If you have ever felt like your LinkedIn strategy is not working despite how much effort you are putting in, you are not alone. Most B2B founders make the same mistakes: trying to keep up with every trend, posting content that sounds polished but says nothing, and treating social media as an afterthought rather than a business system.

In this episode of The Amanda Kaufman Show, B2B LinkedIn strategist Priya Shah breaks down exactly what it takes to build a social media presence that actually works for your business. Her framework is simple, practical, and built for founders who are serious about results.

Credibility First: Why Your Audience Has to Trust You Before They Buy From You

Before you can convert followers into clients, you need to establish yourself as someone worth paying attention to. On LinkedIn especially, credibility is the foundation everything else is built on.

- Why It Matters: B2B buyers research before they reach out. If your LinkedIn profile and content do not clearly communicate your expertise, they will move on. Credibility is what makes someone pick up the phone.

- How to Do It: Be specific about what you do and who you help. Share insights that demonstrate real experience, not just recycled tips. Priya recommends leaning into the background and perspective that makes you different, because your lived expertise is something no competitor can replicate.

- Common Mistake: Many founders try to appeal to a broad audience by keeping their content vague. This feels safe, but it actually makes you invisible. The more specific you are, the more your ideal clients will feel like you are speaking directly to them.

Consistency Over Virality: The Long Game That Actually Wins

Going viral once will not build your business. Showing up reliably over time will. Consistency is one of the most underrated competitive advantages a B2B founder can have.

- Why It Matters: Consistent presence builds familiarity, and familiarity builds trust. When your ideal clients see your name regularly in their feed, you become the first person they think of when they need what you offer.

- How to Do It: Commit to a posting schedule you can actually sustain, even if that means posting less often than you think you should. Priya emphasizes that quality and regularity matter far more than volume. Start with engagement before you worry about posting frequency.

- Common Mistake: Founders often start strong, burn out, and go quiet for weeks. Then they restart with a flurry of posts and disappear again. This on-and-off pattern erodes trust. Steadiness, as Priya puts it, is its own form of competition.

Clarity of Focus: Stop Trying to Be Everything for Everyone

One of the fastest ways to dilute your LinkedIn presence is to try to speak to everyone. If your content could apply to anyone, it will resonate with no one.

- Why It Matters: Clarity makes your content magnetic to the right people. When your audience immediately recognizes themselves in your posts, they engage, share, and eventually reach out.

- How to Do It: Get ruthlessly specific about who you serve and what you help them achieve. Your content should reflect that focus consistently. Priya's three C's, credibility, consistency, and clarity, all reinforce each other. Clarity is what makes the other two work.

- Common Mistake: Founders often fear that being specific will shrink their audience. In practice, the opposite is true. Specificity attracts the clients you actually want to work with and repels the ones who were never a good fit anyway.

Break the Silos: How to Multiply Your LinkedIn Impact Across Your Organization

If social media is the job of just one person or one department in your business, you are leaving most of its potential on the table. Priya spent years inside large corporations discovering that siloed social media performs at roughly 3% of what it could.

- Why It Matters: Every person on your team has a network, a perspective, and a voice. When those voices contribute to your brand's social presence, the reach and authenticity of your content multiplies in ways no single brand account can match.

- How to Do It: Invite team members, subject matter experts, and even enthusiastic customers to contribute their voices. An employee who genuinely loves their work and shares that publicly is worth more than a dozen polished brand posts. Start by identifying two or three people in your organization who are naturally good storytellers.

- Common Mistake: Many businesses police what employees can and cannot say about the company online, which silences the exact authenticity that makes social media valuable. Trust your people, give them simple guidelines, and let them show up as themselves.

Ditch Trend Chasing: Why a Steady Strategy Beats the Algorithm

Every week there is a new format, a new audio clip, a new challenge everyone seems to be joining. And every week, B2B founders waste time trying to adapt their brand to fit something that has nothing to do with their business.

- Why It Matters: Trend chasing confuses your audience and dilutes your brand. When your content is inconsistent in tone and focus, people do not know what to expect from you. And when they do not know what to expect, they stop paying attention.

