Nov 24 2025
The Founder-Led Growth Loop: How To Amplify And Measure Executive Voice For Real ROI via @sejournal, @purnavirji

In this series (here and here), I’ve covered why founder-led marketing works and the systems you need to stay consistent, based on the playbook I co-authored for LinkedIn (my employer).

You’ve built the content engine and the operational frameworks to avoid burnout. Now comes the final, most critical part: proving it works.

Your founder provides the authentic voice. Your job as the marketer is to amplify that voice to the entire market and build the measurement framework that proves to the board, “This is working.”

This is how you turn a content strategy into a scalable, predictable, full-funnel growth loop.

Part 1: Amplify What’s Already Working

Your founder’s organic content is resonating, but it’s only reaching their first-degree network. Why guess what might work when you can use data to amplify what’s already working?

This is the most efficient paid strategy you can run, because paid works better when it’s built on trust. Our playbook data shows that startups whose directors post actively already generate 33% more leads through their paid campaigns.

Your secret weapon is Thought Leader Ads (TLAs).

TLAs are a LinkedIn ad format that lets you promote posts from individuals – founders, employees, even customers – rather than just your company page. They look and feel like organic posts: authentic, human, and scroll-stopping.

In general, TLAs are a high-performing format resulting in 1.5x higher click-through-rates (CTRs), 30% more efficient cost-per-click (CPCs), and 2x follower growth.

Apply them to startups and the impact is even bigger:

  • 7.6x more engagement than any other paid ad format.
  • 5x higher video engagement with video TLAs than regular sponsored video ads.

This isn’t just a top-of-funnel awareness play. You can use TLAs to build a full-funnel machine:

  • Top-of-Funnel: Amplify your founder’s best “scar story” or “contrarian take” post to your entire Ideal Customer Profile.
  • Mid-Funnel: Retarget everyone who engaged with that TLA with a more direct offer, like a Conversation Ad or a Lead Gen Form for a webinar.
  • Bottom-of-Funnel: Add this engaged audience to your nurture sequences and track them as they become sales-qualified leads.

The foundation is your founder’s best organic posts. From there, you can plug them into a full-funnel paid strategy.

Part 2: Build The Measurement Framework

This strategy feels right, but you have to prove it.

The biggest challenge in founder-led marketing is that the most important metrics – trust, reputation, resonance – don’t show up on a simple dashboard. They show up in your deal velocity, your DMs, and the way people talk about you when you’re not in the room.

There are ways you can start to track these on LinkedIn. Let’s break it down.

First 90 Days: Track Leading Indicators

Validate whether your content is resonating before it drives pipeline:

  • Engagement quality: Comments from ideal customer profiles (ICPs), DMs received, reposts by peers.
  • Audience growth: Follower count, especially from target segments.
  • Conversation starters: Number of inbound messages or replies sparked by content.
  • Profile metrics: Track who’s viewing your profile after seeing your posts.

LinkedIn recently expanded its analytics for individual members, giving you more visibility into how your content performs. Under the “Analytics” tab, you can now track:

  • Profile views from a post.
  • Followers gained from a post.
  • Audience demographics (job title, industry, location).
  • Premium button clicks (if you have a custom CTA).

These metrics help you move beyond vanity metrics to start measuring resonance – what’s landing, with whom, and why.

What not to do: Obsess over engagement metrics, delete underperforming posts, or let your founder compare themself to established thought leaders. These habits will drain motivation before your systems are strong enough to carry them through the dip.

Next 90 Days: Track Momentum

Track how your content is influencing relationships and reputation:

  • Prospect mentions: Train your sales team to log every time a prospect mentions your founder’s content during calls.
  • Dark social mentions: Track when your content gets shared in private peer networks like Slack groups or email threads.
  • Content-influenced deals: Create a CRM field to tag every prospect who mentions your posts.

Scott Albro, TOPO founder, does this in Salesforce by creating a “content-influenced” deal stage and tagging every prospect who mentions posts, comments, or competitor reactions. Then he measures deal velocity and pipeline.

Irina Novoselsky, CEO of Hootsuite, shared her results in the playbook: “I just did the math on my daily LinkedIn commitment over the last 3 months—10M+ impressions generated. But most importantly, 37% of our monthly leads are influenced by my social presence.”

