Martijn Holtes
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Reputation built on people, not platforms.

Martijn Holtes is a strategist for Employee Advocacy and Ambassadorship, Social Selling and Thought Leadership in B2B

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Companies I’ve worked with

AKD

Capgemini

ABN AMRO

TNO

Siemens

Teva

KNVB

Choose to be vital, not functional.

The functional gets replaced.
The vital get asked for by name.

Most professionals remain unknown and lose out to the louder ones.

You have the expertise, but they never built the relationships or the reputation. So when the opportunity comes up, someone else takes it.

Being good at your job and being known for it aren’t the same thing, and it’s the second one that brings opportunities.

People can’t pick someone they can’t see, so opportunities go to the name they already know.

If no one knows what you’re good at, you were never even an option.

Companies broadcast rather than build trust.

Most companies push one corporate voice, script their employees, or mandate advocacy.
So everyone, including your customers, tunes out, and the trust that could be built gets lost.

The usual move, when you want more opportunities, is to push harder. More posts, more ads, more money on events.
The problem is that everyone is doing the same, and we collectively learned to scroll straight past all of it.

What works is giving your ambassadors something they actually want to say themselves.

All opportunities evolve around trust, not reach

Ambassadorship, Social Selling or Thought Leadership has almost nothing to do with how many strangers saw your post.

What matters is whether the handful of people who hand out the opportunities trust you.

That trust doesn’t come from a feed.
It builds up slowly, person by person, through people who know you well enough to say your name when you’re not there.

Those people are your ambassadors, and building your reputation through them, instead of through platforms and follower counts, is what I call ambassadorship.

  • For a person, your ambassadors are the ones who vouch for you.
  • For a company, they’re the employees and partners the market believes, real people, not a company broadcasting channel.

Build that, and you stop chasing attention.
A supplier gets swapped out the second someone cheaper turns up.
That doesn’t happen to a partner people trust, they ask for you by name, because no one else comes to mind.

Real relationships and real reputation are what make a person or a company vital.

Where do you start?

It depends on whether you’re putting yourself forward or a whole company.

Reputation

You’re good at what you do.

But when people read your profile, you sound like everyone else. Same tips, same words, nothing that’s only yours.

I help you find the one point of view that’s yours alone, and say it in plain words, so you become the first name people think of.

Thought Leadership

Culture

Employee advocacy is about creating conditions where employees choose to represent the brand because they believe in it

Effective employee advocacy isn’t one-size-fits-all. Different people have different capacities, motivations, and willingness to participate.

Employee Advocacy

Revenue

If you pitch before people trust you, not much comes back.

I work with the salesreps, business developers and consultants to ensure they are being trusted and the obvious choice for specific buyers, before, during and when they’re ready to buy.

Social Selling

250,000+professionals
950+companies
Since 2011in B2B

Since 2011, I have worked with 950+ companies and 250,000+ professionals.
From solopreneurs, names like ABN AMRO, Capgemini, Siemens and everything in between.

Curious how I can help you?


What made it work was the structure.
We started with personal branding, moved into content, then network growth.
For a group of busy senior leaders, that combination was perfect.

Virginie Marco · Marketing & Communications Director, Capgemini

Latest articles

Practical pieces on reputation, ambassadorship, and winning trust in B2B.

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Questions I get a lot

What is ambassadorship in B2B?

Ambassadorship is building a reputation through real relationships and real people, not reach or corporate broadcasting. Instead of one company account posting to people who scroll straight past it, your reputation gets built and vouched for by actual people.

How is this different from personal branding or social media marketing?

Personal branding and social media marketing are ways to get seen. Ambassadorship is about how opportunities reach you. Instead of chasing them with cold calls, ads, or another campaign, you let the people who trust you, clients, contacts, your own employees, bring those opportunities to you.
Reputation is the foundation underneath it, being the name people already trust before there’s anything to sell, and a sale is one of the opportunities that show up when real people vouch for you.

Who do you work with?

B2B professionals and companies that run on expertise and trust. Think consulting and other knowledge-heavy fields where clients buy the person before the service. On the individual side that’s people who want to become the ambassador for their company or the thought leader on their topic, and people in client-facing roles like sales and business development. On the company side it’s firms that want their people to be the reason buyers and talent choose them.

Is LinkedIn still the best platform for B2B?

For building a B2B reputation and network, yes. That’s where the buyers are, and it’s where I built my own name, most people know me from my LinkedIn strategy and tactics. But the platform is the means, not the goal.
LinkedIn is where you apply it today, and if LinkedIn changes the rules tomorrow, your reputation doesn’t reset to zero if you take a broader approach.

Let’s talk

You’ve seen where you might start. The next step is a conversation, not a form.

Tell me what’s going on, and I’ll tell you straight if I can help, and where to begin.

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