08:19: We trust the person who admits they messed up a deployment far more than a brand page posting shiny infographic about success.

00:08:25: Speaking of infographics though, Audrey Chia highlighted the demand for high density values completely rewiring visual formats on the feed.

00:08:33: Yeah standard fluffy PDF carousels are losing their reliability.

00:08:36: The algorithm favors six highly specific formats now Cheat sheets frameworks resource libraries diagnostics comparisons and walkthroughs.

00:08:45: It's

00:08:46: all about reducing cognitive load.

00:08:48: buyers Are just exhausted by long-winded thought leadership you know?

00:08:51: For sure They want you to take a complex system and make it instantly actionable.

00:08:56: And, You can leverage AI to build these.

00:08:58: as long the core insight is yours!

00:09:00: Maya Voye shared a phenomenal case study about founder named Tim Scheuer.

00:09:05: Oh I saw this one Didn't?

00:09:06: he drive an insane amount of impressions?

00:09:08: Over eight hundred thousand organic impressions.

00:09:10: He secured eighty five percent all his SaaS signups using simple animated infographics.

00:09:16: Let me guess...he spent ten thousand dollars on bespoke design agency.

00:09:20: Nope, he built them entirely himself using Claude code.

00:09:23: Wait

00:09:24: the coding tool?

00:09:25: Yeah He wasn't just typing a prompt into an image generator to draw something pretty... ...he fed his own psychological frameworks in to Claude Code and used it to programmatically build scalable animated SVG graphics.

00:09:37: That is the perfect intersection of marketer logic and developer execution.

00:09:42: Hey real quick if you are finding this deep dive helpful Take a second and hit subscribe on whatever app you are using right now.

00:09:48: so don't miss our future deep dives.

00:09:50: We do this every two weeks!

00:09:52: Yeah, definitely subscribe because here is the strategic shift that should change how every CMO values their social content.

00:09:59: Michelle J. Raymond revealed that LinkedIn's share of chat GPT citations has jumped by four hundred thirty nine percent recently.

00:10:07: wait four hundred and thirty-nine percent.

00:10:09: yeah Are you saying when user asks chat GPT a business question.

00:10:13: The AI is aggressively scraping LinkedIn posts to formulate its answers?

00:10:17: Precisely, LinkedIn is no longer just social feed.

00:10:21: it's rapidly becoming primary data repository for large language models.

00:10:25: Think about the implications of that.

00:10:27: A potential enterprise buyer might never even log into LinkedIn.

00:10:31: Right?

00:10:31: they open chat gpt and ask What's the best consensus framework for deploying cybersecurity compliance?

00:10:37: And

00:10:37: the AI could scrape your specific LinkedIn post, summarize your frame work and cite you as the definitive expert.

00:10:44: Even if that original post only got twenty likes

00:10:46: Exactly!

00:10:47: It fundamentally breaks the old vanity metric model.

00:10:50: it is about establishing authoritative data of the AI models to retrieve later

00:10:54: Which means LinkedIn essentially has a new SEO battleground.

00:10:59: If AI is scraping for expert data A faceless corporate Brand page doesn't have the lived experience an AI wants to cite.

00:11:06: You need human experts,

00:11:08: which is why The era of the corporate brand page acting as the primary megaphone Is just over.

00:11:13: forward thinking companies are aggressively decentralizing their voices

00:11:17: like what's happening in Microsoft?

00:11:18: Yes

00:11:19: Sarah Goodall Hickey Young and Melissa Rosenthal all recently discussed this major reorganization at Microsoft.

00:11:25: They literally moved there entire communications department out of the marketing division.

00:11:30: Let me guess, they moved it under the Chief Revenue Officer to tie social voices directly into pipeline.

00:11:36: You would think so but no!

00:11:38: They moved corporate communications under legal.

00:11:40: Under legal?

00:11:41: Yeah specifically under Vice Chair Brad Smith who handles all their antitrust and global litigation.

00:11:46: So if Microsoft puts comms on a legal team how do you prevent those employee posts from sounding like that were written for congressional hearing?

00:11:54: Well we connect this with bigger picture.

