I apologize for using Dilbert to suck you in, but I couldn’t resist – this one seemed doubly relevant as the US election drags on… (just delete the word “company”…)
This post departs from my usual habit of blogging on IT strategy and digital business transformation topics, but there is a connection: how to cut through the noise of social media and reach your target audience. That said, I don’t want to over-sell this. I’m sharing the results of some basic test and learn research I conducted into different ways of publishing blog content on social media, because I learned something useful from the experience. I hope you will too.
If you’re reading this, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets have probably become a leading source of your daily information. They’re compelling because they are targeted to our interests by people we know and (perhaps) trust. Focus makes them essential tools for advertising, building communities and for managing your personal and corporate brand.
They’re also a bit of a mess, and the noise of propaganda and ill-formed thoughts can easily drown out the valuable nuggets. Of course, it’s also true that your noise might be my nugget, and sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which. They try to help by targeting things to you that match your interests and the preferences of your personal network, and this means that it is important not only for people to read your content but for them to like, share and comment on it, so that Their networks may be exposed to your work.
In using social media for my business, I have a simple objective – I want to help grow my consulting practice, by sharing my experiences and point of view on relevant business topics and reaching potential clients in and beyond my network. Figuring out how reach my audience and be heard through the noise was directly relevant to my objective.
For context, I run a boutique business and IT transformation consulting business called Groundswell Strategies LLC. I’ve been blogging on IT strategy and business transformation topics for several years, both to support the business and help crystalize my thinking about what I’ve learned from client engagements. I started on WordPress and moved to my company website (www.groundswell-strategies.com/blog) last year.
The results of my blogging were NOT impressive. I was mostly talking to myself – no one was really listening (except Sally, my former colleague and most loyal commenter!). The standalone blog was pinged now and then, and most of the steady flow of 5-10 visitors a week to my company website didn’t seem to get to the blog page.
I figured I should either fix this or stop writing. I looked at the way others were publishing on LinkedIn – it looked pretty snazzy and easy to do, but at what cost? Will I lose control of the content? Will it bring viewers to my website? Will I benefit, or will this just serve LinkedIn by (incrementally) increasing Their advertising revenues and eyeball metrics? I talked to some folks who knew about this, and they encouraged me to publish directly on LinkedIn, but I couldn’t get comfortable.
I needed some facts based on real data, so I decided to run an experiment. I wrote a new post, provocatively titled “The digital customer piss-off machine” and published it to my company blog page. And then I posted links to the post as a share on both LinkedIn and Facebook, with the title and a brief intro to catch the reader’s attention. I wanted to see if posting a link could drive meaningful traffic to my website from social media.
And the answer was yes, sort of – a whopping 15 additional people clicked through to my post from Facebook and another 15 from LinkedIn. Several more “liked” the post on Facebook and several old friends and family offered thoughtful and supportive comments, which was nice but unlikely to drive new business. Nobody liked, shared or commented on the post at LinkedIn. Engagement was pretty good – readers from LinkedIn were spending 2-3 minutes on the site, and those who came from Facebook were sticking round for a bit less time, 1.5-2 minutes (according to my Google Analytics dashboard). But when you consider I have about 5 times as many contacts at LinkedIn than Facebook, it’s pretty clear that this approach was not reaching my target audience at LinkedIn very effectively.
This blip of activity quickly tailed off, and I began to appreciate that the extra click to get from the link to my website meant that people couldn’t just start reading and get caught up in the content. They had to actively decide to click before they could read. I felt like I was starting to understand why I might get more readers at LinkedIn. I also noticed that many influencers publish on LinkedIn with a tagline that says “this article was previously published at xyz”. I decided that this was a game I could play to increase readers and control over my content (though I’ll admit that I haven’t consulted an attorney about this).
On Monday I did a quick cut and paste of the original text and posted it on LinkedIn (easily done), and waited eagerly for the data.
Now, the metrics from these free tools aren’t directly comparable across platforms, as LinkedIn doesn’t offer the depth of metrics I get from Google (at least not for free). But almost immediately I could see that there was something different happening – 32 views of the page in the first day. But no likes or shares. Hmmm.
On Tuesday, a person who knows stuff about LinkedIn kindly and gently pointed that the (light) profanity in the title might attract more clicks, but it also might prevent some readers from sharing or liking the post, because they just don’t want those words showing up in their own newsfeed and be seen by their boss, clients, etc.
Fascinating! Ironic! I had created my own “digital customer piss-off machine”, which was silently destroying customer value, just like the one I had described in my post! I had neglected to take my own advice and walk in the shoes of my customers…
I quickly changed the title to “Are your digital channels leaking customer value?”, and added a note about the change. And guess what? A couple of shares, over a dozen likes, and now it looks like about 20% of the views and half the likes are from folks outside my 1st degree network. Shares and likes are quickly increasing my reach beyond the folks who receive my posts in their regular feed…
After a week, over 64 folks have read the post, and 2 have commented, 2 shared and 14 liked it. All of the interaction happened after the title change. Roughly 20% of the views and half the likes are from folks outside my primary contact network — shares and likes are quickly reaching beyond my own network.
The impact of this post on my LinkedIn presence is clearly positive — views of my profile are up 178% for the week and the ranking of my profile across my network has gone up 13%, in one week!
My company website has seen no additional traffic, but actually, I’m ok with that. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if my LinkedIn presence (including the profile of my company, which I’ve not invested in at all) is more important and impactful to my business and personal brand than my own site. I’ve already gotten one cold-call proposing a new business partnership based on this post. I wonder how many new business opportunities I can generate with a steady flow of (quality) postings?
And, what else matters? Posting length (shorter)? Use of keywords? Embedded quotes? Links to other articles or people? What about Twitter??
I will keep experimenting, but I also know that the limitations of LinkedIn’s free tools will constrain what I can learn, which makes me wonder if I should upgrade to a premium account to get my hands on more data, like how long readers spend on my posts…
In summary, this experience has caused me to rethink my approach to publishing and social media, and to start taking my personal and business LinkedIn presence much more seriously, now that I’m armed with some live data and facts that can guide my digital decisions.
I hope you also find this helpful. What have you learned about the best ways to use social media tools and cut through the noise to reach your business audience?
Please comment here, or drop me a line at Gil@groundswell-strategies.com.
