I’ve talked a lot about the Choose 2 Pick 3 concept. If a social media platform is one of your 2 then one of your 3 is going to be posting consistently. For some reason I have no problem consistently posting on my personal profile… I mean there’s always something going on in our lives I can share with the world. π However, my fanpage was another matter all together.
For some reason I find my fanpage difficult. I think it might have something to do with being able to see how many fans I have and how FEW people actually see anything I post. I have also had a hard time figuring out exactly what my fans want to see on the page. This lack of clarity and annoyance has led to off an on bouts of my poor little fanpage sitting on Facebook collecting dust. π Yeah, so sad right?!
However… I recently turned over a new leaf. I decided that I was going to make a go out of my fanpage, and I was going to start sharing content regularly and consistently there.
Funny how when you make a decision things show up to help you make it happen.
That’s exactly what happened to me. Out of no where, some very cool things showed up that have made it super simple for me to make sure I’m posting every single day, consistently to my fanpage.
And you’re not going to believe how freakin’ easy it is!Β
Ok.. I don’t know if you’re like me or not, but here’s my deal. I love Facebook. I can spend HOURS refreshing my newsfeed, liking and commenting on everyone’s stuff, only to realize the whole day has gone by and I haven’t posted anything from me. oops.
I also find it difficult to get motivated to go out there and FIND stuff to share (sometimes… and then other times I find so much I want to share I end up posting 15 things in 20 minutes. Neither of those works BTW). The key is to be consistent, regularly over time.
So let’s get to it.
First of all… you need to make sure you understand there are DIFFERENT types of content you can share on your fanpage; not just can share… NEED to share! Different types of content do different things and are seen by different amounts of people.
Here’s what I’m talking about:
- Images.
- Links to articles.
- Updates with no links.
- Updates with links to opt in pages.
I think those are the 4 big ones. You need to make sure you’re sharing all four kinds of posts… because believe me, it makes your numbers go UP. I’ve been playing with this for the last few weeks, and when I added updates with no links at all in my content rotation BOOM, engagement shot up as well as reach. So yeah, it’s important. (Don’t worry I have shortcuts for them all! YAY)
1. Images.Β
Images rock. You can find them anywhere. I personally like to do images that have tips or quotes on them… because that fits perfectly with my market. I recently picked up a PLR package of images. All I did to these images was take them to Picmonkey and add my opt in page url to them. Just keep in mind that you want to use images that your audience can connect with.
Schedule your images.
I do this one evening when I’m feeling motivated. I watch TV, edit my images and then schedule them to my page. I use the scheduler on my fanpage for this step… I choose a time to post them ~ usually in the afternoon when I’m not on Facebook so much ~ so I still have content going out. I share 1 image post a day.
2. Links to Articles
While I LOVE to read a ton of blog posts… it can easily become a time suck and I could end up at the end of the day having accomplished none of my income producing activities if I just let myself peruse blogs all day looking for something to share on my facebook page. I do want to find articles (including my own!) that are relevant to my fans, that they will find helpful, and useful.
Schedule your articles.
I found THE coolest tool to do this. It’s called Swayy. It is a very cool little web based app where you connect your fanpage. It goes into your fanpage, takes a look at your fans, what they like, what they want, what they are interacting with and then gives you quality blog articles that are of interest to them that you can share/schedule. BOOM. Yeah, hello, this has completely saved my ass when it comes to my fanpage.
I log in every morning, and choose 2 -4 articles to share to my fanpage. There is a scheduler right on swayy so you can schedule the articles you’ve chosen to be published throughout the day. I know personally, I write my blog post in the morning, and will want to share it then, and have Rebel TV I share in the afternoon, so I schedule the swayy articles every couple hours around the times I’m going to want to post my own stuff.
It works great… it’s really fun because they also have analytics so you can see exactly what people are liking, sharing and clicking on! This is great because then you can start sharing MORE of those articles, and you can even start writing some blog posts that are more relevant as well!
3. Updates with no links:Β
This was the little tiny piece of the puzzle that I had been missing. Just plain old status updates with no links, no images, nada, nothing. Just an update.
My problem was I had the hardest time finding something relevant to post every day. THEN I found this super cool little tool. Β It’s a Facebook App called status shuffle. Thousands and thousands of sayings, quotes, status updates to share. You can either share through the app, or I just copy/paste the update into my page and then use the schedule feature on the page itself.
Schedule your updates:
This was another glass of wine and TV project. I managed to schedule out an entire months worth of these in less than an hour. But now I know every single day I will have at least 1 post without a link going out to my fans. These plain status updates I’ve found get shared, liked and commented on. When you can increase the engagement on ANY of your posts on your fanpage your other posts will benefit too! So scheduling a plain old status update ends up helping people see your blog post links more often too!
4. Updates with links to an opt in page:
These are not mandatory… but it makes me smile so hard when I get an opt in from fanpage. π I usually do these with an image, a quote or a saying a little comment about the image and then a link to my opt in page. If you choose images that people like they will share it, even with the link in there. In fact, that happened this morning… I had 3 or 5 people share an image I posted even though it had a link to my opt in page on it. So YAY… I just got to connect with all THEIR friends too.
Schedule your opt in links:
Don’t go overboard with this strategy. I’m assuming your blog posts have call to actions leading to your opt in page… so you don’t really need to do this often, but regularly and consistently is nice. I do it every couple days or so. I will probably play around with the timing of it, and keep checking the stats to see how it’s working and then tweak it.
So there you have it, an insanely long post with all my tips and tricks to keep your fanpage filled with amazing content consistently and regularly over time. The fun comes now in the engagement. Now that you have content going out without you thinking about it all the time, you just have to keep an eye on your notifications. When you see someone interacting with your content hop over and say thanks, like their comment, start a conversation. That’s how this whole social media marketing works… provide great content that starts a conversation and then you pick it up and run with it!
Have an awesome day… and if you want to see all of this in action stop by and like my fanpage. π
Both of these are a great find.
I noticed that when I try to share one of the blog posts that you have shared, there is the option to share the post to my other platforms (Twitter etc) using Hootsuite. When I click on the Hootsuite tab and select the other platforms it generates a link to the blog homepage or one of its other posts.
Is there any way of making it share the post you have shared.
Thanks – Dave
I think the ability to do that comes from hootsuite itself… so the issue is probably with them. You might check their FAQ or ask support. Glad you found the tools helpful!
I used to be kind of an ‘automation snob’ – I think because for me it seemed like it was a slippery slope to spamming people with a bunch of links, and I think some people do over use it. But I’ve started using some of the tools you mention here, plus a couple others… and have found that it really just enables me to do what I was already doing better.
I must admit Kelly ~ I used to be the same exact way. It seemed to me like automation = cheating. I know that’s some crazy self talk going on there!! Now when I think about it automation = more time to focus on the stuff I like!! π Thanks for stopping by!
Super helpful Jackie as I have trouble staying consistent with FB pages as well. Profile, no problem, but like you, I am frustrated with engagement.
I’ll try some of your suggestions for this month and see if engagement picks up a bit. π
Another great tool I love is Buffer. I can use it to add links to articles I’m reading that I feel my peeps would love too. Buffer connects to my FB page, G+ page and you can connect to LinkedIn/Twitter as well. Set up a sequence of times you’d like content to go out and it will auto post at those times.
You can fill up the feed and let it run for a couple of days without effort!
Yes! I use Buffer too… the thing I don’t like about it… as with Hootsuite is when they post for you it shows up as coming from them. Swayy doesn’t do that. π My reach is definitely going up the longer I’m consistent with it, especially since I added the text only status updates.