Co-Founder & M.D @ Louder.Online

As a businessman,  entrepreneur, and author, I've spent 16 years reshaping the landscape of our industry. 

Co-founding Louder.Online 16 years ago was the beginning of a journey that has led to global recognition, transformative partnerships, and multiple successful ventures.

Some of my journey's highlights include:

→ Co-authored the book "Faster, Smarter, Louder"
→ Consulted for Fortune 100 clients including Salesforce, Intel, IBM, Coca-Cola, and Target
→ Authored over 1,000 articles for major publications like Forbes, HubSpot, and Entrepreneur
→ Recognized as a thought leader by Content Marketing Institute and Search Engine Journal
→ Delivered speeches across the US, UK, Asia, and Australia

As a serial entrepreneur, I've:

→ Co-founded Louder.Online, recognized among the top 25 Martech Companies in Asia-Pacific
→ Started multiple businesses across various industries
→ Launched an M&A education business focused on small business acquisitions
→ Developed expertise in multi-channel marketing, SEO, PPC, CRO, and content marketing

My work has garnered attention from prestigious media outlets:

→ Featured in The Huffington Post, Forbes, and the Sydney Morning Herald
→ Regular contributor to HubSpot, Entrepreneur, and Fortune
→ Guest on popular podcasts like Mixergy and Entrepreneur on Fire

My approach goes beyond traditional marketing. I create actionable, thoughtful strategies that not only deliver new customers but build lasting brand relationships. 

If you're looking to revolutionize your digital presence, explore business acquisition opportunities, or drive your brand into the future, let's connect.

Aaron Agius

I’ve watched outdated SEO strategies die in real time.

The digital graveyard is full of businesses that thought lazy, generic SEO could win.

90% of “professionals” are still playing that losing game.

Do you honestly think you’re different?

Most still build SEO on wishful thinking:
➔ Pick random keywords
➔ Stuff them into useless content
➔ Chase backlinks like desperate attention-seekers

That’s exactly how Strategy B self-destructed.

Here’s how you actually dominate SEO today, and what Strategy A did:

Content & Intent
➔ Educational content solving real market pain points
➔ Surgical alignment with sector-specific search intent

Optimization & Testing
➔ Real-time, data-driven adaptation—not set-and-forget
➔ Technical excellence: site speed, mobile-first, UX
➔ A/B testing like a sniper, not spray-and-pray

Metrics & Authority
➔ Focus on real metrics: traffic, conversions, revenue
➔ Targeted, high-authority links earned intelligently

I use nothing except what delivers measurable, aggressive results.

Strategy A didn’t just beat Strategy B—it obliterated it: 4.2x more traffic, more revenue, more engagement.

Why? It was engineered to annihilate inferiority.

Without precision, relevance, and data, you’re irrelevant.

Your competitors who do invest in these will outpace, out-earn, and erase you.

Strong CTAs help—but strong brands are better.

Make people WANT to buy from you.

Don’t force them.

If your SEO is still on autopilot, you’re not just falling behind—you’re already buried.

The fastest way to kill an agency isn’t bad SEO; it’s hiring people who ‘know SEO.’

Join the top 1% of agency leaders by facing this truth:
Your obsession with “SEO experience” is suffocating your future.

Most agencies cling to experience like a life raft.

They treat it as gospel.

A shortcut to credibility.

But experience has quietly become a straitjacket.

The harder you demand it, the more you guarantee stagnation.

Ask yourself who’s really moving your agency forward: rule-followers, or rule-breakers?

I’ve watched agencies collapse under the weight of “proven” tactics and “seasoned” hires.

Creativity didn’t die.

It was choked out by predictable resumes and recycled solutions.

SEO innovation has never come from playing by the book.

Yet agencies keep hiring carbon copies of their competitors.

That isn’t strategy—it’s delusion.

Here’s the reality:

Experience doesn’t guarantee relevance.

It creates echo chambers.

It filters out the renegades: the ones bold enough to ask, “Why are we still doing this?”

SEO today doesn’t reward mastery of 2012 tactics.

It rewards people who see new patterns and act before consensus forms.

The agencies leading this industry aren’t run by veterans clutching dusty playbooks.

They’re driven by talent with audacity, curiosity, and vision.

This isn’t an argument for ignorance.

Technical skill matters, but only as a foundation.

