Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: If you're an agent or advisor and you're still treating LinkedIn only as a job board, then you're at risk of falling behind your competition. That's because LinkedIn has become one of the most powerful marketing platforms available to insurance agents, financial advisors, and other people whose entire business is built on trust. And in 2026, that shift is accelerating. So today we're talking about why LinkedIn matters so much in the age of AI. How the algorithm works, what kind of content you should be posting, and how to build an audience that's relevant to your business. I'm David Belleville.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: And I'm Jo Barker.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: And this is the Amerilife Marketing Mentors podcast.
All right, Jo, let's start with the big picture here. Why has LinkedIn become so important to the health and wealth industries, especially in 2026?
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Well, I think it's the, the purpose of why everybody comes there. So LinkedIn is so unique compared to the other social media channels, and it's, it's the professional channel. So it's meant, when you go there, you know that you're going to be getting professional posts talking about business.
And it's not just about posting about your friends or family or, or that, you know, that personal side of it. It truly is about the business side. So when you go there, it's okay to talk about business, it's, it's okay to be sales heavy, it's okay to, to share that type of information where on the other social media channels it might seem off. Yeah, because of the topic structure. LinkedIn is the perfect opportunity. And that's what it's meant for. It's meant for networking. And you should treat it like a networking event where you're trying to connect to as many people as possible and you're trying to share your expertise in your area.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: Absolutely. And with more than 1 billion users worldwide, it is a platform that truly most people can't afford not to be on. And I think for most people, the standard use case for LinkedIn is for people who are looking for a job or looking to hire for a role in their organization.
So let's go ahead and start there and just make the assumption that most people treat it as a job board.
If that's your only experience with LinkedIn, Jo, where do you recommend for agents and advisors to start using the platform for marketing purposes?
[00:02:13] Speaker B: Well, I think, I think you can still use it as a job board. So a lot of agencies are trying to recruit, they're trying to get new agents and advisors. You could be looking at career changers. So you can go on there and treat it as a job board and you can talk about the perks of being an insurance agent or the perks of being a financial planner and try to, you know, begin to build your downline and get those people you know to come over, ask you questions and where you become the expert and you're sharing your personal experiences of how you got to where you are today.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:02:42] Speaker B: The other opportunity that it really opens up the door is, is not a lot of people are posting on LinkedIn, so it's a perfect opportunity to get in there and get attention easily. Because the fact is most people don't post and even if they are, they're posting once every couple weeks or once a month. So if you get on there and just in a typical week, try to post one to three times a week, you're going to be killing it compared to everybody else. And especially if your content is high value and it's going after your target audience and you're answering their questions up front and you're going to get people that are paying attention to you and start following you along and want to connect just to learn more.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: And we're going to talk a little bit more today about how to leverage LinkedIn to connect with new audience members, to build an audience and really get the most out of the platform. But you did mention it, it is a great platform to be on. If recruitment is part of your 2026 strategy, there are people out there that, as you mentioned, are career changers or potentially just looking for their next endeavor, their next chapter in life. And so for our audience, this is again, a tool that you can use for recruitment purposes. But we also know that this is a great platform to build authority as well. And as we talk about personal branding in 2026 and the rise of AI, what role does LinkedIn play for agents and advisors who also want to use LinkedIn as a way to establish themselves as a thought leader?
