“The New York Times doesn't give a flying F about, hey, here's a case study of someone who went from zero to a million dollars with their LinkedIn profile.” - Rand Fishkin Rand recently challenged a core way that I have approached social channels like Linkedin. For the last two years I have attempted to differentiate my content through just sharing what I am personally doing. The experiments I have run, the results I am seeing, what is working and what isn’t. What Rand points out is that personal narrative content often gets high engagement but low amplification. If you want major outlets to pick stuff up, it’s all about the trends and larger significance of that data. So instead of… “Here are 3 learnings I had from ranking 20 Reddit articles in AI overviews” the line might read “Reddit is now being cited in 59% of all Google Search Results. Here is why this changes search forever” Obviously I think these ideas can play together. You can use your personal data to help substantiate an argument about the larger industry trend. But making sure you are delivering content that is the type that would be amplified, reshared, or picked up by “points of influence” is a great takeaway.
I feel like both strategies can work together. What would you say is a good split between content that can be easily shared by others and more personal content? 80/20?
Two different strategies. One is designed with your social media audience in mind (in this case, LinkedIn), the other essentially is an earned media play. It really depends on what your goals are as to which route to take. But what Rand is saying is correct; indeed, earned media coverage today often has its genesis in owned media and social media i.e. build your profile and reputation, share your ideas and insights etc, and over time this might land you media coverage, or speaking gigs, or podcast interviews etc if your thoughts/ideas/opinions are strong, and backed by evidence, or proof-points (i.e. this is earned media). Sure, you could pitch the media directly like 'the old days', but that's not necessarily the best course of action today. An integrated credibility-first approach tends to be the most sustainable.
It makes sense. The TAMs of people who care about you vs the industry are grossly different. "How I did X" content = potential buyers care about this. Not great for reach, but great for pipeline and credibility. I suppose this is why "State of [industry name]" research reports get so many backlinks and publicity. The TAM for that is bigger.
“Here are 3 learnings I had from ranking 20 Reddit articles in AI overviews” is a weak headline anyway, in part maybe because that type of article more and more is most assuredly going to be written by someone’s dopey AI agent or even worse, chatGPT. Great advice though, if you know what you are looking for, then you are already winning. If you want high engagement make a meal, if you want to amplify, make a pill.
Great point on tying personal experiences to industry trends. Such a smart way to stay relatable while reaching more people.
All about the trendy impact in a broader sense to be worth reporting about instead of egocentric research for the conclusion if „buy my own program“.
Read this one twice to ingest. Personal authentic stories will help you to feel relatable and approachable, but will not make anyone interested in your product. We must cleverly combine the two ideas.
I think it’s just a temporary bandaid until they figure out how to combat ai
Agreed, leveraging what's trending has a better chance for media amplification if it's something their audience also cares about.
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13hI guess it depends what you're trying to achieve on LinkedIn, doesn't it? If it's reach, amplification and action, probably a combined approach is smart. But if you've got other priorities, maybe it's something else?