The REAL reason your content isn't converting

Paige back with the B2B Growth Newsletter, where we break down what one of the internet’s favorite creators is doing right so you can use their strategies to build raving fans for your company.

She’s the modern-day sales savant behind #samsales, growing her consulting business into the multi-millions with simple solutions like Show Me You Know Me®. With a focus on social selling, her content is relatable, sharable and usually has the perfect touch of snark and humor. 

But there’s one small thing Samantha McKenna does that sets her apart and allowed her to grow a business built on selling and personal branding solutions—

She clearly deviates vanity metrics from those that drive conversions and build relationships. 

The metric that is most important? Impressions — not engagement. 

Sam doesn’t say engagement doesn’t matter… It’s just not as important as impressions for building rapport and closing deals. Often the posts that seem to be most successful (more reactions and comments) aren’t the ones that drive sales. 

Engagement is largely a vanity metric, especially on LinkedIn. The people who like and comment are already in your circle. Friends, colleagues, existing or past clients. The people you want to reach, according to Sam, aren’t in this circle. And most of the time, when the right crowd sees your content, they won’t leave a reaction or comment. 

Sam creates content with one major goal in mind: Sharability. 

She aims to build content that will be shared in email, Slack, or private messages (notice none of these platforms allow for liking and commenting). This is otherwise known as dark social, and happens to be one of  #samsales top revenue drivers and one of the best ways to expand your audience beyond LinkedIn. 

Engagement is easy to track — so how can you make the shift to tracking dark social performance so you can optimize your content for sharability in private channels?

Good news! Sam shares the formula she’s created:

Engagement / Views = Dark Social conversion

So let’s say you have a post that got 234 comments and 42,000 views. This would be approximately 179 views per like and a conversion rate of .56%.

Any post that gets less than .9% views-to-engagement ratios signal good dark social performance (and more net-new eyes on your content and brand). 

Now that we’ve shifted gears and started focusing on impressions or views over engagement, how can we follow the Sam Way to start optimizing for more impressions and better long-term content targeting? 

This may look different for your business, but often the best-performing content is framed around teaching. Sam opts for deep, expert-level content that is so valuable it resonates deeply with her ICP. 

Think about your own habits — what kind of content do you share with your coworkers? Odds are, the content educates or sparks a laugh. 

What does sharable content look like for your ICP? When you can lock in and create for sharability rather than likes and comments, you can move past vanity metrics and nuturing your existing audience into a lane of true audience growth. 

The takeaway: Your “most successful” posts aren’t the ones that will close the most deals. By shifting focus to impressions over engagement, you can tailor content to expand your audience by tapping into dark social for increased brand visibility and inbound demand generation.

That’s it, ya’ll. Happy creating!

Paige Peterson
Newsletter Aficionado, Sweet Fish

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