The New LinkedIn Content Playbook: AI, Collaboration, Creator Marketplace, and Out-of-Network Reach

0:00Today's episode is brought to you by Social Media Marketing World and this year we've added something brand new, a creator track. You've watched them, now meet them. Daryl Eves, who has advised Mr. Beast and Arak. Adley Kinsman, whose channels average more than a billion views a month. Plus Sean Cannell, Maria Wendt, Roberto, Blake and more. They'll show you how they grew their audiences and how they keep them paying off. Join us April 1st through 3rd in Anaheim. get your tickets at socialmediamarketingworld.info. That's socialmediamarketingworld.info.

0:37Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing Podcast brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers and business owners who want more exposure, more leads, and more sales. Today, Jerry Potter and I are exploring important updates from LinkedIn with our special guest, AJ Wilcox. Take it away, Jerry. Thanks, Mike. It's great to be here with AI Slop flooding feeds the future of trust at scale.

1:15I really think it's going to be collaborating with other people and brands who already have loyal audiences. And LinkedIn seems to be betting on this as well, cracking down on AI-generated content and giving us new tools to expand our reach through collaboration. So today, we're going to walk through how to take advantage of this so you can future-proof your brand's presence on LinkedIn. Very excited to be joined by AJ Wilcox. AJ is the world's leading LinkedIn ads expert who teaches businesses to drive high-quality B2B leads at scale. He's also the founder and CEO of B2Linked and the host of the LinkedIn Ads Show podcast.

1:47Today, AJ, Mike, and I are going to explore what these latest updates from LinkedIn mean for small business marketers and owners like you. AJ, welcome back to the show. Oh, gentlemen, I'm so excited to be back. Thanks again for the repeat invite here. Yeah, so we've seen this happening and LinkedIn keeps doubling down on cracking down on low quality AI generated content often referred to as AI slop in order to prioritize authentic professional conversations as they call it an expertise. So anytime content appears to be generated by AI and lacks clear perspective, as they say, or quote that AI slot category, they say it's going to be less likely to be widely distributed beyond a person's immediate network, which as marketers, we're obviously trying to reach new people.

2:28So I guess my first question here as I look at this, AJ, is LinkedIn being hypocritical since we still have that enhanced post AI button literally in the compose box? Yeah, I think it comes across that way. I mean, LinkedIn were the very, very first ones to jump in. Like as soon as as chat GPT came out, They immediately started building all of these AI features into the platform. Like they're encouraging people implicitly that they should be using it. But now, of course, as we do start using it or if we're using it wrong, now they're saying they're going to slap our wrists. So it does feel a little bit that way.

3:00But I'm actually really glad that the pendulum is swinging back. Like we're forcing you to have to be authentic. If everything is slop, no one's going to stay on the network. It's not going to be a great place to be. Yeah, obviously that's bad for everybody, including LinkedIn. So, you know, we're obviously not going to stop using AI to enhance and optimize our workflow. But like, what do you think the key is to doing this without being labeled slop? They kind of gave us a hint there with a clear perspective. But what else do you think makes content stand out in a way that's not going to be considered slop?

3:31Yeah, the kinds of content that isn't written like AI, it's obviously different. Perspective is a great word. I think authenticity is a word that may be overused, but I think that communicates it as well. If you're sharing original experiences, AI doesn't do that. If you're sharing genuine insights, especially insights that are so cutting edge that AI doesn't already know about those before, that's sure helpful. So yeah, just be an actual thought leader. I have some thoughts on this too, because folks, you probably know if you're listening, I got another show called AI Explored. And I use AI all the time and I'm a writer.

4:07so in the early days I created a I trained up a cloud project specifically on my voice and it was so good that I could actually just give it a couple things and I could write something that sounded like me but after a while I began to start to notice the tells and I think humans can notice the tells and AI algorithms are even smarter to notice the tells it's some of this like you might think this but this you know or I don't even I can't even like articulate them but you know them when you see them. So what I, what I started to do is I started to, okay, I'm actually going to write in my entire own voice, which is what I do.

4:46And then I give it over to Claude and I say, Claude, where is this week? Claude, let's work on my hook, right? Because the hook is the part that's just seen before the more specifically with the written word. And I've gotten it to the point where I've used it more as a consultant and less as an author, specifically when it comes to the written word on LinkedIn. But at the same time, AJ, you know, this is true. LinkedIn is one of the few platforms that AI models can get access to. And a lot of people are creating AI automations and workflows are just automating everything. And I would imagine as a result of this, because, you know, Facebook has locked it down where you can't actually, unless you're really creative and you're using a Chrome extension to allow you to take over your browser, they just kind of lock down the models to be able to go in and do this kind of stuff.