- How to Do It: Before jumping on any trend, ask yourself whether it connects back to what you are actually trying to achieve. If the answer is no, skip it. Focus instead on clearly communicating your unique value in the tone that actually matches who you are. Your founding story, your perspective on the industry, the problems you solve every day: those are the stories worth telling.

- Common Mistake: Founders sometimes convince themselves that entertaining content is a shortcut to reach. But if you are a B2B business, your audience is not following you for entertainment. They are following you because you have expertise they need. Give them that, consistently, and the right people will find you.

Conclusion

Building an authentic LinkedIn strategy is not complicated, but it does require intention. Priya Shah's framework brings it down to three things: show up with credibility, stay consistent, and be absolutely clear about who you are and who you serve. When you stop chasing trends and start investing in your own story, you stop competing for attention and start attracting the right clients naturally.

To hear the full conversation with Priya, listen to Episode 329 of The Amanda Kaufman Show on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Frequently Asked Questions

H3: How often should a B2B founder post on LinkedIn?

Consistency matters more than frequency. Priya recommends starting with engagement before posting, and committing only to a schedule you can sustain long-term. Even two or three well-crafted posts per week beats daily posting that burns you out in a month.

H3: What kind of content works best for B2B on LinkedIn?

Content that draws on your real experience and speaks directly to your ideal client's challenges tends to perform best. Avoid overly polished or generic posts. Share your perspective, tell stories from your own career, and focus on what makes your approach distinct.

H3: How do I know if my LinkedIn content is too broad?

Ask yourself: could this post have been written by anyone in my industry? If yes, it is too broad. The most effective B2B content reflects a specific point of view and speaks to a specific audience. Specificity is what makes your ideal clients feel seen.

H3: Is it worth having employees post on behalf of the company?

Absolutely. An employee sharing genuine enthusiasm for their work or insights from their role is one of the most authentic forms of brand content available. The key is to invite participation and offer simple guidance rather than tightly scripting what they say.

H3: How do I get started on LinkedIn if I have never really posted before?

Priya's advice: start with engagement, not posting. Spend time commenting thoughtfully on others' content, responding to posts in your niche, and building relationships. This tells the algorithm what you care about and helps you find your voice before you start publishing your own content.

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Are you confusing "showing up" with actually connecting? This one is for every B2B founder who is exhausted by the noise.

Priya Shah is a LinkedIn strategist with roots in journalism and PR who has spent her career helping businesses break out of their social media silos. She joins Amanda Kaufman to talk about what actually moves the needle for B2B founders on LinkedIn... and why chasing trends is one of the fastest ways to water it all down.

In this episode, you will learn:

- Why social media siloed inside your organization is only performing at about 3% of its potential

- Priya's 3 C's of B2B social: Credibility, Consistency, and Clarity

- The difference between authentic content and performative vulnerability

- Why trend chasing dilutes your brand... and what to do instead

- How steadiness is its own form of competition

- Why founders have more compelling stories than they realize, and how to start telling them

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CONNECT WITH PRIYA SHAH

Website: https://shahsquared.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/priyashahstrategist

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shahsquared

Instagram: @theandlifeproject

Free LinkedIn Starter Cheat Sheet: Follow Priya on LinkedIn and send her a DM. She will send you a free PDF with simple tips on how to get active and show up with confidence. Tell her what from today's conversation inspired you!

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STAY IN THE LOOP

Subscribe to The Quiet Part, Amanda's newsletter where she shares what is actually working in her business... without the performance.

Sign up at: https://clairvenu.com/the-quiet-part

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LISTEN TO THE AMANDA KAUFMAN SHOW

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theamandakaufmanshow

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If this episode helped you, a quick review on Apple Podcasts goes a long way. It helps the show reach more founders who are ready to do the real work. Thank you in advance!

Transcript

Priya Shah (00:00)

If we're just like trying to be fun and cool all the time, you're forgetting at the end of the day, you're a business around something. So I always say to people who want to do something like that is to really kind of

rein it in and say, what is the focus of what you're trying to do? What are you trying to achieve here? Because I think sometimes what we're seeing is just a very tactical approach of kind of chasing this thing or that thing, but not seeing how it connects back to the whole. So for anyone who's trying to compete, sometimes steadiness is its own competition of saying, okay, I'm gonna continue on this path,

Amanda Kaufman (00:35)

hey, hey, welcome back to the Amanda Kaufman show. And today we get to pick the brain of Priya Shah. She is a genius at B2B social media. And she's here today to talk to us about how do you show up for real, for real, in a sustainable way when you are a very busy founder. Priya, welcome to the show.