Without creativity layered on top, it’s useless.

Hire safe, and you’ll rank safe.

And safe is invisible.

Keep demanding “SEO experience required,” and you’ll keep getting substandard work. 

Interchangeable campaigns. Predictable outcomes. Slow decline.

If you want to win, hire people who challenge you.

Who ask better questions instead of reciting old answers.

Break your addiction to experience as a proxy for value, or accept average results.

Because the future belongs to agencies willing to reject the default.

Your move.

Why 'SEO Experience Required' Is Killing Agency Innovation

You think office perks keep talent loyal?

Try locking a strong engineer into an outdated tech stack, then watch how fast the kombucha bar stops mattering.

The modern workplace does not lose top performers because snacks are poorly picked.

It loses them because leaders micromanage tools instead of trusting professionals.

Read that again.

How most teams think retention works:
➔ Free lunches and unlimited coffee
➔ Nap pods and ping-pong tables
➔ Trendy offices with beanbags

How retention actually works:
➔ Real autonomy to choose, test, and deploy the right technology
➔ Zero tolerance for legacy systems that choke creativity
➔ Trust in the people closest to the work to define what drives results

Ask your best developer what matters more: her keyboard or the pizza in the breakroom.

If she’s any good, she’ll dismiss the perks and ask for freedom to use the right tools.

Here’s what tech stack autonomy delivers:
➔ Teams focused on outcomes, not optics
➔ Faster cycles without friction from outdated software
➔ A culture that attracts serious talent
➔ Skill growth that compounds through real problem-solving

You don’t see elite companies leading with office perks.

You see them winning because they invest in adaptable tech and let experts decide what works.

Retention is not about dopamine hits from free stuff.

It’s about respecting intelligence.

Perks often mask deeper dysfunction.

Rigid tools signal control, not stability.

Top performers want environments where they can break, rebuild, and improve their own stack.

Anything less tells them they will be more valuable somewhere else.

If perks are still your retention strategy, competitors are already recruiting your team.

Strong CTAs matter.

But strong brands matter more.

Make people want to work for you.

Don’t try to trap them.

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Why Tech Stack Freedom Matters More Than Office Perks

I stopped solely chasing Google rankings years ago and scaled my businesses to seven figures while competitors stayed stuck on the keyword hamster wheel.

Most people still treat traditional SEO like a lifeline.

That’s why growth feels slow, visibility is inconsistent, and progress looks like motion without momentum.

The playbook is outdated, even if it’s familiar.

My domination strategy:
➔ Eliminate dependency on Google
➔ Distribute hyper-targeted content across syndication, affiliates, and dark social
➔ Automate omnipresence so my audience can’t avoid the message

Too aggressive? That’s usually what unqualified marketers say before irrelevance catches up.

Week to week, I’m outpacing competitors by:
➔ Building distribution networks that bypass search entirely
➔ Partnering with affiliates who reach audiences Google never will
➔ Seeding dark social with conversion-first assets that collapse the discovery cycle

Alongside that:
➔ I run automation pipelines that deploy content before rivals even react
➔ I choose syndication channels where brand control is absolute
➔ I use precision micro-distribution that bloated SaaS tools can’t replicate

What worked?

Killing SEO dependency.

No waiting. No link begging. No algorithm worship.

I move faster and command attention while others tweak metadata.

What doesn’t work?

Playing it safe: incremental keyword gains, endless dashboard watching, and hoping rankings turn into momentum.

Anyone still glued to Search Console is ignoring how fast this market moves.

This works because control beats compliance.

I refuse to let an algorithm designed to flatten ambition dictate my growth.

I build distribution that’s automated, precise, and relentless, so omnipresence is engineered, not earned.

Comfort kills scale.

If you want real growth, stop digging through SEO fossils and start building systems that can’t be throttled.

The future belongs to those who own distribution, not those waiting to be ranked.

Most digital marketing teams celebrated today are bloated relics, propped up by outdated thinking.

Everyone wants elite performance, yet almost no one wants to accept what it actually requires.

What I see with top enterprise clients is a very different model.

It is not stacked talent or big personalities.

It is precision, alignment, and results. Nothing else.

Here is where most digital teams fail.

They worship vanity metrics.

They stay busy with meetings, reports, and headcount growth that leads to stagnation.

Their structures mirror yesterday’s failures, not tomorrow’s wins.