[00:04:04] Speaker B: So I think when you're looking at your platform and you're looking at your profile, it's all about making sure that it matches who it is that you are and you want to be known for. So we talk about SEO and, and we talk about AEO and GEO when it comes to websites and other platforms. It applies here too, on LinkedIn. So if I'm a digital marketer and I want to be known for digital marketing for insurance agents, I'm going to have that on my LinkedIn profile. So I'm going to go over there. And I'm going to have it in my. About information. I'm going to put it in my experience and make sure that those keywords are popping up in there. I'm going to be posting all of my information about digital marketing and how it benefits agents and advisors. And it really gives you a platform where, you know, this is, this is where they're hanging out. Now. They're not hanging out there for hours, you know, every single day like they are maybe on Facebook or other platforms, but, you know, they're hanging out there and we know that they're scrolling for probably about 30 minutes a day, which is a great time to get your content in front of them. The main thing is just making sure that when you're creating that content, that the content is relevant to who it is that you're trying to reach. That's one of the hardest things, I think, for people as they're trying to build out their content and they're trying to prepare is they tend to veer off a lot where if you can just keep it narrowed in and say, okay, this is, this is the audience I'm going after and I just need to build my content that's valuable to them and not get too distracted with all of those hot topics that surpassing you by that you want to jump in on knowing may not be relevant to your target audience.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: I think that's a great segue into how the LinkedIn algorithm works. And what type of content should our audience today be focusing on? Because we mentioned this off the top, LinkedIn is one of the most unique social media platforms. It is tailored for professional language to be used. It's like you said, it's not necessarily the platform for casual conversations or family updates. So what type of content works on LinkedIn and how does the algorithm tend to distribute that content?
[00:06:02] Speaker B: So the algorithm is trying to not only identify who you are and what it is that you're trying to accomplish on there, it's also trying to figure out how to the people you're connected to, what do you have in common, the type of comments that you're leaving on other people's posts, what do you have in common? What are the type of things that you're commenting on all the time? What are the type of things that you're posting all the time? So the easiest way for the algorithm to understand who you are is to be consistent. So if I'm on there, and again, I'm posting about digital marketing, I'm going to try to make sure that each of my posts has some sort of digital marketing angle to it, I'm going to always try to bring it back to that. If I'm picking post a comment on, I'm going to try to make sure it has some sort of digital marketing or AI angle to it. If I'm connecting with people. So people can send you a connection request, you don't necessarily have to always accept it. You can, they're still going to follow you and you can just let it sit out there because that's a signal to the algorithm of who you connect to and what industry they're in. The easiest way to confuse the algorithm is to be sporadic. So if I was out there and I was posting about digital marketing and then cooking and then personal fitness and I started commenting and posting, I'm going to skew the algorithm. It's not going to have any idea what feeds it should be giving to me. It's not going to have any idea who should be seeing my post and it's going to get confused. And that's where you start to see, you know, you lose impressions, you lose your audiences is because LinkedIn doesn't understand who it is that you're speaking to and who and based off of your comments and everything that you're doing, it should be natural. And so I think as long as you can keep it in mind of what your goal is and try to stay on track there, that's going to be the easiest way to find success on LinkedIn.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: Great points, Jo. The the type of topics that you post regularly about is what the algorithm will start tying to you and start distributing content to people who resonate with those topics. So one best practice to take away from much of what Jo just said is to get really clear first on who your audience is and what challenges are you really good at solving for them. If you can pick three, three to four frequently asked questions that your clients typically have or solutions that your business offers, then that can help keep you in your lane and it provides a roadmap for what you should be posting about regularly on LinkedIn.
Let's take this a step further, Jo, because there's a lot of people out there who claim that they have the the secret sauce in terms of how much you should be posting on LinkedIn or any social media platform, or the best times of day, the best days of the week.
Let's get clear on that a little bit. For those listening today, do you think that there's any truth out there for like the magic day or the magic time frame that you should be posting on LinkedIn.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: LinkedIn's unique because LinkedIn recycles posts that are two to three weeks old. And so I would say the more of what I've noticed is it doesn't necessarily matter what time or what day of the week. So I try to change it every week is I try different days and I try different times just to compare it later and see what worked and what didn't work. But the life cycle of A post on LinkedIn is so long compared to other platforms. So don't be surprised when you're on LinkedIn and you're seeing posts for, from three weeks ago and it's popping up in your feed now. That's normal for LinkedIn. LinkedIn has a, has a reputation of going after old posts and recycling them. And for a long time, I mean, I see posts for events that have passed all the time and I'm like, oh, that looks pretty good. Let me go like, click that. And it was two weeks ago, right? And I'm like, why am I getting this in my feed? But that's just, that's the LinkedIn algorithm right now. What's really crazy is how many posts you see that of the people that you're not connected with at all. So it doesn't necessarily have to do with followers, it doesn't necessarily have to do with who you're connected to. It's trying to give you relevant content based off of the topics that it thinks you're interested in. LinkedIn's goal is the same as everybody else. It wants to keep you on their platform as long as they can. The easiest way to do that is to give you relevant, interesting content and what it believes you're going to interact with and that you're going to find interesting.
