Chapter 1: Introduction and Why You Should be Using Facebook
Facebook is one of the biggest and most successful websites on the internet. In fact, it’s the second largest overall, second only to Google in terms of users. It’s often (correctly) quoted that if the active Facebook users were the population of a country, it would be one of the biggest countries in the world. And according to a recent survey by Shareaholic, about 24% of all referral traffic comes from Facebook.
24% in other words is ¼ of all traffic on the web essentially. And that means that if you aren’t doing your very best work to try and promote yourself on the social network, you might well be missing out on a quarter of your potential traffic. Again, that’s a huge amount to be missing out on. A more conservative estimate from Define Media Group puts the percentage at 16% but that’s still a huge proportion either way.
Here are some more impressive statistics. Did you know that Facebook has over 890 million active users every single day? And did you know that of those 890 million users, most will click on between 2-4 external links? That’s about 1.8-3.6 billion referrals every single day. You should be looking at how you can get a slice of that!
But Facebook isn’t only impressive in terms of numbers. The allure of Facebook is not just ‘quantitative’ it is also ‘qualitative’. What does that mean? It means that Facebook is also very powerful because of the way 5
that it works and specifically the way it allows users to ‘target’ their marketing efforts.
Basically, while Facebook might generate 16-24% of overall traffic, that traffic will be much greater for some websites and some niches. Those sites publishing content with a highly sharable nature will find that Facebook works even better for them and this is of course owing to the viral nature of things posted on the site. Buzzfeed for instance – a site that is incredibly successful and profitable – says that it only cares about Facebook and social media for generating traffic.
And actually, in a world where Google is constantly changing their algorithms, Facebook offers a much surer bet in terms of a long-term strategy.
What’s more, Facebook gives you unprecedented control when it comes to deciding who will see your content and how you’re going to market to them. In other words, you can target users based on their age, sex, location, interests and more which just isn’t possible with other methods of marketing. This gives Facebook a massive advantage and when you combine this precision with the sheer size of the audience… it’s the perfect storm for any marketer.
But just because Facebook is a huge and powerful tool for marketers, that doesn’t mean that you can just dive straight in, start flailing around and expect to get results. If you hope to be successful on Facebook then you need to have a strategy and you need to know what works and what doesn’t. Facebook should be thought of as its own ecosystem and as such, certain unique strategies need to be applied while others should be 6
avoided. Read on and you’ll be armed with all of the skills and expertise you need to start making Facebook really work for you. 7
Chapter 2: What do Facebook Users Share, Enjoy and Want?
Getting Facebook to work for you has a lot to do with psychology. Specifically, it has to do with understanding the psychology of the average Facebook user and how it differs from that of web traffic elsewhere.
What do Facebook users respond well to? What falls flat on Facebook? What is it that makes someone share something or like something on Facebook?
Understanding this is highly important, not only because it will allow you to share the very most effective type of content that will grow and spread across the network like wildfire but also because it will help you to decide what kind of campaigns and products are the best fit for Facebook full stop.
What Should You Be Using Facebook For?
We’ve seen how and why Facebook is such a powerful tool and why you should be using it. With those kinds of numbers there’s no doubt that you should be investing a great deal of time and resources into marketing on the platform.
At the same time though, it’s also important to understand the limitations and the failings of Facebook. In particular for instance, it’s important to recognize that Facebook referrals are typically quite ‘low quality’. On average, a visitor who comes from Facebook will look at only one page of 8
your site, as opposed to someone on Google who will look at 2-2.5 or direct visitors who explore 3-5 pages usually.
Why is this?
On mobile this is at least partly down to the fact that Facebook users are going to be looking at your page through the Facebook browser. In turn, this tends to encourage them to head back to Facebook rather than browsing the web.
More generally though, it’s also because your posts and adverts are actually interrupting people on Facebook. When someone visits your page through Google or by typing your URL into the navigation bar directly, it means that they’re interested in reading what you have to say at that given time and thus they are actively seeking out your content.
On the other hand though, when someone sees content that they found through Facebook, they’ll be taking time out of their leisure activities. They came here to check up on their friends not to read your content.
This right away creates a subtle yet powerful psychological shift in what Facebook users respond to and how you should best be marketing to them.