5:32So I don't know, AJ, I don't spend as much time on LinkedIn as you do, but can you tell when people are just using AI? Does it seem a little formulaic? You know, I was looking at a bunch of responses I got to a post this morning and I looked at it and I went, I'm pretty sure these three comments are all AI. I questioned these, these might be. So I think my brain's starting to get a little bit better at telling, but yeah, I think everyone's radar is going to become a little bit more finely tuned. Do you think that if LinkedIn, which is part of Microsoft and Microsoft obviously has a big stake in ChatGPT and they're developing their own models, do you feel like if it's pretty obvious that this whole thing was crafted by AI, you're just going to see a reduction in reach?

6:14You're just not going to see as many people see it? You know, I sure hope so. I hope that this has already been happening. I hope this is not a new thing where they've finally said, OK, we can spot AI now and we're going to start shutting it down because low quality posts get low quality reach and they have for a long time. But yeah, I don't know. I hope to continue to see that happen because I sure like your approach of like, I'm going to come up with it as the brain, then let AI enhance it. Don't start the other way around. Well, I think the thing we're kind of waiting to see is, is it going to be flagged because it says, you know, you said you couldn't, you know, rattle them off.

6:50But I just think about these all the time, Mike, not X, not Y, Z. And everything is happening quietly and silently and everything matters. And this is why it matters and all of those. But is it going to be that? The hidden truth is this, you know what I mean? Yeah, everything's hidden. Everything's quiet. Everything's silent. But I'm curious if that's the kind of thing that it's going to flag it by, because as humans, that's what we flag it by. But there could also be a worthless piece of content without any of those tells. And I think what we're going to see, you know, they're saying the algorithm is going to flag this stuff, but the humans are going to get to help too, right?

7:23If the humans don't engage, then LinkedIn will stop recommending it. Isn't that right, AJ? Yeah, I sure think so. I mean, LinkedIn visibility has always been about engagement. And I think AI is going to be a help to them. AI is just very good at summarizing. I've spent enough time in B2B marketing. I've read B2B websites that are this long of text, but you read and you go, I don't know what I just read. I don't understand any of this. I think that's the kind of content that, you know, when you write it, obviously whether a human wrote it and it was just really bad or AI created it as slop, it's not valuable and it just needs to be penalized.

8:00By the way, for folks who actually do really use, want to use AI to create high quality content, it's really important that you choose the right model. And when it comes to the written word right now, it's Opus 4.6. It's not Opus 4.8. It's not Fable. It's not Sonnet. And some people are like, what are you talking about, Mike? Well, if you use Claude, which most writers are using Claude these days, you want to use Opus 4.6. It's incrementally better than all the other models for writing. And this is how you can get high quality output. Because the truth of the matter is if we can use AI tools to increase the quality of the content, I don't think any algorithm is going to have a problem with that.

8:37Don't you think, AJ? Yeah. I think as long as what you're communicating is of value, I don't think they necessarily care that it was created by AI, but it's directed by humans. I mean, that's the key to the whole thing, right? But a really good writing model is going to help you go from a good writer to an excellent writer. I just wanted to throw that out there. It's interesting that it's not the highest model necessarily either. And I want to go back to something you said too, Mike, where you said, I use AI to then say, hey, you know, help me make this better or where is this weak? And I think if we go back to what LinkedIn and AJ mentioned about having a perspective, you can ask AI to go, hey, does this have a perspective?

9:11You could probably ask it, does this sound like AI? And it would probably be able to recognize that too, but it's a great final pass. Now, I want to take advantage of the fact that AJ, you obviously spent a lot of time on the paid side of LinkedIn as well and see what we can learn about this, both for the organic and the paid side, they've introduced a tool called Brand Kit inside of Campaign Manager, where you can add your brand assets. So your colors, your fonts, your brand voice for creating ads. And the whole idea is that it'll make sure that your AI generated ad copy and creative assets are still aligned with your brand guidelines, which again, is interesting when they say they're cracking down on AI.

9:43But I guess if you give them money, they'll put up whatever you want, right? But like on the paid ad side, are you seeing a reduction in reach on ads that feels more automated or AI generated from kind of what's out there? No. I mean, basically what you said, like, unless your content or your company goes against their guidelines, like it can't be gambling, it can't be drugs or alcohol. As long as you're within that, if you pay the money, if you'll pay their prices, you'll get the reach. But we definitely do see that if an ad appears to be low quality, or if it has those AI tells, people just don't interact with it.

