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LinkedIn in 2026 isn't social media — and if you're still treating it like Instagram's boring cousin, you're leaving the biggest opportunity in B2B marketing on the table. Four out of five LinkedIn members drive business decisions, but only about 5% of them post strategically. That's not a crowded room. That's a wide-open one.
In this episode, I share the most engaging parts of the keynote I am delivering this week at the Digital Marketing Summit at Nova Southeastern University — including the Business Engine Framework for LinkedIn that I built the talk around, and why LinkedIn is now the one platform where search, email, and social actually converge.
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Download your free copy of the 1st edition of Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth here.
If this episode helped you see LinkedIn differently, please leave a review on your favorite podcast app, share it with a colleague who needs to hear it, and subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next.
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Most businesses treat social media like a task to check off. Post something, hope it performs, repeat. But according to today's guest, that's exactly why most businesses are getting mediocre results — because social media isn't a task. It's a craft.
I sit down with Jon-Stephen Stansel — social media manager turned entertainment industry freelancer and author of The 10 Principles of Effective Social Media Marketing — for a conversation about what actually works on social media in 2026. Jon-Stephen has managed social for Texas State University, worked on Prime Video's Invincible, Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the Avatar franchise, and is currently working on Beast Games for MrBeast. Through all of it, he's distilled social media into 10 principles inspired by designer Dieter Rams — evergreen enough to be true a decade ago and still true today.
We cover why goals — not followers or viral moments — are the only real starting point, why audience alignment needs to happen before any content gets created, how to find and hire the right social media help without getting burned, how to measure social media success in a way that actually means something to your business, and why the most important principle of all is that social media is fundamentally human — even in the age of AI.
If you've ever wondered why your social media efforts aren't translating into real business results, this episode will show you where to look.
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Two years ago, 60% of consumers said they were fine with AI-generated content. Today that number has dropped to 26%. Consumers are rejecting AI content faster than marketers can create it — and the brands that ignore this are paying a steep price.
In this episode, I'm sharing the full breakdown of the keynote I delivered at DigiMarCon West in Hollywood — a presentation called People, Not Prompts. It's built around the SES framework from my book Digital Threads: Search, Email, and Social working together as one connected system. But more importantly, it's about the layer on top of that system that AI simply cannot replicate: people.
I walk through why the bottleneck in marketing has shifted from execution to strategy, what the SES framework looks like with an updated AI-era lens, how brands like Lego, Levi's, and Intuit got burned by going all in on AI without a strategy, and how LinkedIn has become the single platform where search, email, social, and people all converge.
Plus — I'm giving away a free copy of Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth to podcast listeners and YouTube viewers. Details inside.
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I've been saying for years that marketing is increasingly visual — whether it's social media, YouTube, websites, or even AI-generated content. But most of us aren't designers, and we're winging it when it comes to visual branding. My guest today is Jim MacLeod, author of The Visual Marketer, and he's someone I've known for about a decade — back when I co-founded the Social Tools Summit and invited him to speak about visual social media from a B2B perspective. Jim has a rare combination of graphic design expertise and deep marketing strategy knowledge, and in this conversation he breaks down how to think about visual identity from a customer-first perspective, why consistency matters more than creativity when building your brand, and how to align your visual content strategy with actual customer research. Whether you're a solopreneur designing your own graphics in Canva or a marketing leader managing a creative team, this episode will change how you think about the visuals that represent your business.
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You're using AI every day — but is it actually getting smarter about your business? For most marketers, the answer is no, because they're treating AI like a search engine instead of a workspace. In this episode, I break down the AI Workflow Flywheel that I have developed for my own business — a compound-momentum system that makes every AI conversation build on the last, so your output gets better and faster over time.
If you've ever wondered why some marketers seem to get 10x more value from the same AI tools you're using, this is the episode that closes that gap.
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If this episode helped you rethink how you use AI, share it with a colleague who's still treating ChatGPT like a search engine. Subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode, and leave a review — it helps other marketers find the show. For more frameworks, strategies, and weekly insights, visit nealschaffer.com.
