In this episode of the podcast, I’m joined by Facebook marketing expert, Amy Porterfield to discuss how to use Facebook to supercharge your online marketing.
Facebook is huge and we all know that we should be using it to help build our brand. The question is what to do, and how to do it right! In this interview, you’re going to hear Amy give me a top to bottom review of my Facebook page and ideas for how to make it generate more leads (the name of the game!).
Check out this podcast, it was some wicket Facebook marketing tricks!
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About Amy
Amy Porterfield is the co-author of Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies and a Social Media Strategist for entrepreneurs and small businesses. Many consider Amy the go-to person for all things Facebook Marketing.
With 12+ years marketing experience Amy has worked with mega brands like Harley-Davidson Motorcycles, along with Tony Robbins International where she designed and managed his digital and social marketing campaigns. She currently consults with entrepreneurs, and small and large businesses on social media strategy.
In This Episode, Amy and I Discuss
Her 3 Step Formula for Facebook success
The 3 big mistakes that most rookies make when first starting out with Facebook
A case study of my own Facebook page with specific actions I need to take to improve it
Which applications you should use on your wall
Which services you might want to consider hiring to help you
How to use paid advertising and promoted posts to really ramp up traffic
3 ninja tricks to increase engagement
and so much more…
Links
Lujure.com for custom apps
CustomFanPageDesigns.com
FBInfluence (if you want to purchase Amy’s course and use my affiliate link, email me afterwards and I will include a free Niche Site Mastery Baby Ninja membership worth $77)
Transcript
Click Here to Read the Transcript
OIL 029: An Interview with Amy Porterfield
Trent Dyrsmid: Hey guys! It’s Trent here from the Online Income Lab podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in to episode no. 29. On today’s episode we are gonna talk about how to use Facebook to get more traffic, more subscribers and more sales for your online business. On the show is gonna be with a guest by the name of Amy Porterfield. Facebook expert, author and trainor and I’ll tell you she is just giving me some absolutely amazing ideas in this episode of the podcast on how I can get more traffic, how I can get more fans, how I can increase engagement. Ultimately all of which is gonna help me to grow my business and so we’ve used my site as a case study and I really think that you’re gonna get a lot out of this episode. So with all that said let’s just jump right in to the interview and you can hear from Amy how to make Facebook super charge your business.
Hey everybody! It’s Trent here from the Online Income Lab and on the show with me today I have Amy Porterfield, Facebook guru extraordinaire and super uber online marketer. And you know I looked at my Facebook page and I thought “you know it’s good but I bet I could do better.” And so I started to look around for who would be an expert who I could get on the show who I could do like this sort of live one on one consulting but it’s not one on one coz I’m gonna record it for the benefit of you guys, my audience. So hopefully those of you who are listening will be able to listen as Amy and I go through and talk about what’s right and what’s wrong with my own Facebook page. And you’ll be able to take those pieces of advice, knows, acts and steps and go apply them directly to your own Facebook wall. So Amy thank you so much for coming on the show and making some time to help me out and to help my audience out.
Amy Porterfield: Happy to be here Trent. Thanks so much.
T: So before we dive in to the case study as it were I’m sure that some of the people in my audience don’t know who you are. So could you take a few minutes and I know that after college you worked for Harley Davidson then you worked for Tony Robbins and then you decided to go out on your own and hang out your own shingle as a Facebook expert. So that’s quite a journey. Can you just talk a little bit about how that happened?
A: Yes definitely. When I was working at Harley Davidson I was doing marketing for them and I went to a Tony Robbins event. And fell in love with everything he was teaching so I thought “I gotta work there.” Which isn’t always the best thing to go work in an environment where you want to participate but I thought “Oh I’ll check it out.” So I applied, got this great job as a content development director and went behind the scenes which was a huge health shell shock because behind the scenes is very different than anything you would ever guess. Very, very stressful but amazing experience. And I got to work directly with Tony on his content and also his online marketing campaigns.
And while I was working with Tony he brought in some guys that I had never heard about at that time. But if you’re in the internet marketing world we sat at a table with Frank Kern, Jeff Walker, Eben Pagan, Brendon Burchard, Mike Koenigs, these really big internet marketers and they were explaining to Tony how they run their business which was very different how we were running the business at the time. And so I listened and bought, there’s a whole world out there that I really want to get exposure to.
So I went to a lot of social media and then moved in to online marketing more so once I started my own business. But I took everything I learned from Tony and started my own consulting business and soon got a call from Wylie Publishers asking me to co-author the book Facebook Marketing Online for Dummies. So I hadn’t really niched myself but once they came to me and that book came out, really I was more well known for Facebook than anything so I just kinda started to ride that wave. I love Facebook. I love what you can do with building relationships. So that’s basically how I got here.
T: You know it’s funny that you mentioned the word wave because yesterday I was listening to an interview from *inaudible (Amexco G) with Andrew had a guest on and he said in order to be a great surfer you need to have a great wave. And without a great wave you can’t be a great surfer. And obviously surfer isn’t that a forth for entrepreneur. And I thought to myself “oh that’s absolutely brilliant” because if you’re the smartest person in the world but you’re working on an idea that doesn’t have any adaption or any momentum it’s gonna be a tough slug. So fortunately for you you got on to a horse or on to a wave rather that was going like mad and continues to go like mad. And that’s really why I decided to have you onto the podcast. Now before we get into this you mentioned that you got this call to co-author the book. How does that happen?
