Best of LinkedIn: Social Selling CW 23/ 24

Brought to you by Thomas Allgaier and Frennis. This edition highlights key LinkedIn posts on social selling in weeks twenty-three and twenty four. Frenis supports clients with identifying target attendees for events, crafting outreach that cuts through the noise ,and driving qualified registrations. You know, imagine finding out that um...

eighteen of the twenty-two people deciding whether or not to buy your software will actually never speak to you sales team. Wait! Eighteen out of twenty two? That's almost everyone.

Literally almost every one. they're never gonna join a discovery call. They won't see your demo Instead their making a multi million dollar decision based on what they just silently observe about you online. Wow!

Yeah, so welcome to this deep dive into the top social selling trends and insights we've seen across LinkedIn. Okay let's unpack this because if you're a B-to-B marketing professional listening to this... You already know that landscape right now is frankly incredibly loud. Oh absolutely deafening.

Right. The old playbooks are feeling And we're all trying to figure out what actually drives revenue versus you know, which just drives vanity metrics. Yeah those empty likes exactly. so our mission for today is simple.

We have sifted through a massive amount of curated LinkedIn insights from calendar weeks, twenty three and twenty four. So this mid-twenty twenty six to extract the absolute best most actionable strategies. we're covering a lot of ground today. We really are looking at evolution outbound systems how authority is actually built The reality getting your employees to post And massive shift happening with BDB creators paid media.

I think that by addressing elephant in room here The way most companies do outbound right now is just fundamentally broken. Yeah, the classic spray and pray? Exactly! He pointed out that the whole, you know cold-outbound is dead narrative.

Is honestly just lazy. It's coming from people who refuse to adapt their systems Because Krimmins is actually pulling a thirty percent reply rate right now. Wait seriously? A thirty percent replied because I mean if i'm a sales director looking at standard Cole email metrics where we celebrate like one percent or two percent conversion Thirty percent sounds completely made up.

How is the math on that even remotely possible? Well, The math only works because he fundamentally changed the denominator. He's achieving That thirty percent rate by targeting just sixty prospects. Just sixty not six thousand right?

Not six thousand just sixty. and the mechanism behind this Is just patience. he spends one to two entire weeks warming them up by thoughtfully engaging with their content before he ever sends a single direct message. Then cold calling is your tier one closer and LinkedIn.

Link Dan has to be treated as a highly calibrated precision play, And precision requires a tremendous amount of restraint. Vaca actually caps his linkedin activity at about forty direct messages in twenty five connection requests a day for those taught Tier One accounts. Okay, let me play devil's advocate here for a second. If I have a massive pipeline quota to hit this quarter capping my team at forty dms A day sounds terrifying.

like why so low? because if you try To scale your linkedin outreach past those thresholds the underlying math of The platform just turns against You. first of all linkedins algorithm will flag you For spam behavior and restrict Your account right which is an absolute nightmare. it Is in second honestly more importantly Buyers instantly see through the lack of personalization.

If you push your best, most valuable tier one accounts into a massive automated cold blast You are actively burning Your Best Revenue Opportunities. You're just setting money on fire. Exactly! You need an orchestrated system.

Maja Voje outlined this beautifully. She noted that Most Teams run One Single Tired LinkedIn Play Right. They Blast A Cold DM To Five Hundred People Cross their fingers and then act surprised when the pipeline is entirely dry. Right, hope isn't a go-to market strategy?

It really isn't. so she outlines a stacked system of seven different prospecting plays And they're ordered by complexity. You start with low hanging fruit like your personal network. Then you move to event attendees.

than people who engage in posts Makes sense. Finally build up complex multi channel play using tools like clay and sales navigator as orchestration layer. And just for anyone listening who might not be in the weeds with the tech stack, when we talk about an orchestration layer like clay. We essentially mean a piece of software that sits in the middle and connects all your different data sources right?

Exactly it pulls into prospects info their recent activity. there are company news so you aren't doing the manual copy pasting yourself. It allows for personalized outreach at You know a slate scale. That's a great definition.

