Michelle J Raymond

Business LinkedIn Trainer - B2B Marketers/Business Owners my LinkedIn G.R.O.W.T.H Masterclass & B2B Community Builder are your secret to growth. Company Page Expert. 2XLinkedIn Author.

Are you running your company’s LinkedIn strategy in-house and wondering how to improve your results? You know your audience is here, but the advice available can be confusing or unsuitable for your business.

👉 Why Most LinkedIn Advice Doesn’t Work for B2B
Most LinkedIn advice is too generic or focused on shortcuts that deliver little more than vanity metrics. Hacks and automation will not build trust or meaningful relationships and will not grow your business. 

👉 Build a Strategy That Fits YOUR Business
Whether you’re starting out looking for more engagement or ready to turn followers into business growth, I’ll design a strategy tailored to your goals, resources, and team. 

👉 What You’ll Get When We Work Together:
• Company Page Expertise: Turn your LinkedIn page into a community where your audience engages and your brand thrives.
• Profile Rewrites That Work: Showcase your team’s expertise and attract the right opportunities.
• Social Selling Training (G.R.O.W.T.H. Framework): Equip your team to build relationships, nurture trust, and sell without sounding salesy.

👉 Who I Work With
I partner with businesses globally that are driven to lead their industry. These businesses are open to new ideas, willing to invest time, and not looking for quick fixes. If that sounds like you, we’ll work well together.

👉 The Power of Two: Build Your Brand AND Your People
Your LinkedIn strategy should grow your business and empower your team. I focus on the Power of Two: building a strong company brand while helping your employees grow their personal brands. When these work together, you get exponential results.

👉 Here’s What Makes My Approach Stand Out:
• Tailored Solutions: Every business has different goals, resources, and challenges. I design strategies that fit your unique needs because one size never fits all.
• Ethical Expertise: I don’t rely on hacks, automation tools, or engagement pods. My approach is rooted in trust, relationship-building, and long-term success.
• Proven Results: With over two decades in B2B sales and social selling, I bring practical, actionable insights that drive real growth.

👉 Work With a Recognised LinkedIn Expert
• International LinkedIn speaker.
• 2 x Best Selling Author - Business Gold (Company Pages) and The LinkedIn Branding Book.
• Host of the Social Media for B2B Growth Podcast and cohost of The LinkedIn Branding Show.

Global LinkedIn Pages Expert - LinkedIn Strategist and Trainer - B2B Social Selling Consultant

What's the secret to LinkedIn marketing success in 2026? Just so I'm clear...

First, we weren’t posting enough.
Now we’re posting too much.

First, we had playbooks to go viral.
Now we’re told to go niche.

Video will save us all. 
Video disappeared. 

You know the kind…

The problem is, shiny tools won’t fix a weak LinkedIn marketing strategy.

If your positioning isn’t clear and your message doesn’t stand out, no amount of hacks, prompts or posting schedules will save you.

This is where I think a lot of B2B brands are getting distracted.

Instead of doing the harder work on:
• Who they’re for
• What they actually want to be known for
• How they’re different from everyone else

In 2026, LinkedIn results will come from getting the fundamentals right and letting your Company Page and your people work together to build rapport first and then trust over time.

Not from flip-flopping every time someone says they’ve “cracked the algorithm." Or should I say Brew360? 

What's your favourite LinkedIn Flip Flop Advice? (yes, that's the technical term for it 🤣)

Company Page Led Growth ​> Scale with employee advocacy on LinkedIn. Work with me - Company Page Management, Page Admin Training. Employee LinkedIn Training. #Timfluencer

This one's for Page Admins, Marketing Managers and business owners who are figuring out how to get more from their Company Page. 

They, too, are impacted by LinkedIn's new algorithm engine 360Brew. 

🎤 WANTED: Someone who runs a Company Page for a global company that wants to be a podcast guest to talk about the unique challenges that come with this. It's more important that you have experience running the page than guesting on podcasts. 

