1. Spend 12 Minutes Learning to Use the Facebook Pixel 2. Implement and Make More Money

If you're running Facebook Ads for yourself or others, have you checked out Facebook Ad Hacks? It's probably the BEST business group I'm in, in terms of providing tons of useful knowledge. If you have a question about an ad you're running, ask it here. 

The founder of the group explains how to use the Facebook pixel: 

Networking Is Not Easier When You Are an Extrovert

data-animation-override>
“Introverts have it rough at networking events. But you know who else doesn’t like feeling super awkward about trying to find and connect with people at a big event who would be great business and career connections? EXTROVERTS. ”

One of the talks at Social Media Marketing World last week was called, “Conference Networking for Introverts: Ninja Tricks and Tips.” The description: 

Do you believe there are potentially new connections that can be forged at SMMW17 that can help advance your business or career? Do you want to leave this conference with new contacts, relationships and follow-up meetings already scheduled? And do you feel the only challenge is knowing how to reach out and connect with them?

It’s funny because it’s not the first time I’ve heard someone describe networking as a challenge for introverts.

But you know who else doesn’t like feeling super awkward about trying to find and connect with people at a big event who would be great business and career connections? EXTROVERTS. Networking can be a big challenge for extroverts, too. 

I should know, because I am an extrovert. 

Introverts get all the glory in the solopreneur world—they love working from home, quietly on their own projects, eating cereal and quesadillas all day in their PJs.

This is not me. I love my business, but I miss working with people. (I do enjoy the quesadillas.)  

I’m an extrovert who runs a business solo, works with all of my clients by phone or email only, and spends about 60 percent of the week working from home. I. Get. Lonely. 

So by Tuesday night, at an unofficial warm-up mixer for Social Media Marketing World, I was chomping at the bit to chat it up! Even so, I was nervous. That’s because networking events can result in two very uncomfortable scenarios, scenarios that are not mutually exclusive, which means, both can strike at the same exact moment. Ack.

Scenario 1: socially awkward nightmares. The silences. The pauses. The realization that you are talking to someone with whom you have nothing in common. How do you exit without being rude? How do you let them exit, when it’s so clearly what they want to do??? 

Scenario 2: This scenario only happened to me once at SMMW–it happens to me about once at almost every networking event I attend. A man came up to me, asked me what I do, and then told me that what I do is related to what he does, and then told me how. You wanna know how? … Me, too. I’m still wondering after his explanation. Anyway, sometimes what you do and what I do are two things that are not related. But that didn’t stop this dude from shoving a business card in my hand. 

This scenario is a distance cousin of FOMO. I call it: “FONMESHICIBO.” Fear of Not Making Every Single Human Interaction at a Conference Into a Business Opportunity.  

Please don’t misunderstand me: I would have been happy to have a conversation with this man. But instead what we had was a sort of in-person reading of each other’s website homepages or the top of each other’s LinkedIn profiles. It was just weird.  

Anyway, that’s the bad. There was plenty of good–way more than bad. And for me, a lot of it occurred on Days 2 and 3 of the conference, after I re-listened to a Tim Ferriss podcast episode about how he networked at South by Southwest. Whatever you think of Tim Ferriss, the advice was simple: 

Don’t dismiss people. Don’t be a [jerk]. Don’t rush.

Here’s what I learned after incorporating that advice into 2 days of talking my face off with a bunch of marketers who love to talk about business.

Don’t dismiss people: it is OK to have several conversations at a networking event that are unlikely or even absolutely not going to turn into a business opportunity. I had great conversations about the nitty gritty of Facebook Ads–and learned a few useful things!–with people who are never going to be clients of mine.  But they know who I am and they know I know my stuff. 

Don’t be a [jerk]: this really didn’t happen at all at SMMW. It really attracts non-jerky people. So I’ll use Tim’s example: a woman asked a speaker what apps he had on his phone, so he showed his home screen to her. From there she grabbed the phone from his hand and texted herself from it so that she’d have his number. 