10:18People will stop engaging. And of course, in advertising, we need people to engage. That's the whole point. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'll just throw a couple of thoughts in here. I kind of feel like this is kind of a feature that's in a wrong place. If you're using image tools or video tools to create your ads that are AI tools, that's where you want to have the brand direction, right? I mean, it's kind of strange that they're doing this unless actually LinkedIn is offering AI content creation? Are they actually on the ad side? AJ, do they allow you to create images automatically with AI or no? Yeah, I think this is pretty new.

10:53It recently rolled out, but we've been able to have content created like the intro text and the headlines help with AI. Now we've got imagery too. And I think that this is related to that. So, okay, that makes sense. So then if LinkedIn is making it easier for advertisers to make ads within the LinkedIn ecosystem, then this is absolutely something that's probably pretty valuable, I would think. Yeah. So now we live in this world where anybody who knows what they're doing can spin up a professional-looking website and five posts a day on LinkedIn using AI, which is kind of what we're up against.

11:25And so I think that aligning brands with people who already have trust with an audience that you don't have trust with is an incredible opportunity. And LinkedIn has announced collaborative posts. So this is a feature we've seen on some other platforms, but it's a new feature where multiple profiles and or company pages can publish and share a post together. All the collaborators will be visibly credited and their names will be displayed at the top of the shared post. Now, I didn't see any info about how many could be in one post. And of course, every participant has to approve being a collaborator.

11:56So it's not like a tagged post where you can just tag somebody and they're in the post without their permission. So that's good, I think. But do you feel like this is the future of trust and reach on LinkedIn? Or is this one of those things where it'll be novel for a while and then it'll just be another feature that we occasionally see. You know, I really think I haven't seen the feature yet. I really do think this is going to become table stakes. Think about it from the perspective of a company where, you know, if you try to share something from your company page, it's getting no reach. No one's ever going to see that.

12:25And so companies are saying they're trying to encourage their employees. Hey, would you post about this? The easiest way to do that is just to have them hit reshare on the company page post. But of course that gets no reach either. And so when you're trying to encourage employees to get involved, how much better can you do than saying, Hey, let's all collaborate. It'll be easy. You don't have to come up with the content yourself all by yourself. We'll all kind of help. And if LinkedIn shows good reach here, then I think this is going to be amazing. So you would see it as like one executive would start the post and then send it to the others and everybody else just has to approve or a department or employees or something along those lines.

13:04I think so. Yeah. And, uh, you know, Collaborating with people outside the organization is awesome too. Find someone who their product or service is tangentially related to yours. So everyone has like skin in the game here. Then both company pages, both thought leaders that are internal to their companies, they can all have it under their names. I think this is going to be really cool as long as it gets better reach than the company page post. Yeah. And this is interesting because they're saying that in time, so coming soon, LinkedIn pages and individual personal profiles will be able to share posts together.

13:37So that would be really valuable. So imagine if the company decides to tag in the engineering department, right? That's maybe behind the new product update, just to kind of like allow that kind of reach effectively to go across multiple individuals with inside the company. I feel like there is right? Where businesses are trying to get individuals activated on LinkedIn, right? AJ? Yeah. A lot of businesses are still afraid. I still hear a lot of founders who are saying, I don't want my employees active on there because then they're going to get poached away. But I think most have gotten past that.

14:13And now it's okay. If we allow our employees to share their thought leadership, it makes the company look better. So we actually want to facilitate that. I think that the way this is going to work, at least the way we think it's going to work based on what we've seen on other platforms. Not that LinkedIn is not first on everything, but we have seen this in some other places is essentially if you partnered with somebody else that had a, you know, a neighbor audience or a tangential audience, they will reach their audience, they'll reach your audience, and then they will look for more people like that if it's really engaging content.

14:43So I think that's what the great potential is. I think maybe Instagram was the first to come out with us a few years ago, and I had incredible success with this. I do wonder though, if, you know, the stuff that does best on LinkedIn is organic content or content that feels organic. You see people all the time complaining, as soon as I put up a picture of my dog, I get a gajillion views. But when I actually post about my business, LinkedIn doesn't show it to anybody. Is there something about having two names at the top, especially if one of them is a company name, do you think that will immediately make it feel less organic?

15:15And if so, how can we avoid that? I think that's a risk for sure. I'm really interested to see like the display, how these look. The first time I see one, I'm going to take a screenshot so I can use it as an example. But I do, I think if you come out with something where a company shows as having, you know, put it out in some way, or even you have run the same risk with it being tied to individuals as well. If it feels like it was written by corporate, you know, it's overly professionally written, it doesn't sound like a human, then I think people are going to write it off regardless of whose name is at the top.

