Sam Meller is the Head of Social for The Hustle, but we briefly got to borrow her for Masters in Marketing, because she makes everything she touches better.
That’s how I got 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 calendar so fast 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 need good ol’ human instinct.
A Tale of Two Targets
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 get 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 using 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 getting 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 think, ‘We have that! Let’s try that out!’”
But making unique, tailored content for each channel would simply take too much bandwidth and budget.
“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 thought 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 got over a million views alone, compared to the 400 we were getting prior.”
Here’s what Sam says 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 showing off 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 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 need a little more data before I say that’s 100% the reason. But I’ve been doing this for long enough that my spidey senses are tingling.”
3. Sometimes you just gotta 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 untold brand equity.
“I respect the data. I use the data. I think it’s a fantastic tool, but I will be the first person to tell you that I do not live and die by the data.”
Instead, think of your data as a guidepost instead of the end-all-be-all of your strategy.
When asked for the moral of the story, Sam sums it up: “It’s really important that you’re trusting yourself and trying out new things. Not thinking ‘Oh, this worked for us six months ago.’ The internet moves too fast to stay in one lane.”