Her team saw measurable business impact:

  • Executive presence was mentioned more frequently in sales calls in Q1 2025 than in all of 2024.
  • Deals closed faster when buyers referenced her content.
  • Enterprise opportunities influenced by her social presence had higher ACV.

Kacie Jenkins, former SVP of Marketing at Sendoso, found that when a prospect followed one of their Director+ executives on LinkedIn, they saw 11% higher win rates and 120% larger closed-won deal sizes.

Peep Laja, CEO of Wynter, tracks self-reported attribution: “About 80% of people signing up for Wynter or scheduling a demo say they found me on LinkedIn.”

6 Months Onwards: Business Impact Metrics

Track your lagging indicators:

  • Increasing inbound pipeline: Gal Aga’s rule is “if 20%+ of your pipeline mentions your content, you’ve won”.
  • Increasing deal velocity: Deals with content-influenced leads close faster due to pre-established trust
  • Attracting talent: Job applicants cite your posts.
  • Owning your category: You’re increasingly referenced in industry conversations.

Connect The Paid Loop

This final step connects amplification and measurement. How do you prove your TLA spend is driving revenue?

Use LinkedIn’s Conversions API (CAPI) to connect your CRM and website data directly to LinkedIn. This gives you visibility into offline actions and helps you attribute pipeline.

LinkedIn’s revenue attribution tools let you measure impact at the business, campaign, and company level. One tech company using revenue attribution found 36% higher win rates and 37% shorter deal cycles.

Startup advisor Canberk Beker sums it up: “When founders connect their organic presence to paid strategy – and measure both direct and influenced pipeline – they see outsized ROI. We’ve proven that TLAs lift demo requests and drive cross-channel conversions.”

Your Role As The Growth Multiplier

A founder-led strategy is a game-changer for sales and marketing.

Your founder’s job is to be the authentic voice. Your job as the marketer is to build the machine around them.

By connecting an authentic organic strategy with a high-powered amplification lever and a sophisticated measurement framework, you create a complete growth loop.

This is the modern marketing engine, one that builds trust at scale and proves its impact on the bottom line.

All data, quotes, and examples cited above without a source link are taken from the “Founder-Led Sales and Marketing Never Ends” playbook.

More Resources:

Featured Image: eamesBot/Shutterstock

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Nov 5 2025
How Founders Are Turning Their LinkedIn Posts Into Larger Sales Deals [Webinar] via @sejournal, @itsduhnise

Build Influence, Drive Revenue, and Grow Faster

Your voice is your most underused business asset. 

Founders who post at least 10 times a year on LinkedIn: 

  • Generate 33% more leads.
  • Close deals that are 3.7x larger. 

The data speaks for itself.

In this live webinar, a rockstar team from LinkedIn will share new insights and proven strategies from their latest research on founder-led marketing. You’ll see how the most successful founders are transforming expertise into trust, reach, and revenue.

What You’ll Learn

  • The 3 story types that resonate most with buyers and how to capture ideas without adding hours to your week.
  • A proven approach for creating consistent, high-impact posts that don’t lead to burnout.
  • Which metrics actually matter and how to track real influence across your sales cycle.

Why You Should Attend

You’ll hear how brands like Aligned generated 65% of their leads through founder-led marketing, how Hootsuite’s CEO influenced $15M in pipeline, and how Wynter drove 80% of demo signups through this strategy.

Whether you’re pre-seed or scaling to Series B, this webinar will help you turn your own perspective into your strongest lead-generation engine.

Register now to learn how to use your voice to grow trust, visibility, and deal size.

🛑 Can’t make it live? Register anyway, and we’ll send you the on-demand recording.

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Nov 3 2025
Don’t Let Your Founder Burn Out: 4 Systems To Operationalize Thought Leadership via @sejournal, @purnavirji

In my last article, we covered strategies that turn a founder’s voice into a pipeline driver. The most common follow-up question I get then is about how to do it consistently without burning out.

Every minute a founder spends on LinkedIn is a minute they aren’t building, hiring, or selling. This is the number one reason most founder-led content strategies fail: They start strong, then disappear. Many fail to make it past 90 days.

The data from our LinkedIn (my employer) playbook confirms the stakes: startup director+ who post at least 9x a year see 3x more engagement and 4x more new followers than those who post only once. But trust isn’t built on viral moments. It’s built over time.