For starters, it means that you should share shorter and less in-depth content on Facebook. Look at your own site stats – chances are that the pages that enjoyed the most success on Facebook were the ones that were easier to dive in-and-out of.
At the same time, this also means you should think about your goals on Facebook. If users only look at one page when they come from Facebook, this might not be the best place to make direct sales. Likewise, this might 9
not be the best place to try and establish yourself as a thought leader with a long, insightful post on the nature of your industry.
What you should be using Facebook for is to increase your brand awareness, visibility and loyalty. This is an opportunity to increase your likes, your shares and your followers and to be seen by more people. This is a great opportunity to capture e-mails meanwhile and leads for your e-mail marketing and it’s a great place to test ideas, to communicate with your audience and to get feedback.
Facebook as a marketing tool is about casting a large net and taking that first step towards forming a relationship. It’s also about forming a dialogue and communicating. But while there are exceptions to this rule, it’s not as well suited to making direct sales.
What Type of Content Gets Shared and Liked?
Another thing to think carefully about is the type of content that does well on Facebook. What can you post and share that will get people talking about your brand?
This might mean creating your own content, or it might mean finding content that is currently trending already through tools like BuzzSumo. Whichever route you go though, there is a lot of value in the skill of being able to identify the type of content that will thrive here and then picking that for your own site. 10
Again, understanding this is all to do with understanding the psychology of the Facebook user. And specifically, it’s about knowing why people are moved to share.
Here’s one quick observation that might take you by surprise for instance: most people who like or share something on Facebook will do so before reading it. In fact, they may not ever read it.
Think about your own Facebook use. What was the last thing that you shared on Facebook? And what was the process that led you to do that? Did you see a link that looked interesting, follow it, read it and then share it/like it so your friends could see it?
Or did you see it, think it looked interesting, click ‘like’ or ‘share’ while chuckling to yourself then decide to come back to it later?
In many cases, it will be the latter.
So if they haven’t actually read a post, why would they click like or share?
There are two main reasons:
• Communication
• Expression
Let’s look at each of them here for a moment…
Communication
First and foremost, Facebook is a communication tool. In theory, everything that occurs on the site should be facilitating communication. As such, the options and tools built into it are all conducive to this. 11
For instance, Facebook gives you the ability to share a post with your friends but it also gives you the ability to share something directly to another friend. And this is again something you might have done yourself.
So if you were to see a fun looking article on ‘Challenges Only People Who Work From Home Will Understand’, you might decide to share it with your friend who works from home. Or if you see an article on ‘Why Alligators and Crocodiles Are NOT Dinosaurs’, you might decide to share that with your friend who insists that they are dinosaurs. In each case, you are using your post to either start a new conversion, to carry one on, or to show the friend you’re thinking about them and you ‘get them’. Sometimes content will even be shared mid discussion on Facebook to back up a point. How do you get your content to be used in this manner? Simple: think about the specific person you are aiming your content at as you write it. Write it for someone you know in fact – and then share it with them. Chances are that if you know someone who can benefit from the article, other people will as well.
Another strategy is to think about discussions and arguments you’ve had in the past and to write more broadly on that subject.
Sometimes people will also post content to Facebook in a more public way. If you share something to your own wall, it’s often because you want to start a discussion about it and use Facebook as a public forum. Maybe you’ve seen an article on how politicians are increasing their own salaries and you feel outraged – you might respond by sharing that content so that you can start a discourse on the subject and poll the opinions of your friends and family. Note that this might also mean you end up sharing content that you actually don’t like or even feel strongly against. The belief 12
that you only share things because you like them then is certainly misguided
So how do you create content that will get this kind of response and get shared as a result? The trick is to think of things that are divisive and that people will think about one way or the other. In other words, it’s better for your articles to create a strong negative reaction than it is for them to create no reaction at all.
Expression
So that’s one of the reasons that people share content, examined in a fair amount of detail. People share content to communicate and that can mean that they’re sharing posts they think friends will find interesting, or things that they hope will spark some kind of conversation.
The other reason people share though is to express themselves. That is to say, that people share content often because they think it makes them look interesting, or because it says something about who they are.
If we’re being entirely honest, Facebook is a highly narcissistic place and one of the main things we do there is try and show off how interesting we are or what exciting lives we lead. For many people this means posting pictures of holidays, or updating our statuses with comments we think will make us look witty. We might also post an article about politics to our page because we’re stating that we agree with said politics and that way we demonstrate a) that we know about politics and b) that we hold X belief.