They talk about analytics while guessing which levers matter.

Now compare that to what actually works.

I align marketing with sales, product, and customer success so no message conflicts.

Analytics should be foundational, not decorative. Data drives every assignment.

In addition:
➔ Every hire is intentional: there are no “nice-to-have” roles
➔ Roles are built for one clear outcome, not inflated resumes
➔ If a tool or automation does not drive progress, it is not purchased

What worked for me was relentless prioritization.

Teams must be built for impact, not appearance.

Trendy tools without measurable lift are wasted spend.

What never worked was growing teams for ego.

Chasing trends.

Separating marketing from sales and product.

If a team is not aligned around one strategy, one dataset, and one goal, it will fail.

Enterprise environments remove illusions fast.

Discipline and data decide everything. Everything else is noise.

The future belongs to leaders who build marketing teams as strategic weapons, not social clubs.

If you are still running a team built for 2016, the outcome is predictable.

You either define the next decade, or you get outperformed by it.

Watching enterprise websites bleed millions is like seeing a luxury yacht sink while the crew argues over who forgot to plug a hole.

Everyone gawks at digital “giants,” yet few have the guts to fix the mistakes draining revenue.

Right now, 83% of enterprise sites sabotage themselves—ignoring SEO audits and gifting revenue to competitors.

Tomorrow, those who embrace relentless auditing and optimization dominate.

Here’s how I approach it weekly:
➔ Full audits with Screaming Frog & Sitebulb—anything less is amateur hour
➔ Fix broken links, slow pages, outdated metadata before they drain revenue
➔ Mobile optimization checks—59% of search is mobile; ignoring it is malpractice

Beyond that:
➔ Page speed benchmarking—every second costs ~7% conversions
➔ Crawl & indexation analysis with GSC & Ahrefs
➔ Site architecture reviews—duplicate content, buried conversion paths, hidden opportunities

What works? Relentless, unsentimental audits.

What doesn’t? Overpaid agencies or “set-and-forget” in-house teams.

Complacency costs millions.

Why it works for me? Every missed audit is a personal attack on profit.

Numbers dip? I hold the process accountable, not Google.

The data doesn’t lie: 1 second of delay = 7% fewer conversions.

Mobile traffic dominates—fail there, and competitors feast.

No enterprise wins by accident.

The choice is clear:
➔ Audit, optimize, cash in
➔ Or watch market share vanish

Neglect is a choice.

Optimization is a weapon.

Budget won’t save broken processes.

Face the numbers. Confront reality. Do the work.

Your revenue depends on it.

Mistakes Enterprise Websites Should Watch Out For

Your “thought leadership” content isn’t building authority, it’s training your audience to scroll past.

I’ve seen too many enterprise marketing execs cling to their blogs like security blankets, while the audience moves on.

Your blog isn’t building authority.

It’s shouting into a void while people scroll, swipe, and click past.

Long articles, keyword stuffing, “thought leadership”: they’re mostly ignored.

Drop the delusion.

How most teams think engagement works in 2026:
➔ Four blog posts a week for “consistency”
➔ Endless SEO tweaks chasing shrinking search traffic
➔ Bloated articles that vanish after publishing

How engagement actually works:
➔ Data-driven, personalized content based on real audience signals
➔ Interactive video, audio, and immersive formats that stop scrolling
➔ Strategic distribution on channels people actually use

Reality check: over 50% of marketers report declining blog traffic.

Average attention? Less than 60 seconds.

Only 26% see ROI.

Meanwhile, audience-first content drives engagement and conversions up 200%+.

Blogging is the fax machine of marketing: familiar, expensive, ignored.

Every hour spent polishing posts is an hour not building experiences that actually connect.

Stop obsessing over calendars.

Start listening to data.

Build experiences, not posts.

Blogging was a tool.

Adaptive, audience-first content is your advantage.

If your strategy still revolves around publishing more words, you’ve already chosen mediocrity, while competitors build real relationships.

Why We Tell Our Clients to STOP Creating Blog Posts

Every SEO team has a budget and an outcome.

Here’s the truth: only one of these is truly yours.

Competitors can throw money at bloated agencies.

Fill seats with ineffective generalists.

Buy overpriced tools.

Boast about “full-service.”

But they can’t build surgical efficiency.

☑ Budgets Limit
Budgets come from profit constraints, not strategy or boldness.

