Beyond Social

Bernard Ablola's first 27 videos went nowhere. He had to ask his wife and his mom to like them. Then video 28 took off, and he posted 2,200 times last year.

Bernard is the founder of Think Strategy and a former director of marketing at eXp Realty. He talks with Barry Weston about committing to post every day, why B2B buyers want founders instead of logos, and how he turns recorded calls into content without it sounding like AI.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
- One idea becomes five assets: a text post, a video, a carousel, a voiceover cut, and then distribution everywhere.
- Feed your call recordings into AI and ask for posts built from things you actually said.
- Keep taste and judgment human. That's what makes you stand out in the feed.

ABOUT BERNARD
Bernard Ablola is the founder of Think Strategy and previously led marketing at eXp Realty and eXp Commercial.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernardablola/
Think Strategy: http://www.thinkstrategy.com

Beyond Social is brought to you by Vista Social, the social media management platform for brands and agencies. Try it free: https://vistasocial.com

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Sales reps hate updating the CRM. Vista Social's founders explain how an AI agent with your SOP handles it for them.

Vista Social has roughly doubled in size over the past year without doubling headcount. Co-founders Vitaly Veksler and Reggie Azevedo walk through the exact setup: lead prep, post-call CRM updates, follow-up tasks, support replies, and DM lead qualification. If you don't have an SOP yet, they cover where to start.

What you'll take away:
- An "agent" is your SOP written as instructions, plus connections to tools like HubSpot, Google Calendar, and your meeting recorder.
- After a call, the transcript fills out the HubSpot deal and creates ClickUp tasks with owners and deadlines for every promise made. Reps went from 3-4 calls a day to 6-7.
- Support went from summarized tickets to drafted replies to some tickets answered autonomously, and the team is back under a 30-minute first response.

[TIMESTAMPS: add from final audio cut. They may differ from the YouTube version if intros or ads differ.]

About your hosts:
Vitaly Veksler and Reggie Azevedo are the co-founders of Vista Social. Reggie oversees sales and support.

Connect with them on LinkedIn:
Vitaly Veksler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vitalyveksler/
Reggie Azevedo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reggieaze/
Vista Social: https://www.linkedin.com/company/vistasocial/

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A post with 60 likes can beat one with 500. Zapier's Ryan Quindlen explains why he stopped reporting impressions and started tracking who engages.

Ryan runs social at Zapier with a team of two, and his top goal for H2 is a sales pipeline number. He joins Barry Weston and Chris Cunningham to talk about measuring LinkedIn by audience instead of vanity metrics, which formats work after the spring algorithm change, LinkedIn's new AI slop button, and the very unglamorous AI setup behind Zapier's executive content. Built for social media managers, marketers, and anyone who has to defend social to a CMO.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Every week Zapier reports what share of each post's engagement came from director-level and above. The target is 40%.
- Engagement is matched against HubSpot data in a Zapier Table, so the team knows which personas, companies, and topics are engaging.
- A text-only post summarizing a video often beats the video. Screenshot reactions to X, Reddit, or TikTok posts are badly underused on LinkedIn.
- "Comment below" CTAs and questions as the last line are getting buried. Stop using them.
- Exec posts start as a 5 to 10 minute recorded conversation. AI strips the filler, then Ryan spends 20 to 30 minutes editing by hand.
- Going from high to max reasoning costs about 6x for about 10% smarter. Ryan stays at high and below, and routes grunt work to cheaper models, which saves him around 60%.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Ryan Quindlen joins Beyond Social
01:15 Why "cool as shit" creator events work
03:26 Selling bold creative to a "boring" B2B exec team
06:30 Stop chasing impressions, track ICP touches
11:31 Boosting weak posts means your goals are wrong
12:36 The 40% director-plus rule
13:08 How Zapier tracks who engages
17:11 The format that's working: text beats video
19:17 Steal from X, Reddit and TikTok (with credit)
21:59 LinkedIn's AI slop button
23:25 Comment bait and closing questions are getting nuked
25:13 When your hand-written post gets called AI slop
31:22 Why Zapier's top 5 posts of the year were on X
33:26 Ghostwriting for a CEO who takes social seriously
38:57 Meet Kevin, Ryan's local AI knowledge layer
43:25 The "that's not good enough" trick
45:18 War council: 7 subagents that argue with you
47:22 Model routing and saving 60% on AI
49:34 Never go above high reasoning
51:25 Inside Zapier's social team of two
53:57 Recorded exec calls become draft one
56:11 Taste is the moat

ABOUT RYAN
Ryan Quindlen runs social at Zapier, where he sits on the brand team and works on content with executives, including CEO Wade.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanquindlen/

Connect with Barry Weston: www.linkedin.com/in/barry-weston

Connect with Chris Cunningham: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisclickup/

Beyond Social is brought to you by Vista Social, the social media management platform for brands and agencies. Try it free: https://vistasocial.com


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Everyone treats their LinkedIn company page like a box to tick — post, get 200 impressions, wonder why it's dead. Michelle J. Raymond says that's exactly backward.