Priya Shah (00:58)

Thank you Amanda, I'm excited to be here.

Amanda Kaufman (01:01)

I'm so excited to have you. So Priya and I met through a business incubator that we're in and we immediately hit it off with an offline conversation talking about authenticity in social media. So we had to bring that here onto the show. And Priya, I would just love for you to share with us, like, what are you seeing that's working right now for founders, especially if they are focused on selling to other businesses?

Priya Shah (01:26)

I think really what it comes down to is thinking about your own capacity and so really it comes down to credibility.

consistency and clarity. Those three C's are my kind of go-to because I just feel like so often we're seeing everybody want to be everything all at once and when you can hone in on those little bits then we I think can really unlock the best of people and who they are and everything that they have to offer and it's not kind of covered with all the fluff.

Amanda Kaufman (01:57)

Talk to me about fluff. Like what are you seeing right now

that is fluffy slash completely ineffective for an audience?

Priya Shah (02:04)

Yes, I think there is, or there at least has been in the last few years, this kind of shift over to being very, very performative. So, trying to really show up in a way that makes it feel like you are something. Not yourself! You are something that your audience wants. And so, I'm seeing it consistently where either you're throwing it all into AI and saying, this is who I am and I'm just gonna regurgitate that.

Amanda Kaufman (02:12)

Hmm.

Priya Shah (02:32)

And so we are losing substance or we're seeing, I think on the other side, fluff from the standpoint of nothing really, I would say that is a little risque. People are saying in that safe zone. And so that differentiator is gone. So we are kind of seeing the same thing over and over and over again between the AI and just people just being a little bit scared to really show us who they are.

Amanda Kaufman (02:44)

Hmm.

Mm.

You

know, I love that. mean, a few years ago when I started doing a lot more online and social media, the thing I was hearing all the time was like, be vulnerable, be vulnerable. And there's that like performative vulnerability. think like people will be like, you know, like this drama thing happened. And they would say it in a very dramatic way. But if you assess like what they're saying is it's not a lot like it's not a lot that really comes through. ⁓

Priya Shah (03:23)

Mm-hmm. I

agree.

Amanda Kaufman (03:26)

So how can

you tell, you know, as a writer or a content creator or even if you're just trying to find good examples out there, what are some tells that someone is being genuine, authentic, you know, really real and vulnerable versus this performative thing? Like, are there any particular tells that somebody should like watch for?

Priya Shah (03:35)

sure.

I think sometimes it's hard because I always say don't be beholden to the algorithm. The algorithm also controls what we see. So I think really it comes down to sometimes you have to do a little bit more of the legwork. when it comes, if you find people that are authentic, so you have read through their content, you've read a few posts and you can tell this person maybe doesn't post frequently or is doing it consistently but not in a daily way. But I'm saying that whatever they're saying is

really

valuable, make sure that you're going and checking out their posts so that it does tell the algorithm that you want to see it. But then I would say really being intentional of your own time. So when you click on them, stay, dwell, be able to tell the algorithm I like this type of content. And I would say also look to see that there isn't specific kind of structure. So if you keep seeing the same thing over and over

over again. Typically we don't have, it's that same concept of, your uncle doesn't die 12 times a year. There's a little bit of that inauthenticity when you're like, why does this person always have the same problems or the same problem in seven different ways? It's like, well, they're just kind of plopping it into AI and then trying to regurgitate. But if you actually know this person as well, I think sometimes it's also take it offline. Make sure that you're starting to connect with these people in different ways.

whether that be following somebody's podcast if you really like their content and gaining a little bit more interest or finding other platforms that they're on. I think that is also another good indicator to say, this person's genuine because I'm seeing quality content everywhere for that person. I just got a little taste on a LinkedIn. Sure.