A: You know that was very interesting because when I left Tony Robbins I started working with Mike Stelzner, social media examiner. He was just starting this website and wanted me to come help him out with his Facebook page. And so I started to work behind the scenes, social media examiner’s facebook page and get everything setup and get the engagement up and we grew to 30,000 fans in the first year. So it was a huge success story. And I started to guest blog posts for social media examiner. And I did that pretty regularly and this is something I tell my clients all the time. Get out there and start guest blog posting wherever it makes sense for your niche because that truly is how people are going to get to know you and what you’re all about.
And so Wylie had seen a bunch of my articles on social media examiner and a few other places where I was a guest blogger and that’s how I got noticed. Because the great thing about guest blog posting is sure I have my own website and I blog there regularly but I’m not as big as these other people who’ve asked me to contribute for them so I really take advantage of giving my content everywhere I can. So I’m seen and heard as much as possible in areas that matter most to my business.
T: So guest blogging is something that I’ve had some success with as well and I will admit that I don’t put near enough effort into it. And I’m totally taken aside already but I know people who are listening to this are thinking “oh yeah? I wanna know more about guest blogging.” Let’s just take this little sidebar for just a moment. Without going into the next hour because that would be way off the topic of what we’re getting into and maybe we’ll have to have you back on the show again. But how does somebody go about getting guest blog opportunities? If you could cover it in 5 minutes what would be your best set of tips?
A: You know the first set of tips or the first tip that I would give is do your research. Make sure that you know where your audience is spending time. Where people are going to find out more about your niche. And do that research and make sure that that websites that you wanna guest blog posts for they actually are accepting guest bloggers and they have a really good audience. A good alexa rating and they have a popularity online. Now you don’t necessarily always have to start with the best of the best but definitely have a punch list and know who you wanna go after.
Also I really do believe that you need to humble yourself a bit. When I first started with social media examiner guest blog posting the only thing Mike Stelzner had me do was write reviews about studies on Facebook and social media. So I literally take a study that was unmashable and I would rewrite it into a quick summary. It wasn’t anything that I was truly excited about but you have to start somewhere. And once he got used to my style he said “why don’t you write a little bit more and put your own personality into it and all that good stuff?” So humble yourself a bit if you’re just starting out. Get on a few blogs to get your feet wet and then start going after some of the bigger blogs. And when you go after the bigger blogs you need to go to their website, find out their process. Every single blog is different. So social media examiner might have you submit an outline where mashable would have me submit the entire article and then they would let me know if they were interested or not. So you kinda need to play the game a little bit and know what they expect and don’t give them things that are gonna waste their time because they’re too busy. So research and knowing what they’re looking for and knowing their audience and their style those are all things that I did right away from the very beginning and have had huge success with guest blog posting.
T: And here’s a tip listeners that I have for you. Get yourself a spreadsheet and list down all the blogs that you think would be good guest posting opportunity. List how many twitter followers they have. List how many facebook followers they have. Follow them on twitter, follow them on facebook. Make a list in your twitter account of call it the guest blogging potential list so that you can start to interact with these people. So you can start retweeting them, so you can start replying, you can comment on the wall on facebook. Somebody is going to notice you when you do that so that when you do reach out for a guest blogging opportunity you’re at least not just coming in the cold out of the blue.
A: So true.
T: Alright. So again that’s a much bigger topic than we have time for in this episode but thank you for allowing me to have that quick little sidebar. Alright so when I was studying your material you talked about there was 3 mistakes that a lot of people make with Facebook. And that was underestimating the power of a super fan, underestimating facebook’s power to help you build a list and not using facebook in a way to create enough engagement. In other words you put this post up but then you just check out of facebook and somebody might be replying to your post but you’re not on facebook anymore so you’re not replying, you’re not getting any engagement.
And then you talked about a 4 step formula. And phase one was page optimization and then growing your fan base, creating massive engagement and then converting those fans to super fans. So those concepts are gonna be the concepts that will underpin the next phase of our conversation hopefully. As we go through and we have a look at my facebook wall and that’s facebook.com/onlineincomelab. So let’s have a look at that and maybe you could tell me first of all what you think I’m doing right and then let’s talk about probably a much longer list on what I’m doing wrong. Or what I’m not even doing that I should be doing. Does that sound reasonable?
A: Sounds fantastic. So I thought what we could do is take my formula that optimize fan group engagement super fans. We’ll take each one of those and I’ll show you what’s working and what’s not working for each.
T: Perfect.
A: Okay great. So right now I’m looking at your facebook page. I’m looking at your timeline cover and when we think about optimizing our facebook page there’s 2 areas that are most important. Your timeline cover photo and your custom applications. The custom applications are the little boxes that are below your timeline cover photo. So first of all for your timeline cover it looks fantastic. I often tell my clients 2 things you wanna do with your timeline cover photo – tell people who you are and what you are about and make sure that it’s an instant connection that they really get right when they come to your page. So you have this great quote here, you have your name, serial entrepreneur and then you have some social proof which is fantastic as well. So I think you’ve done a great job with your custom timeline photos so that is definitely working for you.
T: That’s cool.