Similarly, we might share an article about the things that you experience from home because we work from home and we want people to know it, or 13
know what that entails. Again, in this scenario we might even post content without reading it – in this scenario we post it almost like a badge of honor – not necessarily checking to make sure that it actually makes conclusions that we agree with.
Articles and Posts that Get Read
So a lot of content on Facebook just doesn’t get read. But what does it take to create a post that will get clicked on? And if your post isn’t getting read at all, what can you use to get it shared?
Here you have two major tools up your sleeve: the title and the image.
Using Clickbait
If you look at some of the most successful content on Facebook, a lot of it will fall into the category of ‘clickbait’. What this means, is that the title has been devised specifically to compel people to click on it. Now of course that has always been the purpose of pretty much any link but in this case, the difference is that this objective is pursued at the cost of all others – it doesn’t matter if the title is descriptive, accurate, useful… as long as it gets clicks.
And it really works!
So what kind of techniques do titles use to become clickbait? Usually the aim is to leverage the curiosity of the reader – to ask some kind of question or to create suspense with some kind of cliffhanger.
So for instance, you might say something like: 14
‘You’ll never believe what happens next in this video!’
Sometimes the title will even take a first-person narrative perspective such as:
‘I’m so glad I read to the second paragraph…!!’
Another, slightly more subtle trick, is to make a list article and then to make one of the points sound particularly more interesting than the rest. So for instance:
‘Top Ten Ways to Save Time At Work – Number Two Changed My Life!’
This article is descriptive but then has the added trick of making the second item sound particularly interesting and even more so than the rest. The hope is that the prospective reader will be so eager to find out what number two is all about, that they’ll click on the link even though they normally might not.
Clickbait titles work and they work very well but make sure that you use them with caution. If your titles are too obviously clickbait, they will likely trigger a cynical reaction. Facebook users are becoming used to seeing clickbait and as such, they are now wary of such titles.
The real problem here is that many clickbait titles just fail to deliver on their promise. They promise to blow your mind but then offer underwhelming solutions. Sometimes the links don’t even lead to full articles!
So what can you do about it? The trick is to try and be a little more subtle about it and a little less deceptive. In other words, you still want to spark curiosity and interest but the difference is that you’re going to spark 15
curiosity with a genuinely interesting topic that people haven’t heard before (how novel!).
Say you have a fitness website. How often have you seen articles saying ‘Ten Ways to Get a Six Pack’ or ‘How to Lose Weight Without Starving Yourself!’. All of us have read variations on that same article countless times before and as such, we’re kind of sick of hearing it. It’s no wonder that you have to resort to what amounts to trickery in order to get people to click again.
But now imagine an article on a new supplement that people haven’t heard of before. Or how about a new training technique called ‘cardio acceleration’? What about the fitness benefits of parkour? Or the different ways you can combine martial arts and weight training?
What you have now is a genuinely new topic that sounds interesting to anyone who is interested in the subject. There’s no reason to lie or to trick – this just genuinely is an interesting topic. This is what will make your articles really stand out. It goes deeper than just the title, it’s the topic and it’s the initial idea that leads to the creation of something new and different. This is in many ways the most important step in your article writing process.
The Picture
Other than the title, the next tool you have to use to get people to click on your content is the image. Next to the title, this is what people will see first and it’s what will make your content stand out. Very quickly, a great image can sell the concept of your article and it can also be entertaining, funny, emotional or fascinating in its own right. 16
So think: what is the hook of your article and how can you get this across with a great image? What image will grab the attention of people who are scrolling through their newsfeed? And what image will be interesting enough that it warrants a like or a share on its own merit?
One good example is to use memes. Memes are images that come from popular culture – often stills from movies but sometimes just funny photos doing the rounds on the web. To these images, you then add two short lines of text to encapsulate your point in a funny way. Often the meme will follow a set formula and you will find that certain images and structures appear over and over again. ‘The most interesting man in the world’ meme for instance normally starts with ‘I don’t always…’ and then follows it up with ‘But when I do…’.
Memes are instantly recognizable, they’re funny, they’re witty and they’re trendy. If you can use one to make a point that people will agree with, then you can expect this to lead to a large number of shares.