☑ Outcomes Build Trust
Clients trust teams that deliver traffic, rankings, and revenue—on time, every time.

☑ Outcomes Differentiate
In a world of “big spend, minimal results,” outcomes set you apart.

Why outcomes matter more than budget:
➔ Showcase expertise
➔ Prove real impact
➔ Build credibility
➔ Attract results-focused clients
➔ Create loyalty through performance
➔ Fuel word-of-mouth with execution

Here’s how I focus on outcomes:

Team & Roles
➔ Hire a single full-time SEO lead for clarity, strategy, and cross-team alignment
➔ Use freelancers with deep expertise for high-impact work
➔ Demand role clarity—everyone owns a piece of the result

Tools & Processes
➔ Exploit only tools that matter: Ahrefs Lite, SEMrush Pro, GSC
➔ Cut “nice-to-have” software and vanity spends
➔ Enable cross-functional collaboration with devs, UX, content, and analytics

Learning & Measurement
➔ Rapidly upskill your team with free resources: Google SEO Starter Guide, Moz Academy
➔ Measure every KPI ruthlessly: rankings, organic sessions, revenue per page
➔ Reject the mindset that “budget = success”—brains, discipline, and adaptability drive results

Focusing on outcomes isn’t a tactic.

It’s the bedrock of a performance culture.

Lead with outcomes.

And watch market domination follow.

Building an SEO Team Without a Big Agency Budget

Stop fantasizing that clever slogans or bloated teams will propel you forward. Study the enterprises that win, then reengineer your marketing machinery with laser focus on efficiency and strategic thermonuclear power. Or, stick to your old ways and watch those quarterly reports slide deeper into shameful territory.

There is no magic formula, no shortcut, no fairy tale “hack” to building a world-class SEO team on a budget. There is only strategy, discipline, and the will to act while your competitors waste time and money.

It’s time for some honesty. You do not need a monstrous marketing budget or the razzle-dazzle of agency smoke and mirrors to build an SEO team that cr

Open article: Building an Elite SEO Team on a Budget: The Unforgiving Truth No Agency Will Tell You by Aaron Agius • 6 min read

Building an Elite SEO Team on a Budget: The Unforgiving Truth No Agency Will Tell You

If you want an agency that shapes tomorrow, recruit like your future depends on it—because it does.

Every time you hide behind “SEO experience required,” you’re lighting the funeral pyre for your own ambition. There will be no applause at the grave.

The Ruthless Truth About Innovation, Recruitment, and Survival in Modern Digital Marketing Let’s incinerate the industry’s most sacred cow right up fr

Open article: Is Your Obsession with “SEO Experience” Suffocating Your Agency’s Future? by Aaron Agius • 8 min read

Is Your Obsession with “SEO Experience” Suffocating Your Agency’s Future?

The benchmark for success is no longer innovation. It’s about acquiring, hacking, and out-optimizing every single move your competition makes—and then automating it so aggressively that human error and hesitation are eliminated.

Let me ask a question that will probably make you squirm: Just how naked are you, competitively speaking? I’m not talking about the LinkedIn vanity me

Open article: How Reverse Engineering Competitor Strategies Fuels Industry Leadership by Aaron Agius • 7 min read

How Reverse Engineering Competitor Strategies Fuels Industry Leadership

Empower your workforce to choose, adapt, and evolve their own tools, and you’ll lock in the best talent, outpace your industry, and shatter old benchmarks for innovation and growth. Stick to the myth of perks, and you'll wake up to a talent exodus and a stalled product roadmap.

Abandon everything you know about SEO. Engineer an underground content distribution system that guarantees visibility, authority, and conversion at scale. Traditionalists will be crushed. Only the relentless—the ones who dare to discard the outdated—will dominate.

Accept the harshest reality in digital marketing: traditional SEO is finished. Yes, you read that correctly. The endless grind of optimizing keywords,

Open article: From Zero to $1M: The Ruthless Content Distribution Blueprint That Annihilates Outdated SEO by Aaron Agius • 9 min read

From Zero to $1M: The Ruthless Content Distribution Blueprint That Annihilates Outdated SEO

It’s not too late to fix this. Shred your editorial calendar and interrogate your data. Ask your customers what they want—every quarter, every campaign, every channel. If your answer is “more blog posts,” you’re asking the wrong people, or you’re lying to yourself.