00:11:56: It's about preparing for massive scale-up of employee generated content.

00:12:00: The data is indisputable.

00:12:02: Individual employee profiles earn eight to twelve times the reach of a company page

00:12:07: because employees are closer to the product and human buyers instinctively trust other humans over a logo

00:12:13: exactly.

00:12:14: but when you empower tens of thousands of employees to speak publicly, compliance risks skyrocket.

00:12:21: hence legal.

00:12:22: But there's massive friction point.

00:12:24: Naisha Gain highlighted this exact tension.

00:12:27: She warned that the single biggest risk to employee advocacy is the internal review process, The over-editing trap.

00:12:33: It happens every day.

00:12:35: A brilliant engineering leader writes a raw real post about a failed code push.

00:12:40: it sounds exactly like them.

00:12:42: Then they submit into corporate review board

00:12:45: And well meaning manager fixes every tiny comma Swaps out technical slang for corporate jargon and rounds off all sharp edges.

00:12:52: And by the time it goes live, you have polished all of humanity right out.

00:12:56: It triggers that AI slop filter in the buyer's brain immediately even

00:13:00: if a human actually edited

00:13:01: exactly.

00:13:03: but despite those challenges elevating individual voices is mandatory.

00:13:07: Danny Markovits pointed out.

00:13:08: companies need to look way beyond CEO for this

00:13:11: For sure.

00:13:12: The CEO talking about culture great recruiting But doesn't always sell software.

00:13:18: If you sell a highly technical developer tool, your target buyer wants to hear from your CTO.

00:13:23: They want peer-to-peer credibility.

00:13:25: but the operational reality is that CTOs and CFO's do not have three spare hours a week to draft LinkedIn hooks...you know?

00:13:32: So how are smart companies solving this?

00:13:35: Lars Lovgren provided a look under the hood.

00:13:37: they are quietly abandoning their massive corporate blog budgets.

00:13:40: Google AI overviews are stealing all that organic traffic anyway instead.

00:13:47: So they pair a dedicated writer with top executives.

00:13:51: How does that not just suck up all the executive's time?

00:13:54: The ghostwriter acts like an investigative journalist, They get the executive on quick fifteen minute call interview them about specific client problem and extract raw experience

00:14:05: And then the writer handles algorithmic formatting and publishing.

00:14:09: That is incredibly effective.

00:14:11: It really is.

00:14:12: And this realization isn't just changing internal org charts.

00:14:15: It's birthing a highly lucrative external market, too.

00:14:18: Brands are realizing they can rent influence.

00:14:22: Here is where it gets really interesting...it feels exactly like YouTube did back in twenty-ten.

00:14:31: The

00:14:32: defining moment for this just happened.

00:14:34: Edward East, Becky Owen and Thomas Smale shared the details of a massive industry acquisition billion-dollar boy group which is huge influencer agency.

00:14:44: it's made its first company acquisition in twelve years.

00:14:47: They bought creator authority right?

00:14:49: In a multi million dollar.

00:14:50: all cash deal.

00:14:52: Yep

00:14:52: A B to C influencer giant buying up dedicated btob capabilities.

00:14:57: And the origin story is wild.

00:14:59: It all started with a cold LinkedIn message back in twenty-twenty

00:15:02: three.

00:15:02: Wait, really?

00:15:03: Just a cold message?

00:15:05: Yeah!

00:15:05: Edward East was simply reading the analytical posts written by creator authorities.

00:15:09: founder reached out to connect.

00:15:11: no pitch deck No demand for meeting

00:15:14: which proves where The big advertising budgets are shifting.

00:15:18: Fifty nine percent of BDB buyers now say they consume Creator content on LinkedIn more than anywhere else.

00:15:23: And marketers are reporting that B to be creator partnerships, our delivering the highest ROI of all their influencer strategies.

00:15:30: Because you're borrowing trusted third party validation and Sabrina has it gave us a great name The beige dividend.

00:15:37: Oh I love that.

00:15:38: yeah linkedin historically had this reputation as a beige boring platform.

00:15:43: That dividend is the massive financial payout early adopters or getting for bringing actual personality to It.

