Sam Miller is Head of Social stir, But we briefly took credit for it Masters in Marketing, Because she makes everything better that makes her better.
That’s how I got a chance to listen A strategic material change that increased stun by 35,000% On LinkedIn
When I heard this story, I threw an asana card on my editorial calendar so fast, I nearly broke my click-in finger.
In short. , it’s a cautionary tale that even good content may not be the right content for your audience. And how, even in this data-soaked paradigm, sometimes you still need good ol’ human instinct.
A tale of two goals
When Sam first stepped into his role stir, He started with an audit of all his different social media channels.
“I really wanted to understand what was working, what wasn’t working, and where we had opportunities to grow.”
He quickly noticed a disconnect: hustle and bustle Was killing it on Instagram, but on LinkedIn? They were not feeling the love.
At the time, both channels were using the same content strategy: daily recap videos where the host The Hustle Daily Show Here’s a rundown of the day’s headlines. But while these videos were popular on Instagram, they didn’t seem to take off hustle and bustleLinkedIn audience.
This is where many marketers easily assume that LinkedIn wasn’t the right channel for their brand. But with more than a decade in content marketing, Sam has learned to trust his gut.
“LinkedIn should be a really strong platform for us,” he explained. “Given that our entire brand is about business, careers and entrepreneurship technology, it’s a natural fit.” But we weren’t really getting any traction.”
A tactical twist of titles
Around this time, Sam noticed that LinkedIn had launched a (then new) short-form video feature similar to Instagram Reels.
“I’m just searching (on LinkedIn) and starting to see a lot of these vertical videos of podcasts or explainer videos, and I’m like, ‘We have this! Let’s try it!’
But creating unique, tailored content for it Every channel Will take a lot of bandwidth and budget.
“I thought I’d check out the podcast clips My first million Along with Sam Peer, who was the founder hustle and bustle” And, while sharing the same name didn’t hurt (same pull bias? wacka wacka), his thought process was more about aligning the above-the-fold content to the platform’s expectations.
The results were close.
“(Before the test) we had 71,000 total impressions in the month of August, and in September we had 25 million impressions from LinkedIn alone.”
Takeaways
Now, having a well-known media personality certainly played a role, but before you dismiss it as mere facial recognition, consider this. hustle and bustle Similar success was found with less recognizable hosts.
After this test, Sam (Miller, not Parr) reached out to the podcast and YouTube teams to gather their most successful content to match the sound of this audience. The number did not decrease.
“One of them got over a million views, compared to the 400 we were getting before.”
Sam says you should take:
1. Don’t assume your brand has the same audience on every channel.
Which stands to reason, right? How often do you Like a company so much that you’ll follow them on Instagram And LinkedIn?
And, even if you did, would you want to watch the same video twice?
2. Audiences want to see people, not brands.
Sam attributes a large part of the success to showing the people behind the content.
“It’s really important to us that we’re showing our talent, our people, because I strongly believe that people want to follow people. They don’t want to follow a brand. They want to see personality.”
And it starts with your thumbnails.
“In pretty much all cases, the best-performing videos start with someone’s face. Even if it’s for two seconds, you see a person, and they grab you.”
“I need a little more data before I can even say that.
3. Sometimes you have to go with your gut.
If Sam had followed the data blindly, he might have de-prioritized LinkedIn or abandoned it altogether. And hustle and bustle Millions of views and spontaneous brand equity would be lost.
“I respect data. I use data. I think it’s a fantastic tool, but I’ll be the first to tell you that I don’t live and die by data.”
Instead, think of your data as a guidepost rather than an end point to your strategy.
When asked about the moral of the story, Sam summed it up: “It’s really important that you trust yourself and try new things. Don’t think ‘Oh, it worked for us six months ago.’ Internet moves too fast to stay in one lane.“
