by Dan Kelsall
So, I decided to drill down into the figures to see which posts 23
brought in the most business. My suspicions were right. In quite a few cases, the viral posts brought in less leads.
We created a tool that was able to scrape the engagement from social posts, so that I could see the breakdown of my audience.
A bit naughty as I’m accessing data that the social networks don’t want me to have (Yup, I’m a GDPR criminal), but it was the only way to truly know.
You see, the problem with going organically viral is that you can’t really determine where that content goes, and who sees it.
And the more mass market it is and the more it spreads, the more likely it is to get engagement from those outside of your target audience. And, when you’re looking for business, that’s not a good thing. It’s dangerous in two ways: 1) You’ll increase your following, but they’ll be the wrong people (not your potential customers) and it will dilute your audience.
2) The next time you post, it will appear on the feeds of the wrong people and guess what? No business.
What I found was, for the viral posts that drove few leads, a high percentage of those engaging with the content weren't my target audience.
And, while we’re on the subject of going viral, let me tell you about something else I learnt via a decision I made this year.
LinkedIn decided to introduce measures that would stop what they considered to be ‘unprofessional’ content on the platform.
They introduced a reporting function, and encouraged
‘members’ to actively flag posts that they considered unprofessional.
24
Get enough people reporting your post and, boom. Bye, bye content. Get a shed load of people reporting you regularly and you can kiss goodbye to your reach. It's nothing new. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook have all shut down pages and accounts, and censored content.
LinkedIn is no different.
There are also rumours (and this is my worst) that they've added bots to actively scan LI content for profanity. And if they stumble across a ‘fuck,’ ‘shit’ or ‘bollocks’ then once again, au revoir reach or, sometimes, that piece of content will disappear for good. In total, I've lost 12 pieces of content. I'm aiming for 50, and then I'll write a book called, 'What Not to Post on LinkedIn'.
So here’s the thing.
Despite the platform being the social media equivalent of North Korea, my point here isn’t just to whinge about LinkedIn - their platform, their rules after all - it’s to show you what really matters when it comes to content.
You see, I spent a good year going repeatedly viral. The issue was, every piece of my content, like this book, was littered with swearing and weird, often crude, analogies. Some said I did it to stand out, others labelled it as a form of attention seeking, but, in truth, it’s just because, in real life, I swear. A lot. And yeah, it certainly helps me stand out from other content marketers.
When I stumbled upon the news of LinkedIn censorship, I had a choice. Knock the naughty words on the head, something of a trademark of mine, and start writing like the ‘professionals’ do, or say, ‘fuck you LinkedIn,’ carry on the way I was and risk my reach being affected or some gimpy job’s worth taking down my 25
posts.
I took the latter approach.
Suicide for a marketer, right?
Not exactly. You see, I already knew that my viral posts brought me in less business. I was already well aware that my niche posts were my bread and butter. And I’d already built up a big enough audience of the right people that, even if my reach were limited, it would still hit a decent enough percentage of my target audience to generate business.
So, I continued with the swearing and the weird analogies. I stuck to my guns. And, sure enough, my reach was affected. My engagement dropped. Prior to LinkedIn siding with the easily offended, according to our tool I hit an average of 2400 likes and 300 comments per post. In just a couple of months, that average slid to 1100 likes and 150 comments. And my profile views dipped significantly.
But you know what? The amount of leads I get through has been on the up ever since.
Interesting, init?
Now, I'm not saying that going viral is pointless. If your product or service is suitable for the mass market, or if a large percentage of the users of a certain social channel are your target audience, going viral works a treat. And though I’m not an advocate of using ‘brand awareness’ as a focus of any content marketing, I can’t deny that viral content is the quickest way to get your name out there.
26
But remember, the whole point of content marketing is to be consistent; to build an audience that repeatedly engages with you so that, when they come to buy, you're the first person or brand that they think about. You're much better off getting 200
likes and 20 comments on every post from a core group of people than getting 20000 likes and 2000 comments once every so often and getting fuck all engagement on each post in between. Going viral occasionally isn't how you build a brand.
Consistent engagement from the same people. And the more people you get looking out for, and engaging with your stuff, the bigger your audience gets. That's how you build trust. That's how you nurture fans. That's how you win new customers with your content.
Another thing I want to address here, are the marketers and digital agencies that have taken to labelling high engagement numbers as 'vanity metrics'.
