SNM083: Ten Ways to Increase Facebook Engagement

speaker 0: 0:00 10 ways to increase your Facebook engagement on today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by fresh books. Accounting and bookkeeping mistakes destroy thousands of small businesses every single day. Bookkeeping doesn't have to be hard turned to the number one invoicing software for small businesses. Start for free today at serve no master dot com Backslash fresh. Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated?

If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast, where you'll learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host. We all know that Facebook is Thea massive juggernaut, the behemoth that controls massive swaths of the Internet and can make a break many businesses.

But how can you break into Facebook? How can you get people to pay attention to you? There are certain little steps you can take along the way to make it a lot easier for your post to go viral and for you to get customers and engagement in connection using Facebook, and the first of those is creating terrible content. Now it's very hard. When you say to someone make make something viral it's overwhelming.

What you want to dio is start with making it possible for people to share things. One of the big changes that I made recently was re sizing all of the images on my website to the perfect size for Facebook. And it's always changing. It's something like 12 or three by 600 right now is, I think, the size I'm using. I can't be the exact number, but you can look it up. It always look and say, What's the perfect size for images to share on Facebook?

This is one of the critical steps to actually getting people to share stuff I see all the time someone clicks share and the images resized, and so part of it gets clipped off. And when you have text on your image, half of the word on the left gets clipped off half the one on the right. Sending people can't read a sentence anymore, and you lose a lot of the value of having image post.

You also want tohave videos that are easy for people to click a button and share when you're creating the content, what you can do and what I really recommend. And this is something to do more and more and more and more is to follow really great headline principles you want Thio include every elements of a great headline, and that means using. And I have a recent episode I talked about this. You want to use a lot of headline generators you want to use headline testers.

It's a very simple formula for writing a great and share a bowl headline so you don't have to think of from scratch using a tool. Make it a lot easier for you will take a lot of the challenge and difficulty away. So following simple steps rather than just saying, Oh, create something terrible. I hate when people say they regret something that's viral. Make sure that it's the size correctly and then model it on other viral content. That's a really, really simple way to do it.

The next thing is to include calls to action. You have to say things to people to let them know what to do. Like, Hey, if you like this video, click this link if you thought this was valuable, share this in. When you're doing stuff, for example, that's political. And you want to say Oh, stop this from happening. You know, click here to save your country. Share this if you love your country. Very simple, but you created called action in a reason.

Do this If you believe this, if this speaks to you. If you found this helpful share with your audience, share with your friends. Share with your family member. Think about those letters that people used to send around that said No, if you don't for this to 10 people, something bad will happen to you. It's the same idea. You want to give people a motivation for taking action. Say, if you send this and it's better. If you do acts, something positive will happen.

But it's the same idea. If you do this that please give a lot of value share with other people, get the word out, make sure this doesn't happen again. Not having a call to action will lose you a lot of engagement because people don't know what to do. If you don't tell people to do something, they won't do it. It's amazing how important it is to simply say, Hey, please do it. So what we have now?

Our 1st 2 steps make it easy to share your content. And when you create stuff on Facebook directly when you share your on post on Facebook, when you share video on Facebook, make sure you include called action, telling people what to do. The next thing to do is to mix up different content type so you don't want only videos, videos or great videos are really, really wonderful. And I'm actually thinking about a couple of shifts in with my video stuff. I create so much content.

But I'm thinking, as I've been preparing for this lesson, actually downloaded a new video app for my phone. I'm gonna test it, supposed to be way, way better then the video admitting That's the native one. And in fact, I even saw this awesome tool called the Osmo Mobile.

Now haven't tested it out, but I'm thinking about buying for myself as a little present sometime the next one or two months, and the reason I'm thinking about it because it helps you to record a little bit more stable videos, and it works with this happen. It's supposed to be really, really amazing simply because I don't want to buy a new video camera. Looked at a load. My video cameras, my CIA.

Yates was just recording a little video earlier today from my podcast training course, and the Z aides are awesome. The Codex C. It's probably one of the best view of cameras made last 10 years, but the promise they're all from 2010 so they're just getting old and machinery doesn't last forever, so they haven't died yet. But I've definitely seen one of my friends had one that died, and I need to look towards the future, and I've been recording more and more video with my camera.

I've been pretty happy with it, so I don't know if I'm gonna grab that tool, but I'm thinking about it because then you could just record a video of you talking your face, and it's pretty cool. It's a great way to create content really, really quickly, really easily if you're doing live action video, but what you want to do is mix of content. If your only only doing videos, then you're gonna lose people because not everyone is always looking for a video.