Don’t rush: Tim talked about how to excuse yourself from a one-on-one conversation you’re having with someone at one of these events without making them feel like they don’t “rate” with you and you’re on to find someone else better. This has always been a toughie for me.

His advice: say, “Hey, are you gonna be here for a while? I’m going to go mingle, check out the rest of the event. I’ll catch up with you later.” 

Ta-da! You don’t have to go to the bathroom! You don’t have to melt into the floor or the wall behind you. You can just say, “Bye.” Maybe this has occurred to you but it never occurred to me. And I loved it. I used it just as often on people I really felt like I connected with but had spent 20 or 30 minutes talking to.

On the topic of “don’t rush”–unlike Tim Ferriss, I can’t say I single-handedly built my client list for the coming year with his networking ninja skills.

But I made contacts, I had fun, and I’ve already implemented some of things I learned from the sessions and the people I met. In the same podcast episode, Tim talks about how in the lead-up to his life-changing visit to SXSW, 26 publishers had rejected the 4-Hour Workweek. He had finally gotten a deal and he was at the conference to spread the word about his book. The tipping point happened (in a BIG way) but not before he had to prove to himself that he could stay the course despite difficulty. That’s why “don’t rush” is my favorite piece of advice of his. Whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert–so far staying the course has made the biggest difference in my business, rather than following a single method or piece of advice. 

And the best thing about don’t rush? It works whether you’re introvert, an extrovert, or anything in between.  

2017: A Marketing "Tactic" That Needs to Die

So. A lot of earth-shattering, world-changing stuff is going on in 2017. 

People know where I stand, but in case you want the short version: I'm for compassion; taking care of the poor, sick, and vulnerable; doing unto others as I would have them do unto me; and trying to listen more than I speak.

Now that that's out of the way: I want to talk about a trend I've seen as long as businesses have been using social media and email to market themselves. I thought it had died, but just today I saw it rear its ugly head again. People call it different things: I'm going to call it "piggybacking on the zeitgeist."

You see it a lot on Twitter, and it either falls flat or backfires spectacularly. Here's an example of the latter: 

Example of a brand using a trending topic without understanding the context #Advertising#SocialMedia#WhyIStayedpic.twitter.com/iTSmfaT6Xv

— Scott Paul (@scottfpaul) September 9, 2014

And then, after being excoriated (rightly) for using the hashtag inappropriately, the apology 4 minutes later: 

A million apologies. Did not read what the hashtag was about before posting.

— DiGiorno Pizza (@DiGiornoPizza) September 9, 2014

What went wrong here? DiGiornio decided to piggyback on a trend for maximum "exposure." There are so many solid reasons NOT to do this. 

1. Exposure doesn't help you make more sales.

2. You look desperate, on the order of begging people to like your Facebook page or join your group. By the way, stop doing this, too. (Most people have.) Just share stuff that people will like--let them decide whether they like it enough to join. 

3. It's not your wheelhouse. The latest offender I saw was an email I received for a list on I'm on. I'm a big fan of this company, which provides a subscription service that I happily pay for each month. That's all I'll say so as not to out them. 

In their case, they decided to first write about the state of the world today:

"Everywhere I look, people are butting heads. Friends are un-friending each other on social media and families are avoiding each other for fear of an argument. But there is hope…" 

They then made the (pretty awkward) segue from wringing their hands over the fear and anger they're seeing online and offline (a very legitimate and heartfelt concern, to be sure) to selling their product as a way to help. In this case, they offered a referral code and asked users to share it with their families. 

This one's in the "fell flat" category. Was it a DiGiornio-sized faux pas? I would say no. But does using the country's heartbreaking divisions to sell a few more subscriptions make you look kind of like a weasel? ...

No doubt we are all selling our services, products, expertise, from those of us who are consultants working for themselves (like me), to people who work a "day job" to successful small business owners. My quibble is that you need to sell for the problem you solve. Does my subscription service solve the divisions that are tearing at the fabric of this country? 

