New Year, new playbook.

What's really gonna work for LinkedIn B2B marketing in 2026.

Let's take a look.

G'Day everyone.

It's Michelle J Raymond here and welcome back.

2026 has started.

We are off and racing.

And marketers, I wanna know, are you going into 2026 with your LinkedIn strategy with

confidence or lots more question marks?

Because I think you'd be forgiven if it was the latter

with lots of question marks.

Because ultimately there has been so many changes that went on on the platform in

2025 and they were fundamental changes.

The way that LinkedIn works now is very, very different to how it has previously.

Is it a good thing?

I'm not sure.

Time will tell.

And for me, I certainly went through a bumpy period as I've shared on

the podcast in, you know, previous episodes about what it was like for

me with the changes to the algorithm.

And now that we've got 360Brew, which is the engine that runs the algorithm, is

completely new technology for LinkedIn and that is really a game changer.

So I'm not saying throw out the playbook for your LinkedIn marketing, but I am

saying we really need to stop and take a look and I think the best place to start

for this is definitely going to be the fundamentals of what has actually changed.

I think it's important to understand what has changed and then what I think

will make the biggest difference.

And where do we go to from here?

What things do you need in your LinkedIn playbook for 2026.

That includes Company Pages, it includes how we get our employees active

and how we bring them all together.

Yay.

For the Power of Two.

That's not going outta fashion.

And certainly something I'll be more focused on in the podcast going forward.

So thank you to everyone that gave me so much support last year.

It just means the world to me, especially when you reach out and connect.

That makes my day.

So if you are someone that's new to the podcast, welcome.

Please do make sure that you connect with me on LinkedIn so that we can

stay in contact between episodes.

Before we go into what's changed, let's have a quick word from

our podcast sponsors, Metricool.

What's really changed on LinkedIn?

Let's start there and I think the most important place to start with the changes

is the definite shift on LinkedIn from a platform where you could pretty much do

most things for free and get away with it, to very much being a pay to play

platform and LinkedIn focusing on that.

So we definitely saw a lot of features being hidden behind paywalls.

A very big distinction between free accounts and premium accounts.

Rightly so.

It probably should have always been like that.

We've seen the rise of boost features, so LinkedIn enticing us to spend more

money on ads, not just as Company Pages, but also as individuals

now being able to boost our posts.

The actual people on the platform have changed.

We are now 70% Gen Z and also millennials are in that number, but Gen

Z really do own the LinkedIn platform.

And we're going to see more and more changes come through from LinkedIn

and features that they promote based on what will attract and

keep that audience on the platform.

LinkedIn's, coming up to a quarter of a century that it's been around

and been a part of our lives.

Some of you that are listening have probably been around for a long period

and seen all of these changes, and that's the only thing that we can be certain

of is that it will continue to change.

I think with that also comes the fact that the platform is more crowded than ever.

If I rewind the clock 10, 11 years, when I first started social selling on

LinkedIn, it really was what I realize now, such an amazing time to be on there.

You could post anything and get huge amounts of impressions.

You could connect with unlimited numbers of people.

It was just brilliant.

People would respond to your DMs because they didn't think that you were going

to sell them something straight away.

And ultimately also, you know, no ai, no automation.

Are we still using the term AI slop or when humans just copy each other,

does that really help our situation or say that we are better than ai?

I don't know.

There's so many things to think about when it comes to that particular topic.

Ultimately, when we're looking at these changes, 360Brew is now the

large language model that runs the LinkedIn algorithm behind the scenes.

How would I describe it?

Pretty much it's looking for signals from you at all times on who you are, what

you do, and what makes you different.

So making sure that your profile is updated, that

your Company Page is updated.

All of these things are really important as well as consistent

contact with our community and creating content that serves that community.

In a nutshell, we probably should have been doing that always, so there

shouldn't be any real big changes.

But if you are someone like me that has kind of neglected updating your

profile for a while, and certainly Company Pages are neglected in most

of the audits that I've ever done.

It's time for you to go back and actually do a bit of work on that.

But they're the main things that I think are changing.

So we're crowded, we're seeing more automation and Ai, and that pay

to play is really the significant shifts that have come through.

What difference does that make?

Let's have a look at that next.

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty fatigued from all of the shiny new

tools that promise the world, that are meant to make my life easier.

