If you had told me three months ago that I would be spending my summer investing money in Facebook ads, I would have asked if you were on something. 😉
Like many of you, I’ve watched my page’s reach decline due to the big Edgerank algorithm update in 2013.
If you didn’t know, they significantly lowered the percentage of your fans who see your content because they want people who can’t engage their audiences to buy ads.
Well even before the update, I never had the most engaged Facebook page. Some of that was my fault, though. I never updated it more than a few times per week. I also wasn’t posting content that was interesting enough because if I was, more people would have been engaged, right? Hey, it’s the truth!
I cannot put all the blame on the algorithm update.
Well as you can imagine, the engagement just got worse after the change two years ago. So the LAST thing I was thinking about was paying money to buy an audience that would potentially never see my content.
Well I’ve changed my tune after some testing. I had a complete mental shift with regards to how I look at Facebook.
Here’s What Changed My Mind
In mid July, I attended a Teespring meetup. It was absolutely the most valuable meetup I’ve ever, ever attended, and I’ve been going to these events for four years now. I usually attend meetups about WordPress, marketing, etc. but I was getting bored with many of them.
To be honest, I’ve been getting bored with many of the topics I’ve been known to blog and vlog about, so this was a much needed meetup on MANY levels! I wanted to learn and do something new. Plus, I’m super intrigued by the T-shirt monetization model.
Well, when I saw that Teespring was having a meetup I was pumped. I have been doing very well with Spreadshirt (my latest addiction), and had just tipped my first Teespring campaign with Facebook ads.
Don’t worry. If you’re not interested in making money with shirts, that’s not really the point of this post. It’s really about getting cheap FB likes and building up an engaged page for your website or to sell a product. It just so happens that Teespring is what got me roped into all this.
I met several people at the meetup who make a living with Teespring and Facebook, and they had so much valuable information to share. I went home and started implementing some of the tips and saw immediate results with buying cheap, targeted Facebook likes for a new page.
Teespring’s Influence on My Mental Shift
First… here’s the skinny on how Teespring works…
You make money by running limited-time T-shirt campaigns, but unlike Spreadshirt, Zazzle etc. you have to sell a minimum amount in X days before you get paid. The short-term income potential is much greater than the other shirt affiliate programs.
Most people who are successful do the following…
- Buy Facebook ads and target people who would be most interested in the shirt (i.e. you create a shirt for female nurses and target females who have “nursing” in their Facebook profiles)
- Market to their existing niche Facebook page
Well, I had only tried method #1, and I had 10 failed campaigns before finally tipping. This method can also get very expensive if you aren’t good with FB ads and you don’t set small budgets. Fortunately I always set very small budgets, so I didn’t lose too much with those 10 campaigns.
Nevertheless, I grew tired of running so many failed campaigns, and didn’t want to spend any more money with this method.
At the meetup, I noticed a lot of the successful “Springers” were not buying ads at all to sell their shirts. They were just marketing to their existing niche Facebook pages and their customer list. (Once you start selling, you can advertise to existing customers you’ve earned using Teespring’s messaging feature.)
I hadn’t tried the “Facebook niche page” method yet, and it was primarily because I knew about the Facebook reach situation. Why spend money on people that will never see my content? No way!
Then I had a mental shift. What if I invest $50 to $100 in building up a new page, learn to get the cost per like REALLY low for my ad, and work hard at page engagement. Then I’ll have an audience to market to, and won’t have to keep buying ads for every campaign.
Let’s face it. Despite all the complaints about Facebook’s declining reach, there are still thousands of people out here profiting on the platform with a great reach, and/or drawing traffic back to their own sites, building their email list, etc. all thanks to their page.
Why do you think Facebook hasn’t changed their algorithm back to the old one? Because it’s working for their bottom line – A.K.A. advertising dollars. They’ve got to please their shareholders, not us!
So I thought…Let me stop complaining about the Facebook of YESTERDAY and see if I can capitalize on what Facebook is TODAY. Who cares if only 50% of people see my page as long as I’m making a profit, right?
Big mental shift for me!
Buying Likes for a New Page
Since my goal is to sell shirts, I did some research on niches that appear to buy a lot of shirts and made my selection.
On July 19th, I sat down and created a brand new Facebook page and began running my first ad to get likes.
I budgeted $100 and hoped to get at least 1,000 likes. In other words, my goal was to pay no more than 10 cents per like — even though I had read that’s hard to do in 2015.
When the campaign started, I was paying 14 cents per like. That was actually the best I’ve ever done, but still too high for my taste. So I let the ad run all day to see if it would improve, and by the end of the day it was down to 6 cents.
The more likes you get per ad view, the less you pay for a like. So that’s why my cost kept decreasing.
After 11 days, I spent a little over $100 total (I set a daily budget) and had 2400 likes with an average cost of 5 cents per like (U.S. traffic only). I haven’t spent any more on ads for this page.
As you can see from the image above, almost 2000 of those likes are paid, the remaining 400 likes came organically while the ad was running. Facebook recommends your page to the friends of the people who recently liked your page.
I used Facebook’s Audience Insights tool to ensure my audience was laser targeted, and I worked hard at making sure the image and text in the ad were relevant and spoke directly to that audience.
