4 Pillars for Social Selling

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0:33Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is Jon Janssen. My guest today is Lorenzo Johnson. He's the Director of Revenue Management and a partner at SociallyIn, a leading U.S. social media agency. He's a specialist in social selling, helping B2B professionals and SMEs leverage LinkedIn to drive revenue. As a content creator for Madcraft and an instructor on LinkedIn learning, Lorenzo teaches thousands worldwide through his courses on social selling. So, Lorenzo, welcome to the show. Well, I appreciate you, and thanks for having me today, John. I'm very excited to be here.

1:09Awesome. So, did I say the name right? Socially In. I had to kind of stumble over that. There's a lot of letters together. You said it correctly. You said it better than a lot of people who, when they call us and they say social lion and other things like that. So you hit it right on the head, John. Awesome. So let's start. We're going to talk mostly about LinkedIn today. Yes, sir. So let's set the table. Going into 2026, which we're there. What's changed? What do we need to pay attention to? What's gotten worse about, better about? Just give us the lay of the land for 2026 on LinkedIn. Well, there's a few things that's happened on LinkedIn that I think everyone should be excited about, not necessarily fearful about, but absolutely kind of thinking about what they're going to be shifting and changing.

1:50And so I'll kind of get right into one of the biggest things that's happening. And it's around this term AEO that everyone's kind of talking about and always engine optimization and always everywhere optimization. You know, you're hearing all of these different types of names and LinkedIn is actually one of those social platforms that's also starting to be incorporated a little bit more into that. What we're starting to actually see is that content is starting to be indexed. When you start to get into search inquiries and search queries, technical things like leveraging hashtags and things like that are actually starting to also come up in search functions and Google and things like that.

2:26That's also with other platforms like Instagram and things like that. But again, I know we're focusing historically or this conversation specifically on LinkedIn. So the first thing that you're seeing is that with all and like all social, you're starting to kind of see this integration between social search. These avenues that used to be very separated and segregated are really starting to kind of work together now. And so that's the first thing that we're saying right now is that content, long form content, putting out some of that thought leadership type of content that used to be really good and really exciting on LinkedIn.

2:56It's kind of been watered down when ChatGBT made everyone an expert all of a sudden and things like that. But we're starting to see that start to come back. So that would say that's one of the first things that we're starting to see, John. All right. So let's dive into that with kind of this flood of very average, you know, AI content. How does somebody take their content and make it stand out? Well, one of the biggest things is doing stuff like this. It's that video content. It's that content that necessarily can't be just crafted using some words and things like that. It's having the ability to get into conversations like this, speak people able to see your voice.

3:32So video content is absolutely really starting to take off. From a true feature standpoint, one other feature that we're seeing is carousel posts. Those types of content engagement features that are keeping people on a post for a little bit longer, just like a video would do. We're also starting to see that have a big impact. But of course, as you know, that is something that could be easily kind of manipulated from an AI standpoint. And I mean, let's let's get the elephant out the room as well. You can also script videos and use AI to do all of those different types of things, too. So unfortunately, it's kind of leaking into everything that we're doing.

4:04But I would say video by far is the best way to not only posit yourself as that thought leader, but really separate yourself from a lot of the newsletter style type posts out there. that as soon as you start to read it, it's so clear that people are just running it through a chat GPT prompt and not even a quality chat GPT prompt like that. Yeah, actually, I'm not even here. This is an AI avatar. It'll get there soon. It's crazy. I've actually had people ask me if I wanted to be interviewed on their show by an AI avatar. How'd you respond to that? What were your thoughts? I was like, eh, probably not.

4:43It's too experimental. I think a lot of people look at LinkedIn and they just think, okay, what am I going to post? That's like how the day starts, right? You really talk more about a LinkedIn blueprint. You want to kind of unpack what the pillars of that are? Yeah, so I like to kind of break it down. And for everyone who doesn't know, there's essentially four pillars that LinkedIn uses to define if a profile is being used correctly and if you're doing those appropriate things. More commonly referred to as an SSI or the LinkedIn Social Selling Index score. Those four pillars are four things. The first one is how are you building your professional brand?

5:18The second thing is, are you finding the right people? The third thing is, are you engaging with insights? And the fourth, and I would argue absolutely the most important thing is, are you building trusted relationships? And so if you were to break all of those downs, they actually get into all of the day-to-day execution of what you should be doing on LinkedIn. So again, when you start talking about building your professional brand, what type of thought leadership are you actually putting out there? What type of value-based, what type of resource-driven type of post and content are you getting out there and putting out there for people to have a reason to come back to your platform to start off with?