15:49So I would encourage everyone to write very conversationally, like we talked about before, try to make sure you're showing a perspective. It feels authentic. It's using personal experiences. It's thought leadership that AI hasn't just seen already published across a thousand different sites. I think that's going to help a lot. I was at a two-day mastermind last month and you mentioned thought leadership and And, you know, AJ, you've taught me about thought leadership ads, but I don't think I understood them until this moment in this room. But this one woman who is on the creator side of things was working with a brand.

16:21And whenever a brand shows up to sponsor a post with her, she will then tag her business page. Then she can use her business page basically to boost her personal profile post. So she'll basically take part of that budget. And then all of a sudden, I don't know if her clients even know that she does this, but all of a sudden she gets this huge reach in that way. and it is a way to amplify personal profile posts. And I would imagine, you know, before it was with tagging, but I would imagine if we are using collaborations, you'll be able to do the same thing. I think so. And I see her strategy because, you know, if you put out something organically, you're going to see the number of views it got.

16:56And it's generally going to be less than the number of followers that you have for sure. But as soon as you promote that post through the ads platform, you can get impressions through the roof. So if you as a creator, if you're trying to show extra value to others who are going to hire you, you can say like, hey, if you hire me as your creator, as your voice, I'm going to guarantee you 100 ,000 impressions. 100 ,000 impressions is cheap through the ads platform, but it shows a lot of value. So I could see that it might be gaming it a little bit, but there is value in numbers for sure. I mean, I think it's a win-win-win, right?

17:29LinkedIn's happy, the client's happy, and she's happy. But so if somebody comes to you, because I'm putting myself back into when I worked at an agency and I'm imagining one of my clients, which happened sometimes. Oh, I was listening to the social media marketing podcast with Michael Stelzner. I heard about this new thing. How do we do that? So somebody comes to you and says, Hey, I want to start doing collaborations. What's, what's the first thing you're going to tell them to, to do? Like, where do we start with this? Well, I don't know how the new tool is going to work yet. So I couldn't give you guidance there.

17:59I really hope I get access to it soon because it seems awesome. But, you know, I think just to start out, whether you're using this feature or not, collaborating in some way is awesome. And it's something that every brand should consider. So be looking for those people out there who are maybe fans of your brand, maybe collaborators who are tangentially related to your product or service, not directly competitive, but you get to help each other. Those are great opportunities. And then just approach them with like, hey, hey, there's a topic we really care about. What if you post as your voice? What if we post and what if we tag each other?

18:34No money has to exchange hands. It's just all around everyone wins with getting to extend your thought leadership. I think that's where I would start. I like that you kind of have presented it as, hey, we're in this experimental phase. Let's try it out and kind of see what happens here with it. But it sounds like it's worth doing a little research first, like finding out what they're into and finding across something in common to post about and everything like that. I think so. Start with the people that you're already aware of in your network. Cause I think approaching someone cold that you have no idea if they've ever heard of your brand before, that's like a second or a third tier strategy, but chances are as a brand, you know, who your top fans are.

19:10You know, the people who are always commenting on your stuff, the people who are vocal current and past customers. I think that's a great place to start. Yeah. Okay. And of course the people pleaser in me is like, Oh gosh, I have to, what if I have to tell somebody no, but obviously you want to do the best thing for your brand. Yeah. We've got some exciting news. We just launched a creator ticket for Social Media Marketing World. Here's what other creators had to say about the conference. I'm a content creator. I came here to really learn about the different strategies and tools that can better my workflow and automation and to better my audience as well.

19:41This is my third year coming to the Social Media Marketing World, and I love it. Every year I get to hear firsthand from creators all over the country, what they're doing, the new ways to improve things. It doesn't matter how many followers you got, whether you are new or you've been around for a while. All of these people are so friendly. You just walk up to anybody and they introduce themselves to you. This community is amazing. Everyone's here to share. I'm excited to get back home and start creating. Get tickets at socialmediamarketingworld.info. Now, finding these people, right? You may come across them automatically in your feed.

20:15But if you wanted to actually look for them once you've decided to start collaborating, they have now expanded their AI-powered people search to all US users before where it was only premium-only access. So now you can use natural language search to find people based on intent rather than exact keywords. You'll see verification badges appearing in the search results for more trust and transparency. And then also AI-generated profile summaries in search results to explain why a person is relevant and highlight shared connections or experiences. another reason to make sure that all of your latest stuff is up to date on profiles.

20:52But I think this tool was designed for prospecting. But I mean, how would you go about using this to find collaboration partners then? I agree with you. I think this was designed for the sales navigator product, which is meant for outreach. And then LinkedIn was like, well, hey, we might as well make this available to everyone because it's going to be universally helpful. So I support it. I approve. I think it's a really cool feature for you to actually go out and start using it. I think you probably want to think about like maybe even use your own profile as a as a case study here you think about like how do you want people to try to find you and go and concentrate on writing your your profile in a way that really you're not trying to just take like specific keywords and specific orders like you know we've been trained by hr departments to do but really think about it strategically how can i express what i do professionally and what i'm looking to do in a clear and succinct way so that when AI comes in and, you know, crawls it, scrapes it to ingest it, that it's understanding and it can then pitch you in the best possible light.