Notice the relevancy in the ad is 10. That’s a measurement of how relevant my ad is to the audience I targeted. This is super important. Ten is the max, and the higher the relevancy the less you pay.
One month later, this page has 3200 likes (the remaining 800 are all organic).
What About Engagement?
In short, it’s amazing.
I posted an ecard meme (people really, really love those!) on August 6th and the reach for the post is now up to over 200,000. Yes, the reach (number of people who see the post) is higher than the number of likes on the page! Each post averages over 100-150 likes.
Notice the above post has almost 1,000 likes, 1800 shares and check out the reach. I swear, 229,000 is probably my total engagement for the lifetime of my 2 Create a Website page!!! 🙂 🙂
So how can you have a reach higher than the number of likes on the page?
When you post something that has such great engagement, Facebook will continually show it to most people who are logged on and like your page.
Some people will see the post multiple times. And if it gets REALLY good engagement (likes, comments, shares, etc.) then Facebook will also show it to their friends who haven’t yet liked the page. This also helps to build your likes organically.
Here’s another post from two days ago…
Could I Do This Again?
I wanted to so see if I could replicate this and create more pages. By this time, I’m starting to consider doing a course on this, and I need to make sure this isn’t just a one-time thing.
I started my 2nd page last week, and it was more of a challenge to get the cost down so I didn’t spend as much. It’s in a competitive space (advertising wise), but less saturated with shirts, so I am committed to building this up. It’s also a very passionate audience that I really want to sell to.
I spent about $36 for 300 likes. I got the cost down to 12 cents per like, but started off at 28 cents per like. Yikes! I stopped the ad immediately, and tweaked the image to get the cost down.
But here’s what’s crazy. The engagement per post is almost as good as my 2 Create a Website page that has 18,000 likes!!
Like my first page, the average reach is often higher than the number of likes. At the time I’m writing this, it has 417 likes and look at the reach from a recent post…
And another post…
This audience also shares posts a lot more than the first page I setup. It’s interesting to see how different audiences have different behaviors. Shares are so important for your reach because it helps keep it strong. I think they are even more important than likes with regards to the FB algorithm.
The reason I’m pointing this out is people often complain (and I used to as well) that you can’t get most of your fans to see your content on Facebook and that’s simply not true. I’m working hard at posting regularly and getting the engagement going EARLY ON to not only keep these people engaged, but hopefully draw in more people organically.
The biggest mistake I made with 2 Create’s page is never really working hard at engagement from the start. As a result, I have a lot of people who liked the page years ago who have never been engaged. So they are pretty much worthless likes now.
Plus, unlike the 2 Create page, these are NICHE pages. 2 Create a Website is not really a niche site because I post about so many different subjects, and the audience has many different needs and interests.
Going niche is ALWAYS best, and will give you better results.
If you’re doing this to sell shirts, you also want to focus on finding niches that have very passionate audiences. That also helps with engagement.
This is all working on autopilot as I’ve scheduled posts a month in advance on all the pages. I’m auto posting about 2-3 times per day, so it’s practically maintenance free. Most of the content is just images and memes related to the niches. I also check in daily to respond to any comments. I’m going to talk more about engagement in the next podcast.
My third page started out with 1 cent per like, but eventually averaged 5 cents once it got going. I only spent $10 on that page (193 likes) because I realized I’m running out of info to post to build up engagement. In the future, I’m going to make sure I do this with pages that I have a long-term interest in.
And if you’re wondering why the cost per like doesn’t add up to the total likes, it’s because the average cost changes during the life of the ad. In the page above, it started out as 1 cent per like, but finished at 5 cents as the ad got older. The price you see is what the average price was for the last set of likes.
I’m done with spending money on ads for now. It’s all about engagement to build these pages up now to sell later. I’m not in a hurry to promote too much at this point. Pacing your promotions is very important.
Why So Secret?
I may be revealing the pages later, but not now. If I do a course on this, I want the numbers to remain pure and authentic. I don’t want lurkers liking the page, influencing the stats, and competing with what I’m doing. So I’m being very strategic about what I share and when I share it.
The last thing I want to hear is “You only got so many likes and engagement because you announced these pages to your audience!!” Gee, never heard THAT one before! lol
I’m not using any 2 Create or existing brand influence to build these pages up, and I want to keep it that way for now.
What About Monetization?
OK, so getting cheap likes and having great engagement is one thing, but what about monetization? What are my plans for these pages?
As I said, Teespring is what got me interested in this in the first place. I did sell a few shirts on the most popular page when I ran my first campaign 3 weeks ago, but nothing like you’d expect with a page that has such great engagement. I haven’t tried to sell anything else yet.
I’m going to need a much larger audience to earn the income I want, so I have to be patient and keep building.
Honestly, I think the Facebook/Teespring T-shirt market is getting very, very saturated. Think about how many shirts have been advertised on FB in the last year thanks to Teespring ads.
The key is finding sub niches. Too many people are going after the same markets because they are copying ideas and audiences from widely publicized Teespring campaigns (nurses, engineers, teachers, various sports, etc.)