5:57Finding the right people. One of the things that we're actually starting to see more is LinkedIn is actually penalizing your impressions and your reach if your audience isn't quality. Here's what I mean by that. If LinkedIn is starting to get this feeling algorithmically that you're just basically reaching out to everybody mass, if you're using automation tools, which a lot of people are doing to send out mass invites and different things like that. If you're not actually commenting, engaging, endorsing with the people as they're starting to come in, LinkedIn is actually going to start to lower your impressions.

6:29So that's why you'll see people that have 10, 15 ,000 followers, but yet their posts are still only getting 10, 15 type of posts and things like that. they're not truly finding and building up the right audience. LinkedIn, unlike other social platforms, it's not a popularity contest. LinkedIn isn't like, hey, John Lorenzo, I want you guys to have 100 ,000 people that are kind of all over the place. LinkedIn would rather you have 1 ,000 people that are locked in, they come to your platform for insights, you're engaging back and forth. They'd much rather have that type of relationship building. Engaging with insights.

7:04Are you actually commenting and engaging on other people's posts? Are you also engaging on other content that's happening? Are you sharing other types of content, keeping people on the LinkedIn platforms and things like that? One of the other misconceptions and just basic things that people don't do that I see all the time is, you know, people share and copy posts without even having something as simple as like a caption or copy on it. Small little things like that make LinkedIn really feel, are you truly engaging with insights? Are you truly using this platform appropriately? And then that last pillar is, again, is are you building trusted relationships?

7:39And I know that's very hard to kind of quantify and kind of line item up. But simply what that basically means is are the individuals that you're connected with and that are connecting with you, are you guys engaging back and forth? Are you DMing them? Are you liking comments? Are you endorsing? What type of interaction are you seeing? Or are you just kind of posting a whole bunch of kind of stuff out there? So those are typically the four pillars that LinkedIn is typically looking at that guides and decides algorithmic reaches, impressions and things like that. So you mentioned at the beginning of that something called SSI.

8:11Is there a tool that you're social selling? Is there a tool you can go and put your profile in and it'll tell you how you're doing? There absolutely is. There's actually a link, John, that I could pop over to you. Please excuse it. But it says something as simple as like LinkedIn.com backslash like SSI score or something. I could get you an actual link. But the really cool thing is once you log in and you literally click that link, it'll tell you not only what your overall score is, it will actually give you a rating for each of those pillars out of a 25 percent. As of right now, and this does change sometimes, each of those pillars is equally weighted, 25 percent.

8:46So you will be able to see your rating out of that 25 percent. Of course, the aggregate score will be what your total LinkedIn SSI score, which will be out of 100. Okay. So a lot of times when I talk to LinkedIn people, you see people doing courses, the very first thing is always fix your profile, update your profile, make it stronger. So what are some tips that you would give people that would make a stronger kind of selling profile? The biggest tip that I can give you is you need to use, and this is just an algorithmic feature of social, the more features that you actually use and execute, the more quote unquote love that they'll give you.

9:22So for example, and you know, John, this is a question for you. I'm just curious since we're talking, do you by chance have like professional mode activated on your LinkedIn profile? Or do you even know what professional mode is? I do have it activated. Yes. Of course you do. And so you know that once you activated that, there's some really cool things that you were able to do for completely free by simply clicking that button. the ability to post a newsletter, the ability to actually create a microsite landing page that's right there where you can have case studies, pitch decks, YouTube videos, all of those different types of things, as well as just a few other searching features that you also kind of get access to.

9:55So it's really important to make sure you're leveraging those features because again, once algorithms see that, they say, okay, this is a profile that we should continue to start to get low. So that's absolutely one of the biggest ones that I see people don't optimize on their profile. You know, everyone has the cover photo. Everyone has the profile pic and things like that. But those additional features, making sure you're about us is properly used. All of those things really matter. But I will say professional dashboard activation is key right now. Hey, you want to keep up on all things duct tape marketing, the stuff I read, the books, the people I interview.

10:32Check out the duct tape marketing newsletter. Every week, we're going to send you out. We're going to keep you up to date on what's going on in the world of marketing. And just for subscribing, you're going to get our free chat GPT prompts that will allow you or assist you in the creation of marketing strategies and plans. So check it out. It's at dtm.world slash news. That's dtm.world slash news. So one of the things I know everybody says this, everybody knows this, you know, you You want to follow people. You want to engage with people. You want to eventually turn those into conversations that we sell, right?