21:54Once you've seen it in your own profile, I think it's a lot easier to now think, okay, when I go out and start looking for others, what am I looking for? AJ, I got a question for you. Jerry brought up verification badges and what's your view on what they are? I know there's two ways to go about doing it. Is it worth it for us to do it? Like, what do you think about that? I think there's two sides of the coin here. There are some people who want to be found. So if you're running your own organization and you're looking to attract clients or customers, I think you want to be found. I think there are also people out there who don't want to be found because they're tired of sales pitches over and over.

22:30But I don't see a downside for the most part in being visible. So I think any way that you can decorate your profile, whether it's verification badges, being a premium member for sure. If you have, I don't know if they're going to show it, but certifications and skills, they might decorate your profile that way. If you've added different interests to your profile of like certain product interests, they might decorate it that way. In marketing, it's all about standing out. And I think anything you can do to help your listing stand out, it's going to be like the new SEO. I remember, at least this is how it used to be.

23:03If you work for a company like I do at Social Media Examiner, you can verify that you actually work there because I got a ton of people who claim they work here. You do not, right? And it just verifies by sending you to the actual domain of the, you know, it sends the email verification to the domain. But then there's this more sophisticated verification where you have to go through this identity thing. Is that worth it? Or do you feel like just email verification is sufficient enough? What's your thoughts on this? I think however you would do the verification, it's probably going to show the same badge, but I don't know for sure there.

23:35But I do see verification was something LinkedIn rolled out and not very much was dependent on it, you didn't change a whole lot. But over time, obviously they want that verification to mean more and more and to actually be valuable. And so I think if you are not currently, I think you should probably seek that out and at least make sure that you've got the verification. Whether the one that you do through Clear in the US is any different than scanning your driver's license versus emailing the domain. I don't know which is going to be more valuable. I will tell you for whatever reason, I could not get clear verification no matter what I tried, even though I know that I did everything.

24:13And I think that their AI models were screwed up or something. But the email verification was dirt simple. So I just decided to do that. Because who doesn't want a checkmark next to their name, right? I mean, like, I feel like as marketers, we all want checkmarks next to their name. Of course. And I would imagine they probably even have different color checkmarks, do they? Or is it not like the other platforms, AJ, where they have like different colors that mean different things? I think I've only seen the one color for verification, but I know if you're like a, I forget what they call it, like a top voice or something, there's a separate badge that you'd have.

24:43So I wouldn't be surprised if they have different colors for different levels. They like to stratify us. And so for the chances, if I'm hearing you correctly, AJ, of us coming up in search, you're saying anything we want to be known for, use every possible tool on our profile, whether it's a verification, like you even mentioned interests, right? Which is not something I would have thought of, but you want to be listed for all of those things. there's a software tool that I use that all of a sudden gave me this pop-up a couple weeks ago it said hey you are you know you we we think you're good at this add it to your LinkedIn profile so I've seen these third-party tools it's video editing which is not something I'm looking to be known for so but but basically take everything that you want to be found for and add it in there somewhere yep I think it's all worthwhile and was that tool by chance Descript it was yes yep okay I saw the same thing on mine.

25:31Same thing. I don't need to be known for video editing, but I thought it was so cool that now they have this integration between LinkedIn and different tools. I added it to my profile anyway. Because they made you feel special. Like Mike just said, you got the checkmark. We all want a checkmark, right? Yeah. So, all right. Well, another way that we can increase trust, I think is by partnering with creators. And so LinkedIn has launched a creator marketplace. This is a new platform within campaign manager where brands can find, evaluate, and partner with creators based on their expertise, their audience, and their content performance.

26:02In a study, 82 % of B2B marketers said that creators increase credibility with decision makers. So first of all, I'm curious, is this a tool that somebody could use to find somebody even if they weren't actually placing a paid ad campaign? This is actually only for inside the ads platform. And I'll give you the background here. We know that thought leader ads are the most, they're the cheapest and the easiest type of ad to run that gets a lot of reach, a lot of engagement at low cost. So LinkedIn knows this, they're trying to encourage people to use this ad format. But if you as a marketer, if you're having a hard time convincing the CEO, like, please go like write a post about this or record a video.