No. 

But here's what that subscription does do for me: it saves me time, which gives me more time to devote to family, and it saves me money. Those are great benefits! And those are the benefits I would tout if I were them. 

What do you think? 

**UPDATE** Today, April 5, 2017, Pepsi had to pull its ad with Kendall Jenner handing a soda to a riot cop. Repeat after me: "Using this country's heartbreaking divisions to sell more pop makes you look kind of like a weasel." 

Subscribe

Join to receive occasional marketing tips and tricks straight to your inbox!

We respect your privacy and will never share your email address.

Thank you!

If You Don't Get a Lot of Website Traffic, Use Facebook's Love for Video to Find Your People

In my previous post, I talked about website visits: "An unspecified number of people visiting your site for an unknown amount of time, reading an unknown portion of its content and taking either no action or an unknown action. That's what website visits are. But, they can be useful. "

And so can video views. 

In 2016, Facebook was obsessed with CRUSHING IT in the video department. They wanted to crush "IT" and they wanted to crush  YouTube, Periscope--you name it--in the process. This fact is mildly interesting for personal use of Facebook and it's fun to futz with Facebook Live and all.

But it's really interesting for Facebook for Business and using Facebooks Ads to find customers. 

Because video ads are really cheap. You must supply the video of course, but uploading a video directly to Facebook ads and then targeting the ad at cold (cold = they have never heard of you) traffic doesn't cost you nearly as much as promoting a blog post and getting a user to click. 

Setting up this ad is relatively simple: Set the objective of the ad to "Get Video Views" and upload your video. You can even set up captions right in Facebook Ads Manager. 

Depending on the target audience and the quality of your video

In a recent campaign I ran for a client who has almost no website traffic, we paid about 2.5 cents per view of her entire 40-second video. 

If I had targeted the same cold traffic with a link to a blog post on her website, I guarantee you we would not have been 2.5 cents per click. We could have been paying more like 50 cents a click. That's almost 200% more, for those of you who like getting your mind blown by big sounding numbers. 

Put another way, we reached 1,000 people for $25. If we had tried to get them to click to the website, it would have been more like $500. 

But we haven't even gotten to the part I'm excited about! Here is why I'm really excited about this: we (you, anybody) can now use Facebook Ads' Custom Audience feature to create an audience out of video viewers.You don't need people to go to your website to make a Custom Audience out of them. 

And you can specify that you only want to include people in your audience who watched 50% or more of your video. So you know you're not creating an audience of people who are getting counted because the video played for a second or two while they were scrolling. 

This is a huge breakthrough! If you just don't have the numbers or the money to advertise clicks to your website to strangers, you may still be able to carve out a budget to create an audience of several thousand people who have demonstrated that they are interested in your topic. 

Here's how to create the custom audience: 

Choose Audiences from the top menu

Click the blue button in the top left that says "Create Audience." Then click "Custom Audience." Choose the Engagement on Facebook option. Then click Video. Here's where you get to specify a video audience that watched at least 50% of your video: 

Once you've created this audience, you can build the ad that offers them the coupon for the free class. Just remember to target this video audience when you are setting up ad targeting. 

To recap, the steps are: 

1. Create an informational video (don't close with a promotion or try to sell anything). This is news your audience can use. Keep it to 1-3 minutes. 

2. Buy an ad with the video and target cold traffic. 

3. Create an audience out of the people who watched 50% or more of the video. 

4. Re-market to them by buying a second ad where you target only them and ask them to do something that's a heavier lift, like sign up for your email list. 

Questions? Leave them in the comments. 

If you want help setting up this particular ad type, find out how to work with me. 

Facebook Ad Tip: Using Website Clicks (Instead of Just Counting Them)

I said Facebook ad tip. Not Photoshop. 

Online tactics-wise, I think the most important thing I've learned this year is that website visits do not constitute the accomplishment of any business goal.

Website visits do NOT constitute the accomplishment of any business goal.  

I wrote it twice because it seems to be quite difficult for some of business owners and nonprofit leaders to accept.