11:13I don't see very many people doing that well. They're trying to get to the end game as quickly as possible. So somebody will connect with me and I'll think, yeah, that seems like a reasonable person. I'll connect in the very first email that I get is an attempt to cause conversation, but it'll be so silly. You know, it's like, so what are you most excited about in your business this year? And I'm like, stranger on the bus just asked me that. It's like, what? You know, I mean, but people don't seem to think that way. You know, it's like, I want to get to that, you know, the end game as fast as possible.

11:52How do you suggest, especially in a selling environment, that you actually create some engagement, but make it authentic? It has to be. And this is something I tell every single person when they start talking about focusing on LinkedIn. If you go into LinkedIn saying that I need business over the next six months, you're completely playing the wrong game. Your strategy is going to be off. And I can tell you right now, John, you are not going to get any of that business that you're going to see. And then you're going to come back and say, LinkedIn, such a terrible business development platform. Oh, my God, it's so bad and things like that.

12:23I was just talking to another company and they did an analysis on how long it takes to do what's called either social selling or account based marketing, ABM. It is currently taking approximately 320 days from the time you start that campaign until the time that new business actually comes into the door. That assumes that for that entire 320 days, John, you did things the right way. You're providing value driven content. You're providing educational type of content. you're providing those things that make it so that when people are ready to buy, not only have you already created the awareness of your product, the why about your product, but it becomes a no brainer why they should at least consider you when they're going through that process.

13:07And so that's the biggest thing that I tell people is if you're not prepared, number one, for this to be a long term game, you're not playing the right game right here. And that's unfortunately what we're seeing, John, is we're seeing a bunch of people who have seen these automation tools and they've been told that, hey, if you send a thousand messages out, by percentages, you have to be successful, right? And unfortunately, we're seeing a lot of that. And it just tires people out from people who are doing it the right way. And so unfortunately, now going into 2026, value-driven content and engagement strategies is going to be even more important than it was this year.

13:38Completely agree. I mean, it's obvious when somebody's just doing cold outreach to be, you know, you're a piece of meat at that point, you know, that they're trying to communicate with. So, but there are places where I think there are some automation tools, some AI that can help the process. What are some of the tools? You know, for example, if you've got a post that really is blown up and you're getting lots of comments and people are engaging with it, are there ways for you to maybe move those people to another conversation, say an email, or obviously as much thoughtful, you know, commenting on their comments that, you know, has to be done by hand, but are there parts it can actually make that obvious handwork easier and faster.

14:22There is. So I'll tell you two tools that we, again, I can only speak for our agency, things that we're doing successfully. The first one is actually a tool called Apollo. Apollo is a tool that integrates not only directly into your LinkedIn, it could integrate into your CRM systems. We use HubSpot, for example. Why that matters and why we love it. Apollo is simply an integration tool that if, say, I was on John's LinkedIn profile right now and I had it pulled up, I could click on the Apollo integration. It would tell me numerous things. It would tell me, number one, your email, contact information, phone number, a lot of that information that you may not put in your LinkedIn profile because of the exact stuff that we just talked about.

14:59However, Apollo has the ability to do what's called scrape all of that type of information, which I'm sure you're familiar with. We love Apollo. The way that we leverage it is if you we leverage when we reach out and we do corporate pay outreach campaigns, individual outreach campaigns. as soon as you show any form of interest, any form of interest, we're immediately putting you into our email system and things like that. The reason I mentioned that tool is because a lot of people don't have their business emails in LinkedIn anymore because of what we're talking about right here. Apollo allows you to still get that information.

15:30And then, of course, as you can imagine, John, if we have that phone number, you bet you're going to get a phone call that at least says, hey, we were talking about this. We were chatting about this. Does it make sense for us to have a conversation? So that's the first tool that I really enjoy using. The second tool that we've been using and full transparency, we're just testing this, but I'm testing it because of something that we started initially in our conversation. And it's that video seems to be opening up doors on LinkedIn. It's actually a tool called Weasley. What it actually allows you to do is it actually allows you to create customized video outreach.

16:02So as opposed to doing this, hey, John, we're in the same field type of conversation. It's a more personalized video. Of course, you can do some customizations, but the really cool thing it does is it actually will scroll the site and the LinkedIn profile of the person that you're talking through. So not only can I say why, you know, I'm just calling, but I can say, hey, John, I was actually checking out your LinkedIn profile and look at what I saw. Here's a post that you did this. I maybe would have done this a little different or here's something that you did so great. I would lean into this and take it to the next level.

