The LinkedIn System for Execs Who Have No Time to Post | Jeffrey Zhao, Ordinal | EP.30

When Jeffrey Zhao was running Slope, a design and marketing agency, his team did organic social for B2B companies. They tried every tool out there. None of them fit. Sprout, Hootsuite and Sprinklr were built years ago for consumer brands, back when social meant brand awareness and not much else. B2B needed something different: execs posting, employees engaging, approvals moving fast, and a way to tie all of it back to pipeline. So Jeffrey built it. That’s Ordinal, and he was the customer before he was the vendor.   I brought Jeffrey on because I use Ordinal every day (this isn’t a paid episode, I promise) and because he can see who posts and who goes quiet across a huge number of B2B companies. That view makes the pattern hard to ignore. Company page reach has dropped more than 60% in the last two years. Meanwhile, the companies winning on LinkedIn have execs and employees posting every week. People buy from people. The hard part is making that consistent when your CEO is stuck in board meetings.   We got into why exec teams stop posting (usually they just get busy), why “I have nothing interesting to say” is almost never true, and how one social manager can now run content for 20 execs plus an employee program, a job that used to take 10 people. Jeffrey also shared how Clay grew its LinkedIn from 8,000 followers to over 120,000 with a one-person social team, and why writing the post is only about 10% of the work.   What you’ll learn - Why B2B social covers the whole funnel, from brand awareness down to closing deals - The three reasons exec teams go quiet on LinkedIn, and the one role that keeps them posting 3 to 5 times a week - Why LinkedIn feels “cringe” to people who don’t use it (and what they’re missing) - How to find 3 to 5 posts’ worth of ideas a week in your call recordings, Slack threads and Notion docs - The CFO who headlines finance conferences for thousands of people and still thought he had nothing to say - How posting on LinkedIn can raise your cold email response rates, even when nobody engages with the post - Why your LinkedIn posts work as built-in social proof in the middle of a long deal cycle - The two-second profile fixes that 90% of companies skip, even though prospects are one click away from booking a demo - How Clay scaled to 15 to 20 execs posting every week with a tiny team - Where AI helps, where it turns into slop, and why hiring a human still gets most teams better results today - Rapid fire: the most underrated post format, whether there’s a best time to post, the LinkedIn habit Jeffrey would ban, and if you should keep or kill your company page   TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Intro: LinkedIn for B2B Growth 00:08 How LinkedIn Builds Business 00:47 From Agency to SaaS: Slope to Ordinal 04:01 Why B2B Social Media Is Different 05:08 Executive and Employee Advocacy 08:01 AI in Social Media Management 10:11 Why Executives Stop Posting on LinkedIn 14:31 No Time and Nothing to Say? Fix It 20:05 Personal Profiles vs Company Pages 21:50 Authentic LinkedIn Posts That Work 22:23 How Thought Leadership Drives Pipeline 23:53 LinkedIn Posts as Social Proof in Sales 24:52 LinkedIn DMs and Profile Optimization 27:11 Clay’s LinkedIn Growth Case Study 29:21 Executive LinkedIn Posting Strategy 32:18 AI Writing vs Human Content 36:01 Content Approvals in Slack 36:40 Rapid Fire: LinkedIn Tips 38:51 What Reputation Means + Wrap Up GUEST Jeffrey Zhao, Co-founder of Ordinal. Ordinal: https://www.tryordinal.com/ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandevgan/https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhaojeffrey/   HOST Justin Obey, founder of Obey Creative. We help B2B founders turn cold outbound into warm conversations through a podcast-driven content engine. One episode per week. Your prospects know and trust you before your sales team ever picks up the phone. First episode live in 30 days. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinobey/ Website:https://obeycreative.com/https://obeycreative.com/   SHOW Return on Reputation explores how founders and business leaders turn expertise into trust, authority, relationships and business growth. Subscribe to Return on Reputation for more conversations about personal branding, leadership and building a business people trust.