Not saying that website visits don't count for anything, or don't mean anything. But they are not a self-contained business goal. An unspecified number of people visiting your site for an unknown amount of time, reading an unknown portion of its content and taking either no action or an unknown action. That's what website visits are. 

But they can be useful. 

Here's one way: you can drive "cold traffic" to your website and make it into "warm" traffic.

Cold traffic is website visitors composed of people people who've never heard of you before but demographically or interest-wise appear to be the type of people who are your biggest fans.

Before I describe how to do this: you need to install the Facebook Pixel on your website in order for what I'm about to tell you to work. The Facebook Pixel keeps track of website visits. It does a lot of other things, but that's really all you need to know for the purpose of this tip. 

So, let's say you are KidVentures. (I don't work for them but they just popped into my head.) You know a lot about your clients: they are

• parents

• who have kids between 0-4

• disposable income to take their kids to an indoor playground

• time to take them during business hours

• need to take them -- maybe they have more than one kid

Step 1: Share a post that links back to your website

If you have a blog post that you know is particularly popular, share that. Anything informational that appeals to this target audience will do.

(You can select interests and target by demographics using http://facebook.com/ads/manager. Don't use the "Boost Post" feature to do this. It doesn't have the targeting features.)

With this ad, make sure not to ask your audience to do anything more than click to read the blog post. Don't ask them to buy anything. Don't ask them to sign up for anything. Just click: that's all you need them to do. And make sure the article or post is on your website. Don't link to a news article about your company that's on someone else's website. 

In the case of Kidventures, I'd advise them to write a quick article where they interview a parent who loves their Parent's Cafe, or ask the parent to guest-write it. They should share something that would appeal to their target market (see the bullets above). A post about the relaxing benefits of having a cafe on-site (with Wi-Fi!)  might do the trick. 

Step 2: Create an Audience in Facebook

Once you've published the ad, it's time to collect the clickers. In order to do that, you need to create a custom audience within Facebook ads. To do this: 

Visit the Audience section of Facebook ads manager.

Just create audience. Then click "Website Traffic." 

Choose "People who visit specific web pages." 

Now, paste the URL for the blog post you used in your ad. (Make sure you OMIT  http://, www, and the slash (/) at the end of the web address.) That's it! 

This audience will automatically update with a new member every time a new person clicks on that ad. 

So, now, you don't have these individuals' names or contact info. But you do have them in a list.

You can use this list to do a lot of the same things you'd do if they had signed up for your email list. How about offering them a coupon, huh? Kidventures? You can share the coupon in an ad that you create, targeting only the people on that list. 

Or you can run an ad with an offer and a link to sign up for your e-mail list in order to get it. A lot of people explain this kind of ad very well. Here's one I like. 

You can create ads that target as few as 200 people on Facebook. I would try to get your audience size to about 1,000 (depending on the type and price of the product you offer); then run this second ad, where you re-target the people who showed initial interest. 

What you're really doing is re-targeting an audience that has already initially shown interest. I don't make this stuff up! Read more about this tactic from the Master. 

Like this tip? Tell your friends to sign up for my marketing tip newsletter.

Feeling Paralyzed By All the Things

TFW when Netflix asks you "Are you STILL watching???"

It's been 20 days since November 9 and the world we woke up to after the U.S. presidential election. 

In the days after the election, I mourned. I grieved. I cried. I looked inward. I spent much of my free time on Facebook, reading, reading, reading, other people's agony and opinions and aggression. 

Then, I was ready to do something. ... But what? Everything? Nothing? 

I told my husband, "We need to do something! Big! We need to invite a refugee family to live with us. No, we need to sell our house and move to a rural red area where we can make a difference. I can teach!" 

My husband looked at me. He looked a little scared.

I said something like, "I know there's a large space between doing nothing and flipping my life upside down to try to solve every problem. But I don't know how to find the things in the middle ground." 