Tag someone in the comments you think I should talk to.

Most B2B brands are running their LinkedIn Company Pages like personal brands. And quietly, it’s killing their results. That might sound blunt, but if

Open article: LinkedIn Company Pages in 2026 (What To Stop and Start Doing) by Michelle J Raymond • 4 min read

LinkedIn Company Pages in 2026 (What To Stop and Start Doing)

Are you feeling more or less confident with your LinkedIn strategy for 2026?

Over the break, I did a quick review of how I'm showing up across LinkedIn, my website, podcasts, YouTube, etc., and was pretty horrified at how much what was out there didn't reflect where I'm at now. 

Time to get focused and back on track! 

How about you?

LinkedIn changed a lot in 2025. Not surface-level tweaks. Fundamental shifts. The kind that quietly breaks old strategies while everyone’s still tryin

Open article: LinkedIn B2B Marketing in 2026: New Strategies & Changes You Need to Know! by Michelle J Raymond • 4 min read

LinkedIn B2B Marketing in 2026: New Strategies & Changes You Need to Know!

"If your product is the hero of the post, you’ve missed the point.” 

I want this Nancy Harhut quote on a t-shirt to wear when I'm speaking at Social Media Marketing World 2026. 

Honestly, the toughest lesson, the hardest to convince others it's the right thing to do, but the one that has the biggest reward. 

In the podcast, Nancy shares one simple language change that you can easily fix this. 

So go ahead and give it a listen and thank us both later. 

Just the tip of the iceberg, as they say....

Which insight did you find most interesting you want to try and implement?

And why most B2B content is working against the brain, not with it. If your LinkedIn content feels like it should be working but isn’t quite landing, 

Open article: What Brain Science Teaches Us About LinkedIn Marketing by Michelle J Raymond • 4 min read

What Brain Science Teaches Us About LinkedIn Marketing

Looking for a speaker for your community, podcast, LinkedIn Live or event? PICK ME 😀

Thanks MRxPros for having me on to share my framework, "LinkedIn in 15 mins per day". Sue Collin you have done such a brilliant job growing this community. 

Are you next?

Send me a DM and let's see if we can come up with a cool collaboration. 

Help me out and tag people you think I should be connected with who could be interested. 

Cheers

A Zoom meeting grid with 21 smiling participants, each in individual video frames. Top text reads "Pick me as your next guest speaker" in bold white letters on a pink background.

Tim Tam Tip - Unpopular opinion… Mangoes & Cream Tim Tams are a hard no from me. 🤢 I don’t care how “new” or “exciting” they are. I’m team Double Coated all the way.

This is your LinkedIn lesson for today.

Just because something is trending doesn’t mean it deserves a spot in your LinkedIn strategy.

I see too many B2B teams chasing:
👉 Every new format
👉 Every algorithm rumour
👉 Every shiny tactic
👉 Every “you must try this” post

This is the recipe for confused buyers and very little growth.

You don’t need every flavour to win. 

You need the right one for your business, done consistently and well.

Know your clients "Double Coated", and stop forcing the Mangoes & Cream.

What’s one LinkedIn tactic you’re ready to stop doing?

No alternative text description for this image

When leaders want control and employees stay silent, LinkedIn doesn't work.
The answer is not more tools or more rules. 

What is the answer to this very common situation?

Glad you asked. 😀 

My answer is in this week's podcast episode. Enjoy the overview. 

Can you relate to either side of this problem? Has it happened to you?

If your leaders want control and your employees want nothing to do with LinkedIn, you don’t have a content problem. You have an alignment problem. It’

Open article: Why Employee Advocacy Fails on LinkedIn (And How to Fix It) by Michelle J Raymond • 4 min read

Why Employee Advocacy Fails on LinkedIn (And How to Fix It)

Things that make me go hmmm 🤔 when marketing research announces what’s “new”…

After 20 years in B2B sales, a lot of the research I'm reading feels more like derrrrr I could have told you that, rather than a big breakthrough.