If you’re in the 83% still treating audits as an afterthought, just know this—the clock is counting down on your market share, your profitability, and, possibly, your job.

If you want to shift from bleeding revenue to dominating your sector, the path is simple and merciless: Audit. Fix. Audit again. Only the relentless survive. Only the disciplined thrive.

The $100 Million Blunder Sabotaging 83% of Big Brands Let’s destroy the myth right now: Enterprise organizations are not immune to catastrophic digita

Open article: Are Critical SEO Issues Costing Enterprise Websites Millions? by Aaron Agius • 9 min read

Are Critical SEO Issues Costing Enterprise Websites Millions?

If you still believe original ideas win markets, you’ve already lost.

The real power belongs to those ruthless enough to rip apart competitor strategies, reconstruct them with brutal efficiency, and then weaponize automation to dominate at scale.

The CEOs clinging to “innovation first” are simply donating market share to the cunning operators who treat competitor intelligence as the only path to victory.

Are you building your business on naive optimism or unforgiving reality?

Who wins the future: original “innovators,” or tacticians who dissect, replicate, and automate competitors until nothing is left to steal?

You can chase the ghost of “adequate SEO,” comfort yourself with pointless dashboards, and watch your competitors suffocate you in the SERPs.

Or you can build a program so empirically sound, so viciously focused, that 4.2x isn’t your ceiling—it’s your starting point. It’s not about working harder. It’s about being too precise, too ruthless, and too relentless for anyone else to keep up.

You want proof that most so-called “SEO experts” are nothing but glorified guessers? Keep reading. If you’re clinging to tired, generic strategies, yo

Open article: Why One SEO Strategy Outperformed Another by 4.2x (And Why Most Experts Never Will) by Aaron Agius • 8 min read

Why One SEO Strategy Outperformed Another by 4.2x (And Why Most Experts Never Will)

Matt Swain

LinkedIn for Founders & Execs

I’ve built my career as a creator, thought-leader, author and entrepreneur who helps executives and founders evolve their online presence into genuine influence. I’ve had the privilege of working with global icons such as Wim Hof, Steven Bartlett and Arthur Brooks, and collaborated directly with LinkedIn to shape the conversation around digital content, executive-led brands and how social influence can drive commercial growth.

At the start of 2024, I founded Triangle Branding, an exclusive B2B thought leadership agency built for category-leading founders and CEOs who want to turn their ideas into influence. We help them build human-led digital reputations by using their own personal voice to drive commercial impact through LinkedIn-first content, strategic storytelling and demand-generation systems. 

Over the last 18 months, we’ve helped clients raise over $100M, land deals with companies such as Sony, Nvidia and Virgin, had 100 million eyeballs on clients’ content and generate meaningful inbound opportunities by building executive-led brands that people trust.

--

We've generated 1,000,000+ views in the first 6 months with four C-Suite Execs at a 150M ARR leading B2B SaaS platform. 

We've generated 5,000,000 impressions and 40,000 engagements on a leading Harvard professor - with them becoming a LinkedIn Top Voice.

We've helped an energy leader book qualified conversations with SVP's at Walgreens, Starbucks, Mars, GSK and Lidl. 

We've helped agency owners generate organic engagement & MQLs from leaders at THG, Uber, Heineken, Estée Lauder, Samsung, Lavazza, L'Oréal, Tony's Chocolonely and more. 


www.triangle-branding.com

Founder of SOCIAL CLUB

Founder and Manager of SOCIAL CLUB - an exclusive social media community where members manage over 328 million followers. 

If you're an influencer or brand who wants to connect please get in touch. 
If you're interested in investing/sponsoring/collaborating please email on matt@mattswain.co.uk

I was invited by LinkedIn to attend B2Believe, and the message was clear:

B2B is shifting faster than most teams realise. Creativity, buyer confidence, and human connection are becoming the new growth levers.

Here are my 7 core takeaways (share & save this!) 

1. Creativity is becoming the language of B2B

Creative that grabs and holds attention multiplies leads by 3x. But while 92% say consistent creative matters – only 12% deliver it. 

49% B2B decision-makers say they’re more likely to explore a company if its advertising is creative

40% B2B decision-makers say they’d be more likely to consider a purchase if the ad is seen as “creative”


2. Millennials + Gen Z now make up 71% of B2B buyers 

You need to engage them differently – they respond to: Cultural references; human stories; faces, not logos. 