The cues from LinkedIn, I've always found super interesting is the, the, the amount of time that you stop on a post is being measured. So whether you interact with it or not, whether you hit like or you hit anything doesn't matter. And so you have to watch those impressions on LinkedIn, not necessarily how many people liked it or how many people comment it. Because of all the social media platforms, LinkedIn has the mo, has the least true engagement of likes and comments. Most people just scroll on there. But what's really cool about it is it's tracking everything so you can, it's tracking if people hit the more button and if. And it's tracking how long it's saying in the view of the user. And so those type of things help every single post that you get out there and they hit that more button. Even if there's not a lot of likes or a lot of comments, you're still getting credit for getting people interested, hitting more, and staying on your post longer than they say on other posts. So to me, LinkedIn is. It's pretty interesting. I like the algorithm. Personally, I feel like LinkedIn is a level playing field for everybody. It doesn't matter how many followers you have, whether you have a hundred followers or you have a hundred thousand followers, it doesn't matter. Because right now, the way that the algorithm is working, it's feeding everybody the same, as long as it's good quality content.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: And that's a trend that we're seeing across social media, is that these algorithms are less and less based off of who you're following or connected with, and more and more based off of your own behaviors and in, in usage of those platforms. So you mentioned earlier the importance of crafting an audience or connecting with people that are relevant to your niche or the topics that you'll be talking about. And then the same goes, it sounds like, for what type of content that you engage with yourself. Because if you're staying in your lane in, within the realm of digital marketing, then the content that you're going to be delivered in the algorithm is going to be within that arena.
And that's how you start to build out your network and connect with other people who also share those same interests. Another point that I want to touch on, Jo, you mentioned how the algorithm will distribute content sometimes weeks after it's published. So I want to discuss the importance of diversifying your content strategy and having a mix of timely content and evergreen content. Is that something that you can touch on a little bit?
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think just keeping in mind how long it's going to stay out there, you. I don't think that you need to overthink it too much, but I think it's good to have that mix. And keep in mind that when people are on LinkedIn, they're not necessarily going to your page and scrolling back through that old content. So when you start to find content that works, you want us keep recycling it. So maybe it's twice a year or three times a year, if you have a piece of content that worked very well, bring it right back again.
Because that life cycle's probably up to four weeks. I would say right now, anything older than that, nobody's seeing it. So you might as well go back, bring it back.
You can use the same photo if you want change the caption a little bit and then that way you're utilizing that same, you know, the stuff you knew already worked and you're bringing it back to life. But and I think that's another thing that people overthink too much is they think every single post, every single week needs to be net new. It doesn't go back and find those old ones that were valuable to people. Because think about how many more people have begun to follow you since then and they've never seen it. So and it's okay if the people who follow you have seen it before. It's fine. You're producing content, you're getting it out there and you're trying to provide as much value as you can. So that's kind of how I've always measured it is I've taken a look at my old post to see what's done really, really well. What can I bring back to life? And then what is timely news stories? Breaking news? I think there was a meta one we did not long ago. What's those timely news stories. And then what's those Just value adds that I can throw in there also. And before you know it, your content calendar. Like even last week I was looking at it and I'm like I can't post anymore this week, but I've got four more posts that I already have in the queue so I had to push them over to this week. And you before you realize that you're you've got posts after post ready to go because there's so much good content that you can put out there that you feel you know would be valuable
[00:14:13] Speaker A: and you're going back and looking at the metrics. We say this all the time, that those really should be your goal posts and how you're guiding the direction of your content and your messaging. If you have consistent topics that your audience is resonating with, double and triple down on those, find new ways that you can share that same information.