A few favourites:

👉 Buying committees.

Not new, they always existed.
When you actually sit in customer meetings, you see it first-hand.

Procurement, technical, finance, users, leadership… all influencing the deal in different ways.

That’s why I teach our clients to connect wide and deep inside every target account. 

👉 Buying cycles are getting longer.

I’ve worked in industries where deals routinely took 2–5 years from first conversation to signature.
Complex decisions take time. They always have.

That's why I teach our clients to nurture relationships over the long term, no hacks.

👉 It’s all about building trust.

Almost. You skipped a step.

First, you build rapport. Once they like you, we can move on to trust. 

This is what makes working with me different.

I’ve lived on both sides, B2B sales and B2B marketing. 

I understand the pressure, the politics, the reality inside real buying environments.

That means I can help sales and marketing actually work together, with the kind of commercial understanding that only comes from experience.

Curious…
Which “new” marketing insight makes you quietly smile?

🚨 Stop posting on LinkedIn. Not forever. Just until you’ve done this one thing...

Check out the latest episode of Social Media for B2B Growth Podcast for more details.

I changed my mind on this one thing when it comes to LinkedIn Company Pages. 

You see, I'm always learning, experimenting, and joining conversations with experts, so how I work with my clients is always evolving.

LLMs will continue to give generic outdated advice. As they say, it's the average of the internet that you get in the responses.

Whether it's done for you with Company Page Management or training for Page Admins, I love being the competitive advantage.  

PS I may even change my mind on LinkedIn Pages Premium, too....

Help me out - would your business refer to it as a Company Page or Business Page on LinkedIn in your conversations internally?

I'm trying to understand a bit more about which is most commonly used in meetings etc

Any further comments are welcome if they need a bit more explaining.

How do you most commonly refer to your LinkedIn Page for your business?

The author can see how you vote. Learn more

Ashley Faus

Director of Integrated Product Marketing, Atlassian

Marketer, writer, speaker by day... singer, actor, fitness fiend by night!

I've handled all aspects of marketing strategy and execution, from product marketing, to demand-gen, to content and events. I love telling the high-level stories that resonate with an audience and connecting the dots between types of assets and distribution channels.

My writing has been published on TIME, Forbes, The Journal of Brand Strategy, and The Muse, and I've spoken on various marketing topics for INBOUND, Harvard Business Review, and MarketingProfs.

Visit https://ashleyfaus.com/ for more information about my book, "Human-Centered Marketing: How to Connect with Audiences in the Age of AI".

(Views are my own)

Head of Lifecycle Marketing, Portfolio

"A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one."

Funny how we only ever hear the first part of that^^ quote, often said with a derisive tone.

Nobody wants the "master of none" 😬

And yet... I proudly claim the moniker of "marketing generalist"!

My superpower is connecting the dots, working across multiple teams, and integrating across channels.

If you need someone who sits at the intersection, I gotchu.

And this is why I'm always slightly surprised but delighted when I'm recognized in a specific marketing discipline.

My current title is "Lifecycle Marketing", but I contributed enough PMM-related content to earn a spot on the 2025 Product Marketing Influencer list.

And Alt Marketing School offers courses across allllll the marketing disciplines, including trendier topics, like the creator economy.

Personally, I think we're in a generalists' economy right now.

With teams running lean, leaders looking to bring in more AI and automation, and the rise of the fractional or solopreneur, generalists are making a comeback!

So cheers to all the folks who are making their mark in each (or every) discipline 🎉 

See the Alt Marketing School list: https://amschool.click/top

See the Product Marketing Alliance list: https://lnkd.in/dTmpNtJ5

Buy my book, "Human-Centered Marketing: How to Connect with Audiences in the Age of AI": https://amzn.to/4jqaKDW

Head of Lifecycle Marketing, Portfolio at Atlassian

I almost ended up naked onstage 😳

I was playing a bride, wearing this ridiculous '80s-style dress (pictured below), with a dropped waist, heavy beading, and a ridiculous train.