That means you’ll need more than inspiration or willpower to go the distance. The solution is to build systems to operationalize your founder’s creativity.

Now, it might sound counterintuitive. Creativity is a nebulous, free-flowing concept. And operationalizing it can sound … restrictive. I promise you it’s not. Think of it as building the foundation and scaffolding to strengthen and support creativity, allowing your founders (or you!) to stay consistent without burning out. And actually enjoy the process along the way.

Here are four systems you can build to maintain consistency.

1. Build A Central Content Bank

Stop hunting for ideas every week and start building a repository.

This shared document – a simple Google Doc or Notion page works fine – becomes your single source of truth that you and your founder can both contribute to.

Your content bank should include:

  • ICP Profiles: Quick reference of customer pain points, objections, and goals.
  • Post Ingredients: Running list of “scar stories,” customer insights, contrarian takes, and company stats.
  • Hook Library: Collection of proven opening lines ready to deploy.
  • “What’s Worked” File: Log of top-performing posts to repurpose formats.

Most importantly, include a “Creative Block” list. When your founder gets stuck, whip out one of these prompts for instant inspiration:

  • “What’s something I wish I knew six months ago?”
  • “What’s a mistake I made this week?”
  • “What’s a customer question I keep hearing?”
  • “What’s a belief I’ve changed my mind about?”
  • “What’s an intelligent risk I took that paid off?”
  • “What most energized me this week?”

This bank is a sanity saver. Rather than stare at blank screens waiting for inspiration to strike, your founder now has a library of proven material ready to deploy.

2. Establish A Repeatable Content Rhythm

Inspiration is fickle. A schedule is reliable.

Help your founder build a repeatable rhythm for content creation by batch creating their content during set content creation time blocks. Gal Aga, CEO of Aligned, blocks off time on Sundays to create his three posts for the upcoming week.

He follows a simple formula:

  • 1 Scar Story (e.g., “We lost $500,000 because…”)
  • 1 Contrarian Take (e.g., “Why [industry belief] is wrong”)
  • 1 Customer Insight (e.g., “What 17 buyers told me about…”)

Another approach comes from Peep Laja, CEO of Wynter, who runs original survey-based research one to two times per month. This system gives him a week’s worth of unique, proprietary content that no competitor has.

The specific rhythm matters less than having one. Pick a day, pick a format, and stick with it long enough to build momentum.

3. Create A “Capture” System

Your founder is already creating content. It’s just trapped in their daily conversations. Your job is to build a system to capture it.

The simplest method? Voice memos.

As humans, we talk faster than we can type. Encourage your founder to record a one- to two-minute voice memo on their phone right after a customer call or whenever an idea strikes. You can then transcribe these notes and turn them into the first draft of a post ready for them to edit. This can save as much as 80% of the writing time and gives you loads more raw material for posts.

A more hands-on approach is to “interview” your founder. As Kacie Jenkins, former SVP of Marketing at Sendoso, explains: “It’s important to work with your exec team to identify how they best think and reflect, and then build on that.”

Book 30 minutes on their calendar, hit record, and ask them questions from your “creative block” list. This gives you authentic, first-person soundbites that can be turned into a week’s worth of text posts and video clips.

The key is reducing friction between having an idea and capturing it. Make it as easy as talking into their phone.

4. Use AI As A System Multiplier

When things get busy, AI can help you maintain consistency. Instead of using it to write posts, use it to operationalize your founder’s insights.

  • Turn voice notes into drafts: Feed an AI tool the transcript from a voice memo and ask: “Summarize this into two to three post ideas” or “What’s the most compelling insight here?”
  • Build your content bank faster: Feed the AI a batch of past posts and ask: “What themes do I keep coming back to?” or “Which ideas could become a series?”
  • Capture their authentic voice: Arvind Jain, founder of Glean, shared how his team took this approach further. They built an AI agent trained on transcripts from his past speaking engagements. Now, every draft runs through the agent for tone and polish before it’s shared, ensuring it sounds authentically like him.

AI doesn’t replace your founder’s thinking or creativity. It removes the friction between their ideas and published content.

Systems Create Stamina

A high-impact founder brand takes months to grow. The initial discomfort of building these systems is the barrier to entry that keeps most competitors out.