A: Now the thing where you definitely could improve on are your custom applications. So let’s talk a little bit about these custom applications. Facebook recently changed things with the timeline so before were just links on your left column and now they’re very prominent. And those 4 across the top the first one the photos that will always be there. You can’t move that box around and that means everytime you put a photo in facebook it’s gonna appear in that box. The next 3 can be custom applications meaning you can put anything there. And what I always do with my custom applications is I make sure that I have multiple lead generation opportunities. Because what I teach is that it’s no longer about the like it’s truly is about getting the lead. But with facebook you have to focus on that like first because once you get the like you can get out into the news feed of your fans once you get your engagement up and from there you can move your fans to action which means getting them into your email list. And then creating a stronger relationship with them outside of facebook. Because we don’t own facebook and it can change overnight and we’ve seen this happen we don’t wanna put all our eggs in one basket and just think well I’ve got all these likes so I’ve got an audience. That’s not necessarily true.
So to have more control over your audience or list of messages you put out there you definitely wanna build your list. So what I suggest to you is to create one custom application that is an opt in opportunity, give away a free ebook. I do free social media updates. A free video series maybe. What is it that your audience would sign up for find very valuable. That’s one of the custom apps that you wanna create. You also could create multiple custom apps and have different lead opportunities that’s what I’ve done. And I also have a custom app that is truly just a sales page. I took a sales page from my product that’s outside of facebook and I pulled it into a custom applciation. So if people wanna learn more about my product they can click on my custom app and they can read all about it. I would only suggest this with lower priced products. I wouldn’t put a thousand dollar product sales page on my facebook page. It’s more of a nurturing building relationship kind of opportunity for these custom applications. So definitely focus there. Everyone always ask me well how do I create these custom apps and I always give…
T: I was just about to say it.
A: Were you gonna say that?
T: Yeah.
A: So 2 recommendations. If you’re more of a do it yourself kind of person my favorite tool is lujure, it’s lujure.com. And lujure.com allows you to create a bunch of templates and they give you templates and you can create your own custom apps or you can literally pull in a URL from your website and pull it into the custom app. Now you have to play around with it. You only have 810 pixels to work with in terms of width. So if your webpage is a lot bigger than that you don’t want it to not fit but you can play around with it. There’s tons of training videos at lujure.com. You can do 1 custom app for free or you pay $30 a month and can have unlimited apps for unlimited pages.
The other tool I often use is customfanpagedesigns.com. They are a do it for you service. They create timeline cover photos and custom apps. They are the best of the best and they’re so easy to work with and they’re the ones that usually do all of my custom apps. I like mine to look really pro. I like someone to come to my page and know that I’m serious about this. This is my business. I take pride in it. They help me do that. So those are 2 do it yourself or do it for you.
T: Okay. So if I’m hearing what you’re saying I need to create more lead generation opportunities so if I have an ebook that could be one of them. If I have a webinar lead capture forum that could be another one. If I had a sales page for a low priced product that could be the third one. Am I getting that right?
A: Yes. And also custom apps are great for videos. So if you wanna do a welcome video and have people click that custom app when they come to your facebook page you could tell them “welcome to my facebook page. This is who I am. This is what I’m about.” Remember you wanna make sure that whatever you do on your facebook page you’re getting very clear who you are, what you’re about and how people can do business with you. We don’t want a bunch of fans just so we can say we have tons of fans. We want to move those fans to action. So it has to be clear how people can do business with you.
T: Okay.
A: Okay. So optimization, timeline cover photo and your custom applications. One more quick thing. Do you have a local business, meaning people don’t walk into an office with you, right?
T: No.
A: So one definite thing you wanna do is you want to change your categories. You can do that inside the edit page part of your admin panel and you wanna get rid of your phone no. and your address and you don’t want it to say local business. Instead I would choose maybe a program product service website. You have a bunch of different options. The reason being is that inside that little box right below your profile photo that will all go away and then you can put a call to action such as to learn more about xyz click here and you could put a hot link. It’s the only place on your timeline that you could actually put a very clear hotlink to let’s say your website or a sales page or an opt in, whatever you wanna do. Okay so definitely get the address out of there so you can use that box for more important things.
T: Okay. I just did that. I figured out how to do it now I’ve gotta rewrite this content that’s in there. It just says personal blog blah blah blah. But yeah okay.
A: So in the area you wanna look for in the about section in your facebook page it’ll just say I think it just says about. There’s like one line. That’s the area that’s gonna get pulled through to the front.
T: Okay.
A: Great. So definitely everyone should have a call to action in the about box on their timeline cover. Very important. Alright. So then the next area we wanna talk about is fan broad. How to get more quality fans. And my very favorite way to do that is through facebook advertising and more people will say “ah I don’t do facebook advertising and I don’t have a big budget. I’m a one man show or one woman show.” And I’m a one woman show and I use facebook ads to grow my list every single week. And I have over 16,000 quality fans. And the reason being is that I use something called sponsored stories or I use what I like to call likes statements in ads.