26:43And because they're not getting that kind of content, they're not able to run these ads. This is a direct answer to it. So what happens is anytime someone mentions your brand, you can now go into the creator marketplace and it will surface like, hey, here are the people who have mentioned your brands. Do you want to look at them and maybe send them a request to sponsor their post? And so it's all about making it easier for brands to launch thought leader ads that they know are going to perform great. Okay. So basically where people are already talking about your brand, now you have a chance to get in front of their audience and borrow their trust, which is kind of what we're talking about today.

27:18Yeah. And when you sponsor one of these thought leader ads, you control the audience, like you put dollars behind it, you decide who it goes to. So they're the reach that their profile has access to. I mean, in the first day or two of their post, you've already gotten the max out of that possible. But, you know, if you want to show their message to a new audience, to your ideal audience and you're willing to pay for it, I think it's awesome. A third party saying something about you is always going to carry more, more trust and credibility than you saying about yourself. I feel like I see those in my feed all the time.

27:52And those are the ones that I think of where I see, wow, 21 ,000 reactions. And then I see in partnership with, and I go, oh, it's an ad. Totally. Yeah. So if we are vetting a creator to work with, like as a brand or as a marketer, we're like, okay, I found this person. They seem to have the same audience. Like what should we be looking at other than their reach? I think their reach is certainly interesting, but you You know, it doesn't tell the whole story. I would certainly look at like many of their past posts and see if I see like an average number of reactions and comments that they get on each post, because you can always put dollars behind something like one post to pump it up.

28:29But if you see like, nope, they actually do have a very active following. People care, they engage, then yeah, they might be one who's worth working with. But I would also say that doesn't have to be the whole story, because like I said, when they post the post for the first day or two, that post has really gotten all the benefit it's going to get. When you sponsor it and put dollars behind it, you choose which audiences see it and you really control that reach. So the reach that they originally had doesn't really matter to you all that much as long as you get to control who sees it from there.

28:59And so usually you would add the money after the post had already been running. Correct. Okay. So it's already got some social proof in it. It's already, you know, got something going there. Totally. And so I understand this. this is different than on the other social platforms like Facebook has something like this, but they've got a list of all these creators that you can search for and then you can reach out to them and interact with them and they'll give you a price to create a piece of content. This sounds like, and by the way, I don't even know if you knew that existed. You know what I mean?

29:30There's all these creators and you can hire them flat out through Facebook and negotiate a deal with them directly through Facebook and they will create the content for you and it will be a mutually beneficial kind of partnership. But in this case, this is more of a, hey, find people who are actively talking organically on the platform, LinkedIn, about my product, and then put some money behind it. And it sounds like the creator isn't necessarily gaining anything other than more exposure and reach. Is that right? Yeah. And you do have to ask their permission. So if you request and they say, no, I don't want my post to be used like that, then you won't get to as an advertiser.

30:08Are some of them going to say, sure, but it's going to cost you? I mean, is that the kind of negotiations you think are happening behind the scenes? I think they could. I know some people do charge for posts, you know, charge for having something turned into a thought leader ad. But for the most part, when I see our clients reach out to people for this, they're basically leading with like, Hey, we're going to put dollars behind your profile, getting seen more. Oftentimes that's a pretty equal value of exchange and you don't actually need to pay, but it's probably going to happen. When those dollars are put behind it, is there a call to action added to it that benefits the brand?

30:42Or is it just giving it more reach to an audience with the hope that it will look like an organic piece of content that's somehow going to influence people? Currently, it's the exact same post just with dollars put behind it. Okay. We've seen LinkedIn do this where a company boosted post, when you go to sponsor it later, you can add an additional CTA. So I wouldn't be surprised if in the future personal posts do that as well. But right now it's just putting dollars behind the exact same post. Okay. So let's be strategic here. Let's say I am a creator and I want to get in front of brand X. Okay.

31:14I want to help them and I want to help me. Right. So how would I do that so that my stuff might show up to that brand? Because there's some people that would love to have partnerships with a brand and this could be their inroad. Do you understand where I'm going with this? Like you're a creator and you want to work with a bigger brand. How would that brand even like, would we have to embed certain kinds of keywords in there? you think for the AI to recognize this and show, show it up? And would, would it be just coincidental? Cause there's probably just a little window where the brand might even be notified or go in there to look like, what's your thoughts on this?

31:45Well, I think if you want to show up in the creator marketplace, as long as you mentioned their brand in one of your posts, that's going to be enough to show up there. If you tag a company page, most of the time there's not, there's someone's asleep at the wheel. Like they're not checking their, their company notifications are not getting them. So you're probably not going to get their attention, but sure, try it. But then I'd also say humans, individuals see their notifications a lot more. So if you know that there's an individual at that company, someone over partnerships or someone over marketing or something like that, tag the individual in your post, you're going to be a lot more likely to get their attention that way.