Amanda Kaufman (05:33)

So I'm gonna be totally unprofessional and put you completely on the spot. ⁓ I

know that you checked my show out. So do you have any pointers of like, what are we doing well? What could I be doing differently when you saw my stuff?

Priya Shah (05:40)

Mm-hmm.

I mean, I honestly, I really enjoy your stuff. So it's hard to give you too many pointers. I think you've done a really good job of refining into exactly who you want to be talking to, because that's another piece that I think a lot of people miss is they're, again, trying to be everything for everyone. So then they're alienating their ideal audience and the ones that they really do genuinely want to help because they're trying to kind of water down the content because they

Amanda Kaufman (05:53)

you

Priya Shah (06:17)

feel so nervous around being specific about, I work with women, I work with this specific industry, whatever it might be. They're like, no no I don't want to do that, but you do. You're very clear about who you are, who you want to talk to, what you want out of the engagement that you're giving. I don't think that there is a lot of just questioning of what you're gonna get if you follow your show, if you follow you on social. You're pretty honest.

I

Amanda Kaufman (06:46)

Yeah, well, thank you. I appreciate that. And, you know,

I wish more people understood that being authentic does not necessarily mean that it's just natural, right? Like that'll naturally come to you. I think once you develop some skill, then you sound natural.

Priya Shah (06:59)

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Kaufman (07:07)

But I think one of the things I really connected with you about Priya is you you have been someone who has built a career of excellence like you've you've had So many like do you mind just sharing with us a little bit? Your background that's led you to some of these conclusions because I think there's a lot of people that are doing social media right now that do not bring the perspective that you're bringing Because they haven't done

Priya Shah (07:07)

sure.

You

Amanda Kaufman (07:34)

the same kind of work. So can you go ahead and share with us what that is? Because not all of us are gonna do that work and it's helpful to understand your perspective. Where is that coming from?

Priya Shah (07:37)

Sure.

Sure. And that honestly came from falling into social as kind of a default. It wasn't necessarily what I went out to do. think anyone, especially not to age myself, but this was not a thing when I started my career. I started my career in journalism and public relations. And so I was a storyteller first and foremost. So I knew the difference between genuine storytelling and what was kind of being fabricated or even being in media interviews and feeling

like, that person's just not doing an awesome job at that because they're so uncomfortable. And so when you can get someone to feel really comfortable and be themselves, you get the most value out of it. So I started my career more so focused in the consumer side, which is very, very different, and then shifted and did a 180 into the B2B side, which was honestly a blessing for me because I love the complexity. I like having to have a lot more strategy around what I'm doing.

And that is what kind of led me towards what I do, which is really looking at LinkedIn as a business system and as a social ecosystem. And the reason why was that I went in and I was working at a very large corporation and noticing that everything was being done in silos. And so social media is one that touches everything. And so if you put it into a silo, it's really only performing maybe 3 % of what it can do. As soon as I started breaking down these walls,

and showing everyone how their voice matters and embracing the people within the organization that had the expertise or were talking directly to the customers or those that were just genuinely excited about the work that was being done, just your everyday employee. When we started really looking at all of those voices and the contribution that they were providing to the organization, it just exploded their social. And I think that really showed me

Amanda Kaufman (09:41)

⁓

Priya Shah (09:43)

at the end of the day, as we become more digital, more, you know, kind of connected to our computers, we still love human insight behaviors. We connect in different ways. We have different expertise that we bring to the table and it all contributes to the whole. And so that, I think, came from having that public relations perspective and the storytelling perspective. And so coming from that angle and combining it, then with data and proof,

to be able to talk to a decision maker and show them why budget is important, why these things are moving the needle, and the revenue generation that's coming out of it, because that's what they care about, when I can bring it all together, that's where you see kind of the magic happen.