And Miles Kreiner added another vital component to this concept, he pointed out that LinkedIn Outbound isn't just sending more messages anymore. it actually requires five distinct layers to work in twenty-twenty six. Okay what are they? Lead sourcing ICP scoring signal detection personalization and reply triage.

okay let's break. So ideal customer profile scoring, that means mathematically ranking how perfectly a company fits your target criteria before you ever reach out. Yes exactly. and signal detection...

that's looking for triggers like did they just hire new VP? Did They Just Raise Funding? You're Looking For That Buying Window Right. so if cold email is fishing with the giant net Is LinkedIn social selling basically Fishing With A Highly Calibrated Spear?

But You Need Seven Different Types Of Spears Depending On The Exact Fish You Were Going After. That is a brilliant way to conceptualize it. You're identifying the exact target, understanding what currents they are swimming in right now and using the right tool to reach them. And calibration is your ICP scoring & signal detection Exactly!

What's fascinating here? that this spirit itself has designed around the buyer problem not solution. Connor Paulson shared some striking data on the psychology of these. He noted that Problem Focus messages convert at twenty-thirty percent solution-focused pitches.

They sit all the way down at five to eight percent." Wow, because fundamentally nobody cares about your shiny new software features if you haven't proven that you deeply understand their specific headache? That's the trap most marketers fall into right. bad social selling makes a conversation About The Seller good.

Social Selling Makes It Entirely About The Buyer. it has To Be About Them Always and timing the delivery of that message is just as critical. Anthony Natoli shared a highly effective tactic demonstrating this. He pairs a really relevant day one email with the Day Three LinkedIn connection note.

Okay, but what does the notes say? Well here's the secret. The Connection Note doesn't pitch anything. It literally just says hey I sent you an e-mail yesterday Just wanted to put a face to name.

it points back on the E-mail. Oh that smart! It connects the dots across channels without triggering their defensive sales radar. Exactly its very low friction.

And if we want talk about warming up prospect and lowering those defenses, Michael Kersen and Verratt Aurora proved that commenting is basically the ultimate psychological cheat code right now. Oh absolutely! Yeah Kersens data show if you leave a thoughtful non-AI generated comment on a prospects post before you connect with them your accept rates more than double hitting around seventy eight percent and your reply rate's more then triple. And why does it work so well?

Because it leverages human rule of reciprocity. By stepping onto their digital turf and publicly validating their ideas, you create this mild social obligation. Right? You're giving something first!

Exactly so. when you finally ask for a connection privately they feel compelled to reciprocate that attention. Aurora takes this step further and actually uses those comments as intense signals To build his outbound lists. That's incredibly strategic It is.

So if we connect us the bigger picture The take away from listening is stark. You need a tiered system, you need day layers and you need to be intensely relevant. But here's where it gets really interesting. all of this highly calibrated precision outreach is completely useless if the destination has dead end.

oh hundred percent meaning precision outbound only works If your LinkedIn profile in your content actually prove you are worth talking To once they click your name. And why does that matter? because as we touched on earlier? This is perhaps the most sobering reality check we've seen in the data.

Leo D. Mills and Benjamin Poldian highlighted recent twenty-twenty six data from Forester, And this is The Twenty Two Stakeholders. stat right? Yes!

The average B to B enterprise purchase now involves twenty two stakeholders thirteen internal nine external. twenty people are evaluating your solution. I mean that it's just a massive unwieldy committee. It really is.

Your sales rep might have a relationship with three of them, maybe four if things are going incredibly well. The other eighteen people? They're forming a consensus about you and your company right now without ever having a single conversation with your team. There's lurking!

Exactly they are silently reading your LinkedIn posts there checking your founders profile Consensus forms in the quiet moments before the discovery call even happens. That is terrifying but it also huge structural opportunity If You Know How To Build Your Presence. Richard VanderBloom broke down exactly how to win over that silent committee. And his systems are always so meticulous!

They really are, he says winning requires predictable system not occasional luck. Seventy-eight percent of BtoB buyers check a seller's profile before replying to any outreach. Sevent eight percent? That is huge!

Right, so if your profile reads like a dry resume listing you're quota achievements instead of landing page explaining how solve their problems...you are actively losing deals You basically turning them away at the door. Exactly He found that optimizing your profile as value driven landing pages increases inbound inquiries four point two times. And he doesn't stop at just the static profile.

He preaches a ninety-day authority system, because The LinkedIn Algorithm and honestly Just Human Trust both require consistency. You can't just post once a month. No you need ninety consecutive days of posting on one or two specific topics before the platform really starts distributing your content effectively to Your target audience...you have document ONE REAL SPECIFIC CLIENT.