Your competitors are waiting for inspiration. By building systems, you create stamina. You reduce friction, align content creation with your founder’s existing work, and build the consistency required to turn their expertise into trust, pipeline, and authority.

The founders who win at this aren’t the most creative or the best writers. They’re the ones who built systems that let them show up consistently, even when inspiration doesn’t.

All data, quotes, and examples cited above without a source link are taken from the “Founder-Led Sales and Marketing Never Ends” playbook.

More Resources: 

Featured Image: Master1305/Shutterstock

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Oct 20 2025
3 LinkedIn Strategies To Turn Your Founder’s Voice Into A Pipeline Driver via @sejournal, @purnavirji

Your founder’s voice is your startup’s most valuable – and often most underleveraged – asset. I see this so often with startup leaders. They either avoid posting on LinkedIn (my employer) entirely or default to product features and sales pitches.

That results in the all-too-familiar rotation of hot takes, motivational quotes, and business updates that rarely spark real engagement.

There’s a difference between broadcasting and building relationships. The leaders who build true influence understand that. They build connection, trust, awareness, and pipeline by sharing lessons, stories, and insights that only they can offer. And build consistent formats for sharing their expertise to make it stick.

But should a founder’s way-too-packed schedule also include content creation? Let me help you answer that by asking you another question: When I mention Melanie Perkins, Rand Fishkin, and Marc Benioff, which companies come to mind?

You likely thought Canva, SparkToro, and Salesforce, right? That connection between founder and company is strategic. And a real growth driver.

This shift toward founder-led growth has caught the attention of major companies. PayPal’s job opening for Head of CEO content went viral on LinkedIn. Since then, Virio recently posted a Head of Content role paying $500,000 to $1.5 million annually. OpenAI posted a Content Strategist role paying $310,000 to $393,000 annually. Perplexity posted roles for Content Managers at $130,000 to $170,000 a year. These are strategic investments in executive voice as a growth lever.

According to LinkedIn’s new Founder-Led Sales and Marketing Playbook (which I co-authored), startups whose founders post consistently see 33% more leads, up to 3.7x higher deal sizes when prospects follow executives, and 22% faster deal velocity when buyers feel they “know” the founder.

So, how do time-pressed founders create content that drives revenue? Here are three strategies to turn your founder voice into trust, pipeline, and tangible revenue:

1. Lead With Perspective, Not Product

Most founder content reads like a brochure: “We help X do Y!”. While it’s tempting to go straight for the sale, people tend to scroll right past sales pitches. The less you talk about your product, the more people want to buy it.

As Gal Aga, CEO of Aligned, explains in the playbook:

“First, [people] listen to you, they feel like they’re deeply connected, they love the ideas you put out, they trust you, and then they have to check out what you do”.

People buy from people they trust, and the fastest way to build trust is through storytelling. Scott Albro, founder of Goldie, recommends three powerful story types that build trust.

  • Customer Priority Stories position you as someone who understands the market rather than someone selling to it. Instead of “Our AI optimizes workflows,” try “Today, I met with seven independent pizza shop owners in Brooklyn. Their top issue? Managing order flow during peak hours, usually from 6 to 9 p.m…” You’re demonstrating market insight, not making a sales pitch.
  • Transformational Shift Stories help people navigate change. “Right now, most pizza shop owners are upgrading their POS to better time pickups and deliveries. In the future, there’s an opportunity for AI to predict orders before they even arrive…” You’re painting a picture of industry evolution without positioning your product as the solution.
  • Personal Journey Stories build credibility through vulnerability. “After college, I opened a pizza shop. I managed everything with paper and pen. I didn’t know the first thing about restaurants or technology, but I knew I wanted to make great pizza and support pizza makers…”

Don’t shy away from sharing mistakes or moments of vulnerability – these are often the posts that create an emotional connection and make the founder memorable.

2. Turn Your Daily Interactions Into Content Gold

Your calendar is a content buffet. Every customer call, demo, and “aha” moment is a story waiting to be told. The challenge is to spot the content hiding in your day-to-day interactions.

As Alec Paul, founder of SalesBrand, puts it:

“Treat your life like content. Be more like a journalist. You’re talking to customers every day. You’re the most connected to the pains that you’re solving. No one should know this stuff more than you”.