87% of B2B buyers now prefer content from trusted industry influencers over brand-authored content.


3. Buyability: the new model for growth

B2B buying is slow because buyers don’t feel safe with 64% of marketers saying decisions now take longer. 

The top job-to-be-done is: “Can I defend this decision if it goes wrong?”

Buyers don’t need more information — they need more confidence.


4. Your network is a marketing asset — not a distribution channel

When employees from your target accounts follow your company, you generate 2.4x more leads.

And when senior decision-makers at those target accounts are connected to your employees, that jumps to 2.2x more leads.

You are more than 20x more likely to be bought when everyone in the Buyer Group knows you on Day One. Build brand, trust & authority with the right people. 


5. Video is non-negotiable

Jonathon Palmer said it well: Sound, movement, and visual cues trigger far stronger memory formation than static content ever can.

It generates 1.4x more engagement, meaning more people stop, watch, and interact.

And most importantly: viewers retain 95% of the message when it’s delivered via video.

+20% more leads are driven with video

Attention is scarce and recall is even scarcer. Video gives you the highest chance of being remembered — and being acted on.


6. Employee content > corporate content

B2B is shifting from logos to faces; from corporate statements to human voices.

Even when only 3% of employees post regularly, companies drive 20% more leads.

So bring your team to the forefront. 


7. Brand and demand are no longer separate

Everything now all comes down to trust, Tunji Akintokun put it: “In B2B, trust is the ultimate growth metric that closes deals.”

The era of “brand OR performance” is finished. Full-funnel integration is now a growth multiplier with always-on brand activity showing +10% conversion lift. 


In summary: 

The brands that win in 2025 won’t be the ones who look good in reports — they’ll be the ones who move buyer groups to act.

In partnership with LinkedIn for Marketing #Ad

Simon Cowell and the “Netflix-izing” of TV: 

Simon’s cultural dominance was built on linear television, yet The X Factor format was clearly losing momentum. Viewership had fallen, slipping to around 6 million by its final run (from 20 million at its peak), and the show ultimately wasn’t recommissioned after 2018. 

So he went to the streaming platforms. 

His new show, The Next Act – a behind-the-scenes talent series following the formation, development, and launch of a pop boy band – came out on Netflix last month. A younger, Gen-Z audience showed up, and the series debuted in Netflix’s top three.

While it’s been reported that the show is a “rehashing of The X Factor for the billionth time” it misses the point that more & more linear TV shows will attempt to ‘Netflix-ize.’  Simon is a divisive, well-known figure with a pre-built brand. The show concept has worked for several decades across both sides of the Atlantic. All this gets leveraged & transferred, with some new packaging alongside being formatted in a bespoke way for how audiences today consume content. It makes perfect sense. 

We’re going to see more traditionally proven linear TV concepts, combined with some creative adaptation, become relevant again as they find their way onto streaming platforms. Sport, news, comedy panels, breakfast shows, live cooking, award ceremonies, and chat shows will all follow the same path.

The data shows it: The creator economy is becoming the new Hollywood. 

Individuals are becoming content power-houses commanding attention & cultural relevance that now rivals traditional media. What was once reserved for studios with large-scale productions and billion-dollar balance sheets is available for everyone. 

Media influence is moving from institutions to individuals who understand attention and audience trust – and the gap between “creator” and “studio” is disappearing.

For the last 50 years, TV shows were commissioned around an idea or existing IP. Then the right host or star was cast to fit the format.

That model is flipping.

Now, the individual comes first – and the idea is built around them.

Netflix has just announced one of its first podcast originals, built around Pete Davidson. 

Last month, it was announced that Claudia Winkleman is getting her own chat show on the BBC.

For the last decade, this has been the default in self-owned distribution – podcasts, YouTube channels, newsletters. The creator and individual were very much the IP.

But now traditional media is catching up. 

Individuals are becoming the centre point of mainstream shows.

In 2026 your content is about judgment, taste, lived experience, and the ability to articulate why you think the way you do. The bar has shifted from “can you create?” to “can you create something only you could create?” In a world of AI-generated content, context, specificity, depth, scars, perspective and belief are what cut through – and that’s where the next wave of real creators will win.

Are you focused on producing more content… or better ideas, clearer thinking, and standing for something? 