We had lunch and talked about what to do. What if I just made a list of actions and then did one? Not one a week or one a day. But just started with one action. 

After lunch, I got online. It turned out a lot of people had already made great lists. (There's this one, this one, and this one if you're interested.) All I had to do was do one thing.

I picked an issue, called the appropriate representative's office, and registered my concern with a real person. It's not the greatest thing. But it was the FIRST thing I did, and it didn't turn out to be the last.

Part of the reason I was able to un-paralyze myself and take that first action was the talk I had with my husband. And part of the reason was I remembered this great post I read on Julia Hook's site, "What to Do When You Feel Like Doing Nothing." 

“The work that once inspired you becomes a burden.

You feel guilty and afraid.

You’re not sure what to do, so you do nothing at all.

And things come to an ugly, grinding halt.”

— https://strategicjuju.com

She talks about how to get momentum back. You don't do it by creating a grand, overwhelming plan that will have you quivering in your knickers and reaching for the next distraction.

AND you don't do it by questioning whether the action (which you have not yet taken) will make a one bit of damn difference anyway (You cannot know.) 

You get momentum back by... moving. 

“MOVE.

In any direction related to your business.

Just make a move.

Literally ANY move will do.”

— http://strategicjuju.com

Maybe you feel this paralysis in your business. Maybe you, like me, are feeling this paralysis invade all corners of your life thanks to an anonymous joker's definition of history ("One damned thing after another.") 

I'm with you. I think Julia's advice is so important because it's about being good to yourself and being gentle with yourself.

You don't have to solve it all. You don't have to do it all. You just need to let yourself move. 

A Very Real Reason Your Facebook Ads Don't Work

Over the past few months, a lot of people have come to me with questions about whether they should hit Boost Post on their Facebook posts. 

The answer is always no, as I shared earlier this year. You really should never do this.

But I understand why a lot of people ask about this. They've vaguely heard that Facebook won't surface business-related posts unless your paying; they see Facebook's prompt that tells them they can start with a budget of $5, and they know they need to get in front of potential customers' faces. This seems like a low-cost way to do it.

But like a lot of low-cost/no-cost solutions, it doesn't make you any money. And in this case, it's because it doesn't fit into a larger strategy.

But when I tell this to clients, it feels daunting. Where do you start when you're trying to do come up with this strategy? 

Taki Moore lays this out very clearly.  He's written this guide for coaches, but a lot of the advice applies to anyone who sells anything directly. 

“Before you ever run your Facebook ad, you need to determine how many steps you need to make the sale. Then you can use your ad to get your prospects to take that next step with you.”

— Taki Moore

If you try to "sell in one step," the very first time someone interfaces with you or your business in any way, you're "forced to sell too hard in your ad, which results in almost no clicks or sales." 

To prove just how many businesses need to hear this advice, I'll tell you a story: I just had this conversation with a woman yesterday. She runs a environmental non-profit. We were talking about #GivingTuesday, an initiative the 92Y came up with to encourage the public to make charitable donations the day after "Cyber Monday." 

I told this woman that one of the big reasons that most non-profits fail to drum up a hefty amount of donations on #GivingTuesday is because they are trying to sell in one step. They haven't set up a strategy to warm up their recurring or past donors.

They are essentially standing up in a crowded room, shouting, "I need money for my very good cause!"

How effective do you think that's gonna be? How much more effective might it be to first:

1. Identify a group of people who are moved by that cause.

2. Get those people together in a room.

3. Stand up in front of them and tell them the story of your organization and how it helps alleviate this very serious problem that is very, very important to every member of the audience.

4. Tell them how their money can help in very specific terms.

5. Ask them to donate.

That's a strategy. That's a plan. And that is something, through the miracle of the internet, you can actually do! If you replace the worked "room" with, say, e-mail list segment or Facebook ad custom audience, and replace "stand up in front of them" with "email them" or "buy an ad targeted at them," you can do this very effectively. 

What do you think? Any of my readers making #GivingTuesday plans? 