Otherwise, funny images, shocking images or anything else that grabs attention and tells a story can help you to get shares.
Videos
And better yet – why not add a video to your feed? Videos play automatically on Facebook often and are highly engaging. Just think about the last time you tried to hold a conversation when there was a TV in the room – you both kept staring at it right? Or think about the last time you started watching the ‘Top 100 Love Songs’ late at night and then stayed up to the very end despite not really caring about the resolution and certainly not wanting to go to bed that late… 17
Videos are fantastic for getting people to watch all the way through to the end and they can also be much more persuasive and really sell your point in an emotional way with music and a narrative script. These are less effective at getting people to click away to visit your site but if your objective is to build brand awareness or authority, or just to get likes and shares for your Facebook page, then it can be a great strategy.
So What Works?
So there are a lot of different things to consider when it comes to getting your content to perform well on Facebook. The main points though are that it should be…
Content that is:
• Entertaining/funny
• Short/succinct
• Interesting and unique
• Expressive and specifically targeted
• Trendy or on topic
• Emotional/sensitive
Content that has:
• Amusing/captivating images
• Clickbait titles
• Fascinating titles
• Video
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Chapter 3: Tactics – Hit & Run Commenting, Facebook Pages, Ads and More
Now you know the kind of content that typically performs very well on Facebook, the next question is how you go about posting that content for the maximum effectiveness. The question is: what type of posts work well and how do you reach the most people possible?
Creating a Facebook Page
The first and most important step is to come up with your own Facebook page. This Facebook page is what’s going to represent your brand on Facebook and it’s what you will be posting with. Of course you can’t just use your personal Facebook account, otherwise you won’t be able to promote your business and you’ll end up with a muddled company image.
At the same time, having a Facebook page gives you certain advantages. This will allow you to gain followers for instance without them being ‘friends’ whose posts fill up your homepage. At the same time, Facebook pages give you the option to use advertising later down the line. We’ll look at this in more detail later but this can be a fantastic way to build your followers even more and even to generate direct sales. Your Facebook page is a powerful tool, so make sure you spend time on it.
Some pointers: 19
• Make sure you have a good logo for your business and website. If you don’t have one already, make one. You can later use this to tie together all of your disparate social media channels and business endeavors and that way all your other efforts will boost each other in a highly synergistic manner.
• Likewise, ensure that you have a large crisp cover page that is clearly connected to your branding.
• Add a link to let people easily follow you on Facebook to your website. If you have a blog for instance, then have a link to your Facebook page right along the top and with each post. This way, people who find your site and enjoy it can subscribe for subsequent updates and you’ll be able to bring them back to your website time and again.
Posting to Your Own Page
A lot of your time on Facebook is going to be spent just posting on your own page. Remember this: a completely ‘dead’ Facebook page that is like a ghost town is worse than having no Facebook page at all. So keep it active, even if that means just the occasional ‘hit and run’ post.
Another benefit of just posting occasionally is that it shows that there are real people behind your brand and that your company is approachable and interactive. This will give people a lot of confidence when they’re thinking of buying from you for instance.
Note as well that you can automate the process of commenting and posting. One way to do this is to use the amazing IFTTT. IFTTT can be 20
found at IFTTT.com and is an acronym of ‘If This, Then That’. The general idea here is that you link accounts and connect ‘triggers’ to ‘actions’. So for instance, you can use this to post automatically to your account when you upload some new content, or you can use it to respond to people’s comments. You can even set something up to allow yourself to text a number that will lead to comments being uploaded on your Facebook page. One more use for IFTTT is to link your Facebook and Twitter accounts. This way, anything you post on Twitter can automatically be added to your Facebook page, which will in turn mean that you spend less time on your social media to keep it looking highly active.
Another popular, well known tool here is ‘Buffer’ and this can be used interchangeably with ‘HootSuite’. Both of these tools have options to ‘queue’ posts to your Facebook page and this then means that you can set aside a day to write lots of posts and then have them post regularly at set times during the day. This saves a lot of time overall and it ensures that your social media pages will never appear to be very quiet and abandoned. What’s more, it’s very useful for going on holiday.