So those are great topic or those are great tips there. Jo I While we're on the topic of content and we're starting to get a better understanding of how the algorithm works, what type of content formats typically perform well on LinkedIn, especially if one of the signals to the algorithm is how long someone is staying on your post. We've seen long form text posts, we've seen carousels. Video of course, is a part of any social media conversation anymore. Based off of your experience, what types of content formats should our audience be experimenting with?
[00:15:10] Speaker B: So carousel seem to always do very well. So carousels are very popular and they, and as long as you're providing value, seem to do well. Video is definitely seeing an uptick in the amount of videos and the engagement that you're seeing on videos. And, and recently there's been an uptick also on text only posts.
Personally I've always seen that the posts with photos, just individual graphics, do better. That's me personally. So I think this is where it gets really, really important to measure what your audience interacts with.
And I think as long as you can mix it in and you measure and see what does well, because the other layer that's going to come into play with that is mobile versus desktop.
So on desktop the images seem to do better and the carousels do better. On mobile it seems lately that the text only feeds are doing better. But I believe it changes too based off of what LinkedIn is choosing to put out there.
And, and I heard lately, I can't remember who said it or who posted it. Somebody posted lately that it's no longer social media about connecting with the people that you are following or, or that you have connected with. It's now the interest media. That's all it's about now. It's all about what you're interested in. And that's what you're going to see has nothing to do anymore with who you're connected with who you're following. You're going to see what interests you the most. And so the more signals you can put out there over what interests you the most, then you're going to see those type of posts.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: Yeah, and that's true across social media. The algorithms are all just recommending content that it will believe will keep you on the platform. LinkedIn is no different. Jo, you briefly mentioned video.
We've seen the rise of TikTok and Instagram Reels. What space is there for people to experiment with video on LinkedIn? In my opinion, it's not a matter of if, but when video starts to dominate this platform. So it would be my guidance to at least start incorporating video into your LinkedIn strategy. But I am interested to know your thoughts and what role it plays in 2026.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: One of the things I would love to test this year is going live on LinkedIn. So the ability is there. We haven't quite done it yet, but it would be interesting to see going live on LinkedIn. And I do think video, just like all the other platforms, is going to come into play. What I'm going to find interesting to to watch is the other platforms, you seem to be on them a lot in your personal time. So you know, in the evenings you're hitting those social media channels, LinkedIn. A lot of people are on LinkedIn during the work hours because it is seen as that professional network. So how many people on their phone want to listen to video or while they're at work or it just depends on the situation that they find themselves in and if they want the sound to go with it. So I haven't seen yet in the, in the post that I personally have done that video dominates everything else, but it's definitely something to keep an eye on as, as it moves forward to see what do those trends look like in the United States based off of the target audience that you're going after, what are they interacting with? For me personally it's still been graphics and then shortly here I I want to test the text only as it seems like I think the last number I saw was a 25% increase in impressions. If you do text only on mobile, I'd like to see if you know, if that holds true for the audience that I reach and see if I see those impressions go up just by removing a photo from it. So it'd be interesting and the only
[00:18:24] Speaker A: way that you'll know is if you try exactly and then measure, measure the data. I always look at LinkedIn as the conversation starter platform, similar to how Reddit is constructed. You're there to start conversations, you're there to interact with people, share your insights and it's less about just sharing a meme or a cute cat video. It's where intellect meets social and as you mentioned, also what interests you and what you've interacted with. As we start to wind down this conversation today, Jo, I do want to make sure that we talk about AI and what role LinkedIn is playing now that more and more people are leveraging AI platforms like Copilot or ChatGPT.
I found actually this morning, Jo, that LinkedIn appears in just over 10% of AI responses across LLM search systems. Reddit we know, is the most cited social media platform.
