Social Selling and Commerce

In retail, many chase the next big thing—a new style, a new way to reach consumers—triggering a frantic race to adopt. But most trends fade as fast as they appear. The real game-changers are curated habits that prove they can stand the test of time. I’ve championed social commerce as the future of retail for over a decade. In hindsight, that barely scratches the surface. It’s now a deeply ingrained consumer behavior. The imperative isn’t just to adopt it, but to evolve with it—constantly and intentionally. At HSN, social commerce was core to our strategy. We pioneered the blend of shopping and entertainment. That’s the essence: finding the sweet spot where entertainment, connection, and commerce converge. Soon after, platforms like Twitch began enabling users to both game and shop in real time, blending entertainment with commerce. Fanatics has successfully leaned into this model as well, immersing fans in live experiences while showcasing gear in action, often worn by their favorite athletes and community, turning fandom into a powerful trust signal. More recently, TikTok Shop collapsed the purchase funnel into a single scroll. It's no longer discover, then buy. Now, it’s see it, want it, buy it—seamlessly, in-platform. So, as we look ahead, how do I see this "social commerce habit" evolving? Here's what I expect: 🔹 Creator Integration is Non-Negotiable. For Gen Z, in particular, TikTok Shop has become a primary discovery engine. They trust their favorite creators to genuinely try products and offer honest feedback. The more brands lean into authentic partnerships with creators, the more trust they build in this integrated shopping experience. It’s about relationship-driven commerce. 🔹 Embrace a Zero-Click World. Speed and simplicity are paramount. Consumers need to be able to see, buy, and receive as fast as humanly possible. This means minimal clicks, minimal friction, and no moments for reconsideration. It's about instant gratification and removing all barriers between desire and ownership. 🔹 Elevate Live Shopping. This is a powerful return to the personal connection and real-time interaction that defined the best of traditional retail. Shoppable videos and live sessions transform social media into a personalized shopping aisle. Imagine experts demonstrating products, showing how they fit or can be styled, all in real-time, tailored to your interests. It brings humanity back to digital retail. 🔹 Unlock the Power of Virtual Try-Ons. A longstanding hurdle in e-commerce is "try before you buy." AI-enabled virtual try-on features solves that, making online shopping more immersive and convenient. This translates directly into higher conversion rates, deeper engagement, and customers spending more valuable time interacting with your brand digitally. It’s time to stop treating social commerce like a trend. This is commerce, full stop. It’s a fundamental consumer behavior that belongs at the center of every modern retail strategy.

The #1 mistake I see in client relationships? (It took me years to learn this) Confusing contact with connection. Most professionals think staying “top of mind” means constant contact. So they: ❌ Send generic check-ins. ❌ Ask for meetings without clear value. ❌ Share the same articles everyone else does. Then wonder why response rates keep dropping. 20+ years in client relationships has taught me: The best way to stay memorable? Show up as someone who genuinely cares about them  (and their success). Instead of asking: ❌ “How do I stay visible?” Ask: ✅ “How do I show I care?” Here are my favorite 6 ways to show you care: 1. Spot Opportunities They Might Miss ↳ Share competitor moves and market shifts before  they hear it elsewhere. 2. Be Their Connector ↳ Introduce them to people who can help them grow. 3. Offer Insights They Can Use Immediately ↳ Send relevant research they can apply right now. 4. Celebrate Their Successes ↳ Spotlight their wins like they’re your own. 5. Invite Them Into Your World ↳ Include them in events and conversations that matter. 6. Check In With a Personal Touch ↳ Reach out with no agenda, just genuine care. Here’s the truth: Most people only show up when they want something. Top performers show up because they genuinely care. Because they know when someone’s ready to buy, they don’t research who’s available. They call those who’ve already proven they care. Agree? Disagree? I’d love to hear your take on it in the comments below. ♻️ Valuable? Repost to help someone in your network. 📌 Follow Mo Bunnell for client-growth strategies that don’t feel like selling. Want the full cheat sheet? Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/e3qRVJRf 