In a lot of cases, high numbers are just that. Getting 10,000 likes from peeps in China or India if your product is only suitable for a UK market is useless. Just check out that bloke, Oleg, on LinkedIn for an example of pointless content.
However, you'll also notice that those who label high engagement as 'vanity metrics' are often the ones who get very little engagement on their own content.
You see, going viral can be good or bad. It's the lack of control that's the problem. On the plus side, high numbers not only do a lot for raising your profile, but if you look at them closely, sometimes they can be beneficial.
Check out this shite diagram:
27
So, let's compare post A and post B. On the surface, you might think post A has a better target audience percentage (which is al some marketing tools might tel you), so therefore, it must be the better piece of content. But, actual y, post B has miles more engagement from your target audience - the lower percentage is just a result of having higher numbers. But what about if you produced 10 pieces of content - 5 posts matched post A's performance, and 5 matched post B's. And even though group
'B' had appealed to more of your target audience, group 'A'
brought in more leads. Group 'A' might be niche content, tailored specifical y to your target customer, hence the lower engagement, and group 'B' might be mass market content, so natural y resonated with a wide variety of people, including people who happened to be your target audience. And because it was mass market content, those in your target audience who reacted to it didn't realise what it is you or your company do, didn't visit your profile or website and, therefore, didn't become aware of what you do, let alone buy.
28
The point is, you can never assume a piece of content or campaign is good or bad, based on high or low numbers alone.
However, it's important to note that, although a piece of content with low engagement like post A can be good, or even a campaign of posts with low engagement, you'l only ever build a large audience quickly if you get large numbers. Never underestimate herd mentality. Never underestimate how influenced people are by brands and/or people that attract a lot of engagement and a large fol owing.
And lastly, it's important to take into account how social media works here, particularly when it comes to viral content. You see, likes and comments are the currency of social. If a piece of content gets low numbers, it only reached a smal number of people. If it only reached a smal number of people, that means it only reached a smal number of your target audience.
<
br /> Remember, every time someone likes or comments on your content, whether that person is part of your target audience or not, one of two things happens:
1) It appears in the feeds of that person's fol owers, and some of those may also be your target audience (some networks are slightly different) or;
2) It's featured by the social network you posted it on due to being popular and having high numbers, which also means that it wil natural y reach more of your target audience.
Like I said, there's a real lack of control with organic viral content, but that doesn't mean that it isn't valuable.
And as a side note, don't forget: negative comments by double-hard keyboard warriors have the exact same effect. When someone attacks you, just laugh at the fact that they've contributed to the popularity of your content. Fucking morons.
29
9. FUCK SOCIAL MEDIA
So I’ve already mentioned how quickly social media platforms change. You might find that something that works really well today, doesn’t work tomorrow. One change in an algorithm can upend your entire social strategy. One change in social media policies can result in the removal or censoring of content or, god forbid, a ban on that account you’ve worked to build up for the past few years.
Just look what happened to half the Twitter parody accounts in 2015. One change to Twitter’s policies and off they fucked to the social media bin. Take the ‘Broetry’ style LinkedIn posts of 2017, led by some bloke called Josh. They used to hit the tens of thousands for a good few months. But then they dived. A combination of changes to the platform and audiences getting fed up of the double-spaced, made up stories meant that those that grew huge audiences with that type of content saw their engagement fall off a cliff.
The point is, you can never assume that something will always work. And there is absolutely nothing you can do to prevent changes happening. It’s out of your control.
And because of that, guess what?
There is NO SUCH THING AS A SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERT.
Yup. You heard me.
Now, there might be a few of you getting a bit pissy after reading that. You might be the type who describes yourself as an expert.
‘Facebook Expert’ or ‘Instagram Guru’ might even be your job title. But when something changes as quick as social media, there is absolutely no way anyone is an expert.
30
The only difference between good social media marketers and shit ones is, the former keep on top of the constant changes and the latter are still hanging onto stuff that worked 5 years ago.
But you cannot describe yourself as an ‘expert’ if one change tomorrow means that you need to figure out what works all over again. Even if you're good at it. In fact, I'll let you off if you change your job title to 'Social Media Expert For The Time Being'.
The amount of LinkedIn experts and consultants that somehow manage to sell their services to loads of people, despite getting little engagement on their own content, is ridiculous.
If you're looking for a marketer - whether 3rd party or to hire -
ask yourself this:
How good are they at marketing themselves?