Image credit: Adam Mosseri

Over the weekend, I watched an interesting TikTok that explained how red carpets are now full of influencers instead of experienced reporters. These influencers' sole intention is to fish for viral moments – anything that might spike views on Instagram – with zero expectation that they’ve engaged in the film, researched or prepared compelling questions. What’s more, the people in charge are perfectly happy with this setup – as long as the short-form clips generate superficial numbers. 

We’re prioritizing attention over trust.  
We’re overly rewarding views. 

But why? 

Podcasts are the same – instead of being built around thoughtful, critical conversations – where you pressure-test ideas and interrogate evidence – shows are increasingly engineered backwards from viral moments on Instagram and TikTok. Resulting in soundbites that lack evidence, and contain deliberately polarizing takes to spark a reaction. 

I see leaders and well-known entrepreneurs on LinkedIn play the same game – optimizing for clicks, feel-good content and mass engagement. Taking their impressive multi-decade career and compressing it into recycled frameworks and carousel templates that “perform well.”  At Triangle, we do the opposite. Our focus is on turning leaders into subject matter experts with the intention to build long-term authority with the people who buy, hire, invest, or partner. Because, in a world of people high-jacking your attention and surface-level commentary – depth, context & detail are now the way to stand out. And our data shows this leads to significantly better commercial outcomes. 

We’ve lost sight of the point of content. We’ve blurred the lines between being visible and being credible. As a culture, we’ve become so blinded by attention that we’ve lost sight of our true goals. 

What's your take?

I sat down with Jae Oh, who leads LinkedIn’s ads measurement, formats, and experimentation teams. We talked about:

1. Why ROI is the right metric. But not CPMs, or clicks. Real ROI answers one question: how did marketing dollars translate into growth?

2. The easiest metrics are often the least useful: Cheap impressions look good on slides, but they collapse the moment you’re asked: “How much revenue did this drive?”

3. Marketers lose budget because they speak the wrong language: CFOs don’t think in campaigns and sales leaders don’t think in reach. They think in pipeline, accounts, and revenue – and marketing has to translate into that world.

4. Authority starts with trust – and trust starts with value: People give attention to brands that help them make better decisions. That attention compounds into influence.

5. ‘Brand vs demand’ is a false divide: Buyers don’t experience two journeys; they experience one continuous one. There should be one system. 

6. B2B buying journeys are long (≈211 days): Which means your first message has to remain true all the way to purchase. Consistency builds credibility. 

7. Vanity metrics create false confidence: Great reach, great CPMs, zero impact – if you’re talking to the wrong accounts.

8. The biggest performance unlock is alignment: Brand teams and demand teams chasing different account lists guarantees inefficiency. Focus on shared targets, shared narrative, and shared accountability.

9. Most “measurement problems” are actually organisational ones: When teams don’t sit in the same room, they optimise for different outcomes.

10. Incrementality is what secures budgets: Not activity or scale. Instead, proof that marketing moved the business forward.


If you’re a B2B marketer – this video is for you! 

(Save this and share it with your team)

New York is booked 🇺🇸

Feb 28 – March 4.

As Triangle continues to grow in the US – I’m spending more time out meeting clients, running mini content shoots, and lots of coffees with CEO’s who want to communicate their mission & story with the world in a way that generates demand! 

Here’s what’s on the agenda: 

– visiting LinkedIn HQ 

– in-person shoot with a healthtech client that's reshaping access to care in America 

– and in a series of conversations with teams selling into US enterprise buyers

Between those, I'm carving out time for a handful of informal conversations.

If you're in NYC and building something ambitious – founder, exec, creator, leader – reach out. I'll share what we're learning from working with 30+ clients: what's driving their pipeline and what's cutting through on LinkedIn right now.

If you're around, let’s meet! Drop me a message or email matt@mattswain.com

3 principles for CEO content we're taken into 2026: 

1. Originality 

When people are consuming content, they’re now rightly asking “could this have been generated by an LLM.” Most content still starts externally: GPT search, topics, trends, formats – and tries to bolt a perspective on top. At Triangle, we do the reverse. We start with raw thought: half-formed beliefs, internal tensions, difficult decisions, and patterns noticed over years of experience. That shifts the challenge from writing to ‘extraction’ – and then translating scattered ideas into language and compressing lived experience into a few hundred words. It’s hard work, which is exactly why most people default to the easy option.

