🌟 Social tip
If your social strategy is just broadcasting, start broadcasting less and engaging in the comments more.
When the data doesn’t tell the full story
This Monday, I posted on LinkedIn about a certain chapter of my life coming to an end.
Specifically, I posted about how I’m no longer breastfeeding. I talked a little bit about how nursing is almost as time-consuming as a full-time job, and included a picture of myself from last weekend.
The post got over 100,000 organic impressions on LinkedIn:
Meanwhile, other things I’ve posted in the last couple weeks on LinkedIn about B2B content marketing and social strategy have hit only 4,000-10,000 views.
Here’s one example. A funny video post about content marketing problems as medical concerns:
From looking at this data, it’d be easy to think:
I should do a lot more posts about breastfeeding.
I need to stop posting about B2B marketing because it “doesn’t perform.”
Every post should have a picture of me holding a cup of coffee wearing a Hoosier Daddy shirt.
Videos don’t perform as well as pictures.
Of course, these would be faulty conclusions because:
Posting about breastfeeding is not relevant to my consulting and speaking offers (at least until I switch careers and become a lactation consultant).
Posting about B2B marketing and posting videos have both consistently performed very well for me in the past. That’s just not clear when comparing these two specific posts.
If I suddenly started posting all pictures holding coffee wearing the same shirt, people would get bored of that, and I would need to come up with more creative concepts swiftly.
If I only posted about personal topics and no professional topics, my business would not grow.
All of this seems quite clear… yet companies draw bad conclusions from tiny data sets like this all the time.
A data literacy reminder
When reviewing data for your marketing programs, keep a few principles in mind:
You need to measure benchmarks over time, not individual pieces of data.
Outliers are outliers… and they shouldn't dictate your entire strategy. The breastfeeding post was definitely an outlier. This doesn’t mean ALL posts need to be about breastfeeding or ALL posts should be a picture of me in a Hoosier Daddy shirt.
You want sustained upward growth over time, not random bursts of virality followed by silence.
Another thing the data doesn’t show you is the word-of-mouth spread and emotional resonance of your content.
I recently had someone tell me that a video I posted last year about job interview tips helped her land a new job this year! She said she was now sending that video to everybody she knows.
That’s a very lagging indicator of how resonant the content was, but an indicator nonetheless.
My point is: That kind of data doesn’t show up in a spreadsheet anywhere.
Data is a tool, but it’s just one of many that you can use to tell if your content is actually working.
So while I love that so many people supported me in this personal post related to my breastfeeding journey, I won’t let that dictate my entire content strategy.
Do you feel like data literacy is a problem in your organization? What kind of data helps vs. hurts you as you measure your efforts? Reply back to this email, I’d love to know your thoughts.
I’m speaking on my first webinar of 2026
I’m speaking in a live Q&A and webinar with Storyblok on 4/15! I’d love to see you there.
This year has been a pretty wild ride already for everybody in the content space… and it’s only April. I have a LOT to say about content marketing, AI, and where things are headed this year.
The live convo will be at 8 AM Pacific / 11 AM Eastern Wednesday 4/15, so grab a coffee and come join me!
Sign up and let me know what you’d want to learn in this chat ⭐️
My hand-drawn art to promote this webinar. I colored this while watching High School Musical the other night.
Work with me on an employee-generated content strategy for your company
For the last two weeks, I’ve having a ton of calls about the new employee-generated content (EGC) workshop and program I’m developing with Vincent Pierri.
I’m hearing that companies are getting WAY better results from employee profiles than brand profiles on LinkedIn, and they want to come up with a better system and approach than giving people links to copy and paste.
We still have room for a couple more clients in May and June!
Our EGC workshop is three hours, totally interactive, and covers:
How to develop employee and exec content themes aligned to company priorities
Setting up the right posting cadence
Giving employees the tools to make their own high-quality LinkedIn posts across text, infographics, and videos
How anybody can film videos of themselves they don’t hate
How to turn ideas into frameworks and infographics (yes, templates are included)
Measuring content performance
We also give you a complete starter pack of slides + templates to get your EGC program off the ground. So it’s truly everything you’d need to get started activating a team of 5, 10, or even 50 executives, SMEs, and emerging voices on LinkedIn. ⚡️
If it’s something you’d be interested in, reply to this email, and I can send more details.
💀 POV: Somebody gave me the mic in the marketing meeting
I made a video about what would ideally happen if I got to say whatever I wanted in the marketing meeting, with my brand partner Intuit Mailchimp (I love them btw).
My first step: Tell everybody they can go off camera.
My second step: Get a blanket, turn off the ring light, and change into comfies!
Ahhhh, life is so much better when you’re not being observed during an entire 45-minute meeting that doesn’t need to be on camera!
Watch the whole video over on LinkedIn 🙂
🏆 Kids book of the week
Pride & Prejudice retold for kids
This book is:
🙌 Perfect for English majors who are now parents
🎨 Uniquely illustrated
🥹 A reasonably child-appropriate retelling of Austen (still way too much focus on marriage/weddings, but we can overlook)
If I were writing this book myself, I’d include a lot more dialogue from the book, since the back and forth between the characters is what makes it so compelling.
But I know they did their best, and it’s still a fun read. I’d rather have my kids exposed to this than no Austen whatsoever.
This is ideal for kids aged 4-6; it’s somewhat of a complex story, but probably too simple for kids older than 6ish.
Thanks for reading
I’m genuinely so happy that you took time out of your day to read this newsletter. Thanks for being here.
Right now, this is what I’m working on:
Building a unified content and social strategy for a software and consulting firm
Creating CEO LinkedIn profile and content recommendations for a publicly traded company
Brainstorming video series ideas for a company that wants to do more with social-first video
If you think I could help your company with stuff like this, just drop me a line, yo.
See you next time!