Anyone who is customer facing should be building close, authentic, long lasting relationships with their customers. It pays off in more ways than you can imagine: repeat customers, references, community champions, content ideas, competitive intel and so much more. Here are 5 ways you and your team can start building those relationships: 1. Amplify a customer’s LinkedIn posts - When your customer posts something interesting, don’t just like it yourself but share the link on your internal chat and ask your team to like it as well. It’s amazing how powerful this is. It’s human nature to look at who is liking your content on any social platform and most people get a consistent number of likes. If you drive 50% more for a customer they will notice that. 2. Help find candidates for their team and jobs for them if they’re looking - In your position engaging with a specific persona all day every day you have amazing visibility and connections into relevant candidates for open jobs and companies hiring. If you let your customers know that you can be a resource for them on both sides of the table you will see how quickly you can start playing matchmaker. 3. Share best practices that have nothing to do with your company/product - Everyone is looking to improve in their job. Everyone wants to know what their peers are doing at other companies. When you hear good ideas from other customers or read about a best practice, send it to them. Just show them you’re thinking about them and are invested in them being successful. 4. Make them look good in front of their manager and/or team - It needs to be authentic and relevant but find a reason to give your customer a shoutout when you’re in a meeting with them. It doesn’t even need to be a big thing but something about how they’re the fastest to roll out your product, how their feature request ended up becoming a game changer for a bunch of customers, how they’re the most productive team you’ve seen at one particular thing. 5. Fight for a feature/bug fix/service that they’re asking for - In short, be the squeaky wheel for your customer. When they ask for something, set the expectation that it takes a while to get that thing done but then go fight for it internally. Each company has their own process for this kind of stuff but if you push in the right ways you can usually get their request prioritized. When it’s done make sure the customer knows you fought for them to get that thing done. The best thing is that these are “free”. Of course they will take time and energy but the return on this work is astronomical. I honestly didn’t appreciate the power of these relationships when I started my career but I now have close relationships with so many customers that I’ve worked with over the years. They’re a sounding board for business ideas, they’re working with companies I’m advising and we’ve become each other cheerleaders. What did I miss? What else are you doing to build relationships with your customers?

There are four #LinkedIn and #SocialSelling pillars sales professionals need to leverage to start more trust-based conversations with prospects at a high level of credibility. 1️⃣ Resource-Driven Profile: It is foundational that there is a shift from resume to resource. Start by crafting a value-centric profile that does more than just list your achievements. Share insights that spark curiosity and teach your network something new. Aim to shift their perspective and create those compelling "aha" moments, earning you the right to get the first conversation. 2️⃣ Content & Engagement: Rather than simply broadcasting your own content; engage with others. Comment thoughtfully on posts, curate content that leads back to your solutions, and establish yourself as a thought leader. Remember, your insights can be the subject matter that others learn from, and then see you as the expert that your prospects gravitate to when they have questions, challenges, and needs that you can solve. 3️⃣ Nurture Your Connections: How many connections have you been ignoring over the years? Chances are 10% of your network are people you'd love to have a conversation with. Regularly review your connections, categorize them, and engage in a way tailored to each group. Whether they're clients, prospects, or potential referral sources, personalize the engagement and bring value with every touch. 4️⃣ Proximity Prospecting: Understand the power of social proximity. Use buyer mapping to identify key accounts and how you are connected, ask for client referrals, and seek networking introductions. Your next opportunity could come from a connection made through someone you already know. Keep in mind, at all times, we need to be researching, scanning for conversation triggers, learning, and leveraging the insights to ensure that the conversation is always around what matters to those you are engaging. Social Sales Link The Modern Banker #sslinsights #deepsales #linkedintraining #bankingindustry

I just watched a sales rep spend 3 hours crafting the "perfect" LinkedIn message to a prospect who bought from his competitor yesterday The prospect had been posting about their challenges for 6 weeks. Sharing articles about the exact problem this rep's solution solves. Commenting on industry discussions about implementation timelines. But this rep never engaged with any of it. Instead, he was busy perfecting his cold outreach template while his competitor was building relationships in plain sight. This is social selling backwards. Most sales teams treat LinkedIn like an email database with better targeting. They research profiles → craft personalized messages → send connection requests → pitch immediately But social selling isn't about better cold outreach. It's about becoming part of your prospect's decision-making process before they even know they're buying… and just keeping it casual, like a normal human. Here's what the highest-performing social sellers actually do: → They follow prospects months before reaching out → They add value to conversations prospects are already having → They become a trusted voice in their prospect's content feed → They earn permission to have sales conversations When you consistently add insight to someone's posts for 4-6 weeks, your eventual outreach isn't cold anymore. It's the natural next step in an existing relationship. Your prospects are literally telling you their priorities, challenges, and timeline through their LinkedIn activity. Stop treating social selling like fancy cold calling and start treating it like relationship building at scale. How much of your prospect research happens on LinkedIn versus actually engaging with their content? — Enjoy this? 📱 Join our community: https://lnkd.in/e3WAJnft

