# Michelle J Raymond

Michelle J Raymond advises B2B marketing teams on LinkedIn strategy, including aligning company and employee brands, building buyer confidence, and developing LinkedIn newsletters.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/michelle-j-raymond/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellejraymond
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBMdHddhf5YV3-za06jC-0Q
- Based on 13 dated posts, latest 2026-10-08

## Summary

Most useful for B2B LinkedIn strategy, aligning company and employee brands, building buyer confidence, and assessing LinkedIn newsletters.

- Best for: Complex B2B organisations needing a workshop or alignment sprint on employee advocacy and shared LinkedIn messaging.
- Not for: Consumer brands seeking paid TikTok or Instagram Reels campaigns with performance pricing and short-form ads.
- Check first: Confirm audience composition, fees, terms, partnership route, and client outcomes before contracting.

### Takeaways

- Company and employee brands should amplify each other on LinkedIn.
- Buyer confidence is the missing metric when B2B deals stall.
- They report 139 newsletter editions and an average 38 to 40 percent open rate.

## Main ideas

- **Treat LinkedIn as a team sport: company and employee brands should amplify each other**: Michelle J Raymond argues that complex B2B organisations usually don’t have a LinkedIn problem; they have a team problem. Company pages are active, content is published, employees are asked to engage, leaders are encouraged to show up, and sales teams use LinkedIn in their own ways — but not everyone follows one game plan. Their answer is a two-way system: use the brand to amplify employees, and employees to amplify the brand. This isn’t a case against personal brands; alignment matters more than choosing one side.
- **Buyer confidence is the missing metric when B2B deals stall**: Michelle J Raymond uses a statistic attributed to Vita Molis at The B2B Institute — that 40% of B2B deals do not go to a competitor, they go nowhere — to shift the focus away from content volume. If buyers have seen plenty of content but still don’t trust the brand enough to move forward, the credibility gap and influence on buying committees matter more than publishing more.
- **Don’t start a LinkedIn newsletter for the wrong reasons**: Michelle J Raymond advises most people to wait before starting a LinkedIn newsletter. Launching only because newsletters are said to earn AI citations is a weak reason; so is starting without a defined topic, audience, and point of view, or the capacity to keep publishing after the excitement fades. Address those three gaps, and a newsletter can become a strong authority-building asset in B2B marketing.
- **B2B brand work should be worth watching, not just another lead magnet**: Michelle J Raymond argues that B2B marketing rewards brands that know who they’re for and aren’t afraid to show personality. Most companies say they want that, but few commission it, ship it, and bet a launch on it. Their test: is the brand work itself impressive enough to stop someone scrolling, rather than simply offering a longer feature list? The post includes a partner hashtag; ask whether the launch was paid or sponsored.
- **Measure B2B brand strength, not just who collects impressions**: Michelle J Raymond questions the LinkedIn feed’s claim that personal brands are everything and asks whether B2B measures brand strength properly or simply rewards visibility. They argue that personal brands may get too much credit and company brands not enough. In practice, alignment and consistent repetition from multiple trusted sources matter more than one person going viral.

## Work to read

- [Company brands still carry weight: the Power of Two on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michellejraymond_linkedin-feed-loves-to-tell-you-that-personal-activity-7460568411421655040-9Ayw)
- [LinkedIn is a team sport: why the company page is not the problem](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michellejraymond_linkedinisteamsport-thepoweroftwo-activity-7479452017225039872-HD5W)
- [Three reasons not to start a LinkedIn newsletter — and the numbers behind the advice](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michellejraymond_three-reasons-you-should-not-start-a-linkedin-activity-7474398946111598593-IWnF)
- [The credibility gap: why 40% of B2B deals end in no decision](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michellejraymond_40-of-b2b-deals-dont-go-to-a-competitor-activity-7465341416907550720-sAkA)
- [A launch that led with brand work rather than a feature list](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michellejraymond_conversionpartner-activity-7462691738768494593-O0uS)

## Brand relationships

- **Conversion** (disclosed_partnership)
- **LinkedIn Newsletter Growth Lab** (owned_business)
- **Social Media for B2B Growth Podcast** (mention)

## Partnerships

Michelle J Raymond's posts do not describe a sponsorship or brand-partnership package, rates, or campaign terms. They mention a paid, one-hour LinkedIn Newsletter Growth Lab session, promoted with an invitation to request details by direct message; it is a strategy service, not a stated sponsorship format. A post praising Conversion’s launch includes the hashtag #ConversionPartner but does not state that the post was paid. Brands considering a collaboration would need to confirm scope, fees, approvals, and timing directly. See Michelle J Raymond’s Newsletter Growth Lab post and Conversion launch post.

## Alternatives

- Keeley Mazurek: A better choice when the assignment is about a consumer or direct-to-consumer brand's social channel and how the company staffs, trusts and pays the people who run it. Mazurek argues that a brand's social account should be treated like a retail partner, with merchandising, education and campaigns built around it. They also argue that social media managers build front-facing brand equity every day and should be treated and paid like top-line marketing managers. For an agency whose client sells to consumers and wants to reposition the social function internally, that framing is a closer fit than a LinkedIn team-alignment workshop.
- Tim S Dodd 🚀: A better choice when the problem is sales outreach performance rather than a shared message across the whole organisation. Dodd treats LinkedIn as a client-acquisition channel: humanising outreach so prospects reach a call as warm as a referral. They argue that buyers message people rather than company logos, citing a figure that 73% of LinkedIn members are more receptive to posts from real people than from company pages. If the agency's client mainly wants to improve its sales team's profiles and reply rates, that is the direct match.
- Olga Bondareva: A better choice when the client wants a structured map of every trust-building channel before committing budget, rather than a LinkedIn-specific programme. Bondareva organises trust-building into three groups: building relationships (social selling, community building inside account-based marketing, event networking, long-term nurturing); building your own authority (brand building, thought leadership, senior managers' personal brands, employee advocacy, case studies, public speaking); and borrowing authority (strategic partnerships, analyst relations, B2B influencer marketing on LinkedIn, podcasts with outside guests, PR). The structure was used to build an online conference and is backed by recorded practitioner evidence: interviews with B2B marketers at Snowflake, FLSmidth and NetApp on what makes content get used by sales, including one account of social engagement rising about 200% after materials moved away from brand jargon. For a planning workshop that must allocate effort across channels, that breadth is the point.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/