32:22Yeah. So for example, if you're doing a review of product X, right, maybe it's a new release of a piece of software, or maybe it's a new hardware product, or maybe it's who knows what, if you could figure out who those people are and somehow get them identified properly inside the thing, that might lead to some strategic partnership that could be a cross platform kind of deal down the road, I would imagine, right? Yeah, I think that's an awesome idea. Well, and to go with what AJ said, it's, you know, a lot of people are not paying attention to their company page notifications. And on the other end of the spectrum, you have people that are in charge of those things that maybe get tagged or bothered all the time.

32:55And it's just a matter of settling on those people in the middle who still like to get notifications and are not overwhelmed. I mean, like, let's say you're a marketer and you wanted to get hired. What if you just said, if I was doing the marketing for a company XYZ and tag them, here's what I do. I mean, literally show them how you think. Might be a lot of work or it might be, you know, a great way to get in front of it. I've seen case studies where people have done that for huge, like multinational corporations where it's just like, hey, if I was the such and such director for this company, here's what I do.

33:23And eventually if it gets enough engagement, it gets back to them. Oh, yeah. And then, of course, we have on the ad side, we have this ability to target very specific individuals at certain companies. So our final audience has to be at least 300 people. So this really only works if you have an enterprise level company. But let's say you're trying to do a project for or get hired by IBM's marketing department. Sure, you can put your post, sponsor it to just employees of IBM in the marketing department. And that's a great way of getting attention as well. Does this mean that anyone who has an account on LinkedIn can run these kinds of ads?

34:00You don't have to just have a company page? You actually do have to have a company page, but you could make one up in order to do this. So you'd create an ad account inside of campaign manager. You'd link that with a company page. And then that's all you'd need. You could then create your audience, put dollars behind it, target very specific people, choose your post. Your company is not going to get, or at least the company on your company page doesn't play much of a role anymore. and that wouldn't cost very much. Like we're paying like, you know,$80 CPMs is kind of what you could think of on the high end.

34:31You're talking to hundreds of people, that's like nothing really, right? Yeah, yeah, it costs pennies, but it could really make a big difference. Okay, so with this creator marketplace where you can find creators to work with potentially, I feel like you're leaning toward, but I don't want to put words in your mouth, that if they're not already talking about you, this is a big uphill task and maybe not worth tackling. Or at some point is it, if you're going, look, I got to get into the space. At least I can get some, some that have been vetted by LinkedIn with real data first. This would be a good place to start.

34:59Yeah. Creator marketplace is a great place to go and find those people that you're not already aware of who are talking about your brand. That's a great way to find them there. I'm saying, what if they're not talking about your brand? Is it still good for that? Not creator marketplace, but I think that's a great opportunity for you as a marketer to go and start doing outreach and talking to people who would make it a good collaboration partner and just you do it behind the scenes offline. One other thing I want to add here is one of the things that I really like about what AJ said earlier is, or it might have been Jerry, it might have been both of you.

35:30So many people are using this strategy that I'm about to share, which is not wise, which is they DM you and they say, hey, I've created this thing for you. Let me know if you want me to send it to you. And we know that they send the same thing to everyone. And then when they say yes, they create the thing. Okay. The reason why that doesn't work is because that's like an opt-in strategy and then I don't have to do the work unless they say that they're actually interested. I feel like that is just, I'm going to call that DM slop, direct messaging. And the alternative is to actually create something and post it publicly on your profile, which is what we've been talking about here.

36:08I feel like that is so much more authentic and transparent and it requires commitment and to do the work. And it also requires you to acknowledge the fact that maybe nobody will ever see it. But AJ, I want to know what your thoughts are. There's a pretty good chance someone in your network might know someone who knows someone and they might tag somebody, right? Which might bring someone from that company into see that post, right? So I would imagine something like this could be really strategic depending on what it is you do. If you're a strategist, you talk about how you would change the strategy.

36:39If you're an artist, you talk about how you would redesign it, right? Is this something that people are doing? I'm going to imagine they're not because there's so much work associated with this, but I would imagine the payoff could be quite huge. What do you think, AJ? I do. I agree. If you take it the extra step further, you're not waiting for the opt-in to decide, okay, now I should spend my time on this. I can't remember who it was, but you were just recently interviewing someone on the AI podcast and they were talking about how they would create whole tools and send them to someone as like a proof of concept.