Michelle is the world's leading authority on LinkedIn company pages. She helps B2B organizations wrangle the one asset every business has, and almost nobody uses well — starting with the page, then scaling with employees in what she calls "the power of two.

"In this episode of Beyond Social, Michelle breaks down why company page organic reach gets the least priority on LinkedIn, and what actually moves the needle: flipping self-serving content into content that makes other people better at their jobs, "page advocacy" (yes, your page should be out there commenting), and why most pages are stuck at 200–1500 impressions no matter their size.

We get into the 90/9/1 rule of who actually creates on LinkedIn, why carousels can pull up to 8x the engagement, whether LinkedIn newsletters are worth activating (and why AI is starting to cite them), and Michelle's rule for anyone overthinking it: "If you confuse, you lose."

Plus her permission slip most brands need to hear — it's okay to have fun on LinkedIn.

Connect with Michelle
B2B Growth Co

Connect with Barry
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LinkedIn is the best place for business leaders to get ahead on social media, but so many are either afraid to start or lack the time to figure out the best strategy. How can that be fixed? Ghostwriters.

However, most ghostwriting clients will never admit they use one. So how do you prove the work?

Maria Marchewka writes LinkedIn for busy executives and founders — the people who've climbed the corporate ladder and then freeze at the idea of posting. 

In this episode of Beyond Social, Maria walks through her entire system: the 30-minute monthly call, the 10 custom questions, and how she turns a transcript into a month of posts that still sound like the person who said them.

We get into why commenting beats posting for anyone starting out, what she does when a call produces nothing usable, whether the LinkedIn algorithm is actually out to get you, and LinkedIn's new "seems like AI slop" button — which is either a good idea or a loaded gun, depending on who's holding it.

Chapters
00:00 — Nobody wants people to know they use a ghostwriter
00:25 — Who Maria is and what she actually does
02:46 — Quitting the 9-to-5 to work 24/7
03:01 — How she landed on LinkedIn ghostwriting
04:49 — Practitioner, not preacher: her profile as the proof
06:14 — "Who cares what I have to say?" — the executive mindset block
07:00 — The system: 10 questions, 30 minutes, one month of content
08:57 — When clients start bringing their own ideas
10:34 — Handling comments and engagement without profile access
12:20 — When a post catches fire (and the trolls show up)
14:21 — Coaching executives into video
16:25 — What to do when the call gives you nothing
17:43 — How often should a leader actually post?
19:44 — Is it the algorithm, or is it you?
22:04 — The production workflow: Otter, Claude, Google Docs
23:55 — Why a transcript can't capture excitement
25:01 — Rapid fire: the one habit to start this week
26:17 — Do comments actually help your reach?
28:38 — The Lunch Break newsletter
29:14 — The one habit to quit immediately
31:04 — LinkedIn's "seems like AI slop" button
33:01 — The posts she's most proud of
35:01 — Borrowing Gary Vee's $1.80 strategy
36:30 — If LinkedIn allowed only one post format
38:25 — Underrated creators worth following

Host: Barry Weston

Find Maria
LinkedIn
Website
Newsletter — The Lunch Break, every Monday at noon ET:

Mentioned in this episode
Nicole Ramirez on LinkedIn
Heike Young on LinkedIn

About Beyond Social

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Everyone's bracing for AI to take marketing jobs. Daniel Murray thinks the opposite is happening — and he's got a clear line on which marketers are actually at risk.

Daniel built Marketing Millennials into a 1.4M-follower LinkedIn page, which isn't supposed to be possible for a company page. In this episode, he breaks down exactly how he did it: the tweet-screenshot play he started in 2020, why he posts in dark mode, the meme bank and hook bank he's been building for years, and what's actually working on LinkedIn right now that nobody's talking about yet.

We also get into where AI fits — he uses it constantly, but not for the thing most people use it for. His take: AI gives you breadth; humans still own depth. The best information in marketing is still trapped in the heads of people doing the work, and it's never been posted online.

Plus: how to make a B2B company page not feel like a slog, the evangelist hiring play, and what to actually do with a conference booth if you don't want to be the brand giving away pens.

