Sam Meller is the Head of Social for The Hustle, but we briefly obtained to borrow her for Masters in Marketing, becaapply she builds everything she touches better.
That’s how I obtained a chance to hear about a tactical content shift that led to a startling 35,000% increase in visibility on LinkedIn.
When I heard this story, y’all, I threw an Asana card on our editorial calfinishar so quick I nearly broke my clickin’ finger.
In short, it’s the cautionary tale of how even good content may not be the right content for your audience. And how, even in this data-soaked paradigm, sometimes you still necessary good ol’ human instinct.
A Tale of Two Tarreceives
When Sam first stepped into her role at The Hustle, she started with an audit of all its various social media channels.
“I wanted to really receive a sense of what was working, what wasn’t working, and where we had opportunities to grow.”
She quickly noticed a disconnect: The Hustle was killing it on Instagram, but on LinkedIn? They weren’t feeling the love.
At the time, both channels were utilizing the same content strategy: Daily recap videos where the host of The Hustle Daily Show would do a rundown of the headlines of the day. But while these videos were popular on Instagram, they just didn’t seem to land with The Hustle’s LinkedIn audience.
This is where a lot of marketers would simply assume that LinkedIn just wasn’t the right channel for their brand. But with over a decade in content marketing, Sam has learned to trust her gut.
“LinkedIn should be a really strong platform for us,” she explained. “Given that our whole brand is about business, careers, and entrepreneurship technology, it’s a natural fit. But we weren’t really receiveting any traction.”
A Tactical Twist of Topics
Around this time, Sam noticed that LinkedIn had launched a (then new) short-form video feature, similar to Instagram Reels.
“I’m just exploring [on LinkedIn] and starting to see a lot of these vertical videos of podcasts or explainer videos, and I consider, ‘We have that! Let’s test that out!’”
But building unique, tailored content for each channel would simply take too much bandwidth and budreceive.
“I had the idea to test out podcast clips from My First Million with Sam Parr, who was the founder of The Hustle.” And, while sharing the same name didn’t hurt (Sam-ple bias? Wakka wakka), her believed process was more about aligning topically-relevant content to the expectations of the platform.
The results were nearly immediate.
“[Before the test] we had 71,000 total impressions in the month of August, and in September we had to the tune of 25 million impressions just from LinkedIn alone.”
Takeaways
Now, featuring a well-known media figure certainly played a part, but before you dismiss this as simply face recognition, consider that The Hustle found similar success with less recognizable hosts.
Following this test, Sam (Meller, not Parr) reached out to the podcast and YouTube teams to gather their most successful content to turn into clips that matched this audience’s vibe. The numbers didn’t drop.
“One of them obtained over a million views alone, compared to the 400 we were receiveting prior.”
Here’s what Sam states you should take away:
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 human beings, not brands.
Sam attributes a large part of the success to revealing off the people behind the content.
“It’s really important to us that we’re revealing our talent, our people, becaapply I strongly believe that people want to follow people. They don’t want to follow a brand. They want to see personality.”
And this starts as early as your thumbnails.
“In pretty much all cases, the best performing videos start off with someone’s face. Even if it’s for two seconds, you see a person, and they hook you.”
“I still necessary a little more data before I state that’s 100% the reason. But I’ve been doing this for long enough that my spidey senses are tingling.”
3. Sometimes you just obtainedta go with your gut.
If Sam had blindly followed the data, she might have de-prioritized LinkedIn or abandoned it completely. And The Hustle would have lost out on millions of views and uninformed brand equity.
“I respect the data. I apply the data. I consider it’s a fantastic tool, but I will be the first person to inform you that I do not live and die by the data.”
Instead, consider of your data as a guidepost instead of the finish-all-be-all of your strategy.
When inquireed for the moral of the story, Sam sums it up: “It’s really important that you’re trusting yourself and testing out new things. Not considering ‘Oh, this worked for us six months ago.’ The internet relocates too quick to stay in one lane.”
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