Try this: After each customer call, ask yourself three questions:

  • What surprised me? (That’s your contrarian take.)
  • What bothered me? (That’s your polarizing hook.)
  • What lesson would save others pain? (That’s your high-resonance post.)

Now transform these insights into specific content formats that resonate.

  • Op-Eds let you take a stance based on what you’re seeing. “We almost didn’t launch our analytics feature because early users said it was too complex. Here’s the data that changed our minds.” You’re sharing your decision-making process, not just the final decision.
  • Behind-The-Scenes Features reveal the “why” behind major choices. “I promoted the wrong person. Here’s what happened and how we recovered.” This builds trust through transparency rather than perfection.
  • Customer Interviews: Turn a direct customer quote into a hook. Example: “‘Your product is too expensive.’ What they really meant was…”  You’re addressing common concerns while demonstrating market understanding.

Don’t wait for inspiration. Build a habit of jotting down insights as they happen. Over time, you’ll have a content bank that’s uniquely yours—no one else can replicate it.

3. Pack A Punch With Each Post

Now that you’re spotting stories, let’s make sure they land. Which also leads me to the section on questions I get the most often as a LinkedIn employee: What content and creative tends to work the best on the platform? Here’s what I advise for founder-led growth and executive thought leadership:

Start With Hooks That Stop Scrollers

Your hook is your headline. If it doesn’t make someone pause, the rest doesn’t matter. Gal Aga rewrites posts that don’t get traction in the first 15-30 minutes – his benchmark is one to two likes per minute.

Most people post what’s obvious. Obvious is forgettable; specific is magnetic. Instead of “AI is changing everything,” try “AI is exposing measurement vulnerabilities that always existed.” The second version creates curiosity about what those vulnerabilities might be.

Embrace Depth Over Brevity

LinkedIn data shows posts between 400-800 words generate nearly three times more engagement than those under 50 words.

As Gal notes:

“Short ‘influencer style’ ideas are nice. But for me, the real impact comes from giving people deep advice. Something they can present at a sales kick-off, a playbook, a strategy, a research breakdown, etc.”

Don’t be afraid to go deep if you’re solving real problems. Your audience will thank you for it.

Use Video To Scale Credibility

Video is the fastest-growing language of trust in B2B.

Rand Fishkin, who was early to video in B2B, explains:

“When I first started experimenting with video as a B2B content format back in 2007, I noticed a strange thing: the number of viewers was far lower than our usual blog readers, but the level of engagement, memory, and brand association was WAY higher.”

LinkedIn’s data supports this approach:

  • Video creation is growing 2x faster than any other format.
  • 98% of Fortune 500 CEOs who use social media choose LinkedIn as their primary platform.
  • 63% of B2B buyers say video content helps inform their buying decisions.

Rand’s advice is to not overthink it.

“My full video creation process is incredibly easy, and takes me less time than writing a blog post – as little as 10 minutes to film, upload, and publish a two- to five-minute piece.”

Find Your “Prolific Zone”

This is the narrow band between “obvious” and “outrageous” where your content is authentic, polarizing, and painfully relevant.

Two approaches to try:

  • Challenge conventional wisdom: “Always be closing is dead. Here’s how we 3x’d revenue by firing our SDR team.”
  • Share taboo truths: “Why we let 80% of customers churn…on purpose.”

Track the pushback. If <10% of comments are negative>30%, you’ve gone too far. Somewhere in the middle means you’re onto something.

Work With The Algorithm

Drive the engagement you want by putting the “social” back in social media.

  • Tag people thoughtfully.
  • Ask meaningful questions to boost engagement.
  • Reply to comments, especially in the first few hours.
  • Post 3x a week, ideally between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. in your audience’s time zone (generally speaking).

Before You Hit Publish, Use The Punch Test

  • Does this make someone feel something? (Emotion).
  • Does this make someone think differently? (Insight).
  • Does this make someone want to respond or share? (Action).

If the answer is yes to at least two, you’re good to go.

The Compound Effect Of Consistency

LinkedIn’s data tells a clear story: Startups whose directors post at least nine times a year see 3x more engagement and 4x more new followers than those who post only once. Trust is built over time, and a high-impact founder brand takes months to grow.

Sendoso saw an 11% higher win rate when prospects were exposed to LinkedIn posts from Director+ executives, and 120% higher closed-won deal sizes when prospects followed Director+ executives on LinkedIn.