If they're an Instagram 'expert' and have less than 10k followers, ask yourself why. If they're a LinkedIn 'guru' and get 10 likes a post, ask yourself if they're really who they say they are.
Marketing is full of charlatans. If they can't market themselves well, that's your first sign that they're probably shite.
Another thing that I need to address in this section is around the importance of keeping things native to each platform. What I mean by that is, you need to create pieces of content specifically for each social media channel that you use.
As an example, you need to stop sharing YouTube links on LinkedIn.
Why?
31
Well, let's think about it.
The purpose of any social media platform is to keep you, the user, on it for as long as possible. The longer you, and your audience for that matter, are there, the more money the platform makes.
So, LinkedIn introduced a native video function so that you can upload your own videos about deaf, homeless kids with half a face who became billionaires because they got up at 5am and crushed it. When users watch your native video, they remain on the platform.
However, when you share a link to another social media platform, like YouTube, that naturally draws users away from LinkedIn and, for obvious reasons, LinkedIn don't like that, fam.
And so they put measures in place to limit the reach of such shares, because they don't want you directing users to their competitors. They want to keep people in a 'scroll hole' and anyone encouraging people to leave the platform is essentially taking money from them.
What I'm saying is, the old 'let's share links all over the place'
tactic is dead. You need to take the time to create specific content for each platform that you use or, at the very least, reformat and natively upload your existing content.
Transferring your audience to other channels is harder than it used to be, but you won't have an audience to transfer if your content's reach is limited by the fact that you keep posting outside links.
32
10. FUCK BRAND AWARENESS
Brand awareness, as a business goal, is bollocks.
Seriously.
If you’re an SME, or a startup, and you get 2 likes on each piece of content you produce, what brand awareness?
No one has a fucking clue who you are.
One of the major issues with the digital marketing industry is the number of agencies that sell marketing campaigns with a focus on ‘brand awareness’. They get you to chuck a load of money behind rubbish material that get’s a few thousand ‘views’ and then pat themselves on the back on what they tell you was a job well done.
“Look at the reach!” they’ll say. But, ladies and gentlemen, if it brought in no new customers, or no revenue, or it didn’t increase your userbase, ‘reach’ means diddly squat.
Brand awareness comes as a by-product of producing good content. Brand awareness develops as a result of consistently winning new business.
Large brands, that control a substantial market share, are the only companies that have the time, and budget, to run ‘brand awareness’ campaigns.
Why?
Because it’s about retention. Their brand names are engrained in their industries. Staying at the forefront of the consumer’s mind is really fucking important.
33
But you, the smaller brand, whom nobody knows about, can’t stay at the forefront of your customer’s mind when you were never in their mind in the first place.
Forget about brand awareness for now. You need to produce content that gets results.
Right, I know the fact that I’m slagging off brand awareness campaigns is going to piss off a lot of traditional marketers.
But the focus shouldn't be on reach. High reach numbers come as a result of driving engagement.
But it's important to note here that engagement is changing.
Share figures are dropping all over the show. Seriously. Reports even suggest that Buzzfeed, one of the most popular content channels on the planet at the minute, are experiencing a huge drop in the number of people sharing their content.
But engagement figures aren’t slowing. People are just engaging in a different way. They’re having conversations instead in the comments on posts. They’re tagging their mates in. And on platforms like Instagram, users don’t want to share someone else’s content to their own account. That’s where the stuff they’ve personally created lives. It’s miles easier, and preferable, to quickly tag their pals under a meme they know they’d appreciate, rather than litter their own social media with someone else’s content. Or, and we touched on 'dark social'
earlier, they'll share it via a private message.
It works exactly the same in B2B. I’m sorry, but nobody’s sharing those shitty blogs on your website to their personal social channels. You mi
ght as well get rid of that outdated
‘Share on Twitter’ button.
34
#RIPsharebutton
And less and less people are pressing the share button on LinkedIn, in the realisation that it adds absolutely no real value whatsoever. They’re becoming increasingly aware that a comment is a miles better way to show their appreciation to the author.
People used to say that you had to create ‘shareable’ content for it to have any chance of going viral. But that‘s no longer the case. Nowadays, it’s about driving conversations. Provoking debate. Causing a stir under the content itself. The algorithms of social platforms will do the rest.
So stop worrying about reach. Stop telling your employees and mates to share your posts and articles. Instead focus on consistently creating good content that encourages conversations and debate.