So sometimes you want to mix in ah, list or elliptical. Sometimes you want to make sense. Just a photograph. Sometimes you want to make some different types of content, so they engage with people on different levels by having different types of content as well, a different mediums.

So you can have like a motivational quote one one post and your next post is a video of you working out in the morning and kind of giving people like a little routine and the video in the afternoon compere instead of video in the afternoon, you can send them a list like a recipe. You're mixing up different types of content. So when I send out stuff, sometimes I send out really cool block post that I read.

Sometimes I send out a message about one of my product. Sometimes I send out, you know, try and mix it up, and you want to do that more and more and more and more, and the reason I'm going over this material with you is Actually, I'm trying to prove my own Facebook work. I'm trying to improve more and more categories of my business, and so part of it is doing a lot of research, and I've realized that makes him content.

And having lots of different things people connect with is really valuable having video contents really good. But if you could mix up videos with other stuff, you'll do even better with which ever space you're in. It's really, really good. Thio mix up different styles of content One of things you can think about doing and not sure if I'm gonna do this. I am thinking about it, but I do so much live content. But this is too d'oh used Facebook live regularly.

What's really amazing is that you can d'oh really simple stuff. You can shoot videos in your backyard or anything, and I have friends every time they do. Someone's doing something live on Facebook. It notifies me and notifies, Oh, this person's recording a concert live where they're shooting five windows. Fireworks makes me and say, Who wants to watch a videotape of fireworks? It's the absolute worst. Fireworks are so exciting, live and so terrible via video.

And so everyone shares it and him instantly tells you what's great about that is that they immediately get locked into Facebook and engage with your audience. And then they're there for people to look at over over again later. It saves a recording on that huge on the Facebook live idea. But it is another way to increase your engagement. And if you're gonna record a video, if you're someone who does videos and one takes, I'm doing more and more of my video content in one takes.

Actually, this could be something really cool. Now I have to experiment with the technology before I give you a hard recommend on this. What I'm gonna test, I'll tell exactly I'm thinking about is can I record with my phone using any video app directly to Facebook Live? Or do I have to use the Facebook live up our Facebook app? Specifically these air things? I'm experimenting with it. I want to make sure when you're doing videos.

Another thing to think about when you're recording videos for Facebook is you want ones that actually work. Even if the sound is off. Facebook does test auto playing videos with sounds of Facebook is doing a lot of tests where the sound on Mike replaced.

But I'll tell you right now one of the first things that I d'oh when I'm scrolling down a Web page in the video starts playing as I hit the mute button on my computer because I don't want to listen to something I didn't ask for. News websites do this to me alive. There's a lot of video advertising, so even if it's a video I'm actually interested in, I want to proactively engage with it.

So if you could make a video that works without audio, you can really capture a little bit more audience. So autoplay is probably here to stay, even though it's annoying it out. Tests and out converts videos that people have to push. Click the button as much as people say it's annoying, as long as they buy more or react more to autoplay videos, those are always gonna dominate. That's just the way it is.

But what you could do is simply if you're recording, let's say a video of yourself talking right. It's just a video of you in the yard. You can just put your transcript. Below the video, you can put like close captioning on the video or even better than a word by word close captioning. You just have some really cool bullet points doing video. That way, we'll really capture the people that want to hear you and the people that don't.

So, for example, let's say someone's at work scrolling down Facebook when it shouldn't be there being a little bit naughty. They have the sound turned off on their computers. So it doesn't matter if you have sounds this way, you can engage with people you know. If they can't hear you, it's really, really valuable. Another thing that I'm working out, I've actually been I've been struggling with this have been organized for two weeks. Is Facebook has a thing called instant articles.

What instant articles is where Facebook actually pulls your article into Facebook a block post and then displays it within Facebook. And you can do this if you meet certain requirements. And once I get this completely set up, I'll share this. How to do this? We'll have a walk through my blogged, but I'm still testing it.

I don't have a final answer on this one because something went wrong with the Facebook upset, you have to set up an APP connection, and I've done a bunch of abs before. For some reason, this time setting up didn't work quite right. It's really, really popular, and they load 10 times faster. They load way, way faster, especially the mobile app, and they're very, very powerful. There's a lot you can do there now. The problem is with Facebook into articles is that you can't run advertising inside.

