THIS will determine your content's success

Good morning!

Welcome to Social Studies.

Here’s the agenda for this week:

• what has the biggest impact on your content’s success

• creators I like

• want to work together?

WHO DO I LISTEN TO?

You’ve got me telling you about social media. You’ve got approximately 1 gazillion “influencers” telling you about social. Don’t forget about your boss telling you about social.

• “THIS is how to succeed on ABC!”

• “THAT is a secret hack for XYZ!”

• “The algorithm is prioritizing INSERT 💩BS💩 HERE!”

We’re wasting our time.

Yes, there are a million things that impact your content’s performance, but…

We’re stepping over dollars to pick up pennies.

I posted on LinkedIn for 10 months. Nobody cared.

The next 12 months?

• 11.6 million views

• 27k followers

• 4k email subscribers

What changed? (Hint: It wasn’t my hashtag strategy, my line formatting, or how many connections I was sending.)

Relevance over everything.

When I started on LinkedIn, I was posting what I thought people wanted, not what people actually wanted.

After 10 months of trial and error, I figured out what was relevant (what met their needs in the moment.)

Brands (and creators for that matter) need to realize that even if a piece of content is incredibly valuable at 8:00 a.m. in the executive boardroom, that doesn’t mean it’s valuable at 10:42 p.m. when they’re scrolling social.

Social media is a unique market in that relevance is the only variable that matters.

Think for a minute about all the variables that impact what you’ll eat for lunch today.

Off the top of my head there’s:

• Availability (geographic location)

• Cost

• Other people (Coworkers going out for lunch, spouse cooking something already, etc.)

On social though…

Availability is infinite. Don’t like it? Keep scrolling.

Obviously social media costs time and attention, but most people aren’t budgeting this.

Nobody, except you (and the algorithm) know what makes you stop the scroll.

Relevance is all that matters.

What is relevant?

You’ve heard that content should educate, entertain, or inspire.

I’ll simplify it.

Is your content giving them what they want, where they want it?

So… what does your audience want?

Aha… now, we’re asking the right questions.

More next week.

CREATORS I LIKE

If you only click on one link, could you pick this one?

I recently connected with Nathan Jun Poekert on LinkedIn. He’s the director of social at American Eagle. I had a post that he disagreed with and we had a great conversation and have been chatting a bit since.

He’s starting a newsletter. You should check it out. This one isn’t sponsored, I just think Nathan’s takes are interesting.

WORK TOGETHER?

• Every week, thousands of social media pros read Social Studies. Want to partner to create valuable content? Reply to this email to start the conversation.

• Ghostwriting slots are FILLED. I think I’ll have another opening in a couple of months. Let me know if you want to hop on the waitlist.

p.s. clicking some of these links costs you nothing, but helps fuel my cold brew habit. I, and Onyx Coffee Lab thank you.