By Amanda Leon, founder of OilMoney.io. Houston-raised, came up in the Houston marketing team of Vallourec, and has run Unrth, a brand and growth studio for oil and gas and industrial companies, since 2017, with her boots on client locations in Midland and Odessa. Last reviewed November 5, 2026.
Social selling means using social platforms, mostly LinkedIn in this business, to get known by the people who buy, learn who they are, and start conversations from there. In oil and gas it looks different from the software-sales version. Your buyer may be on location, the decision runs through several people, and the same few names get passed around a basin. So it's less about messaging strangers and more about being the name people recognize when the need comes up.
What the Term Means
LinkedIn breaks it into four parts: establishing your professional brand, finding the right people, engaging with insights, and building relationships. It also built a score around those four, and it's now moving away from that score. Our guide on LinkedIn SSI covers what happened. The score fading doesn't change the practice. Buyers still look you up.
Why It Looks Different in the Patch
More than one person decides. The engineer, the company man, and supply chain can each help or block you. See who really buys in oil and gas.
People watch without clapping. Keith Stelter, a Permian sales leader, wrote in July about being recognized at dinner by a stranger who knew the posts from LinkedIn. The point was that people read your posts even when they never like or comment. So a quiet post isn't a dead post.
The basin is small. In the Permian, everyone knows everyone, so mistakes are public. It's also talkative. One happy client tells five people. That's my observation, not a study.
Most of the feed isn't competition. When we read 98 oilfield sales posts, 22% were product ads, 21% were about hiring or looking for work, and 2 told a story from a location. It's a classified section with a job board attached, and that leaves plenty of room.
What It Looks Like When It Works
Show it working. Jessie Mena, who has field operations and business development experience, told reps selling chemicals, fuel, iron, or tools to post the product working on location, not another selfie.
Lead with the result, then teach. Daniel Purvis of C3 Oilfield Services got 91 reactions on a post about a finished customer job, and between 1 and 8 on each post of a five-part technical series. The series was solid. The finished job is what got people to stop.
Say what you stand for. Nicole Hiracheta of K-Ray Energy Services posts from the road almost daily, rain or shine. A post on professionalism in oilfield sales drew 101 reactions, when the service posts in the same feed usually drew between 5 and 25.
Move from technical posts to stories. One founder we work with had technical posts doing fine and nothing more at month three. We moved him to stories. From September 2025 to October 2026, his posts reached 270,955 impressions, and his most common follower job title is drilling engineer. The details are on our proof page.
Build it before you need it. Stelter's June rule fits here: build your network when you're comfortable, not after a layoff.
It also works for a company page, though that's a different job. Our case study on GMI Group's LinkedIn page shows what weekly posting did for a flange maker.
A Plain Week of It
Fix your profile once. Write it for the buyer. Start with whether your LinkedIn profile really matters.
Post what you saw. One job or one lesson, told plainly. What to post as an oilfield sales rep has a list to start from, and how often to post covers the pace.
Comment on your buyers' world. Add something useful under posts from the people you sell to. A real comment reads better than a pitch in the inbox.
Answer the phone. Tanhee Galindo, who co-founded the Midland testing lab GeoKimika, put it this way: "If you want the work, answer the call or text." Being known only pays if you pick up.
What It Won't Do
It won't get you on an approved vendor list. For that, read ISNetworld for oilfield service companies. It won't replace showing up on location. It's what keeps your name alive between visits. And it won't close a deal in a month. Sales cycles here run long, and we don't have a closed-deal number from our own founder client yet. We say so on the proof page.
What AI Can't Replace
LinkedIn's answer to the end of its score is more AI tools, and tools like that can save you time on research and first drafts. But the one thing AI can't replace is the lived-in story, the real "come with us on this journey." We don't know how long we have on this earth, but let's do it together, because it's more fun if we go together. That's what a buyer is reading for when he reads you. It's also why you own your profile, your posts, and your voice, wherever you work next.
Get Your Bison Walk-Around
If a buyer searched your name tonight, find out what he'd see. Send us your LinkedIn. We'll send back the Bison Walk-Around: five minutes of plain English on what's costing you callbacks and what we'd build. No call. No invoice. We give first. Get your Bison Walk-Around.
Sources and As-Of Dates
LinkedIn, Get Your Score, August 3, 2015: the four elements of social selling.
OilMoney.io, What Oilfield Sales People Post on LinkedIn, read in October 2026: post types, and the Mena, Purvis, Hiracheta, and Galindo items, each credited and sourced on that page.
OilMoney.io, What the Biggest Voices in Oil and Gas Sales Said This Year, feeds read October 30, 2026: the Stelter items.
OilMoney.io proof page: LinkedIn analytics for September 15, 2025 to October 19, 2026.
The Warm Walk-In™ is an original method created by Amanda Leon and owned by The Valours Creative Innovation LLC.