You get Facebook, chooses the ads that run inside your blood post and kind of doesn't profit share. But what I do is what I'm setting up a zit. I'm not gonna run ads in because I care more about People just engaged me in the content, not making money for my articles, because I'm not in the pay per view paperclip market. That's not how I make money. I dont monetize by selling advertising on my own content. I don't depend on that.

So this new Facebook it's articles is very valuable for me, and I really recommend testing it out because it can become very, very valuable now. Another thing you can do is change your posting times is the tip number seven of your writing numbers down, and when you're posting always at the same time, you can develop a regularity, but you might find different types the day get better engage. But there are tons of tests.

Buffer loves of semi ideas about the best times a post in all of those things, so you can use APS. That's end of the best times. For a long time. I sent all of my emails at two in the morning Eastern, and everyone thought that was insane. But I got so much engagement because anyone on at that time of night, they're kind of an insomnia mode.

And I had a really high conversion rates, lots of click throughs and lots of sales for anything I was promoting because I noticed my list was really insomniacs. Without email in the morning, I wouldn't get nearly as many opens or sales, knowing your audience know when they respond. It's important. People are online in different times. Now, as an individual, I engage with Facebook very, very rarely. It's a very small part of my online presence. I check Facebook.

Mostly I check Facebook to look at the local classifieds to see if anything cools for sale. That's probably the main way. Engaged with Facebook, I have two or three friends that only use Facebook for communication. Set of Skype. That's the second way. Use it. Very rarely is, um, I'm not going to the timeline and kind of engaging with stuff, so I'm much more of a content share than a content receiver.

But I'm online at random times, and a lot of people are as well, so test different times, especially have a worldwide audience. You'll find that different things happen now. You can also take old content, some people republish content. You can re publish a post from six months ago or a month ago. That's fine again, especially that shared in a totally different time to shoot at 9 a.m. Last time shared at midnight this time.

So you actually reaching all new people so you don't get a lot of reviews? Ah, lot of people seeing it a second time. Another thing to do is pay attention to the market. Everything I do is built on the idea of see what someone else is doing in reverse. Engineer it. I'm a big fan of that. I don't like to reinvent the wheel. So whether I'm writing an advertising campaign or I'm designing the next book, I'm gonna write or I'm looking for a Facebook strategy.

I say, Oh, what's people similar to me doing what's good about it, What's bad about. And then I replicate some of the ideas say, Oh, I've noticed that people doing a lot of quizzes, So I'm gonna do some quizzes. Ham knows People around here do a lot of videos you could monitor and track. Whether using software, just manual unity, log onto the page of five or 10 people and see what big brands in the same space as you are doing.

If you're in fitness, fall the top 10 fitness pages of your parenting. Look at the top mommy blocks whatever the top people in your space or doing you want. Observe what they're doing and see what engages with you. See the things that I really want to share that. Then you go. I should do something similar. Number nine is to drive traffic from external places so you can actually bring an engagement. You also sent people from your block to Facebook.

So what you can do is provide, you know, share a bowl links and all that stuff. But you could also use your Facebook posts and create time stamps or create a share. A blink. Every one of your post on Facebook has its own permanently. When you grab that apartment link, you can share that Lincoln so you could send people from other places. You can send people directly to your post or your video. That's on Facebook from an email from anything else.

The more you connect people see most of my audience. My audience comes from other sources. I don't have a lot of Facebook to block audience, but I can send my audience to Facebook. They re engage me there, and then you can engage with them over and over again. We always want to expand our lines of communication. I want someone to read my blogged, Follow me on Facebook. So this podcast follow me on Twitter that I can communicate with him on four levels.

If I get Linden that we have five lines of communication, have five chances to reach them with messages. The final thing you could do is you can actually embed Facebook content into your block. We often think about creating content on our blogger or on our own website and then sharing it on Facebook. But you can write a really engaged in post or post your video your or even the replay of your Facebook live video to your Facebook page.

But then you can take that in bed code and share it on your block post. What's cool about that is that it will connect people back and forth and again when someone clicks on that embedded video or clicks on that embedded block poster invented content from Facebook, you know, pull them your Facebook page, and that allows them to usually click, like to leave a comment or to click share so they get connected. And you could do this.

Many of these same things will work on Twitter as well, more and more, and I'll do some videos down the line on Lincoln and some other social media platforms. I just want to give you some ideas now with anything like this. It's very tempting to get overwhelmed because that was a big old list, and you can save yourself. I can't do these 10 things to me things, so I'll do nothing.