So let me give you an example. I was working with a client who was a personal trainer in New York City. She created a product where women all over the world could get in shape online with her program. And so to grow her facebook page before she launched the product we created a series of ads that said click like if and when they clicked the actual ad we brought them back to her facebook page on a custom app where they could sign up for a free gift or they could just like her page. But the point being is that you run ads that say click like if and you drive people back to your facebook page you always get the like link inside your ad. Keeping people inside facebook with an ad will give you that like link in the ad. So if you say click like if you wanna throw out your scale that was a big one for these ladies coz women hate the scale. So click like if you wanna throw away your scale women would click like in the ad and they’d be coming instant fan of her facebook page. That way we were able to get laser focus on the people we were targeting and build up her fan base quickly for very cheap.
T: Okay let me make sure that I understood what you said coz I got a little distracted there. One of my 2 devices stopped recording which is why I use 2. Alright so these ads that you’re talking about coz I’ve used paid ads and many of those 2,049 fans came from paid ads. And I was using them before timeline. I actually haven’t used them since. So are you talking about those ads that go over on the right hand side?
A: Yes. The ads that are on the right hand side.
T: And so is that a type of ad that says click like if or is that just a copy that she wrote in the ad?
A: That’s the copy that she wrote in the ad but the ads are called the engagement ads. And they’re called the engagements ads coz anytime you keep someone inside the facebook they can engage with your ad by clicking that like button so that’s what you’re creating an engagement ad. But inside the ad dashboard you’re basically just choosing one of your custom apps as the destination where people would actually if they click the ad and you’ll automatically get the like button.
T: Okay so let’s use an example with your site. When someone clicks one of your paid ads which of your app pages do they end up on?
A: So a lot of the times I do it for my free webinars. So I’ll run an ad and well let’s say let me back up. If I was doing a like statement I might say click like if the new facebook timeline has you confused and stressed out. That was one I run right when timeline changed. People clicked like then I know coz I targeted them I know they’re my ideal audience because they wanna learn more about facebook. But if they clicked the ad I would take them to free social media updates. So if they’re confused about facebook they’ll wanna stay in the know and that’s what I do with my free social media updates. So you wanna make sure that wherever you’re sending them makes sense to whatever you’re talking about in the ad as well.
T: Alright. Still wanna make sure. I’m looking at the ads I’ve got your page up and there’s ads, sponsored ads to the right of your page.
A: Right. But those are just anybody’s ads.
T: I know.
A: Okay.
T: So the first one on my screen is 5:00 cocktails and there is a like button that you can click at the bottom of it and then the next ad mint marketing plan has no like button at the bottom. I’ve seen none of the other ads had a like button at the bottom so whoever created those ads that must be some kind of functionality when you’re creating the ad is whether to display the like button or not. Is that correct?
A: So the one that has the like button is likely if you click that, I can’t see it, but if you click that you likely will stay inside the facebook. The other ads if you click those ads they’re taking you outside of facebook and that’s why they don’t have the like button.
T: Okay and so I did just click the like in the first one and it shows that I’ve liked it but it didn’t take me anywhere.
A: If you click the actual ad where does it take you?
T: Let me see. To a wall on facebook.
A: Perfect. So that’s how, now I would never send somebody to a wall. That’s it. I’m so glad you brought that up. When you have a destination inside your ads dashboard you get to choose your ad destination. Never choose your wall. Because it’s basically a conversation that’s happening that will make no sense to somebody new. Always send them to a custom application.
T: Sorry I didn’t use the right terminology. This is a custom graphic custom application. It’s not the wall.
A: Oh good. Okay perfect.
T: But when I clicked like in that ad originally it didn’t take me here. It didn’t do anything. It just said I liked it.
A: Right. So that’s basically I know it seems a little confusing but that’s the beauty of these ads. You’re not disrupting anybody’s facebook experience. They’re staying exactly where they’re at. You’re just clicking like to a statement basically. That’s why I like the like statements. Click like if you wanna get in shape for 2012. That was another one we did. There are just people who love to say yes that’s me, raise their hand on facebook. So you are catering to that social side of people. So click like if and it’s a statement that gets them to wanna raise their hands and identify themselves with that statement they click like. They become an instant fan of your page. Nothing happens but the next time you post you could be getting out into their news feeds.
T: Got it. And then you have an opportunity to bring them back over and over and over again and you’re not paying the next time to do that.
A: Yes exactly. So I wanted to bring up these engagement style ads because they’re truly are a fantastic way to grow your fan base because you can target exactly who you wanna target. So a little tip here if you have a competitor on facebook and they have a facebook page and you have a competitor that has a lot of fans or a lot of engagement on their facebook page you could go into facebook and under precise interest you could type in the exact name of that facebook page. If it pops up you can target all of their fans. Everyone who has liked your competitor’s facebook page you can show your ad to them. And so I tell you this because facebook ads are a great way to target your perfect ideal audience because when you start to get that engagement up and wanna leave them to action they’re going to actually pay attention. So that’s why I think facebook ads are so important so you could target your ideal fan on facebook.
But with that, so let’s move on a little bit, once you have a fan base and you have 2,000 fans that’s a great solid number for a fan base. At this point you wanna increase your engagement so let’s look at your facebook page and look at some of the post you have. So I looked a little bit in advanced.
T: Let me jump in with one question before we move on if we could.
A: Yes.
T: Are you paying for these ads on a ppc or a cpm basis? In other words are you paying each time it’s clicked or are you paying for a number of times that it’s shown?