2. Editorial writing > social copywriting 

Everyone focuses on proven hooks, algorithm tricks and ‘easy-to-read’ overly optimized formatting. We’re doing the opposite. Moving towards highly researched content pieces backed with data that are journalist-quality – meaning opinionated, genuinely interesting pieces on culturally relevant topics. Our goal is to create truly engaging content, as we know the distribution will take care of itself. High-quality writing preserves the depth and nuance of your ideas, and positions you as someone who’s credible and thinks deeply.

3. Specifics

Linked to both points above, we’re going deeper into specifics. That means naming real trade-offs, important commercial constraints, the options rejected, and the second-order consequences that weren’t obvious at the time. It means zooming into moments – the meeting where the call changed, the data point that broke the narrative, the uncomfortable tension, the reasoning. Specifics signal lived experience and raise the stakes of the insight. The more precise the content, the more uncopyable it becomes – and that’s where trust is built.


What are you focusing on with your content in 2026?

A thought about AI & talent:

The conversation around AI and automation often assumes a blanket condition that all people are the same. In reality, the top 10% performers in every industry operate in a different tier and should never worry about finding a role. 

The world will continue to automate away the average. But businesses will continue to pay a high premium to work with the very best talent. In an AI world, A-players will become increasingly in-demand and sought-after as they become highly leveraged by AI.

Meaning if you’re an A-player who deeply thinks about their work, uses “human compute,” and operates as a critical and strategic thinker, you’ll have greater opportunities in your working life over the next 10 years - not less. Because winners want to work with other winners and understand the energetic connection and momentum that comes from working alongside exceptional people.

January has been a busy start to 2026 for Triangle: 

– Over the past month, our partnership content with LinkedIn reached 1,000,000 people – including my takeaways from B2Believe and a conversation with Jae Oh, Head of Ads at LinkedIn.

– We signed 4 new clients – from health-tech, digital printing, CTO advisor with 30+ years of experience in tech and procurement AI company – all with the same underlying goal: using LinkedIn to open senior-level buyer conversations.

– Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with Andrew Monu at LinkedIn HQ, sharing more about the work we’re doing to build thought leadership in complex industries. 

– We expanded the team – bringing on an incredible LinkedIn copyeditor, executive advisor with 30+ years of experience running marketing agencies, and have x2 Content Manager roles we’re interviewing for. 

– Finishing the month with record-breaking revenue – a sign we’re moving in the right direction! 

– Our New York presence continues to grow – with 2 new clients based there kicking off this month and an in-person trip planned to spend time with clients and partners.

– A few client wins worth calling out: One of our Harvard professor clients generated 723,280 views; I caught up with a client this week who said he had $500k in new pipeline from our work – testament to our LinkedIn ecosystem approach. 

None of this came easily.

January was long days, five-hour stretches of back-to-back calls, thousands of Slack messages, kick-offs, iterations, and decisions. But ending the first month of the year on a high!

Avatar is a perfect example of what content can be in 2026: 

The franchise is all about experience, immersion, bringing audiences into a universe that they’re invested in and want to keep returning to. 

We’re living in a TikTok-obsessed world, optimized for speed, novelty, and constant refresh. Attention is fragmented, patience supposedly gone. And yet Avatar sits at the opposite extreme: three films, the third running 3.5 hours, released years apart – and still drawing global audiences in the hundreds of millions. A timely reminder that when something is genuinely world-class, people will go to great lengths to engage with it.

In the marketing landscape today, everyone is concentrated on quick wins and cheap attention. But the winners know the real game is stickiness; world-building; defining your IP; building an ecosystem; universe expansion; repeatable engagement. 

It’s about building something people want to return to, invest in, and feel part of. Something that rewards attention rather than demands it. 

A reminder for all of us who work in social, content & marketing – focus on creating something amazing that people want to come back to, over & over again.

For the first time, a bi-partisan bill is recognizing creators as workers, small business owners who are “building the culture and economy we rely on” – not just 'creating content.'

What Khanna’s doing isn’t just “protecting creators.” It’s the government publicly admitting that creators are no longer a side-hustle category – they’re a meaningful economic contributor and an increasingly important source of information. Especially given that more than 10 million Americans now identify as creators.

The creator economy is growing up — and institutions are starting to catch up!

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The Battle

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