The Best Session I Attended at #SMMW17

“We know that 50% of content shared on social gets ZERO shares. So why should you keep sharing on social media when most of the content goes nowhere? ”

My favorite lecture this year by far was "Hacking Facebook Ads: How 50 Dollars Can Drive Enormous Traffic to Your Best Content," by Larry Kim. 

Larry was introduced as the founder of Wordstream, a company of 225 employees that manages $1 billion of ad spend spread among 10,000 clients. (He has since moved on to found Mobile Monkey.) 

He sounded like a smart guy, and he was. 

What I loved about his approach was the intensity: he had something different to say, and he was going to spit it out. But his ability to share the concepts clearly and make them understandable made his talk very powerful. 

And what he had to say: we know that 50% of content shared on social gets ZERO shares. Organic social media reach and engagement are terrible, and paid search costs a lot. 

These are some of the most common complaints I hear from clients: "Why should I keep sharing on social media when most of my content goes nowhere?" 

In response, I've heard gurus point out that sharing good content consistently is absolutely crucial. You must keep going, to develop your reputation as an authority, to get your message "out there," to continue to allow for the possibility that the right people will see you at the right time.

Conventional wisdom. Larry is not a fan. "Social media marketing does feel a little bit like a suicide mission," was an actual thing he said. 

Larry's reasoning for sharing content consistently motivates me, because it's a reason that can make a crucial difference in your business. His point: use social media ads to promote pieces of content that you've shared organically that have performed well above average for you. Posts that you could classify as "viral" relative to the average performance of your content. 

This is the reason to continue to share content consistently: to have a baseline for engagement and clicks. That way, when a piece of content really outshines that baseline--goes viral relative to your other content--you know you can promote it cheaply on Facebook and Twitter. 

No one else at Social Media Marketing World share this concept this year in this way, and it knocked my socks off. 

He called these posts that are viral relative to your average content "unicorns." The other stuff he called "donkeys." 

Image via http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/03/15/quality-content-defined?utm_content=bufferf7406&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Read a deep-dive into this concept here. What do you think about this idea for choosing the content you boost with Facebook ad $$? 

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.