WIN PER WEEK. So actual case studies Yes Use real numbers. Tag the company if possible. You'll let results speak for YOU.

But wait, let me challenge this for a second. LinkedIn is constantly pushing this idea of thought leadership right? And in reality doesn't that usually just mean posting really safe boring industry updates? Yeah Yes You know the type using a lot of consultant jargon stating be obvious and trying to sound incredibly smart without actually saying anything controversial.

You are entirely right to be skeptical, because ninety percent of what we see is exactly that boring safe jargon. but Adam Norr completely dismantled the idea that safe content works. Thank goodness Right. He pointed out that algorithm and basic human psychology actually rewards tension.

conflict hot takes high stakes. That's what keeps people engaged. It makes people stop scrolling. Exactly If you just post beige industry updates.

He framed it brilliantly. Thought leadership without tension is just a corporate memo and nobody voluntarily reads the memo. Oh, I love that. thought.

leadership Without Tension Is A Memo And Annabelle Pickens back this up entirely. What does she add? She said your content shouldn't sound like a polished McKinsey article That went through four rounds of legal review. It should sound Like The Real Messy Conversations & Pushbacks You Have On Actual Sales Calls!

That's such great advice Like, what complex concept did you have to explain on a call today? What stubborn objection Did You handle right about that? because That is where the real value lives. Yes and To build on that it's About bringing The reality of your specific expertise into the feed.

Magali Daru shared five Specific copywriting moves that turn flat boring drafts Into posts that actually pre-sell Your products. okay I need these moves. well It Is all about granular specifics instead Of writing. we got great results for our client Right?

This system closed eighty-eight percent of my leads, instead we helped them make more money. Say... We generated two hundred and sixty eight K in six months. Ah!

So replacing the fluff with hard data? Exactly Vague claims get mentally skipped. Specific undeniable numbers gets saved And shared by that twenty-two person committee. But you know knowing that The temptation for a busy marketer is to just open an AI tool, type in write-a-posts with tension and specific numbers.

And let the machine do their work." Which was huge mistake! Right. Sarah Rav had great warning about this exact shortcut...

She said, Absolutely correct. If you rely entirely on AI, You bypass the critical thinking required to actually understand your audience. He skipped a hard work. Yeah She advises that before you ever open an AI tool...

you need sit down with an actual pen and paper To define your W And what? Pen & Paper Old school Very old-school But it works. Describe this specific person you help And the exact painful problem you solve In the messy language they use only after you've established that human nuance should use AI to refine or format it. Because the unique human signal is the ONLY thing that builds genuine trust with those twenty-two stakeholders.

So, if individual HUMAN authority is what builds trust... What happens when we try to scale that up? Like, how does an entire brand harness that trust. That is the pivotal question right now and The answer requires looking far beyond the traditional corporate company page.

Angelina Todris dropped a massive data point on this. Oh the reach numbers. Yes She noted that LinkedIn has essentially throttled Company Page Reach down to about one point six percent. That means out of every hundred followers your brand has meticulously acquired.

maybe one or two actually see your post in their feed. That is brutal. But she noted that if your engineers, you project managers or channel partners post the exact same piece of content it gets five hundred and sixty one percent more reach Because the algorithm was designed for human connection. people follow people.

a corporate logo just sits passively in the background. but Shijiroi and Simon Heaton had very clear warning about how companies typically try to execute employee advocacy. Yeah its usually done so poorly. It's not about sending a mass mandatory email to your staff, asking them to copy and paste a sterilized marketing post.

Roy pointed out that while genuine employee posts get eight times more engagement you absolutely have to fix your internal company culture before advocacy will ever work. Meaning if people aren't genuinely proud of where they work no software tool is going make the most about it? No! They'll just resent it...

It's difference between forcing your team wear corporate sandwich board on busy street versus giving them a microphone to share their own actual expertise on the stage. One is humiliating corporate demand, The other is empowering their personal growth." I'm really glad you brought up that analogy because the mechanism behind embarrassment vs empowerment is what dictates success. Simon Heaton from Buffer emphasized this exact dynamic.

They do! You have build team of creators who post honestly in there voices about they are actually working. A raw, authentic post from a product manager explaining a bug they fixed will always outperform a polished graphic form the marketing team. Consistency and authenticity completely beat polish."

