attention

Making impressions with your content — Kelford Labs Daily

By getting focused.

Here’s the graph of my last month of impressions on LinkedIn:

I barely posted for the first half of July, started posting a few times a week into August, and last week things started to take off.

Can you guess where in the graph I had my positioning epiphany?

Look, my relationship with LinkedIn is... complicated.

Last year I went through a period where I was regularly getting hundreds of thousands of impressions on my posts because I was making semi-viral shortform videos (mostly about AI topics).

Tons of impressions and reactions, but notice how few comments.

But those videos weren’t focused on my position, so they didn’t get me much more than a few hundred followers and a lot of spam DMs.

So don’t take this as an endorsement of impressions as the most important metric. They’re not everything, they’re only something.

An indication that something is working.

Right now, the recent increase in my impressions on LinkedIn is due to ease. Because I know what I’m writing about, and to whom I’m writing it.

Writing something, making an image, and getting it uploaded is so much less of a chore. Yes, a lot of that is simple novelty: I’ve got a new direction, which gives me inspiration, which fuels my motivation.

This, like all things, will fade.

And then it will be time for more focus.

But I write all this to say: If making content is currently a chore, it’s not because you’re a bad communicator or marketer or advisor.

It’s because you’re not sure what to make your content about. You’re not sure if you’re writing about the right topics. At the right time, directed at the right people.

I get it! I’ve been there.

And I’ve been here, on the other side of it, knowing exactly what to say and how and to whom.

As a communicator, you talk, write, speak, or advise for a living. Your challenge isn’t saying the words.

It’s finding them.

So start looking in the right places: A strict and a slim focus.

On one audience, on what they need most, on how you help them best, when and where they go looking for help.

That’s how you make an impression with your content.

Reply to this email to tell me what you think, or ask any questions!

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