Use these simple ‘hit and run’ posting tactics and you can keep your Facebook page alive and sharing interesting content and value for your followers. At the same time, you’ll consistently be sending more people to your external pages with the hopes of potentially converting.
Hit and Run Comments and Posts
Another way to get a lot of attention for your posts is to post to other pages and groups. Here you have a large audience of people who are interested in the same thing and this gives you the perfect place to market to. 21
Unfortunately, a lot of pages and groups won’t allow ‘non-administrators’ to post which presents something of an obstacle. You can join some groups which will then allow you to share your content and some pages do allow anyone to post. In most cases though, you’d have more luck trying a similar strategy on Google+ or on Reddit.
So what can you do instead, you can simply comment on pictures and images as a one off and then use this to increase awareness of your page and even get likes. Remember: every time someone sees your brand that will be free exposure for you and this is a great way to increase your visibility. So even if you’re looking for active comments sections and just engaging in a discussion, that’s all good stuff and it can lead to likes. Visit a popular page and look at the comments on some of their images – you’ll see that they can sometimes have hundreds of likes themselves! Find a Facebook page about Jackie Chan, post a picture of you with him, or a meme featuring him, or a popular quote – and you might find it drives more people to your page.
This is something a lot of people forget with Facebook. Not everything that you do has to be outwardly ‘promotional’. Sometimes, it’s actually more effective just to join in with the discussion and let the likes come naturally. Just remember to act ‘in character’ for your brand and to post things that will be helpful and interesting, or that will help to demonstrate your expertise, knowledge or entertainment value. You can try and make direct sales or gain traffic from comments on other people’s pages but it’s likely to just result in your comment getting deleted. 22
Using Facebook Advertising
Another big strategy for generating income from Facebook or for building your brand awareness is to use Facebook Ads. Why is this so important?
Well, simply put, your Facebook Page will have an ‘organic reach’ of about 1-2%. What does that mean? It means that if you have 100 followers on Facebook, only one or two of them will see what you post each time you post. If you have 1,000, you’ll get 10-20 views for anything you post.
Of course your followers can see your content if they visit your Facebook page. But as far as content appearing in the newsfeed goes, only that small proportion are going to see what you’re uploading unless you do something extra to promote it. This is where Facebook advertising comes in, which effectively allows you to extend that reach to everyone in your list of followers and further.
Facebook ads can take multiple forms, they can appear as ‘Page Posts’, they can appear as promotions for your page (to increase likes), they can appear as pictures and they can appear as videos. If you’re selling products, it’s also now possible to have a multi-item advert that will show off your items in a carousel-type display.
The great thing about Facebook ads is that they let you target your audience specifically based on their age, sex, location, interests, job description, marital status and more. This way, you aren’t wasting money on adverts shown to people who aren’t likely to have any interest in what you’re selling. 23
Better yet, Facebook ads can be ‘CPC’. That stands for ‘Cost Per Click’ and effectively means that you only pay out when someone actually clicks on your ads. So if your advert is completely ineffective at getting people to click, you won’t be charged anything at all.
And it gets better. Using something called ‘CPA’ (cost per action) you can create a scenario where you’re only charged when a click results in a particular action. For instance, this might mean that you only pay for people who actually like your page. You can also use Facebook promotions and only pay when someone redeems a promotional voucher. This way you almost guarantee your ROI and you know you’re going to get tangible results from your efforts. The best way to manage Facebook is by using natural posts and adverts together synergistically. Build your Facebook page and with posts and ads and then use that page to fuel more posts and ads…
Letting Your Fans do the Work
And don’t forget that you are not the only one who can post content to Facebook. We’ve already seen the type of content that can get re-shared and remember, when people comment on your posts or like them, that also means they’ll get seen by that person’s network. Each time someone likes or comments on your posts, it opens it up to a larger audience and creates the opportunity for more comments, likes and shares. This is how content can potentially even go viral.
But that’s not the only way you can leverage your fan base and get them to do the work for you. Also effective is to encourage them to share your 24
content directly from your blog or website. Here, you just need to add social sharing buttons onto your posts and that way people who enjoy the content can show it to their friends and this is great for getting your old content to keep giving back. This way, even if you don’t have a large Facebook page yet, you can still benefit from a post potentially going viral on Facebook!
