How do you know if you’re ‘doing it right’ with your content?
There are a ton of confusing factors.
Like if your copywriting is good. Or if you’re posting about the right topic. Or if your strategy is working.
When you’re in the dark like that it sucks cus you just feel like you’re wasting time with it all.
But copywriting aside. Topics aside. Strategy aside.
It doesn’t matter.
Because....
It’s impossible to know if you’re doing it ‘right’, if you don’t know what the results of ‘right’ looks like.
I look for 3 things:
- Who is DM’ing me
- Who is engaging with my content
- Who my content is being pushed to
Because how many people my content is hitting isn’t important - it’s who my content is hitting that’s important.
It’s this approach that has driven around $500k worth of revenue in 12 months for an agency CEO I ghostwrite for.
Let’s take a closer look:
1. DMs from the right people
I see a lot of ghostwriters, content writers, strategists and ‘lead gen’ specialists saying they got their client 30 hot leads from one post.
Accompanied by an anonymous screenshot of the floods of ‘interested’ and ‘your services’ and ‘i’m in’ messages.
While I don’t doubt they generated these leads (I have a tendency to trust people first until I have a reason not to, not ideal for social media because it is full of liars and frauds).
I do doubt how ‘right’ those leads are.
Because if you get 30 DMs from ‘leads’ here’s what you’re gonna be faced with doing:
- Engaging in conversation with all of them
- Spending time trying to qualify them
- Then going onto a sales call if they seem right
You could end up spending 30+ hours qualifying these folks.
Only to find out that 1 or 2 of them are ‘right’ (if you’re lucky).
So instead:
Focus on DMs from the ‘right’ people. Not the quantity of DMs.
- Define who your ‘right’ lead is (your ideal client)
- Write content for them specifically
- Measure quality of content based on how ‘right’ those DMs you’re getting are
Quantity is irrelevant.
2. Engagement from the right people
This one’s tougher for this reason:
Your clients typically will not engage with your content.
Why?
Because they want to keep you away from their competition. They want you as their dirty little secret. Saucy.
So don’t expect someone who engages to become a client.
But…
If I’m hitting on the ‘right’ notes with my content, it’s going to attract people LIKE the ones that might become clients.
E.g. my ideal client is 7 figure agency CEOs. If I see a bunch of agency CEOs lighting up my comments section with insights of their own, I know I’m talking about things they might be interested in.
If my comments section is being lit up by freelance graphic designers, I know something’s up.
Your content attracts.
When you attract the right people, it starts the right conversations.
And conversations lead to:
- More content ideas
- More opportunities
- More referrals
Get your comments lit up by the ‘right’ people.
3. Views from the right people
Here’s a LinkedIn trick for you:
You can see what type of person is viewing your content.
First, click on the impressions number underneath your post:
Then scroll down to demographics and flick the list to 'job titles':
Super useful for seeing what kind of people your content is being pushed to.
Because the algorithm tends to push content to people it thinks will read it and be interested in it.
Because that results in a better user experience for LinkedIn’s customers.
Makes sense eh?
I used this trick on LinkedIn to re-align my target audience from solopreneurs to founders (sorta the same thing, but different terminology).
I saw founders were viewing my content the most. So I started calling out founders and using the word founder in my hooks.
Low and behold: more founders started reaching out to me for ghostwriting.
TL;DR:
I’ve done the volume game.
I was measuring the amount of followers, amount of views and amount of engagement for a stretch this year (I was racing this dude called Luke Matthews to 100k followers, was fun).
But it doesn’t measure up against the right followers, the right views and the right engagement.
That is what makes you money - ultimately.