Amanda Kaufman (10:27)

I love that, you know, when I very first started learning about social media, it was basically as a marketing engine, very purely like, post to the internet and then you capture leads. And it was like a very direct response way of teaching what social media is. And what I found in practice is exactly what you're talking about. And even in a relatively much smaller business, you know, not like a big corporation. I was shook.

at how it affected my client relationships. And I remember going like, wait a second, you already paid me. What could be the possible reason that you would be watching me on social? And then when we expanded and added teams, same thing. The team would chime in in their off hours and join the conversation. So you're absolutely right. mean, social media really did fundamentally change how people

Priya Shah (11:11)

you

Amanda Kaufman (11:20)

engage with brands and individuals and it's not limited to these particular teeny weeny tiny little use cases that maybe are

Priya Shah (11:23)

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Kaufman (11:31)

traditionally or conventionally taught about it. I love your background around like public relations, public relations, excuse me, and storytelling from a very formal kind of a background because it means that you get to approach the tool and, you know, wield it in a completely different fashion than, for example, someone who is like just staying up to date with the latest button and algorithm changes on a particular platform, you know?

Priya Shah (11:35)

Yeah.

Hehehehehe

Yeah, and that's what I, yes.

Amanda Kaufman (11:59)

Not that that's not important, it's just they change so fast. mean, it's like you're not going

to build anything on that.

Priya Shah (12:05)

They do, and I mean they all work in tandem.

a very important space for the paid side. There's an important space for obviously a brand channel and what they're providing and serving as a resource. But I think that if you just focus on one, that's where I've seen, you know, all of the kind of pieces crumble because then you're kind of pigeonholing yourself and that's where, you know, looking at it as this big operating system can really open your eyes. And it doesn't necessarily mean, like you were saying, it's only for big corporations. It can be a tiny team.

but a tiny team that has these really amazing people. If you're a team of three, but each of you have a very different focus within the business, you bring your own expertise, or you're just, you know, connected to different people, that's a huge opportunity to just gain recognition in different spaces and also to make people feel good. I think a lot of the times we forget, especially when you're looking at, let's say, an employee advocacy program, well, what's the value here? The value is that we're all

individuals and none of us are necessarily unless for business owners but hold into a single company and so everything's a learning opportunity. Everything's a way for us to just grow in our careers even if it's at the beginning or at the end we're always growing and learning and the only way to kind of showcase that is to lean in and so every time I have people that kind of see and yield their own power through their voice and can really

say, my voice matters, you just all of sudden are seeing so much more happening around a company that's intangible versus, you know, those hard lines of there's so many companies that are just so picky about what you can and cannot do, you lose all of the realness.

Amanda Kaufman (13:51)

gosh,

yes, I used to work for one of those. They've clearly changed their position since I was there, but at the time, they treated social media as a threat more than anything. So I remember the training as we were onboarding is like, you were an ambassador for the company. The internet is forever, which is true. But it's also like, yeah, I definitely started with a pretty healthy fear of the internet.

Priya Shah (14:11)

Within reason.

I understand that. Yes, yes. When you go into a structure where you feel like you're just being policed all the time, yes, you're going to think twice before pushing that post button.

Amanda Kaufman (14:15)

or unhealthy fear, as the case may be.

Yeah, and I'm so curious, like cat videos.

You know, like, what would you say to someone who is worried that their social media is ineffective, mainly because of competing with cat videos or other entertainments? You know, like, I think one of the big challenges a lot of businesses face is, honey, we boring, right? So how do you capture that attention without maybe losing the credibility of the brand?

Priya Shah (14:59)

Sure. And I think, you know, there was the...

the kind of focus on, I call it trend chasing. You know, there's the trend chasing of like, that's so cool. I want to be part of that. And sometimes I feel like that can just kind of dilute everything that you're doing because then it is confusing. saying like, who are you? If we're just like trying to be fun and cool all the time, you're forgetting at the end of the day, you're a business around something. So I always say to people who want to do something like that is to really kind of

rein it in and say, what is the focus of what you're trying to do? What are you trying to achieve here? Because I think sometimes what we're seeing is just a very tactical approach of kind of chasing this thing or that thing, but not seeing how it connects back to the whole. So for anyone who's trying to compete, sometimes steadiness is its own competition of saying, okay, I'm gonna continue on this path, but I'm going to keep kind of highlighting why we're different.

What are unique attributes are why we care about our people? mean something so simple as that can actually start cutting through that clutter and you know, yes, the cat videos are very cute but if somebody is intentionally looking for something that is really within your wheelhouse, they're gonna find you if you're gonna keep saying why.