There are countless plugins you can use on a WordPress website to add this functionality. One of the best known and most feature rich though is ‘Shareaholic’. 25
Chapter 4: How to Find Pages and Groups to Share Your Content To
As we mentioned briefly in the last chapter, one of the best ways to get your posts seen by a targeted audience is to post to existing Facebook pages and groups. This way, you can choose who sees your content based on their interests and you can benefit from all the hard work that the creator of that page or group has already done.
You’ll find that most Facebook pages are built for promotional purposes by their creators. As such, you often won’t be able to add your own content there unless you first become an administrator – which requires permission from the owner.
Instead then, look for and join groups. This way, you’ll be able to take part in the discussion and this will often include the ability to post links if you so wish.
Finding Facebook Groups
The question then is how do you go about finding new groups? One way to do this is with the simple search tool in Facebook. Just click on the search bar at the top (which says ‘Search for people, places and things’) and then start typing the name of a group you might want to take part in. Normally this can just mean typing in the name of your niche. Have a website/business in the fitness niche? Then just search ‘fitness’ and see 26
what comes up. Likewise, you can also pick topics that are within your niche, for instance if your topic is ‘fitness’ then you might pick ‘the gym’ or ‘running’. If your niche is writing, then you might pick ‘fantasy writing’.
Big groups have the advantage of having a wider reach and helping your content to get seen by more people but smaller ones have the advantage of keeping your content at the top longer. The best call is to try some of both.
And don’t be afraid to try out groups that are only distantly related to your topic – this is a great way to branch out and attract new audiences. For instance, if your topic is ‘parkour’ or ‘free running’ then you can also promote that in a group about martial arts as the two have similar roots. You could even write an article specifically on ‘parkour as a martial art’ or ‘the influence of martial arts in parkour’. Melding two vaguely related topics together also happens to be a great way to come up with ideas for new, original content.
If you find yourself struggling for inspiration when picking Facebook groups though, then another method you can use is to try Facebook’s grid search. This allows you to see groups that have friends as members and to see suggested groups. Just look along the left hand menu of your newsfeed and then scroll down to ‘New Groups’. Click this and you’ll be given several tabs. New groups are groups you’ve been recently added to but you can also see local groups (useful for local businesses), you can see ‘suggested groups’ (useful for finding things within your niche) and you can find ‘friends’ groups’. Friends’ groups is surprisingly useful because it lets you see groups your friends are in. As such, you’ll be able to find places where 27
you can likely post without getting deleted. If you’re University alumni for instance, you may be able to find clubs and societies you once belonged to – and this gives you an excellent platform for promoting your stuff. Don’t be afraid to promote to your friends!
Finally, one more trick is to consider looking at the existing fans and members of your current page or group and then seeing which groups they are members of. This is a powerful strategy because it shows you where interests cross over. In other words, if you’re already seeing people migrate from those groups, chances are you may be able to find more recruits there.
Posting to Groups
So, find a Facebook group that is somewhat relevant to your niche or industry, come up with some somewhat relevant content and post it there. Simple! If you create an article on Bruce Lee and share it to a martial arts group, then in theory you can get thousands of new visitors… instantly.
The only problem is that you’ll probably get deleted…
So instead of being purely promotional and out for yourself – think of ways you can give back to these communities. Use this as an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge, your expertise and your value. Only once you have built up trust should you post your very best content there. Don’t overdo it and make sure you give more than you take. Business is all about offering value and Facebook is no different! 28
Outreaching to Other Facebook Pages and Cross Promoting
One of the most popular concepts in digital marketing at the moment is something called ‘influencer marketing’. The way this works is simple: instead of building a huge audience over time that you will be able to share your content to in the future, the aim is instead to simply find an existing large audience and then to share with them. This way, you leapfrog all the time and effort spent building and get straight to the profiting! The person who can give you that route to the market is called the ‘influencer’, hence influencer marketing.
On Facebook, this largely means finding the owner of successful Facebook pages and groups and getting them to promote you on your behalf. The good news is that it’s relatively easy to start this process seeing as Facebook lets you find the group owners quickly and message them. The hard part is convincing them to post for you.
So then, make sure that you have something to offer! Often that will mean offering some money but it can also mean offering to post to your network in exchange for them posting to theirs. This is essentially the same thing as an ‘ad swap’ and it should benefit you both.