The best way to become an excellent social seller is by not selling. If you’re connected to folks with an enviable social presence, you’ll notice that they rarely use their platform to sell. Instead 👇 They talk about the problem their product or solution solves. They talk about their passions that are unrelated to what they sell. They share expertise and inspiration. They invite their followers to attend free webinars or download free resources they’ve created. They create a community that trusts them and their opinion. I understand that many of you have social selling metrics to hit in the form of InMail’s sent or connections made. 👉 How can you hit your sales metrics without selling? Making deposits in DMs, engaging with content or commenting. For sellers in frontline roles, I encourage you to post at least once a week consistently. ❌ Post does *not* mean resharing content from your company. ✅ It does mean, at least once a week, sharing a thought, a story, or a bit of advice. If you’re reading this and thinking, “no, absolutely not Leslie”. Posting is not in the cards. Set a target for engaging with other posts relevant to your ICP. ❌ Engaging is *not* hitting the like button or voting in a poll. ✅ Engaging is leaving a funny, educational, or thoughtful comment. If you are not ready for posting or commenting, use LinkedIn DMs & InMails. ❌ Direct outreach is *not* connecting with as many prospects as possible in order to spam their inbox. ✅ #SocialSelling in the DMs does mean you need to lead with deposits before making asks. Deposits [or gives] should always be valuable & relevant. Deposits can look like offering to make an introduction, sharing a free ungated resource, delivering a non-obvious insight or sending a link to an article that you thought they’d appreciate. To get the attention of the modern B2B buyer, you need to #EarnTheRight to their inbox. TL:DR Stop selling. Replace those selling activities with a focus on creating content, engaging with the community, and keeping the buyer at the center of what you do by leading with valuable deposits before asks. What can you do tomorrow to become an excellent social seller? -- Enjoyed this post? Click here 👉https://lnkd.in/gJSJkUq3 to hit follow & ring my 🔔 for more

What’s actually working right now on LinkedIn for B2B founders? Here are 11 specific tactics I’m seeing across the 150+ posts we have going live every week across our clients (you can use these this week). (1) Text-only posts are making a comeback: Long-form, well-researched text posts are crushing. A great example of someone doing this exceptionally well is Gala Aga, CEO of Aligned. (2) Lead magnet posts still work (when done right): The "comment X for access" format still gets huge engagement…but only if your lead magnet is genuinely valuable. I’d recommending aiming for once per month max to avoid burning out your audience. (3) Short-form video is still prioritized: I’ve been getting slammed with ads from LinkedIn sharing how video is growing 2X faster than other formats. Look…it’s not the automatic viral hack it was in Q4 last year, but the algorithm still rewards it heavily. And regardless, getting on camera in front of your audience is a great way to fast track trust building. (4) Test boosting organic posts with thought leader ads: Organic reach is down across the board. One way to combat this is to your best-performing posts and put some spend behind them as "thought leader ads." This ad unit looks almost identical to organic content in-feed. (5) Filter outbound connections by recent activity: When building your network in Sales Navigator, toggle "posted on LinkedIn" to only target people active in the last 30 days. Your acceptance rates will be wayyy higher. (6) The first 30 minutes of engagement is EVERYTHING. Posts that go viral almost always have massive engagement in the first half hour. For important announcements, coordinate with your team to drive immediate engagement. (7) Use specific numbers in your hooks. "70 demos per week," "$30M ARR" -- these specific figures grab attention instantly. Specificity drives content performance. (8) Leverage AI in your content workflow. AI is here. It drafts content pretty damn well if you have strong source material. You should be incorporating Claude, GPT, Bluecast, etc into your workflow. I also love Wispr Flow for dictation. It’s cracked. (9) Build a content ecosystem with multiple team members. Companies crushing it have 2-7 team members all posting consistently. Use your personal profiles to create an echo chamber on LinkedIn. (10) Use scrappy, real-life media over branded graphics. Polished corporate graphics look like ads and get scrolled past. In-the-moment photos from events or office life perform significantly better. (11) Use Featured Links in your bio to drive profile visitors to the next obvious step in your funnel. Set 1-2 links going to: home page + one relevant case study. You can also do a lead magnet if you have one to put here. You want to make it as EASY as possible for a follower to become a buyer. I go into more detail in today’s video. It’s a longer one, so bookmark it to watch during your next content session. 🫡