A: I’m paying for each time that it’s clicked. Based on my experience and my peers in my own niche and we’ve talked about this over and over again it looks as though on average we’re going to pay less if you do pay per click versus per impression.
T: Okay alright.
A: Great question. So with engagement the no. 1 thing you wanna think about are images. Almost every time you post you want to try to include an image whether that image is getting pulled with the link you’re adding so it’s automatic or if you’re uploading an image. So you do a pretty good job of making sure that there’s some kind of image in a lot of your posts. The reason why this is so important is two fold. One, most people will not come to your facebook page to look at all your posts. 95% or more of your fans will only see your posts in their news feed. And when you include an image in the news feed it stands out more, it grabs their attention. So that’s why it’s so very important to make sure that you can grab the attention and take up more real stake inside the news feed. Images do that. In addition, images are the no. 1 media that people interact with the most in facebook more than video, more than of course just a text link or a text post. So images are definitely where it’s at. What I like to do though so here’s a little tip for you coz it looks like you are definitely using images I like to do really simple post to get my engagement up.
So let’s talk about engagement. If you go to the very top of your facebook page right under your timeline cover photo it says the name of your page Online Income Lab and then it says you have 2,049 likes and 23 people talking about this. Now that 23 people talking about this is in the last 7 days that’s how many people have clicked like on your page, shared your posts, commented on it, interacted with you one way or the other. Maybe interacted with one of your ads. So it’s a 7 day assessment of how many people are interacting with you. The average for most people is 2%. 2% of their fans will be talking about them at any given time. But I always say we definitely wanna shoot for as many people as possible because the more you’re talking about this number goes up the more often you’re going to get out into the news feed of your fans.
So let me give you a tip as to how to get that number up quickly. What I do is I’ll post quotes on facebook. Some people think they’re cheesy but I’ll tell you they work. They work almost every single time. So what I do is I find a great quote that I know my audience will resonate with and I turn it into an image if it’s already somewhere I can find online. I turn it into an image. So I put the words of the quote into an image. 403 by 403 pixels tends to be the perfect size of that image. I post it on my facebook page and in the status update I’ll say click like if you agree with this quote or click like if you like this quote or whatever it might be. I always give a call to action and then I always include an image. When I do this, the last time I did this I had over 500 people click like. People love to click like because they can raise their hand and say yes I agree with that.
T: That’s cool. Hold on let me jump in there. So it’s going out into the feed of people who have already have liked you but it’s also going into the feed of the friends of the people who have liked you. Is that correct?
A: It’s correct. If you get your fans to click like so if you saw one of my post in your news feed and you click like then all your friends would see and click like and they could come check out what you clicked liked about.
T: And that’s the viral aspect of it. Okay.
A: Yes so that’s why it’s so very important to get your fans to do something. And that’s why I always talk about getting your fans to take action. Another little twist to that is I created an image that says click like if you agree and then in the status update I’ll do a little quote. Something short and to the point I’ll write a little quote out that I know my audience will resonate with and then the image tells them what to do. Those go over like game busters. Those always work. So these are just little tricks of how I use images to get my engagement up and I tend to do a lot of this right before I’m gonna go out with a promotion because I need my engagement to be up. It’s almost impossible to keep your engagement up all the time. Mine go through ebbs and flows all the time but I definitely get strategic around the times that I’m gonna promote a webinar or a product or whatever it might be.
T: Well what about using something like hootsuite which I have not used yet and it’s on my list of things to explore to pre-schedule the things that are gonna go out, you can do it in twitter and all sorts of places but we’ll keep this to facebook. Doesn’t hootsuite allow you to schedule a bunch of posts in advance so that they all just pop up or is that not how it works?
A: No. Hootsuite definitely lets you do that and I’ve heard mixed reviews on this. I’ve heard huge experts on facebook say when you use hootsuite or any 3rd party tool facebook doesn’t penalize you. My experience and many others experience is that when you use a 3rd party tool to schedule post like that you tend not to get as much impressions. Not enough people will see it compared to if you did it live. But I have a little trick for you on that.
T: Okay.
A: Now on your facebook page if you go to your status update where you’re gonna post something you should see a little clock in the lower left corner of that blank status update. You can now schedule all of your posts directly on facebook. This is what I suggest to do. So when you plan in advance I would do it that way.
T: Cool.
A: Yeah really cool. And then when you schedule something on your facebook page again you’re looking for that little clock in the lower left corner of your status update box. When you do schedule something all you need to do is go into your admin panel under activity log and you’ll see all the posts that you have scheduled then you can delete them or add to it or what not. So under activity log in your admin panel. So that’s just a great point though. Scheduling things in advance to make sure that you’re posting on a regular basis.
When it comes to engagement one of the things I get asked all the time is how often should I post. And it really depends on how many fans you have and if people are engaging with your posts. But one great study by buddy media they found that the sweet spot is usually between 2 and 5 times a day. So if you posts 2 times a day and you’re getting people to engage and comment and like and all that good stuff you might wanna try 3 or 4, 5 depending on your engagement on your page. The no. 1 reason why most people unlike your page is that you’re posting too much. So definitely you gotta play with this and experiment a little bit but I encourage people to at least once, twice a day make sure your jumping on facebook answering questions that people comment in and post in.
T: So when you do a post how long should you hang around and keep hitting the refresh button on facebook? Or how do you set it up so that if someone comments that you get notified right away?
