Course 11 · Lesson 4 of 14
External statistics you may quote
Say the source aloud. Grades: strong (regulator or independent), mixed (self-reported or co-funded), vendor data (say so), weak (never as measured). Anything not here is not cleared: send it to the pack lead with its source.
| ID | Statistic, as you say it | Source and grade | Caveat |
|---|---|---|---|
| S1 | "LinkedIn added a 'seems like AI slop' report button on 30 July 2026. Over a million members had used it by 20 August, and content LinkedIn classifies as slop sees roughly 40% fewer views. LinkedIn says refining your own words with AI is fine." | Press reports of LinkedIn figures (Moneywise, TechCrunch, Social Media Today). Mixed | For own voice; never "Maktura beats detection" |
| S2 | "In the Edelman and LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report 2025, about 2,000 respondents: 79% of decision-makers are more likely to back a vendor in a tender if it consistently publishes good expert content, and 95% of the buyers surveyed say good expert content shows what a firm can do better than traditional marketing." | Edelman and LinkedIn, 2025. Mixed (co-funded by LinkedIn) | Say "co-funded by LinkedIn" |
| S3 | "Roughly 5% of buyers are in market at any one time, on the LinkedIn B2B Institute's estimate, which is why you stay visible all year." | LinkedIn B2B Institute, 2021 (Ehrenberg-Bass work). Weak as a number; the idea is mixed to strong | Always "roughly" and "estimate"; illustrative, never measured or a budget split |
| S4 | "Only about 6.5% of employees share content on LinkedIn, across 19,727 companies: 8.8% in staffing and recruiting, 8.5% in consulting." | DSMN8, 2026. Vendor data | DSMN8 sells advocacy software, so a competitor: never name in social or marketing copy |
| S5 | "Personal posts earned about 9.2 times the engagement of reshared corporate content in one study of 517,000 posts." | DSMN8. Vendor data | As S4 |
| S6 | "Buffer's study of about two million posts found the biggest gain per account comes from going from one post a week to two to five." | Buffer. Vendor data | Impressions, not revenue |
| S7 | "About 61% of B2B buyers prefer a buying experience without a sales rep." | Gartner, 2024/2025. Mixed | |
| S8 | "In the SRA's small firms technology report, 76% of firms found technology through colleagues or competitors, and only 21% adopted after a provider approached them. Cost (25%) and data breach risk (15%) were the top barriers." | SRA, June 2025. Strong | Law firms only |
| S9 | "The SRA expects firms to assess social media risk and consider a social media policy, and its August 2026 warning notice on generative AI says solicitors remain accountable for AI output." | SRA warning notices. Strong | Never implies SRA approval of Maktura |
| S10 | "In a G2 survey of 1,035 B2B software decision makers, 47% of businesses using AI agents run them with guardrails and only 8% with full autonomy. Agents gated by a human were about twice as likely to reach large cost savings, and only 48% trust vendors' claims about their agents." | G2 AI Agents Insight Report, August 2025. Vendor data | Supports the trust ladder; never promises savings |
Statistics and claims you must never quote#
- About Maktura: any figure from Dom's 543-post analysis ("+300% for posts picturing a woman", "+34% for Maktura users"; about 190 posts were Dom's tests); 61 live features; a voice-match score of 96; 30 plus sources; five vertical toolkits; any count of models, agents or frameworks; the 95% Holly figure; any Watch multiplier; any figure about another of Alex's businesses; the internal "fifty features and one or two work" line.
- About competitors and the market: competitors' internal figures or what their staff said; the 360Brew reach-drop percentages as LinkedIn fact; "2.8 times less reach, 5 times less engagement" for AI content; "LinkedIn detects 94% of AI posts"; "LinkedIn reach is down 50%"; "54% of long posts are AI written, with 45% less engagement"; "81.2% of long LinkedIn posts are AI written"; "personal profiles get 561% more reach than company pages" and "2.75 times the impressions and 5 times the engagement" (untraced round-up figures); precise algorithm weightings; "employees have ten times the company page's connections, and only 2 to 3% share" (2015, not cleared); the 2017 Edelman "45% awarded business" figure as current; Gartner "95% of buying groups reconsider" (second-hand, not traced).
- About selling: every sales-training myth in the Academy library list (among them LinkedIn SSI uplifts, MEDDIC "$300M to $1bn", the Challenger 53% loyalty figure, Lavender's reading level, the SPIN closing numbers, the "limbic brain", priming, the Economist decoy, "66 days", Zig Ziglar).
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