So now that AI is here and now that these tools are becoming integrated in our day to day lives, how should our audience be thinking about LinkedIn if they're trying to establish themselves as an authority figure but also get discussion covered in these LLM platforms, I when
[00:19:45] Speaker B: you're looking at LinkedIn again, it goes back to your, your topic and what you want to be known as that thought leader for. And even the comments are showing up in AI. So if you go to somebody else's post and you leave a good, thoughtful comment, it's likely that could get pulled into an AI result as being cited. And you're going to be the one who's being who's citing or they're going to list you as the one who said it.
That is a lot of value that you can bring to the platform. But again, it's just making sure that it's relevant to what it is that you want to be known for. So the way I tackle it is every single day I try to post five times on someone I know. So I'll go through the feed, first couple I see, I'll. As long as it has to do with the topic that I post about, I will hit like and I will leave my thought on whatever it is that they posted about. And then I go up to the search bar and I type in a topic. So it could be AI and marketing. And then I hit post and then I find five people I'm not connected with and I go like theirs and I comment on theirs. And what that's doing is it's hitting my network and at the same time it's hitting five people who I don't know and it's leaving my comment there. And it's pretty amazing how many people go behind those comments and either like my comment or will comment back to me on my comment on somebody else's page that I'm not even connected to. But that's where, that's where the networking and the value comes into play. But what's critical about it is it's not random. I, you have to be strategic about it. So I'm not out there. Again, there's a lot of fitness trainers on LinkedIn. I'm not out there commenting on those posts. I have no interest in that. That is not the area that I want to need to be in. And so I keep it very, very tight to certain subjects. Now I get a little wide as far as like digital marketing is. I'll do email marketing, I'll do AI, I'll do social media marketing. I'll pick different topics, post on, but it only takes me 10 minutes a day. And I, that's exactly how I do it every single day. And I go through and make comments and you see your impressions go from 1,000 people to 2,000 people to 3,000. And as you watch that scale, I think I looked at mine last week. I hit 8,000 people last week just by commenting on different posts. So it's Very easy things that you can do to get in front of people where people start seeing your name and recognizing you and start connecting you to those keywords.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: Yeah, that's fantastic advice.
So one fascinating stat Too is that four out of five members on LinkedIn are influenced when they're making business decisions by what they see on LinkedIn. So it really is the source of truth for many, many people, but it's also becoming a source source of truth for these AI chat platforms as well. LinkedIn is looked at as a trust platform and something that AI can leverage to produce recommendations and, and citations. So, Jo, is there anything that we haven't covered today that you want to make sure that our audience leaves with?
[00:22:42] Speaker B: I think it's just making sure that you're being real and you're being authentic. So we're all utilizing AI in some shape or form for content and inspiration for the content that we're putting out there. But it's really making sure that whatever you, whatever inspiration or whatever AI tools you're using, before you put it on those platforms or before you respond, make sure it sounds like you make sure it is authentic to you and put your own thoughts in there. I try really hard when I'm commenting never to use AI to help me comment. I want to be authentic. So I go on there and give my two cents. Now, if I have a question, I might use AI to help me research something, but when I actually put the comment or put something out there, I try to make it my own words and make sure it's something that I would naturally say. So that would be my best advice. But really it's just getting started posting most, the majority of people don't post just once a week. Put one post out there and I know a lot of people are like, I don't know what to post and I feel like I'm being judged. You're gonna be judged whether you post or not. So you might as well post and connect to people. And you know, you might have four people that you don't connect with, but that one that you connect with, that actually turns into something that's worth it. And so you wouldn't have had any of it without that. So just get out there, get posting. And the worst that's gonna happen is you're gonna connect with somebo that turns into a business opportunity.
[00:23:55] Speaker A: Yeah, fantastic advice. And there's so much more that we could dive into. If you're not already, be sure that you're subscribed to the Amerilife marketing mentors on YouTube. We'll be talking a lot more about LinkedIn, about AI and about some of the greatest takeaways that you can use for your business and to grow in 2026. So for the Amerilife marketing mentors, that's Jo Barker. I'm David Belleville, and we'll see you you next time.