These are clear signals. When Gal Aga says, “If 20%+ of your pipeline mentions your content, you’ve won,” he’s talking about attribution you can measure.

Your Move

The market doesn’t need another polished corporate account. It needs real humans solving real problems. That’s you. Every founder has a story – the ones who tell it well build companies, and movements.

Your competitors are either avoiding this entirely or outsourcing their voice to expensive content teams. That creates an opening. While they’re hiring $500,000 content strategists, you can build authentic influence by sharing what only you know.

Start with one post this week. Share a lesson from your last customer call. Take a stance on an industry trend you disagree with. Show the human side of a business decision.

Your expertise is already there. Your audience is waiting. The founders who act now will own the narrative tomorrow.

All data, quotes, and examples cited above without a source link are taken from the “Founder-Led Sales and Marketing Never Ends” playbook.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Master1305/Shutterstock

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Aug 27 2025
LinkedIn Study: Professionals Trust Their Networks Over AI & Search via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

LinkedIn reports that professionals are more likely to seek workplace advice from people they know than from AI tools or search engines.

A new LinkedIn study finds that 43% turn to their networks first, with nearly two-thirds saying colleagues help them decide faster and with more confidence.

Key Findings

LinkedIn’s research indicates that professional networks rank ahead of AI and search for advice at work, with 43% naming their network as the first stop.

Sixty-four percent say colleagues improve the quality and speed of decision-making. The study also notes an 82% rise in posts about feeling overwhelmed or navigating change, suggesting that people are looking for clarity from trusted human voices.

Pressure To Learn AI

Learning about AI is causing stress for many people. Over half (51%) say upskilling feels like a second job, 33% feel embarrassed about their knowledge, and 35% feel nervous discussing AI at work.

Additionally, 41% say the fast pace of AI changes affects their well-being. Younger workers, especially Gen Z, are more likely to exaggerate their AI skills compared to Gen X.

Among those aged 18 to 24, 75% believe AI cannot replace the intuition from trusted colleagues. This aligns with the finding that people prefer advice from known experts, especially when the stakes are high.

Implications For B2B Buying And Marketing

The study shows that 77% of B2B marketing leaders say audiences rely on both a company’s channels and their professional networks. Millennials and Gen Z now represent 71% of B2B buyers, leading marketers to invest in trusted individuals within those networks.

Eighty percent of marketers plan to increase spending on community-driven content featuring creators, employees, and experts. They believe that trusted creators are key to building credibility with younger buyers.

This highlights that social discovery and community participation matter as much as search rankings. Content that’s easy to share and linked to recognized experts may reach more people than generic brand messages.

Why This Matters

As professionals turn to their networks for advice, you may need to adjust how you build trust and generate demand.

You can do this by encouraging your employees to share messages, working with trusted creators, and creating expert-led content that’s easy to find on social media.

While traditional SEO and paid ads still matter, networks can affect how people find, discuss, and validate your content before they visit your website.

Looking Ahead

As more people use AI, professionals are learning to combine new tools with their own judgment. Marketers can gain lasting benefits by focusing on building real relationships, rather than just mastering AI tools.

Methodology

The findings are based on research commissioned by LinkedIn and conducted by Censuswide. The study included 19,268 professionals and 7,000 B2B marketers from 14 countries, conducted from July 3 to July 15, 2025.

The percentages and program details mentioned above are taken directly from LinkedIn’s pressroom post.

Featured Image: Nurulliaa/Shutterstock

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Jul 30 2025
B2B Marketing Is Starting to Look a Lot Like B2C (And It’s Working) via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

B2B marketers are taking a page from the B2C playbook and seeing real results.

According to LinkedIn’s B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, strategies once considered too informal for business audiences, like short-form video and influencer collabs, are now central to building trust and driving growth.

The study, based on responses from 1,500 senior marketers across six countries, found that 94% believe trust is the key to success in B2B.

But many brands are moving away from traditional lead-gen tactics and turning instead to emotionally resonant content and credible voices.

Lee Moskowitz, Growth Marketer and Podcast Host at Lee2B, is quoted in the report:

“We’re in an era of ‘AI slop,’ long sales cycles and growing buying committees. Brands need to build trust, prove their expertise and earn their place in the buying process.”