Melanie Goodman & Amy Watts both spoke to exact reasons why these employee programs usually crash or burn. Goodman said that they fail when are treated as broadcast demands for leadership. Exactly! The YFM.

If an engineer doesn't see how posting builds their own personal career equity or makes them more hireable, or establishes as industry expert. they simply won't do it. So for the B-to-B marketing professionals listening to us right now your brand's true reach is currently locked inside the silent profiles of you smartest employees. You need equip with strategy build confidence and clearly articulate there benefit rather than just handing robotic corporate scripts Which brings up final evolution in this landscape.

Because if we are empowering individuals to be the face of the brand, what happens when we start putting actual paid marketing budgets behind those specific human voices rather than corporate ads? We get a massive structural shift in how LinkedIn operates. Yeah In week twenty-four Linkedin officially launched its creator marketplace and Alpha at a major event in The Empire State Building. It's huge news!

This marketplace finally connects BDB brands directly with BDB creators right inside campaign manager. This is a monumental shift Because for years, finding the right B-to-B creator - someone who actually understands complex enterprise software or you know supply chain logistics was an entirely manual disjointed process. Spreadsheets everywhere? Exactly!

Now brands can search for creators by specific topics and crucially they view verified first party audience data to see exactly who follows them. But the rules of engagement here are completely different than consumer influencer marketing on platforms like TikTok or Instagram. Entirely different, AJ Eckstein and Chris Cunningham made this incredibly clear. in The B-to-B Creator Economy deep relevance completely beats broad reach.

Okay explain that. Well, in consumer marketing you might want millions of eyeballs for a new beverage launch. But in B-to-B as Cunningham pointed out... A creator with twenty thousand followers who speaks directly to CISO's Chief Information Security Officers is infinitely more valuable than a generalist business creator with five hundred thousand followers.

Oh because they're the buying committee? Yes! You aren't booking two hundred creators for a sneaker drop. you are trying to infiltrate that highly specific twenty-two person buying committee we talked about earlier.

Here's where it gets really interesting from me, LinkedIn is essentially productizing trust. They're giving BDB marketers the actual infrastructure To buy the exact human credibility That The Buying Committee Is Desperately Looking For and then Distributed at Scale. They absolutely are. And this ties directly into the new era of paid amplification.

Zaid Said Ali and Garrett Caudill discussed how this fundamentally changes advertising strategy. How so? Coddle noted that the core media unit on LinkedIn is no longer a polished corporate graphic or heavily produced video. It's an individual human voice with paid distribution layered behind it.

You were talking about thought leadership ads? Yes, thought-leadership ads! ZideCycle League gave a brilliant mechanical breakdown of how to run these effectively without wasting your budget... Because its so easy to waste money on ads… Too Easy.

The beauty of this format is that you don't need to create new, soul-crushing ad creatives from scratch. You take your absolute best organic post - one from your founder or a key employee - that has already proven it resonates with the market... you cut down and make the hook punchier…. …you use single compelling image….

And put a modest thirty to fifty dollars a day behind it." But the targeting's where people usually mess up and drain their budgets isn't? That's exactly when campaigns fail! Cy Ali says you have to keep your audience tightly constrained under five hundred thousand people.

That feels small for an ad campaign. it is but if you go broader than that, You dilute your budget on people who aren't anywhere near a buying window? You have to turn off LinkedIn's automated audience expansion. speak directly To the buyers.

exact pain in their exact words and as a work. when he ran this highly constrained playbook A single add drove. forty two fifty extra demos a month. It is entirely about putting proven human-centric content in front of the right people repeatedly.

So what does this all mean? I mean, it all comes back to The Human Element - the highly calibrated outbound systems... The tension filled profile optimization... the employee advocacy programs that targeted paid amplification Absolutely none of its works.

if the underlying message sounds like it was written by a corporate robot Which brings me into final provocative thought. i really want leave you with. Okay let's hear We are rapidly entering an era where B to B outreach can be perfectly automated with AI. At the exact same time, buyers are increasingly using A.

I. tools to summarize their inboxes and screen LinkedIn profiles. What happens when your A. I outbound system is essentially just pitching to there AI gatekeeper?

The circuit closes entirely. Exactly! The circuit becomes closed... the only thing that will break that automated loop And actually win the deal Is the undeniable messy specific human signal embedded deep within your strategy.