A: So that’s a good question. So one of the things I teach, I’m so glad you brought that up, is when you post something like if you post something and you want people to give feedback or what do you think of xyz or what are you going to be doing this weekend or fill in the blank – this weekend I’m going to blank. Things like that. Just to get people to engage and just have a good time with you. Wnen you do that I would say stick around for 15 minutes or so or make sure you check back in 15, 20 minutes. And when people do respond get back into the conversation. Address them by name. Expand those conversations so they know you’re paying attention. I always say when you call up a good friend on the phone and the phone starts ringing and let’s say I call up Trent and Trent answers and says hello and I say hey Trent how have you been? And Trent starts to answer and then I hang up on him. Very weird, right?
T: Just a little.
A: It happens everyday on facebook. We post something and we get busy and we go on to the next thing. People are commenting, they’re taking their time to engage with us and we’re no where around. So you could just check back or maybe stay around in 15 minutes and engage in those conversations I can guarantee you they’re gonna come back next time you post something as well. So you definitely wanna increase that engagement by using first names and getting involved in those conversations.
T: Okay so for everyone who’s listening right now who’s a facebook fan of mine I’m sorry for hanging up on you.
A: We all do it believe me.
T: I didin’t know that. I just check it the next day and then I would comment if someone left a comment I would comment back the next day coz it’s all I can do to get through all of my to do lists on any given day anyway.
A: I know it’s so true. I definitely struggle with this one for being completely transparent. It’s really hard to stay up with especially when you start getting a lot of fans like you have. It’s hard to stay up with that. And I have built my page around a place to be a hub for people who have questions about facebook so I’m having to jump on all the time. So I’m not always as timely but I do think if you’re cognizant of it and you’re trying to be as timely as possible that’s really good. So I’ll tell you just real quickly if you look on your facebook page I’m in look yours is a little bit different coz you have recommendations because your page is set up as a place meaning you have a location. When you do change that that word recommendations underneath your, you have a bunch of boxes at the friends, that will go away. Just an fyi.
T: Refresh coz I have changed it now to a blog and not a place. And tell me if I’ve got it set up the right way.
A: Perfect. I love it. Now one thing I want to see you do though is underneath the personal blog I wanna see you add a http to somewhere on the web. So I want them to be able to click in that box.
T: No. I know I got it. I didn’t wanna do that while doing this call. I thought I would get distracted.
A: That’s perfect though. That’s exactly yes and your recommendations run away. Fantastic. So good. This is all looking good.
T: Okay.
A: Okay. So engagement is key. You don’t want to post and ditch. You wanna use images as much as possible. And you wanna add calls to action inside your posts as often as possible and sometimes even turn an image into a call to action to get your fans to do something. So those are all ways to get people to take action. And one more good thing and then we’ll move on to super fans. When you do wanna create engagement and you wanna ask a question on your facebook page make it easy to respond to. People are multitasking and they don’t have a lot of time. So if you ask a question like tell me your favorite story about last summer or something like that. People are just not going to do it. What’s one word that best describes how you’re going to spend your summer? That’s a whole different ball game. People love to do one word responses so make it easy for them to answer and you’ll get more people to engage with you.
Alright so let’s move on to the final area which is super fans meaning turning your fans into super fans. Now a super fan is somebody that has come to your page, they’ve liked it, they’ve engaged with you, they’ve left comments, they shared some of your contents, they told other people about you, they’ve purchased from you and they’ve encouraged other people to purchase from you as well. We all want a handful of super fans. And these super fans are hard to come by because you really have to nurture those relationships. You have to target your ideal fan on facebook to make sure you’re attracting the right potential super fan. You need to engage with them. Use their first name. Let them know that they’re heard and they’re welcome. And then from there you want to drive them to action.
So we talked about these custom applications where you can use facebook ads to drive people to your custom apps and get them to either sign up for your email list or a free ebook or whatever it might be. But let me talk to you about the no. 1 way how I create super fans. And that is through online webinars. I do free online webinars and I use facebook advertising to tell people about them. But I only target my existing fan base and this is really cool. So let’s say I was going to run a facebook ad to get people to sign up for my upcoming webinar. I would target my existing fan base because I usually pay 10 cents a click and versus the average that’s 75 cents a click. So I pay 10 cents a click if I’m targeting a very specific fan base and from there I encourage them to sign up for my webinar. Once they sign up for my webinar not only do I deliver impeccable content to them but I also promote my programs and services. And that’s how I move a fan to action.
So whether webinars work for you or not there’s something in your buisness where you use as a way to move potential client into your client base. However you do that you wanna reenact it on facebook. Do they need to sign up for something first? You then send them a series of emails. From there then do you promote your product, your service. However you do that you wanna reenact it on facebook and that’s how you move your fans to action. Because again a bunch of facebook fans really means nothing. You’ve got to get them to take action. So that’s how I do it. I use webinars but you can use whatever works for your business.
T: Alright let me just run through that again coz I wanna make sure that I understood. So now you’re using another pay per click ad which are the ads that show up over on the right hand side but you’re targeting only people who are already fans of yours which is why your cost per click is so very very low. When they click those ads they’re gonna go in your case probably to your webinar sign up page which is one of those 3 applications that’s under your timeline image, is that correct?
A: Yeah.