This shift toward more consumer-style tactics is evident in the adoption of video content across B2B teams.

B2B Video Marketing Hits a Tipping Point

Video is now foundational to B2B marketing, with 78% of marketers including it in their programs and over half planning to increase investments in the coming year.

Screenshot from: youtube.com/@LinkedInMktg, July 2025.

The most successful teams aren’t using video in isolation, they’re building multi-channel strategies that map to different funnel stages.

According to LinkedIn’s data, marketers with a video strategy are:

  • 2.2x more likely to say their brand is well trusted
  • 1.8x more likely to say their brand is well known

Popular formats include short-form social clips, brand storytelling, and customer testimonials. Content types long associated with B2C engagement are now proving effective in B2B.

Screenshot from: linkedin.com/business/marketing/blog/marketing-collective/2025-b2b-marketing-benchmar-the-video-influence-effect-starts-with-trust, July 2025.

AJ Wilcox, founder of B2Linked, states in the report:

“Capturing that major B2B deal requires trust, and nothing builds trust faster than personal video content. I feel more trusting of a brand after watching a 1-min clip of their founder talking than if I read five of their blog posts.”

B2B Influencer Marketing Moves Into the Mainstream

Fifty-five percent of marketers in the study said they now work with influencers. The top reasons include trust, authenticity, and credibility.

B2B influencers are typically subject matter experts, practitioners, or respected voices in their fields. And their impact appears to be tied to business outcomes: 84% of marketers using influencer marketing expect budget increases next year, compared to just 58% of non-users.

Brendan Gahan, CEO and Co-Founder of Creator Authority, states:

“This feels like a YouTube moment. LinkedIn is entering that same phase now. It already generates more weekly comments than Reddit. Its creator ecosystem is thriving and growing fast.”

Buyers trust people they relate to. Marketers are shifting their influencer strategies to reflect that, prioritizing alignment and authority over follower counts.

Screenshot from: linkedin.com/business/marketing/blog/marketing-collective/2025-b2b-marketing-benchmar-the-video-influence-effect-starts-with-trust, July 2025.

What This Means

Trust signals are becoming more important across the board, especially as search engines continue to emphasize expertise, authority, and trust (E-E-A-T). Relying on blog posts alone may no longer be enough to demonstrate what your brand stands for.

Video gives you a way to show expertise in a more personal, credible way. Whether it’s a founder explaining your product or a customer sharing their experience.

For long sales cycles and complex buying decisions, what’s working now looks a lot more human: authentic voices, visible experts, and content that’s easy to connect with.

Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

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Apr 15 2025
LinkedIn Study Finds Adding Links Boosts Engagement By 13% via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

A new study of over 577,000 LinkedIn posts challenges common marketing advice. It finds that posts with links get 13.57% more interactions and 4.90% more views than posts without links.

The LinkedIn study by Metricool analyzed nearly 48,000 company pages over three years. The findings give marketers solid data to rethink their LinkedIn strategies.

Link Performance Contradicts Common Advice

For years, social media experts have warned against adding links in LinkedIn posts.

Many claimed the platform would show these posts to fewer people to keep users on LinkedIn.

This new research says that’s wrong.

The data shows that about 31% of LinkedIn posts contained links to other websites. These posts consistently did better than posts without links.

Image Credit: Metricool LinkedIn Study 2025.

Content Format Performance Reveals Unexpected Winners

The study also found big differences in how content types perform.

Carousels (document posts) work best for engagement, with the highest engagement rate (45.85%) of any format. People on LinkedIn are willing to spend time clicking through multiple slides.

Polls are a missed opportunity. They make up only 0.00034% of all posts analyzed but got 206.33% more reach than average posts. Almost no one uses them, but they perform well.

Text-only posts performed worse than visual content across all metrics. Despite being common, they received the fewest interactions.

Video Content Shows Remarkable Growth

LinkedIn video content grew by 53% last year, with engagement up by 87.32%. This growth is faster than on TikTok, Reels, and YouTube.

The report states:

“Video posting may have increased by 13.77%, but the real story is in the rise of impressions (+73.39%) and views (+52.17%). Users are engaging more with video content, which indicates that LinkedIn is prioritizing this format in its algorithm.”

