This LinkedIn Tactic Skyrocketed Visibility by 35,000%
▼ Summary
– Sam Meller discovered LinkedIn content wasn’t performing despite The Hustle’s success with identical videos on Instagram, revealing platform-specific audience differences.
– She tested repurposing podcast clips from My First Million instead of daily recap videos, aligning content with LinkedIn’s professional audience expectations.
– This strategic shift resulted in a dramatic increase from 71,000 to 25 million monthly LinkedIn impressions, demonstrating the impact of tailored content.
– Key lessons include showing human personalities rather than just brand content and using thumbnails featuring people’s faces to improve engagement.
– The case emphasizes balancing data with human instinct, as trusting her gut prevented abandoning LinkedIn and unlocked significant growth opportunities.
A strategic shift in content format led to a staggering 35,000% surge in visibility for one brand on LinkedIn. This remarkable growth story highlights the critical importance of tailoring your approach to fit the unique culture of each social platform, rather than deploying a one-size-fits-all content strategy.
Sam Meller, Head of Social for The Hustle, discovered this firsthand after conducting an audit of the company’s social media performance. She identified a puzzling disconnect: while the brand thrived on Instagram, its presence on LinkedIn was virtually invisible. Both platforms were receiving identical content, daily recap videos from The Hustle Daily Show summarizing the day’s top headlines. These videos performed well on Instagram but failed to resonate with the professional audience on LinkedIn.
Many marketers might have concluded that LinkedIn simply wasn’t a viable channel for their brand. However, Sam’s extensive experience in content marketing told her otherwise. She felt intuitively that LinkedIn, a platform centered on business and careers, should be a perfect match for a brand focused on entrepreneurship and technology. The problem wasn’t the platform itself, but the content being shared on it.
The turning point arrived when Sam noticed LinkedIn’s new short-form video feature. Observing the popularity of vertical videos, including podcast clips and explainers, she had a realization. The Hustle already produced a popular podcast, “My First Million,” hosted by founder Sam Parr. She decided to test whether repurposing engaging clips from this show would perform better than the generic daily recaps.
The results were immediate and explosive. In a single month, their LinkedIn impressions catapulted from 71,000 to a staggering 25 million. This astronomical increase demonstrated the power of aligning content with platform-specific audience expectations.
While featuring a well-known personality like Sam Parr certainly helped, the strategy proved successful even with less recognizable hosts from their other shows. By collaborating with podcast and YouTube teams to identify top-performing segments, they continued to generate massive engagement. One such clip amassed over a million views, a dramatic leap from the mere hundreds of views they were accustomed to.
This experience yielded several key lessons for marketers. First, never assume your audience is identical across different social channels. People follow brands on various platforms for different reasons, and they do not want to consume the same piece of content twice. A tailored approach is essential.
Second, audiences crave a human connection and are drawn to personalities, not just corporate brands. Sam Meller strongly believes that people prefer to follow individuals. A significant part of their success came from showcasing the talent and personalities behind the content. She notes that videos featuring a person’s face in the thumbnail, even briefly, consistently outperform others by creating an immediate human hook.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, data should inform your decisions, not dictate them entirely. While analytics are a powerful tool, they don’t always capture the full picture. Sam trusted her professional instinct that LinkedIn held untapped potential, a hunch that data from their initial performance would have contradicted. If she had relied solely on the numbers, she might have abandoned the platform, costing The Hustle millions of impressions and significant brand growth.
The core takeaway is to trust your expertise and remain agile. The digital landscape evolves rapidly, and strategies that worked six months ago may already be obsolete. Success often requires the courage to experiment and adapt, blending analytical insights with seasoned intuition.
(Source: Hubspot Marketing Blog)