T: And then they go into your sales funnel which is a whole other topic and processes happen and they attend the seminar and they can email they can either buy or they don’t buy and there’s upsales and downsales and all sorts of things that can happen at that point.
A: Yes. Now let me add a little bit to that. First of all, I want you to think of facebook as one section of your online marketing campaign. You know it’s definitely social and it’s different from email marketing, different from other things you have on the web. But it really is should be part of your online marketing campaign or marketing plan. And with that that means that you need to do you need to go beyond the like and that’s why I focus so much on that. In addition to that you had mentioned focusing on my existing fan base.
Now here’s something that you wanna google coz I can’t get into it now I know we’re running out of time but this is something really cool. Facebook recently started to roll out promoted posts. If you have more than 400 fans you could post something on your page and within 3 days of that post going live you could pay a little extra to make sure more fans see it and friends of fans see it. So here’s the deal with promoted post they will go out into the news feed. So so many of facebook ads appearing on the right column of your facebook page they really wanna make an impact. You wanna get out into the news feed. So I post about my webinars on my facebook page and then I’ll pay maybe $10 to get to reach even more of my fans and my friends fans. Even if my fans don’t engage with the post their friends will still see it. That’s what cool about promoted post. So on average everytime you post on your page on average 16% of your fan base will see that post which is ridiculously low and frustrating. So now facebook has said okay well if you want to promote that post you pay $5, $10, $20 and we will give it out to more of your fans. I love this. I hate that we have to pay for it but I love this idea because that just means that more of the people who already said they are interested in my business will see my posts. And I only promote posts that will lead to action. So definitely something to look into.
T: So would you ever try this let’s say that you wrote some epic post on your blog and at the bottom of that post there was a call to action let’s say dig out to a webinar. You then put an update on your facebook wall that says hey with a cool image I just wrote this really epic post go check it out. Is that something I mean I get something to try? You would pay for $10 for that?
A: Yes because here a few things you’re doing with that. One you’re driving traffic outside of facebook to a very content rich or valuable place. You’re not sending them to a sales page or anything like that. So you’re sending to your website, you’re giving them great content and you have a call to action at the end of that great content that’s a perfect example of something you would wanna spend money on a promoted post.
T: Okay. See the reason I have done interviews which have much to my surprise I got for a while ago I interviewed a guy by the name of Eric Lass I think he’s on episode 23. And he had become quite successful at writing little kindle books and outsourced the whole thing and turning it into passive income. He’s doing quite well. And so he offered this little ebook where it was like $20 or something like that and he explained how to do it. Eversince I did that podcast with him we’ve been selling about 2 or 3 of those ebooks everyday day after day after day. So that kind of thing would seem to me like everyone’s in a lull why wouldn’t I just go back to my facebook wall and say check out this interview with Eric Lass blah blah blah. It’s really awesome, people love it and do a promoted post.
A: See I love that. I think that’s a fantastic way to use facebook to drive action.
T: Yeah. And not only that everytime they come to my page or rather my facebook or rather my blog I have, you can then run a pop up or you can do any number of things to get them to join your list while they’re at your blog.
A: Yes exactly.
T: So that’s a pretty cool strategy to get extra traffic. Now going back to these engagement ads click like if what would you pay per click or what would you expect to pay per click?
A: So with engagement ads meaning click like if you are targeting your non fans so you’re going to pay more. So on average it’s around 75 cents per click if you’re keeping people inside facebook. But you can definitely play around with that. So I would pay probably around 50 cents per click for those. I’d be amazed if you pay much less if you’re targeting a really great audience that you know is gonna be engaged with you on your facebook page. So usually it’s around 50 cents that you could pay for those.
T: Okay. And how much do you spend a day doing that right now?
A: Right now I”m only spending $10 a day so I’m not spending a lot on my engagement ads but I will say about 2 weeks ago I spent probably $300 over 12 days probably because I was targeting a very specific audience that I knew, I did a little research and I knew that my audience was spending time on facebook in certain areas. And because I’m coming out with a new webinar soon I wanted to make sure that they would see my promotin for it. So I that’s when I did some serious advertising for it using facebook ads and promoted post. I love promoted posts.
T: Now for a typical $10 day I don’t know if you have this data off the top.
A: Oh I want it. I know what you’re gonna say. How many new likes will I possibly get for $10 a day?
T: Yap.
A: Usually it definitely will vary depending on what you’re advertising and the audience you’re after so that’s gonna vary a lot.
T: Okay. Alright so so far we have talked I think we actually covered this. We talked about page optimization which is making sure you got a great looking image. You’ve got the right applications down below the image. And then you’ve got underneath your picture which is below the image you’ve got a call to action in there so I’ve switched mine to product/service now I just need to rewrite it so it’s got a link to my blog. We talked about using pay per click for fan growth, promoted post for fan growth. We talked about ways to increase engagement and I think we just covered off converting fans to super fans is really just making sure that you’re creating more of a one on one relationship with these people by engaging them directly. And as well targeting your existing fan base with your 10 cent per click ads to promote something like a highly valuable webinar.
A: Yes exactly.
T: That’s pretty awesome stuff.