37:11Boy, you put the work in and AI is helping you do that more effectively. you're going to get attention for sure. Yeah. And I don't remember, but I do remember the interview. I can't remember who the person was. I'll look it up by the time we're done here, but you're right. With AI, you can actually create some really great stuff relatively fast, as long as it's not slop, like we talked about earlier. And this could actually have huge benefits for you, for those of you that provide some sort of a service. I'm feeling a little guilt right now because probably two or three times a week, I get approached by somebody to design my YouTube thumbnails.

37:41And they'll actually put a post up on Instagram and tag me. And my response has just been, uh, spam. But now I'm feeling like, well, they did actually take the time to make it. Maybe I could at least just say, I'm all set, but thanks. But yeah, the expectation, I think, is higher now with AI that you took the time to make something. But building a whole app, I would be pretty blown away by that for sure. So, all right. This is a really fascinating update to LinkedIn, I think for any brand that's trying to make sure to reach new people instead of just talking to the same people over and over again.

38:11And it's a new post analytics metric that shows the percentage of impressions coming from in-network versus out-of-network audiences. So just so we're all on the same page, in-network measures the share of post impressions generated by existing followers and their connections. Out-of-network reach measures the share of impressions from people who do not follow or connect with the person who's posting, which happens through recommendations, reshares, or even search. So this is an incredible opportunity, I think, to lean into, okay, what is actually helping me reach new people? AJ, how do we interpret the difference between content that performs well in network versus out of network?

38:47Like, should we be all thinking about both? Or should we all be trying to make the stuff that mostly reaches out of network? Well, I think, first of all, this feature is a really, really strong move from LinkedIn, because if all you see when you post something is just the number of views and then the reactions and comments, it's not going to encourage you to do much more. But if I posted something and it said, oh, 90 % of the people who saw this are from outside your network, even if my network was small, I would go, oh, there's value here. I should consider posting more. So I think this is brilliant.

39:21I think that's what LinkedIn is going to get out of it. What we then do as marketers, as content creators because of it. I don't think I would change the way I wrote or what I published necessarily based off of that split. But I think I would pay attention to try to understand so I could optimize in the future. Like when I talk about this, does this get wider spread than just my network? When I talk about this, does it stay just in my network? Oh, it's helpful to understand my audiences and who wants what from me. So in other words, double down on the topics that you see reach beyond your network.

39:55Yeah. By the way, folks, earlier, AJ said there was a recent episode of the AI Explored podcast. It was the June 23rd episode with Eaton Pollinger and it was called The Future of AI and Selling How One Workflow Closed a$12 ,000 Deal. So simply said, if you go check out the AI Explored podcast, this guy talked about how it's so easy now to create interactive AI resources with tools like Claude that with the right direction and the right effort, you can spin up something that's highly customized for a prospect so that when you actually get to the point of a meeting with them, you're showing them a semi-completed project and the likelihood that you're going to get a yes goes through the roof.

40:38Now, this is not what people are doing because historically you would have had to have done a huge amount of work for something like this. But now AI tools make this really, really powerful. So you talk about like, and what this guy does is he's very active on LinkedIn. And then that creates inbound leads and prospects. And then what he does is he asks a series of questions in advance, utilizing AI and public data. And he creates something that, you know, and gather some insights from them as well, but create something that blows their socks off. I think that's the future of how we're going to be selling.

41:08You know this, AJ, everybody's selling on LinkedIn. But the problem is a lot of people, they can't show off because usually people that are salespeople are not actually creating anything. They're just making a promise. But if you can use AI to create something that's super powerful, then it's just taking it over the line. So I just wanted to throw that over the fence. It was a very fascinating interview that for people that are selling might want to check out. AJ, this has been a fascinating conversation. Thank you for joining us today. If people want to explore working with you, where do you want to send them?

41:37Where's the best place? Oh, I think two places. You can go to the website, b2linked.com. You'll always find everything there, but also connect with me on LinkedIn. Just make sure you customize the invitation to say you heard me on the show. I would love to connect with you, but otherwise you don't even have to connect. Just follow me there. I share all my best stuff publicly. AJ and Jerry, thank you so much for being on the show today. And hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over at socialmediaexaminer.com slash 730. Man, it's hard to believe we've had 730 episodes. If you're new to the show, follow us on whatever podcasting platform you're listening to us on.

42:13If you've been a listener for a while, we would love a review and do check out my other show, the AI Explored Podcast. This brings us to the end of the social media marketing podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. I've been joined today by Jerry Potter, my co-host, and I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving. Catch you next time. The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner.

42:41Before you go, Social Media Marketing World has a creator track taught by creators like Daryl Eves, Adley Kinsman, Maria Wendt, and Sean Cannell. Whether you create or hire creators, you'll learn how they grow their audiences, and you'll get to meet them in person. April 1st through 3rd in Anaheim, grab your tickets at socialmediamarketingworld.info.