The Proof is in the Engagement Numbers

Zev Gotkin
Aug 27, 2017 · 4 min read

If you’re in social media marketing, you probably hear or read a lot of contradictory pieces of advice when it comes to best practices.

A few favorite ones I’ve heard: “Nobody reads anymore. Keep it short and sweet! Long form content is the way to go. Post on Faebook at 3pm. Post at 1pm. Don’t post too much. Keep it to a few times a week. Post a ton every single day!

Some of the pundits, gurus, and research studies may contradict each other, because they are focusing on different audiences, industries, and platforms. Sometimes the information may be outdated (or just plain wrong). What works for one business may not always work for yours.

As a social media manager, I’ve learned not to rely too much on best practices or on what well-meaning lay people or even the experts have to say.

Best practices, statistics, and a little bit of conventional wisdom are OK as a starting point, but a big part of social media marketing is testing and learning (over and over and over again) and applying what you learn. There are many variables (your brand, product, service, audience, location etc.) and it takes a lot of experimentation to find your sweet spot. Look at the results and tweak things as you go. Don’t be too hesitant to try new things and don’t second guess your instincts if the numbers seem to back them up.

One of my first clients was an influential philosopher and religious teacher. I was tasked with transcribing his videos. Essentially, I took his vlog and converted it into a blog. The written word is much different from that of the spoken and it takes work to make a great speaker sound coherent and interesting in written form.

His team used to take my blog posts and rather than share them to the website exclusively, they published the entire thing on Facebook. I was upset at first. As the blogger and social media marketer, it went against what I believed in at the time. Why would they write such long Facebook statuses? I was taught people don’t have the attention span to read lengthy written posts on social media. And why didn’t they keep it to their own blog on their website?

But, the engagement rate doesn’t lie. The numbers were huge and the number of likes, shares, and comments occasionally reached into the thousands, sometimes with very little or no paid promotion. The long Facebook blog posts actually surpassed his videos! Turns out, people do read and engage with long-form written content on Facebook and Instagram. Blog directly on those platforms and see for yourself!

On LinkedIn, I’ve noticed a similar trend. Most of the viral posts I see on my feed are long, text statuses — sometimes without an image. Like this article, these statuses usually leave spaces every couple sentences and they are often candid and from the heart, rather than corporate and detached in tone. I’ve tried this myself and I realized that my posts with the most reach and engagement are often my long-form text statuses (sometimes accompanied by an image) rather than links with teasers or images alone.

I believe this is because most of the people on LinkedIn are driven to achieve professional success and after being stuck in the office for hours at a time where they often can’t watch videos they would rather read something of substance than something bland and sterile. It’s also further proof that B2B marketing can and should be human. Human beings like to read content that feels like it was written by another fellow human being — even in the business world. Who woulda thought?

Also, as early as 2015 (and probably before that), platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram amended their algorithms to reward those who blog natively into their platforms rather than on outside websites and blogs. This is yet another reason why it doesn’t hurt to go long-form on your social media. You will also earn consumer attention faster by blogging on social media networks and blogging platforms, such as Medium — places where most people already hang out — than by keeping all of your content limited to your own website’s blog.

Rock the boat. Challenge the status quo. Ignore the word on the street. Go against the grain. Don’t treat everything you hear from a pundit or an expert as gospel.

What social media marketing or general marketing dogmas do you subscribe to? What conventional marketing wisdom do you think needs to be challenged?

If you have a hunch about something, I encourage you to test it out. You might just be wrong. Or, you might be right and win big as a result. The proof is in the engagement.

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Zev Gotkin

I'm a content marketing consultant. Entrepreneur, Writer, & @HuffingtonPost contributor. Helping brands grow with #blogging, social, & email.

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