Amanda Kaufman (16:19)

Yeah, that's so true. I I think about how the ocean, you know, will wear down, you know, a stone into the pebbles and all that kind of thing. And it's just this repetitive, repetitive motion. And that's so much of how not just social media, but branding in general can be so effective simply through the show up.

Right. And I think so many people are looking for the quick win, the fast glow up that they often will lose sight of just the consistency. And, you know, I think the other thing that's really powerful about what you said is that if you have clarity of vision and the mission, there's emotion attached to that. There's a reason you care so much that you're putting your life force and your risk of owning a business.

Priya Shah (16:41)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Kaufman (17:09)

especially

if you're a founder, there's something really there. so, you know, I would encourage an ad to what you said, like tap in, man. Like you could have worked for someone else and you could have, you could have.

Priya Shah (17:19)

Yes!

Amanda Kaufman (17:25)

supported somebody else's version of vision, you could have gotten a job, but you didn't. You decided to found something. You decided to grow something, you know? And like there is emotion attached to that. So what happened that made you so sad? What happened that made you so mad? What happened that makes you so glad when you see things that are actually working and you can tap into those emotions. All of them are attached to stories and narrative that if you can like capture some of that,

Priya Shah (17:35)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Kaufman (17:54)

O-M to the goodness. That's actually entertaining stuff. You know, like that's the thing that we're actually looking for. Yeah. So good.

Priya Shah (17:56)

Yes.

And if you

can do it in a good way, I mean if you're a good storyteller or you can practice, I would say practice storytelling. We're not all natural storytellers, so practice your story.

Amanda Kaufman (18:10)

yeah, not a natural storyteller personally, right?

How to learn. Yeah.

Priya Shah (18:13)

So if yes,

you if you can kind of hone that skill there's just so much because people do love those personal stories because We're all unique. We all came to entrepreneurship if that's what you chose in a different way And there's always something behind the scenes that can connect us or that's kind of that Cool element of saying I got this idea while I was sitting in this meeting and I was like another meeting and I saw all of a sudden this like

pit of, that's an opportunity and then started building my business on the side. Whatever it is, you always have that kind of story that is getting you up every day. It's like that cup of coffee that is that natural cup of coffee that just like, this is why I'm doing this, this is why I'm focused on this. It's what's fueling you and if you don't remind yourself sometimes as well by re-sharing that story, you forget. You're 10, you're 15.

Why did I do this? Well, remind yourself by, you know, coming back to those stories that really brought you to where you are today.

Amanda Kaufman (19:22)

So good.

Priya, thank you so much for being here. I understand you have a little something for the listener today.

Priya Shah (19:30)

I do. So I have a little kind of cheat sheet for anyone who wants to get active on LinkedIn but just hasn't really started. I always say engagement first. Don't worry about posting. Just get active. Start kind of feeling it out. And so it's just some simple tips that can really help you understand ways to show up, how often to show up, and just get you started. It's just that little kick in the pants.

Amanda Kaufman (19:57)

I love it,

I love it, and how do they get it?

Priya Shah (20:00)

So if you go to my LinkedIn and follow me and send me a quick message, I will send you via DM a little PDF that will have that information in it. And I just want to hear, know, what, if you did listen to this, what really inspired you from this conversation or maybe made you think differently. Because I love a good conversation.

Amanda Kaufman (20:24)

I love that. I'm gonna be sliding into your DMs later, because I wanna sneak a peek at it. All right, well, Brea, thank you so much for being here today. I really sincerely loved this conversation. It was great.

Priya Shah (20:27)

Hahaha

Yes, thank you Amanda and thank you for you know bringing this to everyone's attention because I do feel like sometimes we forget the end of the day we might not be wearing our you know our cape but we have one.

Amanda Kaufman (20:49)

So good and dear listener don't forget to follow up with Priya will include her her links and details all in the show notes below and before you go make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss another episode and grab the link to the show and send it to three of your friends who you wish you saw more of them on social media you wish they had a little more exposure for their business and Finally if you've been loving the show one of the ways that you can let us know is a quick third

30 second review. always really appreciate it because it helps people who are considering our show, especially for the first time, to spend some time with us. So thank you so much in advance for doing that. We're going to be back with another episode very shortly. And until then, make it an amazing day and just do what matters.