Are you social spamming?

From: Selling Signals Newsletter

Date: February 4, 2026

Feb 04, 2026

When social selling turns to social spamming

I’ll admit it: I find Emily Cooper annoying most of the time. And yet I keep watching Emily in Paris, because the show accidentally nails a very real B2B lesson.

Emily gets the likes, the hype, the “omg you’re so brave” comments. Then she walks into the meeting and realizes likes don’t equal trust.

Social media platforms are having an Emily moment. Everyone’s optimizing for attention, but buyers still reward usefulness. Even brands are backing off from the constant pitch.

Nearly half of marketers say 60%+ of their social content is meant to entertain, educate, or inform, not directly promote products or services.

The voice is shifting, too. Almost half of organizations tested a new tone or persona on social because “corporate beige” doesn’t earn attention or trust.

So, if your social selling feels like it’s getting louder but not getting closer, this issue is your reset: Stop posting to be seen, and start showing up to be believed.

Sales Action

How reps turn social into signals, instead of noise

Quick gut-check: You’re probably social spamming if…

✅ Your post could be copied and pasted onto any company’s page.

✅ Your comments sound like a networking event you’re trying to escape.
✅ You drop a link or pitch within the first two messages.
✅ You DM someone who has never interacted with you and call it “personalized.”
✅ You’re posting daily, but can’t name one deal it influenced.

Here’s what to change this week:

1. Post one clear point of view, not an update.
❌ “Excited to share our platform helps teams scale!”
✅ “Most RevOps teams don’t have a forecast problem. They have an input problem. Here’s what breaks first.”

Two-thirds of users engage most with ‘edutainment’ — content that teaches and holds attention. Your POV should help buyers understand, not just announce, something.

2. Comment to add context.
❌ “Great post! Let me know if you want to connect.”
✅ “This shows up a lot when legal joins late. Curious how you’re handling approvals.”

Good comments sound like colleagues, not lead magnets.

3. Earn the DM before sending it.
If there’s no visible interaction history, your message feels cold, no matter how “personalized” it looks. The benchmark approval rate is 29.61%. If you’re below that, you need better targeting and a less templated first touch more than DMs.

4. Stop chasing frequency. Start tracking recall.
The best signal isn’t likes. It’s hearing “I saw your post” on a call.

When your social activity enters real conversations, you’re posting with purpose, not just selling.

Sales Signals

🗂️ Top B2B Social Media Planner Templates for Faster Growth — Use these planning templates to align posts with deal stages, so your social activity supports pipeline motion instead of random visibility.

🔍 AI Visibility Is the First Stage of B2B Sales In 2026 — Audit how your brand appears in AI-driven search and lookups now, because buyers increasingly form shortlists before sales ever enters the conversation.

💰 From Posts to Profit: How to Convert Social Content into Revenue in 2026 — Follow this playbook to turn high-engagement social posts into sales conversations by tying content directly to buyer intent and next steps.

Marketing Movement

From employee posting to employee positioning

If social selling is the goal, marketing can’t treat it like a rep activity or a “post more” initiative. Your job is to make the brand show up clearly, consistently, and credibly through the people buyers already trust.

43% of marketers rank Facebook among the highest ROI-driving social platforms, reminding us that social influence doesn’t live on one channel or look the same everywhere.

More importantly, most of them believe that building an active online community is critical to social success. That’s the opposite of social spamming. Community is earned through relevance, consistency, and participation, not drive-by posting.

Here’s what you can do next:

Build POV blocks that mirror how sales engages.
Package short, reusable POV blocks tied to real buyer moments, such as what changed, where teams get stuck, and the tradeoff nobody mentions. These travel better than generic brand messages and are harder to misuse.
Design social-first entry points.
Create posts and prompts that invite dialogue, add context, and naturally lead to follow-up, instead of rushing to the ask.
Standardize the first move, not the whole conversation.
Define what you need to customize (trigger, role, stakes) and keep consistent (POV, tone, positioning) to keep outreach human and away from off-brand improvisation or copy-paste spam.
Turn high-ROI platforms into trust-builders.
Use LinkedIn, Facebook, and communities to reinforce credibility after first exposure. Retarget with POV content, social proof, and events that feel additive.
Measure social by sales signal, not surface metrics.
Align with sales on what “working” actually means: posts referenced on calls, DMs that lead to meetings, and content forwarded inside buying groups. If social never shows up in real conversations, it’s not selling.

Marketing’s role isn’t to make reps louder. It’s to make sure that when they speak, buyers recognize something worth responding to.

Marketing Signals

📣 Social Media Lead Generation: Top Sites, Strategies & Tips — Map each social platform to a specific lead-gen role so you stop spreading effort thin and start generating contacts that sales can actually work.

📊 Experts Predict the Top Social Marketing Trends of 2026 — Pressure-test your 2026 strategy against these emerging trends to avoid investing in channels and tactics buyers are already tuning out.

🧵 Hubspot Publishes New Guide to Reddit Marketing for B2B Brands — Learn how to engage on Reddit without getting roasted by focusing on community contribution first and promotion only when it’s genuinely earned.

Share this newsletter!

Mixed Signals

Emily gets the likes. But likes don’t equal trust. Sales feels it when “great engagement” never becomes a conversation. Marketing feels it when posting volume rises, but credibility doesn’t.

Here’s a takeaway from Timothy Hughes’ podcast that fits this week’s playbook: Social media works when it starts conversations, not pitches. So, if your social motion is drifting into spam, look for these tells:

Your profile reads like a brochure, not a human that buyers can trust.
Your “personalization” is automated, and buyers can smell the template.
You treat likes as the finish line, instead of the opening to the next step.
You skip the simplest relationship moves (even a real “thank you”) and jump straight to the ask.

→ Translation: Marketing’s job is to make reps sound credible at scale. Sales’ job is to turn credibility into conversations. If both teams do that, social media stops being a feed you post into and becomes a place where deals actually start.

Meet Our Writer

Bianca Caballero

Senior Staff Writer

Bianca has spent the past four years helping businesses strengthen relationships and boost performance through strategic sales and customer engagement initiatives. Drawing on her experience in field sales and territory management, she transforms real-world expertise into actionable insights that drive growth and foster lasting client partnerships.