And on opening night, the zipper down the back of the dress started coming undone...

Inching.
Down.
My. 
Back.

And no one could help me 😬

I felt the sleeves start to slide towards the edge of my shoulders.

I felt an unpleasant breeze on my lower back.

And I realized that I'm just hoping I don't end up naked in front of the audience.

So... when I tell you that I've had things go wrong onstage, I'm not talking about a momentary hiccup with the slides or stuttering over a few words or going blank on my next sentence 😅

What this means for you, as a professional sharing your knowledge at a conference or Town Hall or QBR: it's gonna be ok.

YOU CAN DO IT!

At minimum, you won't end up naked onstage.
And the audience probably won't even notice a flub!

I get a lot of questions about how to overcome the fear, swallow the nerves, and feel confident stepping onstage.

One of my counterintuitive exercises is to catastrophize.

What's the WORST thing that could happen?

How would you react (and recover) if it happens?

Thinking through the worst-case scenario takes the surprise and sting out of it, because usually, it's not that bad.

And now you know how to react 😎

I said I ALMOST ended up naked onstage... handily, I've had a lot of practice reacting to things going wrong.

I straightened my posture to widen my shoulders, put my hands on my hips and across my chest to keep the dress from slipping off completely, and angled my back away from the audience to maintain a little dignity.

And then I asked the costumer to secure the zipper before the next performance, 'cuz we're not trying to have things go wrong twice 💃

Wanna be on a podcast? 

Drop your name and topics in the comments 👇👇

What hosts want to know:

💡 What's your expertise and unique angle?
🎤 Can you speak in an engaging way?
📣 Will you help bring in listeners?

Don't have prior appearances? 

I gotchu:

--> Go live on LinkedIn or post a short clip to share your advice

--> Confirm that you'll share about your episode on LinkedIn (and any other channels where you are active, like a newsletter, website, etc.)

Let's connect some hosts and guests!

(Full disclosure: I'm trying to streamline my inbox a bit, so my goal is to make this an easy place for folks to connect without a middleman 😀)

AI can be the epitome of a productivity mirage.

It FEELS productive to craft the perfect prompt, thinking of all the details that an LLM might need to tailor its response to your specific use case.

It FEELS like progress to refine and refine again and refine just once more for perfection.

It FEELS like insight to ask, "But what about _____?" over and over again.

And. Yet.

Blathering on with the chatbot is not, in fact, DOING anything.

Did you actually use all that research that it pumped out for you to take action?

Did you make the updates to the slide deck or blog post, based on the recommendations?

Did you go to the event and see for yourself whether your ICP actually attends?

I've been struggling with this mirage over the last few weeks 😳

In particular, I'm sparring with Claude to improve my talk track and slides, based on session scores and audience comments from my fall speaking engagements.

I feel like I've been so productive!
I spent so much time typing!
I considered so many angles!

My slide deck has not changed.
My speaker notes are not updated.

And as I go back through the chat history, I'm left feeling a bit overwhelmed, annoyed, and generally unmotivated to take the necessary action to ACTUALLY IMPROVE.

AI is only as good as the action it enables.

You can "doom scroll" and "water cooler chat" and "push pixels" around in an LLM just as easily as any other tool (maybe more so 😅).

Don't fall prey to the productivity mirage.

There are MANY smart marketers in the world.

They have great ideas, they've executed impactful programs, and they've written useful books.

The difference between what they share and what I share is literally THEM and ME.

It's not just about the idea.
It's about the person sharing the idea.

WHO says it is just as important as WHAT they say.

People trust people like themselves.
People resonate with different people.

So using your authentic voice, talking about your lived experience, and sharing your unique expertise is the reason someone trusts you, follows you, and listens to you.

If you're looking to be more visible, get more opportunities, and accelerate your success in 2026, you gotta listen to this episode 😀

Thanks for hosting a great conversation Wednesday Women!

