Productivity tips to manage LinkedIn in 10 minutes a day or less | Actionable insights to harness your expertise for the recognition you seek | LinkedIn trainer & COO of Narify

Most of the marketing advice you're seeing is complete nonsense.

❌Spend budget on advertising
While your colleagues have 5x more reach.

❌Spend budget on converting leads 
While the network of your sales reps already established a relationship with them.

❌ Spend budget on recruitment 
While your employees have your next talent in their network.

We think the solution is MORE. 
More content, more ads, more tactics.

This approach gets you nowhere.

You can't do everything and expect to excel at anything.

Since 2011, I have helped professionals like you leverage B2B Thought Leadership, Social Selling, and Employee Advocacy primarily through LinkedIn™️. 

Together with Richard van der Blom, I run a  consultancy and training agency called Just Connecting. We have supported over 100.000 professionals and thousands of organizations globally. 

If those topics aren't your thing, I'm also up for long gravelbike trips or teaching my Australian Labradoodle some new tricks—although, I must admit, she only seems to do them when there are cookies involved!

Anyway, my approach to my clients?

✅ Figure out what they’re actually aiming for.

✅ Support, develop and execute the systems that bring them closer to these goals

✅ Unlock the potential of employee-ship so employees want to become brand ambassadors. 
(Instead of being forced...)

I work with:
🔹Mid sized to corporate organizations 

🔹Marketing departments that want to leverage Thought Leadership and Employee Advocacy

🔹Sales teams that build authority and attract leads and costumers via Social Selling strategies via Linkedin™️ and Sales Navigator

Although I do take on other client profiles from time to time when I am 100% sure I can help you.

Follow me for insights on these topics. 

Connect or contact me to find out more about our programs and systems. 

Talk soon
📬 martijnholtes@justconnecting.nl

Martijn Holtes

Some partnerships work. 
Richard van der Blom and I have been proving this for 15 years. 
Now we're making it official.

For 15 years, we've collaborated without formalising anything. 
It worked because our skills fit together naturally. 

Just like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger 
Different strengths, shared vision.

Richard has the market presence and expertise that people know. 
I focus on the strategic frameworks and implementation. 
Different roles, one direction.

Last year showed us that our clients' needs have evolved. 

They're no longer looking for training vendors. 
They need partners who can identify and solve the real issues.
The ones hiding behind the surface request.

We realised that to solve those deeper problems, we need to rely on each other's expertise even more. 

So we're formalising what's always been true.

From now on, we're running Just Connecting - Social Selling, Employee Advocacy and Marketing together. 

Not as vendors selling courses, but as strategic partners solving the problems that matter.

We're taking everything we've learned over 15 years and building something different. 

The next six months will be interesting.

More to come.

B2B Thought Leadership | Social Selling and Employee Advocacy | Most companies contact me for platform training. Often they walk away with something more valuable....

The biggest issue for selling isn't your lead-generation process.

It's how you treat the people running it.

I have trained sales teams for over 15 years, 
And I have found that most companies focus on the obvious stuff.

They optimize every step of the process.
Until there is nothing left to optimize 
Then they complain that it doesn't work.

They overlooked one critical element. 

Selling is emotional work. 

Deals fall through. 
Prospects ghost reps. 
The pressure never stops.
Salespeople face rejection daily. 

And if you don't support them in this.
You and the organization are going to pay a price 

So here's my message to all of you leading sales teams 
Stop talking about the f'n numbers for five minutes. 

Ask the question nobody asks:
"How are you really feeling?"

In the long run, this conversation will be what builds the business.

☝️ Swipe through to see how this actually works
♻️ Repost so others can learn too.

Carousel_Selling is a deeply emotional process.pdf

If your own team won’t like your posts...

Why should any customer trust your brand?

I always look at a straightforward thing before I take on new clients 

Do employees like, share, or comment on their own company posts?

If the answer is no, I know the problem isn't their LinkedIn strategy.

Most of our clients tell me it is about time, skills, or tools.

They ask for more training, better content, or an easy way to share posts.

(P.s. I'm all for that 😁)

But…

When people do not feel proud or safe, no tool can fix that. 

They stay silent….

Employee Advocacy acts like a mirror.

If people feel seen, heard, and trusted, they will show up. 
If they do not, they hide.

So next time when you signal low engagement… 

Do you dare to ask what it says about your culture?

Everyone in my social selling cohorts is panicking about AI
"Adapt or get replaced!"
Let's talk about adapting.

To sell anything, you need three things:
Demand
Supply
Leverage to match them efficiently

AI crushes efficiency. 
It always will.

But here's the thing: 
Efficient doesn't mean effective.

I think you are competing on the wrong battlefield.

What your leads and clients actually want? 
Your Point of View.

Not your branding. 
Not your post volume. 
Not your network size.

Your unique way of seeing their problem.

The experience you've built. 
The knowledge you've earned. The skills you've refined. 
The perspective only you have.

That's what AI can't touch.