If you’re lucky and you find the right page owner, you may even find they’re willing to post your content for free. Make something tailor made for them and they will often agree to share it if it’s genuinely good and interesting. 29
Chapter 5: Monetizing Your Efforts
Many people reading this book will already have a functioning online business and thus won’t need help with monetization. For those of you who don’t know how to make money online, this brief primer should open your mind up to some options…
Selling Products
The most obvious way to make money with any business is to sell a product. You can sell a product from your own website (using an ecommerce store for instance) or you can try and sell it directly by sending users to eBay or to PayPal. Products can be crafts you’ve made, things you’ve bought wholesale to sell for more, or even ‘digital products’. There’s a lot to be made by selling eBooks, software and online courses and you can do this by creating a ‘landing page’ for yourself, which is a web page entirely dedicated to selling that one single product.
Affiliate Sales
Don’t have a product? Don’t want to invest by buying inventory wholesale? Then you can always try selling someone else’s product instead. This way you will sell an e-book, a physical product or anything in between and you’ll get commission from every sale you make. Sites like JVZoo and ClickBank can earn you as much as 60% from selling a wide variety of products – often meaning you’ll get as much as $100 a sale in some cases! 30
Affiliate sales work particularly well via e-mail, so if you can use your Facebook page to capture e-mails and leads, this is the best route to making money this way.
Advertising
If you can build up a website to the point where you’re getting thousands of visitors a day, then you can start to advertise on it. This might mean simply adding AdSense, which is a form of CPC advertising similar to Facebook Ads. The only difference is that this time you’re the publisher who’s earning the money!
Being a Social Media Marketer
If you can build up a big enough Facebook following, then this can be a valuable asset in itself. As a social media marketer you can use this as proof of your skills (to offer to others) or you can offer to promote products for money by finding sponsors. Either way, Facebook can sometimes be a job without even needing any other aspect to your business! 31
Chapter 6: Optimizing, Testing and Using Tools
By this point in the book you should have all the basic skills to start thriving on social media. What’s more, you now know the basics of how you can start profiting from that know-how.
All that’s left then is to hone that craft and optimize your approach until you’re maximizing your profit.
How do you go about doing that?
An Introduction to Split Testing
The basic idea behind split testing is that you are running ‘experiments’. Specifically, you are comparing two versions of the same ad, the same post or the same comment and then you’re seeing which one performs best. Normally the two versions will be the same, save for one or two details and this way you will know whether or not to keep that change. Over time, split testing allows you to ‘evolve’ your campaign to the point where it’s almost flawless.
Facebook ads are relatively easy to split test using the tools presented by Facebook itself. As for your landing pages (where you’re selling your e-books etc.) the best tool is to try using ‘Optimizely’ (optimizely.com). Of course you can also just make changes yourself as long as you’re carefully 32
recording the data. Recording data is the secret to success in practically every aspects of digital marketing by the way…
Powerful Facebook Tools for Optimization
Other than split testing, there are other ways you can optimize and analyze the performance of your Facebook page. One example is to use LikeAlyzer (likealyzer.com) which shows you specifically which of your posts are performing best and where your likes are coming from. This way, you know what’s working and you know to do more of that. Fanpage Karma (fanpagekarma.com) is a similar tool that lets you see the performance of your Facebook page overall.
Another aspect of efficiency is streamlining the way you are posting and what you are posting. We’ve already seen how you can use IFTTT, Hootsuite and Buffer to essentially automate the process and save yourself a lot of time. We also looked at Buzzsumo very briefly, which is a large repository of the top trending content in certain niches. This works very well because it lets you see what’s performing well in your industry and then just post it to your own page. That way, the success of another Facebook marketer instantly becomes your success! Shareaholic as we’ve seen is powerful for letting your readers and visitors share your content on your behalf.
Other than that, it’s also worth setting up apps on your mobile device that can help you to post on the move. If you have your phone set up so that you can easily snap a picture of what you’re doing and share it to Facebook, you’ll find it’s much easier to keep the page active and to keep 33
adding new things. Think about streamlining every aspect because the more you do, the more consistent you’re likely to be.
Finally, just make sure that you keep posting, keep tweaking, keep analyzing the data and keep trying! Like anything, amazing Facebook marketing is a skill that takes time, patience and practice. So get started right now and don’t stop until you have a million likes!
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