Hear the full conversation: https://lnkd.in/e-BwQmxb

Join my Stanford class, starting on Jan. 26: https://lnkd.in/eCe697Zx

Buy "Human-Centered Marketing: How to Connect with Audiences in the Age of AI": https://amzn.to/4jqaKDW

"But what if they build a personal brand and then leave!?!"

🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

This is common pushback on not only allowing employees to share their insights, speak on podcasts, build a following on LinkedIn, etc., but encouraging and enabling them to do this.

The ironic part is that these statements are usually sitting alongside a mandate to "get the employees sharing company content on social media"!

Here's the thing: NOBODY wants the soulless company content 😬

Not the employee you're nagging to share it.
Not the viewer scrolling the feed.
And frankly, not even most of your users.

People want to hear from people, which means helping your employees share in their unique voice is a much better approach, all the way around.

And yes, some employees will attract recruiters and brand collabs and advisor offers, such that they might just decide to leave your company.

But the valley is small, and careers are long!

These former employees might become customers, partners, investors, or brand champions... there's so many ways to exchange value 🙌

And in the age of AI?
HUMANS are even MORE important!

I covered several related topics in my conversation with Finn Thormeier on The Executive Brand podcast, tune in for more details on:

- Why and how to build internal influencers
- The 4 pillars of thought leadership
- Choosing the "best" B2B creator

Rant: Freakin' LinkedIn, you are BUGGY!! Pull yourself together!!

I've noticed that when I schedule posts, they often show up wonky.

It un-tags accounts that I at-mention.

It replaces images and videos with link previews.

The formatting in generally is just not what it looks like in the preview.

But apparently, now it's DOUBLE POSTING content?!?!

I schedule a post, went to "post now" and fixed the issues noted above, and then published... only to find that it apparently posted the same content, but with the mistakes, later in the day.

WHHHHYYYY!?!?

I didn't catch it in time to delete the rogue post, so I figured I'd ask if anyone else is seeing this janky behavior.

It's VERY frustrating.

I'm using native features and trying to follow whatever stupid rules the algorithm randomly enforces.

But good grief.

FIX THE BUGS.

/rant

"All effective marketing is human-centered. While we're busy being distracted with shortcuts, Faus helps us refocus on what matters." ― Seth Godin, Author “This is Marketing”

"Trust is under siege from nearly every angle. Yet marketers like you and me want (need!) to build trust with our audiences. The question is... How? Ashley draws you a map." ― Ann Handley, best-selling author and Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs

"Most of the go-to playbooks are outdated, but it's hard to find a replacement for stale marketing practices. Ashley constructed a powerful new set of frameworks, along with practical advice and real-world examples. "Human-Centered Marketing" brings us back to what actually matters: the people behind the screen." ― Nancy Duarte, best-selling author and CEO of Duarte, Inc.

If you've been on the fence about grabbing a copy of my award-winning book, "Human-Centered Marketing: How to Connect with Audiences in the Age of AI", this is the perfect time to buy 😀

On Wednesdays, we keynote 💃

Honored to present keynote session at B2B Marketing Exchange with ADWEEK, talking about human-centered marketing!

Grab your tickets with special pricing through Feb. 16, and yes, you CAN sit with us 😎

"Don't panic, bring a towel."

We're going on an adventure!

Join me on January 14 to talk about the B2B creators you need in your galaxy this year.

I'm talking with Nadia Davis, MBA from CaliberMind about how to:

👩‍🚀 Find the RIGHT voices for your marketing mix

🚀 Build a thought leadership program that delivers the RIGHT outcomes

💫 Measure the RIGHT metrics across B2B creators

Register for free: https://lnkd.in/eYsKtvYN

taplio

The Battle

Michelle J Raymond

Ashley Faus

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Performance ScoreMichelle J Raymond's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreAshley Faus's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Michelle J Raymond

Ashley Faus

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Michelle J Raymond's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreAshley Faus's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreMichelle J Raymond's LinkedIn Performance