❌ “LinkedIn doesn’t work.” ❌ “Social selling is just posting selfies.” ❌ “My team doesn't have time for that fluff.” 👀 I hear this every week. But let me ask you this: ✅ Would you ignore a room full of your ideal buyers gathered in one place, talking about their problems, asking for help, and looking for solutions? Because that’s what LinkedIn is. And if your team isn’t actively using social selling… They're not just leaving money on the table. They're not even at the table. 💡 𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐬𝐧'𝐭 𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐧 𝐬𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥. It’s not begging for DMs. It’s not sharing quotes or cute “Just checking in” content. It’s this: X Building real visibility ↳ Where your name is showing up before the pitch ever lands. X Creating actual conversations ↳ That don’t start with “Are you the decision-maker?” X Becoming known for solving a specific problem ↳ So the trust is already built before the calendar link is clicked. Here’s why sales leaders are leaning hard into it right now: 🔥 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐎𝐥𝐝 𝐑𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐇𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐝 ⇢ Cold calls get blocked. ⇢ Emails get buried. ⇢ Traditional outreach alone just isn’t enough. Today’s buyers: ✅ Google you ✅ Lurk your profile ✅ Scroll your content before they ever reply If they don’t find anything valuable? No reply. No call. No deal. 🎯 And here's the kicker: When your team 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 and 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐰𝐬 𝐮𝐩 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐥𝐲, they’re not just warming leads—they’re creating a pipeline that starts before the first touch. Because you’re already: ✓ Familiar ✓ Trusted ✓ Helpful That's the holy grail of modern prospecting. 💬 "So what should my reps be doing?" Simple: ⇢ 𝐏𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 that show they understand the buyer's world ⇢ 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 with purpose on your target audience’s content ⇢ 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 in ways that feel human, not scripted ⇢ 𝐃𝐌 with context and clarity—not a pitch on the first message 📣 And sales leaders: this is where you come in. If you want a social selling culture to stick, you’ve got to lead it: 👊 Talk about it in meetings 👊 Share wins from it 👊 Make it part of your playbook—not just a “nice to have” If your competitors are winning deals before you even get the chance to pitch… this is probably why. 🧠 Be visible. 💬 Be relevant. 🔗 Be human. Social selling isn't optional anymore. It’s your competitive edge. 🟢 Curious what this could look like for your team? Drop a 💬 or DM me ⇢ Let's talk.

Turn every rep’s profile into a lead-gen machine. You're sitting on free pipeline. Your sales team is already sitting on the most underutilized marketing channel you have: their LinkedIn profiles. Here’s the reality: Marketing builds your brand’s visibility. Sales reps amplify it when their profiles are optimized and active. When marketing drives the social presence and sales reps align their profiles, you create a one-two punch that accelerates trust, conversations, and pipeline. Imagine this: 🔥 Every rep’s headline clearly says who they help and how. 🔥 Their “About” section connects like a conversation, not a résumé. 🔥 They’re consistently posting insights, engaging with prospects, and sharing branded content. 🔥 They get direct inbound meetings booked from their profile. That’s not just branding. That’s scalable revenue enablement. 🚫 Don’t vs. ✅ Do 1. Headlines That Hook ❌ Just list your job title ✅ Say who you help and how (with keywords) 2. About Section ❌ Talk only about yourself ✅ Share your mission + write like you’re talking to your ideal client 3. Profile Photo & Banner ❌ Selfies, blank banners, confusing visuals ✅ Professional headshot + banner that reflects your brand 4. Connection Strategy ❌ Connect + pitch immediately ✅ Send personalized invites, engage your network consistently 5. Consistent Posting ❌ Post once, disappear for months ✅ Show up daily with insights + lessons 6. Comments ❌ “Great post 👍” and nothing more ✅ Add thoughtful takes + reply to every engagement 7. Smart Content Mix ❌ Only promotional content ✅ Rotate carousels, polls, videos, reflections, and teaching posts 8. DMs That Connect ❌ Copy-paste pitches ✅ Lead with value, build relationships before the ask 9. Featured Section ❌ Leave it blank ✅ Pin top offers, resources, or booking links 10. Skills & Endorsements ❌ List 30+ random skills ✅ Prioritize 3–5 niche skills, ask peers to endorse 11. Recommendations ❌ Skip this section or accept vague praise ✅ 2–4 specific, guided recommendations that build trust 12. Let Personality Shine ❌ Hide behind stiff corporate language ✅ Be real, relatable, and helpful—people connect with people ✨ Bonus tip: Connect your LinkedIn with HubSpot to push out your branded content across your sales team to add velocity of engagement, more visibility, and free traffic. The difference between a sales team that’s invisible on LinkedIn and one that shows up daily? 👉 More conversations. Faster trust. Bigger deals. Marketing can light the fire. Sales can fuel it. And LinkedIn is the stage where it all plays out. What’s one feature that you look for on a LinkedIn profile? ________ ♻️ Repost to help others + Follow Jennelle McGrath for more like this

Amazon just shut down Inspire, their TikTok-style shopping feature. Here’s what this means for ecom in 2025: Most brands still think “social commerce” is just about adding a shop button to content. But what consumers actually want is authentic discovery, not obvious selling. The platforms that are falling short: • Prioritize transactions over relationships • Focus on products instead of entertainment • Separate shopping from the overall experience This is why creator-driven content consistently outperforms… When people follow creators, they: • Discover products naturally • Build trust before making purchases • Engage with content they actually enjoy Amazon's failure proves what we've been seeing across 1,000s of brand partnerships: Social commerce only works when entertainment comes first and commerce second. The future belongs to brands that understand their products aren't the entertainment… They're props in creators' stories. Implement this, and watch what happens in 2025. — Leo Limin