I'm not sure that they're actually delivering on that.

And I know that there's like a lot of content that is starting

to push back on is AI automation and all the tools we have, is that

really making us more productive?

I don't know.

How do you think?

So here we are in 2026, looking at what is the playbook that marketers need to take

into the year for their LinkedIn strategy.

What I can tell you is that these shiny new tools, no matter what they promise,

you are not going to ever be able to replace a weak LinkedIn strategy.

And I think this for me, is where I'm encouraging you listeners to

really stop focusing on content and go back a few steps and figure out

what is your game plan for LinkedIn?

Who are you showing up for?

How are you different to your competitors?

What is going to make you be a standout brand, a memorable brand

to end up on shortlists as all of the LinkedIn research would suggest?

How are you gonna actually do that before you create a piece of content?

Tools that help you produce content at scale and make you

feel like you're more productive.

If you haven't done the work on your positioning on your messaging and

getting clear around those things, then ultimately all you're doing is creating

noise at scale and you're not gonna get any closer to your business goals.

And this is something that I personally have been doing a lot

of work over the Christmas break.

Unfortunately, my brain went into hyper focus mode, which

it does from time to time.

And I realised that if I looked at my website, versus how I show up on this

podcast versus my LinkedIn content and all the other, you know, places that I am.

I had grown and evolved and I hadn't gone back and updated

things, so I rewrote my website.

Yep.

Really I did.

I have gone back and updated my LinkedIn Company Page and it's got new banners

and new about info, and I realised just how far I drifted off course.

So if you had come and landed via a search result on my website or on my

Page, or on my profile you would've been getting the wrong signals

from me and I should know better.

You know, I really should.

So for those of you who aren't from a marketing background,

and this isn't on your radar, it really is important to go back and

actually have a look at this stuff.

I think that 2026 is the year that those that go back to marketing fundamentals,

back to the core of why we are doing this, the core of who are we focused on?

Have you spent the last year with your brand really talking about

yourself or the company, more than being in service of your audience?

Like really, honestly, go back and take a look and think who are you

actually doing all of this for?

Because I know that I drifted off course and wasn't doing the right thing because

the immediate symptom of that, is I don't get intro calls from the right kinds of

people, or I don't get intro calls at the volume that I need to scale my business.

And so this is a symptom of a problem that when I went back and analysed,

it was really easily fixed, but something you need to make time for.

So fundamentals for the win.

Now that you have clarity around how your brand is going to show up in

the market, let's move on to looking at two pieces of the puzzle, your

LinkedIn Company Page, and also how employees will show up on LinkedIn.

And I call that the Power of Two.

How are we gonna bring these two things together?

The most important piece of this puzzle is taking a look at the Company Page.

How will that show up this year?

And it's really important to look at it differently through a different

lens, and that lens for me is all about the Company Page really being

the backbone of your strategy.

It is not something where your posts organically are gonna show up in the feed.

That's only gonna get worse as time goes on, but honestly, it's a silent

achiever in the back that shows up consistently, day after day, year after

year, regardless of how many people come and go within that business.

And when it's reliable and consistent, guess what?

360Brew loves that.

Not only does it love it, your team will also be guided by that experience as well.

And I think that's the important piece.

I want you to look at how you can use your Company Page differently.

No longer is it just posting content, talking about the business,

broadcasting at your audience.

And again, I don't think it was ever that, but we certainly have

so many examples of Company Pages that approach LinkedIn that way.

We've got something to say, you are following our page.

We are going to talk at you.

And then funny enough, they show up on the audit sessions that I do with

them and like all you do is talk about yourself, which is pretty boring.

And then you wonder why you're not getting any comments on the Company Page content.

Well, pretty much you were talking to yourself and that

is the result of doing that.

So with your Company Page, I want it to become the cheerleader for your

industry, whether that is for your teammates and other employees within the

business, no matter where they are in the world or whether it's your clients,

I want that Company Page to show up and start commenting and start liking

and engaging with posts and reposting where it makes sense strategically.

Right.

This is never a volume game that I'm talking about.

So think about how can you make your page active, and that's certainly something

that I'm gonna be discussing in more detail in future podcast episodes.

So make sure you follow the podcast so you don't miss out.

Let's talk about how employees play into this Company Page strategy, because you

really do need to bring them together.