A: Yeah it’s a lot. I will say this. Facebook can be overwhelming and confusing at times. It changes all the time and you wanna stay up to date but I think people need to be a little bit more patient with themselves and know that so for this example, this training we just did, take one thing and I know this is coming from my Tony Robbins take action days but just take one thing and tell yourself okay in the next 48 hours I’m gonna do that one thing first. Because if you try to take it all and think I’m gonna get to that someday, someday will pretty much never happens because we’re all so busy. So begin with little baby steps you’d be amazed how much traction you can get on your facebook page. I mean you even changing that little about section you’ll be amazed to how many people click on that when they come to your facebook page. So I like your style. I like that you just take action right away but don’t overwhelm yourself.
T: It’s called, a buddy of mine who’s been on the podcast and he’s quite successful online he calls it the gsd. There’s the gsd group or gsd club I forgot what the second word was. Get stuff done.
A: Amen. I love it. That’s how I live my life. So definitely.
T: Every once in a while I blog about the psychology of success. Because here’s the thing and I’m totally taking a sidebar here but it’s my show and I’m allowed if I want to. Before I had any success in my career on any kind of business whether I was a salesman for another company or in particular when I was running my own business I was consumed with what are the strategies and tactics that I need to do to be successful. And the dirty little secret is this and Tony Robbins had it perfectly with his got this, he calls it, I forgot what he calls it but you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. There’s 4 squares, the first one is belief, the second one is possibility the third one is action then there’s result. The dirty little secret of becoming successful is it’s so much psychology. It’s so much in your mind. And your mind said I want people are new and they don’t get that. They just think it’s just some kind of strategy and some kind of tactic. And here’s why it’s so much about psychology. If you believe that you could get a 100,000 or 10,000 or whatever number of thousands of fans on your wall for example. You don’t really see a lot of possibility. Well I only believe I’ll get 500 so that’s a lot of possibility. So you won’t take a lot of action and you won’t get a lot of results which will reinforce the negative belief.
So what Amy’s saying I completely agree with and what I do is I have a whiteboard and I’ll put the big goal at the bottom. And sometimes I look at the big goal and I’m like oohh man that’s a big goal like a live event and writing a book and doing all the stuff. I go wow I don’t know if I can do that. But then I write down all the steps that lead up to the big goal. Can I put up a website? Yeah. Can I build a list? Yeah. Can I get one person to allow me to blog post? Yeah. Can I start a podcast and get one person to agree to come on my podcast? Yeah. Can I get somebody to make a cool intro for my podcast? Yeah. Etcetera etc etc. And suddenly when you realize that all of those little steps are all things that you can do if you decide I’m gonna give myself a week for step one or a day or whatever you want a time for this once you start doing them and then you just do them over and over again guess what you’ve changed, you’ve changed your belief system. Things that seem too daunting and overwhelming to you in the beginning suddenly you realize hey I can do this stuff coz I got something on my podcast last week, maybe I can get 2 people this week, and on and on and on.
So for whatever it’s worth that’s how I do it. That’s how I manage my state of overwhelm to realize that it’s really doable and anybody can do this if they get focused and put their mind to it.
A: Definitely agree.
T: Alright. So tools and resources. Amy, undoubtedly we have not had near enough time here on the podcast to dive into all of the details that go into making this a success. Now I know that you have a product called FB influence. So and I think we’re gonna set up some kind of special on that that is just for the Online Income Lab listeners and I’ll put a link in the blog post that you can get to it. And this will be at if you’re listening to this somewhere else it’s gonna be onlineincomelab.com/session029. And that’ll take you directly to the post. But some people are just gonna, how can people get a hold of you? Where are you on facebook? Where’s your blog? How do they get on your list if they want to get in your list? And if they wanna buy your product how do they do all that?
A: Okay thanks for asking. So if you go to facebook.com/amyporterfield you can go there ask many questions you might have and you’ll see opportunities to sign up for my social media updates. Also definitely we’ll set up a special page for my program FB influence for Trent’s special audience. And in addition I’m just at amyporterfield.com if you wanna read my latest blog post and find out more about facebook marketing.
T: Very cool. So thank you very much for being on the show. I’ve got nuggets I’ve got gsd I can get some stuff done as a result of my free consulting session that I received today.
A: Lovely.
T: And that’s one of the reasons you know I love putting good stuff out for my audience. And I really love interviewing people like this. But I tell you it all started with a selfless motivation I thought how can I learn more. How can I get people who otherwise might not spend an hour with me to come ahead and give me some really great actionable information. And the benefit for you obviously is you get some exposure. The benefit for my audience is they get a whole bunch of free lessons. And the benefit for me is that I get a free lesson. So it’s really a lot of fun to be able to do this. I feel very fortunate to have an audience that comes in and checks out all my podcasts and every month I look at the stats and I’ve got more and more listeners. So thank you everybody who listens to my podcasts.
If you are listening to this on iTunes and you thought it was a good episode please take a moment and give it a rating 3, 4, 5 stars, hopefully 5. And if you’re listening to this on my blog maybe you could tweet it or share it or facebook it or do something like that. Or you could put a little hat and on it says Trent’s blog is awesome and you can wear that for a day. You can put on 5 or I’ll give you $5 to do that. Anyway so there’s lots more podcasts episodes coming up. I’ve got some really cool guests in the works. So thank you very much for tuning in. Keep on tuning on and I’ll do my best to keep actionable ideas coming your way.
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