Three Things that Will Get You Unstuck If You're Staring at a Blank Page Right Now

Presented without comment

Writing for your business can feel daunting, even if you've been doing it for a while. These are my tips for getting started.  

1. Make a swipe file. Are you already doing this? I can't think of a writer who wouldn't (or doesn't!) benefit from looking for inspiration. Keeping a swipe file for the different types of writing you do is a great way to cut down on wasting time perusing the internet every time you need to write something. It's a great way for keeping you from falling down the black hole of Twitter/Facebook, too. 

Here are some swipe files to get you started (or Google them if you don't see one you like on the list!) 

• Headline swipe file

• Opening line

• Facebook ad

• Blog post

• About page

2. Write down every good question. This tip is for bloggers. This is the best way I've found for avoiding that feeling of not knowing exactly what to write about. Either you can't think of anything, or you can't narrow down your topic. 

If you're committed to writing once a week or more, the only way you can stay consistent is if you create a long list of topics in advance. 

So, where do you get these topics? From your conversations with clients and colleagues. Every time they say something that sparks a discussion between you two, every time you give the same very good answer to a question you've answered 8 million times before, every time you tweet about a small moment or experience related to your workday, write down the topic and a brief description. 

3. Start in the middle. Full disclosure, this is the first full sentence of the blog that I actually wrote; this sentence right here.  

I didn't exactly start here. I started by outlining the blog--I know I'm going to write about writing down every good question and about keeping a swipe file (which you already read about, but which I haven't written yet.) The reason I haven't written those sections yet: after I outlined them I got worried and stopped writing. 

I started wondering, "Will anyone care about what I have to say about this topic?" "Do the people reading my blog really care about this topic?" "This is not going to be that good--why am I bothering?"  

I have had this issue my whole writing life. It hasn't mattered what I was writing. It's worse when you're hoping that people will read what you're writing (as opposed to hoping they won't read it, which is a state more common among writers than you might think).

When I start at the beginning, I have this kind of Pavlovian reaction of  paralyzing fear that it won't be good enough for anyone to read. And I have to stop.  

So, I started skipping to the middle. 

I write as though I've already gotten the hard part out of the way and I just have to get this darn thing finished. This mental trick (if you want to call it that) allows my fingers to loosen up--literally--as I start typing out the meat of a single idea.  

I guess starting in the middle is a kind of swipe file. Getting a meaty idea fully formed on the page means you're not staring at a blank page anymore. You just need to go back in and connect the ideas. 

Ok back to the top. 

This Brilliant Viral Video Actually Teaches Us Something About How to Go Viral

Viral videos. The first time I gave "viral videos" a serious, work-related thought, I was working for Howcast. It was 2009 or so and our entire (small) organization was tasked with creating a viral video. 

At the time I rolled my eyes  at the earnestness. The neediness. But beneath my not-quite-hipster scorn, there was real terror. How DO you create a viral video? What was the formula anyway? Was there really a formula? Or did it just... happen? 

Spoiler Alert: I don't know the formula. Maybe there is one, but I don't know it. If there is one, it's certainly not what it was in 2009. 

But actually I do think there's a clue in this Chatbooks video. The screen shot above was taken when the video had about 5 million views, less than a week after it was published. Maybe not the hugest number in our post- Chewbacca mom age, but it ain't bad. 

And I was thinking about what made this video so watchable. What made me want to share it with everyone? And then I figured it out. 

It was me! 

Or rather, it was the fact that I fall into the bullseye center of Chatbooks ideal audience.

And that made me realize the counterintuitive key to this video's success: it is targeted. It IS NOT for everyone. But it captures the attention of a very high percentage of a very specific audience. Because its creators know who that audience is and how to talk to them. 

They want to reach moms who want to create photo albums out of the thousands of pics on their phones, but haven't done it yet.

That's all. 

This video went viral because it: 

1. Identifies the pain points of its ideal audience, using that audience's language

• no time ("My children are growing like weeds, but I barely have enough time to keep them ALIVE let alone print pictures of them.") 