16:33And so we really love that because it combines everything we're talking about. video so you can see my voice, you can hear me, but it still is value driven. I'm not saying, hey, John, we talk to all of these different people. Do you want to set up a free consultation and things like that? It's like, hey, look at your LinkedIn. This is what I saw. Look at your Facebook. Look at your website. Here are actionable things that we could potentially talk about if and when it makes sense and go from there. So I would say those are the two tools that we've been using this year that we absolutely plan on taking into 2026.

17:03So picking of tools, LinkedIn gets occasionally very nervous about tools that scrape its content. And, you know, we've all seen tools that get banned. And again, a lot of people are being too aggressive with them probably. Yep. But so how do you kind of balance that idea that, I don't know, are there legitimate ways to scrape? I don't know if that's the right term. No, no. Or if it's really a matter of like, it's only a matter of time before LinkedIn says, no, I don't like that. Now, so there are so these tools are basically what are called black, gray and white hat tools. Basically, all this simply means is that black hat tools are LinkedIn says absolutely not.

17:41Those are the things where you use them and you get caught. Not only is your profile being banned, it's going to be hard to kind of get it back. Gray tools, which are the predominant use, like LinkedIn automation tools and things like that. Those live in what we call that kind of gray area. They're technically not allowed to be used by LinkedIn. However, this year, LinkedIn has basically said, as long as you follow these parameters, will allow it to keep going. Biggest thing, for example, is a connection request limit. Moving forward, you can only send 100 connection requests per week unless you're doing things the right way and stuff like that.

18:15As soon as you start to go over that, gray hat tools start to become off the box. as long as tools are what are called more integrations and not necessarily scrapes. Typically, LinkedIn is actually OK with that. We're not seeing too many different things. For example, the tool Weasley that I've actually found is actually allowed to be integrated directly into your LinkedIn inbox through LinkedIn itself. It's not even like a third party tool and thing like Apollo that you have to use. So unfortunately, LinkedIn is always going to kind of always keep you in that gray area Because, again, at the end of the day, they don't want people to come in and use a bunch of automation that ruins the experience, which is what's happened, John, over the past 18 months.

18:56LinkedIn has been not an ideal experience for C-level execs and hire. You open up your inbox and there's 50 people a day that are providing zero value whatsoever. But there are tools that will at least allow you to make your life easy that LinkedIn doesn't. So another one that we use that has never gotten banned is Phantom Buster. Phantom Buster allows you to scrape anything possible that you can think of. Emails, contact information, post information. I mean, they have one, no exaggeration, probably 15 LinkedIn specific like scraping categories. We use that because, again, it counts as an integration.

19:27It's not actually integrating into the profile or anything like that. So those would be three tools that we have seen that not had any issues. That's typically minimum gray, if not in kind of that white hat type of space. I'm sorry to get so technical on that. I think people need to hear that. what are some you know there's basic measurement on on linkedin engagement new followers you know that kind of thing what are some ways to actually other than like getting meetings or getting sales what are some ways to measure your success if you will on linkedin so one of the biggest things i actually am always looking at is i'm looking at views and impressions that's typically what's defining my success if i can get this in as front of many eyes as possible like i've already mentioned, John, the conversion stuff will happen as time starts to go on and as you're doing things appropriately.

20:14So I'm typically looking at views and then I'm looking at kind of that engagement rate per views. And then I'm basically saying the same thing we teach people to do. How do I optimize to create content more like that or less like that? If I'm seeing that every time I mention or tagging someone is starting to work, well, then I'd say, hey, let's make sure that we're putting longer form content. Let's make sure we're doing more of that. I typically personally am defining to get by views and impressions. I want to get as many impressions as LinkedIn is going to allow me every single time. Lorenzo, I appreciate you stopping by and catching us up on LinkedIn.

20:47Where would you invite people to connect with you and find out more about the work at Socially In? Absolutely. Please jump onto LinkedIn. That's going to be Lorenzo Johnson. I'm one of the partners here at Socially In. Very excited to connect with you on there. And of course, John, I'll get you that direct link to our profile. To find out more information about our agency, please just simply go to www.sociallyin.com. You'll get an idea of not just the services that we provide. We have a wonderful case study section where you get to look at all the work that we've done, high quality, creative, and all of that good stuff as well.

21:17Look forward to having you all connect with me. Well, again, appreciate you stopping by and maybe we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road. That sounds like a plan, John. I appreciate you for having me. Thanks so much.

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