That's the Power of Two.

That's exactly how every business should be working.

Company Pages there, your employees are there and we're all working together.

And if you've skipped over the strategy step that we spoke

about earlier, guess what?

Your employees won't have a clue what to do.

No different to the marketers running Company Pages.

Won't have a clue either.

And all that happens is they either post content that is not helpful on

any level, or they don't post it all, which again, is equally problematic.

So you have to figure out how are you gonna bring everyone together?

Strategy, strategy, strategy.

Have I said that enough on this episode?

Maybe not.

Uh, but ultimately we're gonna keep coming back to those fundamentals.

So that everybody knows which direction they're going.

Now, this doesn't mean that I am recommending that as a part of this

playbook for 2026 on LinkedIn, that you should go and prescribe every single

thing that employees should write about, provide all the graphics, make sure

that they only talk about the company.

That is definitely not what I am recommending.

You are gonna have people at all ends of the scale.

So if you want your employees to be active.

Strategy first, invest in training.

Do not assume that they know what to do.

Probably the biggest issue I saw in all of the teams that I worked with last

year is people think LinkedIn is easy.

Guess what?

LinkedIn isn't easy, like honestly it's not even for me that lives

and breathes and eats this stuff.

It really is tricky and it's getting harder as time goes on, not easier.

So give them guidance, set them up for success, and certainly don't try and force

people to do it and don't pretend that the business owns their personal account.

That is a recipe for disaster and certainly something I'm not encouraging,

but I'm definitely encouraging people getting in the same room and having

conversations, whether that's marketing and sales, the marketing and customer

service team, regional and global teams.

There are so many different ways that we can look at this.

So the Power of Two is your winning strategy.

The 2026, LinkedIn marketing for B2B reset is happening right now.

This is the day that I am encouraging you listeners to stop.

Don't post any more content until you've done the work to

really achieve that clarity.

Who are you showing up for?

What makes you different?

And what is it that you offer that solves a problem for these people

in a way that resonates with them?

And I've already done like some power hours this year, and it's been so good to

actually have conversations with people.

That what happened when business got tough in the second half of

last year and business dropped off, they decided to go broader and more

generic and blend in with the crowd to try and open up opportunities.

And the secret to success on LinkedIn is to actually go narrow.

And have that clarity so that you are the go-to recommended business or

person for the problem that you solve.

And if you are confused and broad, then everybody else will and you

miss out on those recommendations.

And also, 360Brew is developed to try and make these connections, but if you

are confused, then it will be confused.

And so the results that you will get on LinkedIn won't be

anywhere near what you're hoping.

Especially when we come out in the new year with so much enthusiasm

ready to do things different, we can take over the world and then boom.

Without clarity, things are just gonna fall over.

So clear, consistent positioning, messaging, that is how your

brand will stand out and actually achieve the results that you want.

Where possible.

I want you to think about how can you build systems around your LinkedIn

processes, built on your strategy where the Company Page and employees

work together and support each other.

No more marketers are looking after the Company Page.

The employee advocacy team are doing something else, and everybody

else is just running around 'cause they're not a part of those

programs doing whatever they want.

It's time to sit in the same room, figuratively or literally

if you can, and have conversations around what this would look like.

What's in it for everyone?

What is the purpose?

Where are you trying to get to?

How can it help individuals achieve their goals, as well as why it's important

for the individuals to help support the business to achieve its goals?

And this is something that I'm sure you can tell.

I'm super passionate about bringing things together, and you're gonna see

and hear more of that from me this year because I know that for myself, I got

so caught up in the shiny tools that were going to save the world and deliver

all this productivity that I got lost, and I forgot to focus on what matters.

I think that if together we do the work and stop and reset and

think, what is it that we wanna achieve from LinkedIn in 2026?

I'm not talking just about the number of posts that you'll do.

When we do that work, it will pay off, and I'm gonna do a series of these

episodes where we can dive into each of these areas a little bit more.

So Company Pages will be next and we'll talk about employees on LinkedIn

and really start to get into why this will make such a big difference, and

if we set ourselves up for success, I know that by the time we get to the

end of the year, you're really gonna have a brand that stands out and is

the obvious choice for your audience.

So if that sounds appealing to you, it's definitely where I am

going to be heading this year.

Until next week, cheers.