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In a marketing world increasingly driven by AI-generated content and data dashboards, it's easy to start treating customers like data points instead of people. Phil Treagus-Evans — founder of UK social media agency Giraffe Social and author of Human First Marketing: The Art of Being Seen, Trusted and Remembered — makes a compelling case for why human-first marketing isn't just a philosophy. It's a competitive advantage.
In this episode, Phil and I dig into what it really means to understand your audience (hint: it goes well beyond the customer avatar), why Phil believes the traditional marketing funnel is built on a fiction, and what a pinball machine (for those that remember what one is!) has to do with the modern buyer journey. You'll also hear Phil's take on where AI helps marketers — and where it quietly undermines everything they're trying to build.
Whether you're a solopreneur, a corporate marketer, or an agency owner, this episode will give you a new mental model for how customers actually move toward a purchase — and what you can do about it.
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Note: This is Episode 442, published January 6, 2026.
You published a book, it hit #1, and the reviews were phenomenal. In the digital marketing world, that’s usually where you take a victory lap. But then the AI revolution happened. Over the last year, the fundamental ways we build relationships and create content on LinkedIn have shifted so dramatically that I knew a simple "tweak" wouldn't cut it.
I’ve spent the last several months obsessively updating Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth to reflect the 2026 landscape. This isn't just a minor update—it's a 70% expansion featuring five entirely new chapters. In this episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on the exact strategies I added to help you stay visible, professional, and profitable.
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Most people are still "chatting" with AI. They put in a prompt, they get an answer, and they move on. But while the rest of the world is dabbling, the top 1% of marketers are building Agentic Workflows. They aren't just using AI to write; they are using it to act.
Today, I’m joined by Matt Collette, founder of Sequencr.ai. Matt has a background at Ogilvy and Edelman, and he’s here to show us how to move from being an AI novice to an AI architect. We’re talking about the "Micro-Agency of One"—a way to use autonomous agents to scale your output and strategy without ever hiring a team.
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Most marketers and creators agree on one thing: “AI slop” is bad for the internet. From hallucinated facts to soulless clickbait, low‑quality AI content is blamed for ruining search results and polluting the web. But what if that narrative is missing the bigger strategic picture—and quietly putting your business at risk of becoming invisible in an AI‑first world?
In this solo episode, digital marketing author and consultant Neal Schaffer makes a contrarian case: a specific, ethical form of AI‑assisted content may actually be your only path to discoverability in 2026 and beyond. As search behavior shifts from short keywords to long, conversational prompts, we’ve moved from the classic “long tail” of SEO into what Neal calls the long‑long‑tail—an environment where having just a few great pieces of content is no longer enough.
Neal breaks down the three tiers of AI slop, the four guardrails of responsible AI volume, and a practical framework for turning one flagship asset into dozens of ultra‑specific answers that both humans and LLMs can find. If you’re a B2B entrepreneur, marketing leader, or service provider worried about spam, brand damage, or ethics, this episode gives you a grounded, no‑fluff playbook for staying visible without sacrificing your standards.
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Most marketers and experts don’t have a conversion problem—they have a messaging problem. Their websites, emails, and content are packed with facts, features, and “I help…” statements that never touch the emotional brain that actually decides to buy. In the age of AI-generated content and endless noise, it’s the human story behind your offer that cuts through and converts.
In this episode of Your Digital Marketing Coach, I’m joined by Aurora Winter—Hollywood-trained storyteller, entrepreneur, and author of ten books, including Turn Words Into Wealth and Marketing Fast Track. Aurora has helped entrepreneurs, attorneys, and experts transform their “invisible” expertise into powerful IP, profitable books, and seven-figure opportunities by fixing how they talk about what they do.
We dive into the specific messaging shifts that turn flat copy into compelling stories, why your brand will determine whether you compete on value or race to the bottom on price, and how to use books, video, and AI-era search engines (Amazon, YouTube, and beyond) to establish real authority. If you’re serious about building a B2B brand that sells without screaming “buy now,” this conversation is your playbook.
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