Connect with Daniel Murray
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-murray-marketing/
The Marketing Millennials: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-marketing-millennials/

Beyond Social is brought to you by Vista Social
Manage every social channel from one place: https://vistasocial.com
Hosts: 
Barry Weston: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barry-weston/
Chris Cunningham: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisclickup/


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Mark Sirkin, Chief Growth Officer at Walk West, breaks down how marketers should actually use AI agents in 2026: not as a fancy autocomplete, but as a team that forces clearer thinking, sharper brand POV, and real workflow leverage.

In this episode of Beyond Social, we get practical on:
→ Why "rewrite this" prompts keep you stuck with mediocre output
→ The interview method that pulls better strategy out of AI
→ How to build an AI agent team that does real marketing work
→ Why AI literacy + brand taste beat tool-chasing
→ The hard truth: if you wait too long on AI, you're already behind

If you run social, growth, or an agency, this one's for you.

🔗 Host: Barry Weston - VP of Marketing, Vista Social

🔗 Guest: Mark Sirkin - Chief Growth Officer, Walk West

🎧 Beyond Social
A Vista Social podcast on social, content, and the systems behind modern marketing.

🛠️ Run social like it's 2026
https://vistasocial.com
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Sarah, Social Media Manager at ManyChat, has grown the brand's Instagram to over 600K followers as a B2B company — and she did it by leading with value instead of product pitches. In this episode of Beyond Social, Sarah joins hosts Chris Cunningham and Reggie Azevedo to break down the content strategy behind ManyChat's social growth and what it really takes to build an engaged audience in the creator economy.

Sarah covers why an 80/20 split between educational content and product promotion is the formula that actually converts, how ManyChat uses comment automations to drive massive engagement (and why their followers trigger keywords even when they're not asked to), and how she manages YouTube and Instagram with a lean but structured team workflow built inside Asana.

The conversation also gets into AI and where it actually fits in a social media workflow — as a brainstorming partner and efficiency tool, not a replacement for the creativity that makes content stand out. Sarah also shares her framework for evaluating what's working, from watch time and engagement rate to iterating on hooks that consistently outperform.

If you're a social media manager trying to grow a B2B brand without sounding like every other brand account, this episode is packed with actionable perspective.

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Organic LinkedIn is still the highest ROI channel in B2B marketing, and Jess Cook, VP of Marketing at Vector, has the numbers to prove it. With roughly $40,000 in total ad spend for the year, Vector made organic LinkedIn its single biggest lead source. In this episode of Beyond Social, Jess joins hosts Chris Cunningham and Reggie Azevedo to break down the B2B LinkedIn strategy behind those results.

Jess covers how she built her own LinkedIn audience by committing to posting every weekday for a year, how she helps Vector's founders and team show up consistently on social media without sounding generic, and why borrowing B2C creative thinking is the biggest competitive advantage in B2B content marketing today.

The conversation also digs into AI and content creation, specifically how social media managers can use tools like Claude to scale without losing their authentic voice, and why human storytelling will always be the thing that cuts through.

If you manage social media for a B2B brand, agency, or enterprise team, this one's worth your full attention.

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ClickUp scaled to $300M ARR in one of the most competitive SaaS categories in the world.

In this episode, Reggie and Vitaly sit down with Chris Cunningham, Head of Social at ClickUp, to break down the SaaS growth strategy behind ClickUp’s rise — from living in a startup house to becoming a category leader in the project management space.

They unpack what it really takes to scale a B2B SaaS company in a saturated market: scrappy go-to-market tactics, early product-market fit lessons, unconventional hiring strategies, aggressive product development, and building content as a long-term competitive moat.

You’ll learn:

• How ClickUp attacked a crowded SaaS market dominated by incumbents
• The scrappy growth tactics that generated early enterprise deals
• Startup scaling lessons from hiring, product launches, and GTM mistakes
• Why modern B2B marketing strategy must include a dedicated content creator
• How AI SaaS features (including ClickUp 4.0 and Super Agents) are reshaping productivity software
• The balance between shipping fast and shipping polished in high-growth startups

This conversation dives deep into SaaS startup scaling, founder-led growth, B2B content marketing, AI integration in SaaS products, and how to build a durable brand in a competitive industry.

If you’re a SaaS founder, B2B marketer, product leader, or growth operator trying to win in a crowded market, this episode is packed with practical lessons.

Subscribe for more founder-led conversations on SaaS growth, AI in marketing, startup strategy, and building scalable marketing systems.

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