Industry-Specific Insights

The research broke down performance by industry. Surprisingly, sectors with smaller followings often get better engagement.

Manufacturing and utilities companies had fewer followers than education or retail companies, yet they received more engagement per post.

This challenges the idea that having more followers automatically means better results.

Practical Tips for Marketers

Based on these findings, here’s what LinkedIn marketers should do:

  • Don’t avoid links: Include links when they add value. They help, not hurt, your posts.
  • Mix up your content: Use more carousels and polls. They perform much better than other formats.
  • Send more traffic through LinkedIn: With clicks up 28.13% year-over-year, LinkedIn is better than many think for driving website traffic.
  • Be realistic about follower growth: Only 17.68% of accounts gained followers in 2024. Growing a LinkedIn following is harder than on other platforms.

Looking Ahead

The Metricool report challenges fundamental LinkedIn marketing beliefs with solid data. The most useful finding for SEO and content marketers is that adding links helps rather than hurts your posts.

Marketers should regularly test old advice against real performance data. What worked on LinkedIn in the past might not work in 2025.

Featured Image: Jartee/Shutterstock

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Apr 15 2025
LinkedIn Launches New Creator Hub With Content Strategy Tips via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

LinkedIn has launched a new “Create on LinkedIn” hub that helps professionals create better content, understand their stats, and use different post types.

The new hub is organized into three main sections: Create, Optimize, and Grow. It also includes a Creator Tools section with specific advice for each post format.

This resource offers helpful tips straight from LinkedIn for people using it to grow their business, build their brand, or share industry expertise.

Screenshot from: https://members.linkedin.com/create, April 2025.

Content Creation Best Practices

The “Create” section explains what makes a good LinkedIn post. It highlights four key parts:

  • A catchy opening that grabs attention
  • Clear, simple messaging
  • Your personal view or unique angle
  • Questions that start conversations

LinkedIn suggests posting 2-5 times weekly to build your audience, noting that “consistency helps you build community.”

The guide recommends these popular content topics:

  • Career advice and personal lessons
  • Industry knowledge and expertise
  • Behind-the-scenes workplace stories
  • Thoughts on industry trends
  • Stories about overcoming challenges

Analytics-Driven Content Optimization

The “Optimize” section shows how to use LinkedIn’s analytics to improve your strategy. It suggests these four steps:

  1. Regularly check how many people see and engage with your posts
  2. Adjust when you post based on when your audience is most active
  3. Set goals using your average performance numbers
  4. Make more content similar to your best-performing posts

Format-Specific Creator Tools

One of the most useful parts for marketers is the breakdown of LinkedIn’s different content types. Each comes with specific tips and technical requirements:

Video Content

LinkedIn says “videos build trust faster” and reveals that “85% of videos watched on LinkedIn are viewed on mute.” This makes subtitles a must.

The guide suggests keeping videos short (60-90 seconds) and posting them directly on LinkedIn instead of sharing links.

Text and Images

For regular posts, LinkedIn stresses being real:

“People want to learn from those they feel a connection to, so it’s best to be yourself.”

It suggests focusing on specific topics rather than broad ones.

Screenshot from: members.linkedin.com/create-tools, April 2025.

Newsletters

You can create newsletters if you have over 150 followers and have posted original content in the last 90 days.

LinkedIn recommends posting on a regular schedule and using eye-catching cover videos.

Screenshot from: members.linkedin.com/create-tools, April 2025.

Live Events

LinkedIn Live lets you stream to your audience using third-party broadcasting tools if you qualify. To help you get the best results, LinkedIn offers tips before, during, and after your event.

Screenshot from: members.linkedin.com/create-tools, April 2025.

Why This Matters

While organic reach has dropped on many social platforms, LinkedIn still offers good visibility opportunities.

The content strategy advice matches what many marketers already do on other platforms. However, it provides specific insights into how LinkedIn’s algorithm works and what its users prefer.

Next Steps for Marketers

LinkedIn’s focus on analytics and testing different content types shows it wants users to be more strategic.

Check out this new resource to update your LinkedIn strategies. The format details are especially helpful for optimizing your content.

With over 1 billion professionals on LinkedIn, the platform is essential for B2B marketing, promoting professional services, and building thought leadership.

Smart marketers will include these approaches in their social media plans.

Featured Image: Fanta Media/Shutterstock

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