one insight worth the cost of entry 👀

Hey,

This week I gave a talk to 250ish content marketers and I received this comment:

Woah, that one insight was worth the cost of entry

So I thought I would share in case it’s helpful for you, too.

Here’s the set up: we were talking about growing your audience on social platforms.

Say you want to build an audience on social to help sell your new product, or to find fresh leads for your consultancy, so you start posting content everyday. Your goal is to drive more traffic to your site so you try to write posts that provide some value— and then link to your site.

You’re hustling to get these posts out every day — but no one is engaging with them.

Not only that, they’re barely getting any impressions at all.

Here’s why:

You’re not creating content that aligns with the goals of the platform. I want you to work smart, not hard— and that means creating content the algorithms will boost, so you can build your audience faster.

So, what do the platforms want?

Well, it’s clear Twitter wants people named Steven who tweet support memes of Elon painted like a French girl riding a giant blue bird and identify as “aggressive Libertarians”.

Sorry I blacked out there for a sec, marketing tips, right, right. Every algorithm is different— but there are some things we can assume they have in common:

1. Engagement; the more the user has to do to engage— the more valuable the engagement is. For example; LinkedIn’s algorithm loves comments. Specifically, comments made in the first 90 minutes after posting.

🧠 Linkedin Tip: Optimize your content to generate questions or discussion, and ask three friends to comment within the first 90 minutes of posting. Make sure you’re replying to comments promptly. Peek Richard van der Blom’s incredible LinkedIn Algorithm report for more hot tips.

2. Time on feed: If you were Twitter— do you want users including links that kick folks off your platform and onto a different website? Nope. You want people to stay on the feed as long as possible, so they’ll consume more content and *see more ads*.

🌱 Growth tip: Don’t include links in your LinkedIn or Twitter posts often— focus on aligning your goals with the platform, which means keeping folks in the feed reading great content.

🪺 Twitter tip: Take a great existing blog post and repurpose it into an engaging tweet thread. Threads are engaging and keep the reader on Twitter longer— all things the algorithm likes.

3. Follow the cool kids: Meta tends to follow (or buy) any competition that’s gaining in popularity. Who are they following now? TikTok. They’re even offering a bonus program to specific creators to make more Reels.

Instagram is telling us it wants more Reels. And what Instagram wants, the algorithm prefers.

I want you to build your audience faster, and get more value from the content you're working so hard to create. So go forth and please our algorithmic overlords— and watch your impressions rack up faster.

Stay excellent,

Sarah

Do you know someone who could use this tip? Forward it over to them!

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An Easy Way To Help 💸

This past week was International Women's Day, and my feed was full of celebrations, events, and dudes high five-ing their wives and mothers. Nothing wrong with all of that— but instead of celebrating, we wanted to do something useful.

An easy way to help close the wage gap is to be transparent about how much you're paid.

It's really hard to advocate for your worth if you don't have benchmarks. If you don't know a guy with the same title as you is making 25% more, it's a lot harder to have a conversation asking for 25% more.

Information is power.

So in the interest of getting people more great information, we launched the Marketing Pay Transparency survey. In one minute, you can anonymously share how much you earn to help women and marginalized folks benchmark themselves and build their confidence and a real case to ask for more.

Take 2 minutes to fill out the anonymous survey. We'll share all of the results soon, so you can use them too!

Help folks earn what they're worth

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New Member Profile ✨

Today we’re highlighting one of our newest Growclass members, the incredibly talented Julie Cruikshank.

Julie is a multimedia designer specializing in digital illustration, animation, and graphic design. As a visual storyteller with 10 years of design experience, Julie loves producing engaging narratives across multiple platforms –– especially for magazines and small publications.

Drop her a line if you need some graphic design help!