What I want you to do is just pick one thing from this list and implement that. Just take one and start there. Then later on do number two. As I always share with you. I'm very open about my marking Holmgren. My business. I told you I started dabbling a Facebook in our circles two or three weeks ago. There was a glitch in the setup of the plug in, and I said, I'm not doing this right now and that's reality. That's me being honest with you.

And so I'll work on it again. And then maybe the next thing I'm thinking about doing his mess around more and more with Facebook live videos. The reason I share that information with you is so you can see what I'm really doing and see that 80 20 rule is so critical. Don't say I can't do all 10 of these. I'm gonna wait and start next month. That's the wrong mindset. The minds that should be. I'll just try one and we'll have time. I'll try another one.

That mindset will really, really help you find success. Facebook could be really, really great platform. But it can also be daunting because it's so big and it's so complicated. It's so overwhelming. So avoid all of that overwhelming us and instead just focus on designing the perfect strategy for you. Design something that simple, start simple and work your way up for most of my social media have my social media platforms are all set up on automation?

I have a service that comes up with cool ideas or cool block post for me to share and then have another service that automatically shares them on my social media profiles through Buffer. I do all of those right now because I don't have a lot of time to work on those platforms. So I just wanted them something happening so they wouldn't appear dead and eventually over time, what I'll do is replace all the original content with my own stuff.

So having a bit of a plan for down the line is much better than just saying I'm not gonna do anything till I'm ready. Start out creating content, start out using different tools and over time, replace them. You know this is the same thing with product creation when I entered the relationship space with my publisher.

Originally, we were promoting about 20 other offers, but what we would do is say, Okay, here's the 20 most successful author offers most sensible products, so we just created 20 of our own versions. We make our own versions, and that's what you do when you're creating stuff. You can start by sharing someone else's stuff and then shift to your own as you have time to make it. I don't have all the products I want to release finished.

I'm in the middle of finishing, designing the slides for my podcast in course, and I'm also I just finished the first outline for the block course Saturday morning and sent it to my assistant to start working more more in the outline, she sent me her rough draft Friday. I sent a bunch of rewrites. This process is critical. It's how I grow my business. But because products aren't always done is always more and more I want to make.

If you have any my products, you can see my members area all the products I'm thinking about creating. Even then, I don't have them all done. Even that list have a list of 12 main products and about 50 blueprints that I'm working on. They're still twice as much I want to make. I've already thought of about 10 more main products I want to put out there. That means I'm constantly creating.

But until you have things done and some possibly get things done instantly until you have things done, you just want to do one step at a time so you can recommend an extra product. You can write a review of something you could do something small that will help you get there. So with Facebook, start off. Just take one little step. You go. No, it can resize my images. That was the first thing I did, and I'm actually not done tell you that right now.

I still need to resize. If you go to my website and you look at the last 30 or 40 post, they're all resize. But I still have to go back to the ones before that and do another batch. So I didn't finish doing often, but I did a bunch of re sizing and changing. The image of the image has text on it, so it's more share a ble. That's something that I decided to do as I'm working on my Facebook stuff.

So as you're doing all of these steps, realize it's okay to do something partially and then work on it again later. I So I still need for my Facebook stuff to Number one. Start replacing the automated content with my own number to start recording videos. Number three. I need to get Facebook into articles working again. I need to feel what went wrong with that app and number four. I need to resize the rest of my images.

So even though those things aren't done and in fact I get the most sometime from people saying, I'm so glad you're websites Finally done. It wasn't done for so long that it's still not done. There's still more things I want to d'oh so you could be in a state of constant improvement. That's okay. It's better to be in a state of constant improvement than waiting for perfection. So I know that started off as a Facebook podcast that started ended up as a motivational podcast.

But these are the things that can happen on this crazy podcast when it's all made by myself. I'm really excited to spend some time with you and have some really cool things coming up over the next few weeks, I'm actually going to an amazing live event very soon, and hopefully I'll be able to get some amazing interviews while I'm there and I'll let you know when I know a little bit more.

So fingers crossed that some of the amazing people I connect with will be up for an interview. For now, thank you so much for listening. I'm always excited to have you engage with me and take some time right now and just been 20 minutes dabbling with Facebook and find one way you can improve your engagement for now and then you comply the other nine down the line when you have more time. So these are 10 ways you can improve your Facebook engagement.

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master. Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode. We'll be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race Hit over to serve no master dot com forward slash podcasts. Now, for your chance to win a free coffee of Jonathan's bestseller. Serve No, master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you tomorrow.

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