That's what makes you irreplaceable.

Stop trying to be more efficient. 
Start being more you.


☝️ Swipe through to see how this actually works
♻️ Repost so others can learn too.

Carousel_Why you need to adapt to the new way of selling (1).pdf

Cold calling worked when people needed information. 
Now they need trusted judgment. 
Different problem. Different solution.

AI can answer your prospect's questions in seconds. 
It can summarize reports, analyze data, and serve up exactly what they're looking for.

But what AI can't do is to make them feel confident about a decision.

That requires a human they trust. 
Someone with real experience and a point of view. 
Someone they've been watching, learning from, and connecting with before they ever need to buy.

This is what I call becoming a "First Choice Authority."
Not the person with the most followers. 
The one they reach out to first when they're ready to move.
The person prospects turn to when they need to make a call. 

If you're in sales, this isn't optional anymore. 
It's how deals get made now.

Here are six reasons why building your authority on LinkedIn is the best investment you can make in your sales career.

P.S. Who's a sales professional on LinkedIn you follow because you actually trust their perspective?

Do you want to share your company's latest press releases?
No? 
Well, guess what - your employees don't want to either.

Only 1 in 10 employees actively participates in advocacy programs. 

Why? 
Because most programs are built on corporate self-interest, not mutual benefit.

Below you find a list of better alternatives. 
Your employees could be your best marketing asset - but only if you treat them like partners, not channels.

Ready to build an advocacy program that actually works? 
DM me to learn how we help companies get this right

The dumbest advice lifestyle guru’s give you is "Just be yourself.”

“Being yourself” can be the exact thing that is holding you back.

Because if “yourself” is telling you that:
❌ Playing big is arrogant
❌ Risks are dangerous
❌ That is “just” who I am….

…then authenticity becomes an obstacle, not an advantage.

We don’t want the watered-down version of you.

We want the version that dares to lead, share, and stand for something.

So don’t just “be yourself.”
Be your best self— the one that we remember, respect, and rally behind.

It improves your business and it improves your career. 
Some won't understand the best version of you. 
Some will 

No matter the outcome, doing the right thing is always the right thing to do. 

What’s one part of your “best self” that we haven't seen yet?

Social selling frameworks promise to make everything easy.
And that's exactly why most people using them aren't seeing real growth.

Don't get me wrong - frameworks and templates have their place.
They give you structure and confidence.

But the people getting real results go way beyond it

✅ They show up consistently.
✅ They ask questions they genuinely want answers to.
✅ They personalise like they actually care.
✅ Their follow-ups add value before asking for anything.

Frameworks can teach you what to do.
They can't teach you how to care.

Use frameworks as starting points.
Then master the parts you can't systemise.

Building trust through genuine human connection.

Do frameworks help or get in the way of your relationship building?

Frameworks  make Social Selling feel easy, but...

Communication Strategist and Consultant; Founder, #WeLeadComms; Superconnector

I'm an communication consultamt focused on enabling organizations and their communication leaders to navigate the intersection of AI-fueled changes in the nature of work, the influx of strong-minded graduates into the workforce, and the resulting implications for cultures and hierarchies.

I'm Iceland-based, and have lived and worked in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands and the US.  

I am the author "From Lincoln to LinkedIn, the 55 Minute Guide to Social Communication," a manual for mobilizing peer-to-peer communication in communities and organizations. I also teach an executive education course on communication and leadership at Riga Business School and have spoken and guest lectured across North America and Europe..

I also play the role of a "superconnector" within the communication industry, sharing profiles of communication leaders through the #WeLeadComms initiative and their thought leadership through Strategic Magazine, and facilitating mutually beneficial introductions.

My email is mike.klein@changingtheterms.com

Specialties: Campaign planning, social network analysis, content development, qualitative research, native English copywriting for international audiences, thought leadership in internal communication and engagement.

Mike Klein MBA, SCMP, CIIC

The org chart is a comforting lie.

Just posted a conversation with Francisco Marin for Navigating Disruption, and he's quantifying something I've been seeing everywhere: the formal hierarchy is not where work gets done.

Francisco runs Cognitive Talent Solutions and co-founded the Network-First Manifesto. His AI-powered analysis shows Fortune 500s how decisions actually flow through their organizations. Not how executives think they flow. How they actually flow.

The uncomfortable truth? If internal comms is still designing strategies based on formal hierarchies while real coordination happens through informal networks, we're building infrastructure for a company that doesn't exist.

The conversation with Janet Hitchen and me pushed into what happens when formal and informal structures diverge completely. In high-velocity environments, that's becoming the norm.

Francisco's challenging some fundamental assumptions about how organizations actually work. And I think he's spot on.

Links in comments

#internalcommunications #organizationalnetworks #leadership

Mike Klein, IABC Fellow

Connecting insight with intent; Founder, #WeLeadComms; Editor-in-Chief, Strategic.Global; FIIC, FCSCE, SCMP (he/him).

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