00:15:49: she earned over sixty thousand dollars This year purely from inbound client leads driven by her content.

00:15:55: Creators are quietly earning solid middle-class incomes just from their feeds, but as Alexis Char noted it is still the Wild West.

00:16:04: The biggest friction point right now is inconsistent pricing

00:16:07: Because there's no standard rate card.

00:16:08: yet Someone with ten thousand followers might demand ten grand a post while someone with fifty thousand followers Might only ask for five hundred bucks

00:16:15: Exactly.

00:16:16: Her advice to creators is purely economic.

00:16:18: Let them market dictate your value.

00:16:20: set your rates based on offer volume.

00:16:22: if you're drowning in brand deals, double your rates.

00:16:25: So whether you are an internal CFO using a ghostwriter or external BDB creator the ultimate goal remains the same.

00:16:34: what actually drives pipeline right now?

00:16:36: It all comes down to how you frame the initial conversation.

00:16:39: Conor Paulson shared data showing that traditional solution-focused messages where Rep pitches software feature and asks for demo convert at a dismal five percent

00:16:49: Because the modern buyer's inbox defense mechanisms are ironclad.

00:16:53: They smell a pitch and delete it,

00:16:55: but problem-focused outreach converts at twenty to thirty percent.

00:17:00: That's a huge difference.

00:17:01: It completely disarms the buyer.

00:17:02: instead of saying we help companies increase pipeline The rep says I'm speaking with a lot of revenue leaders struggling with LinkedIn new split feed algorithm.

00:17:11: Would you be open?

00:17:12: To me sharing a quick framework on how we solve that?

00:17:14: every word is calibrated around their anxiety not your product.

00:17:19: And Chioma Juliet Azubuwe found that aggressive pipeline prioritization is the ultimate lever here.

00:17:25: Yes, she had a client stop blasting messages to everyone and instead prioritize prospects strictly by purchasing power verified need and reachability.

00:17:35: That hyper focus lifted their sales by thirty percent in just six weeks.

00:17:39: Activity does not equal productivity.

00:17:42: if they lack budget authority you are burning calories.

00:17:45: And crucially, this engagement has to happen long before the buyer is actively looking.

00:17:49: Timothy Hughes talks extensively about

00:18:09: And corporate case studies don't build those mental maps.

00:18:11: Harris Fanneroff proved that his personal business posts sharing his own failures and frameworks drive the highest volume of inbound leads,

00:18:19: even though they only make up ten to twenty percent of its output.

00:18:23: because buyers want to know how you think before they care about what you sell

00:18:27: but Brad Hedrickson and Rachel Lowndes called out a major trap that ruins all this goodwill.

00:18:32: marketers desperately need to stop treating as simple connection requests is high intent buying behavior?

00:18:38: yes It is the fastest way to destroy trust.

00:18:41: If a buyer views your profile, it's a micro-engagement signal.

00:18:44: but if you accept their request and instantly automate a five paragraph sales script into their inbox...

00:18:50: You just proved that you view them as a transaction…you burn the relationship instantly!

00:18:55: So what does this all mean for YOU?

00:18:58: Look at YOUR OWN OUTBOX!

00:18:59: Are still blasting solution focused pitches to people who just accepted connection requests or are actually building trust in the pre

00:19:07: market?!

00:19:08: If you enjoyed this episode, new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:19:12: Also check out our other editions on Field Marketing, MarTech AI and B to be go-to market ABM and channel marketing and partner ecosystem.

00:19:21: Thank You so much for joining our conversation today And I want to leave you with one final provocative thought.

00:19:28: if LinkedIn is rapidly evolving from a social feed into a primary data retrieval source For AI models like chat GPT How does that fundamentally change the way your company's subject matter?

00:19:39: experts should be writing starting tomorrow?

00:19:42: Oh,

00:19:44: if a future buyer never actually scrolls a social feed but simply asks an AI to recommend the most trusted vendor in your category.

00:19:52: Will your team documented first hand LinkedIn content be the underlying data that wins you the deal?

00:19:58: Keep building those mental maps not just for human buyers.

00:20:04: Make sure you hit subscribe and we'll see on the next deep dive.