• not very much money ("When Sara does something adorable, I have to say, 'That's cute, but not $50 cute.'") 

• tons of unorganized photos collected on the phone, not archived anywhere else

• not a ton of technical/design expertise

• no energy to get all of that stuff organized, printed, designed, shipped! What a headache.  

• But it would be really nice to have photo albums. I want photo albums. I love my crazy life and I want to be able to look back on it! 

2. Explains how Chatbooks address all these pain points

• Prints and ships automatically "without you having to lift a finger"

• But you will be notified if you want to edit your order or send it back

• Chatbooks are made with high quality materials for a low price "so you can send the savings on your little thumbsuckers." 

• "Live your life and let Chatbooks print it." 

• Go straight to the app from the video (for the many people in this audience who look at Facebook on their phone primarily or exclusively). 

What I really think is worth noting, in both the "identifying pain points" section of the video and the "here is Chatbooks can help" section, is that the script uses the language of the ideal audience member. It uses the words that this mom would use to talk about why "making photo books sucks"! 

One of my friends, who is a mom of two small boys, commented,

“They have tiny spies in my mind.”

So yes, the production values on this video are high, the script is well-written and funny, and they had money to buy the Facebook ad. All of those factors helped make this video go viral. 

But one thing you and I can learn from this video is: are we talking about the problems our products and services solve so clearly that our ideal audience would say, "They have tiny spies in my mind" ?

Get your checklist for more tips on what speaks to your ideal audience. 

How to Get More Out of Your Facebook Posts

"Why doesn't anyone see my Facebook posts?" 

I get this question a lot from clients, non-clients, friends, Romans, etc. And I understand why. You write a post telling people what is so great about your business, what you've been up to, something that really matters to you.

You do this because want to create a post  that inspire engagement, that connects with your audience and help them remember you, right? Posts that make them love you, trust you, remember you, CHOOSE YOU!? Any then no one even looks at it???

Frustrating.

When I managed the Facebook page of a nonprofit online resource with a following of about 250,000 fans, I thought about how to get people to look at our posts a lot.

We actually higher than average "engagement" (likes, comments, shares, and clicks on our posts). But I was always looking over my shoulder at the specter of the Facebook Algorithm. 

Via http://postplanner.com--The Facebook algorithm looks JUST like this. For sure. 

It looks like this, right? In all seriousness though, we know that Facebook curates every single user's feed. It's the reason most people's Facebook posts (whether they be personal or business page posts) don't get seen by all of their friends and fans. 

Another thing we learned while I worked on that awesome site's social media:

This chart is basically saying that if you post something your page, the likelihood that your audience will see it ... has fallen off a cliff. 

Facebook decides what each of its users sees, and it's pretty mum about the exact combination of factors it uses to make those individual decisions. 

But there are still plenty of business pages that get PLENTY of engagement. So, we must know some things. Right?

• Use beautiful photos to get noticed. 

• Or don't. 

• Write short posts! The shorter the better.

• Or ... don't. 

• Post links to your website.

• Or ... you get the idea. 

Here's my point: there isn't one specific format for getting your Facebook posts seen by an audience who might really care about what you have to say. 

What does your audience care about? What matters to them? Or, if you want to think about it like this: 

“How does the thing that matters to you HELP them?”

What does your message do for them? What does it mean to them?

And this is where studying what others have done can be really helpful and important. 

In fact, studying what other people do is the best way to make a list of what to test on your own Facebook page and other social media profiles. 

So, here I've dissected a couple of Facebook posts. One that got a lot of clicks to the owner's website (which you can view here once you sign up for my list), and one that got a lot of comments on Facebook itself (which you can view here). 

They are both great examples because they garnered lots and lots of engagement--higher than average for the profiles they came from, and higher than average across the entire social media landscape. 

They are also great examples because they served a purpose for the business owners who posted them. 

And they are great examples because they use completely different tactics. But I break down why they worked. 

Test out these tactics for yourself! Let me know how it goes.