I learned at the meetup that the above campaign was created by an engineering student. He made a killing! So as you can imagine, people began creating a bunch of “Trust Me I’m a…[Insert Profession Here]” shirts and the market got saturated quickly.
For one page, I chose a niche where there have been a lot of shirts targeted to this audience. So I’m not quite sure how profitable this will be. Looking back, I may have done things differently now. Nevertheless, this page has already converted sales, so earning a profit won’t be a problem. The question is, how much of a profit will this earn?
I also hired a designer…. finally! Even though I’ve had success selling my own T-shirt designs, I could do better with a real designer. Knowing Photoshop is one thing, but having a talent for design is another, and I just don’t have it.
I had to take off my superwoman cape and realize I cannot and SHOULD NOT do everything. (Thanks, Pat Flynn and Chris Ducker for making me realize that.) It’s just not productive for me to spend time on that even though I enjoy it. I need to focus on the marketing, and let someone else handle the design.
That’s so hard for me to do, but I’ve known for a long time that I need to do more outsourcing.
It will be interesting to see if this will make a difference in my sales. I’m anxious to launch my next campaign, but want to wait. You don’t want to exhaust the audience with too many promotions.
Update October, 2015: See what happened after a month and a half.
So What’s The Point of All This?
The REAL reason I’m doing this post (whew, I’m finally getting to it) is not really about selling shirts believe it or not. This would be an EXCELLENT way for new and struggling bloggers to build traffic/exposure to their new sites. Traffic is the #1 problem with my audience…. especially new site owners.
I know that many of you would gladly pay $30 to $100 just to jump-start your traffic/exposure (provided you get great engagement, of course.) Then you can use that audience to promote your site, email list or product.
Let me tell you….I wish I had more of an interest in my most engaged page’s niche because if I were to create a blog, I’d already have an audience to market to. People with sites in this niche would KILL to have a page like this. Heck, maybe I’ll sell it if the shirt biz is not worthwhile. 🙂
I mainly chose this topic to sell shirts, but now I’m starting to think about niches I’m more interested in going forward. To me, that’s the real value with what I’m doing, and it’s so relevant to so many of you because I know about your traffic struggles.
And because you’re going to be using this model to promote your site and list, you’re not relying on Facebook’s platform for traffic long-term — which is a disadvantage to only focusing on selling directly on Facebook. However, if you diversify your income like me, it’s not as big of an issue.
But I get it. You don’t want to invest money in people who may not see your content. Well, the key is working hard EARLY ON to make sure they do! That’s what I’m learning now and that’s what I didn’t do with 2 Create’s page.
So if nothing else, there will be a very detailed course that will come out of this with tons of lessons, examples and actionable advice!
Stay Tuned!
I will be doing my next podcast (update: here it is) on this with much more detail on what I’m doing with the ads and engagement. I also need to do a YouTube video as well because there’s just so much to share — way too much for a blog post.
In fact, this post is probably already too long (3400 words…whoa, I think that’s a record for me.) Shout out to those who made it through! 🙂
I mainly wrote this post to check in with you, and let you know what I’ve been up to. I can’t believe it’s been a month since my last post! Time flies when you’re addicted to Facebook ads. lol
No, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. 🙂 I’ve just been knee deep in advertising and A/B split testing.
I’ve got to say, I’m starting to enjoy the advertising part and NEVER thought I would because I’ve always been horrible with FB ads. Now, I’m diggin’ the challenge of it all, and looking forward to teach what I’m learning.
When I ran my very first “likes” campaign two years ago, I ended up paying 50 cents per like and IMMEDIATELY cancelled the campaign. I had no idea it was possible to get targeted likes from the U.S. for under 10 cents in 2015.
I recently took a Udemy course on Facebook advertising and was so disappointed in some of the advice. He was suggesting you buy likes from all these random countries just to get the cost per like down. The reason the likes are cheap is because these people are less likely to buy and they aren’t online as much.
So what’s the point in spending money on people who may not buy or engage in your content???? I thought that was terrible advice. 🙁
The Bottom Line
If you’re going to spend energy on using Facebook for your business, you have to understand the game and learn how to play it. Facebook will show your content to your fans, but you have to improve your engagement. If you don’t, you’ll need to pay to reach more fans.
Yes it may seem unfair, but that’s their business model now. I don’t see it changing.
I had to stop looking at what Facebook USED to be, and start looking for ways to take advantage of how it works TODAY.
Social media is slowly evolving into a pay to play model. Pinterest also lowered the organic reach when they came out with Promoted Pins.
That doesn’t mean you can’t get free exposure out here because you can, and this certainly isn’t for everyone. But it may be worth trying this just to get a jump-start on traffic. I am VERY happy with the engagement return on my investment so far.
Just please, please set small budgets and don’t spend any more than you can afford.
Guess it’s time to put this much attention into my 2 Create a Website page now, huh?
Just wanted to check in with an update. Hope your summer is going great!
Also, thanks to all of you who checked in with me about my health. I’m doing much, much better and feeling awesome. I appreciate your thoughtfulness. 🙂
Later gators! Back to work for me!
Thank you for a clear breakdown, I was looking to start some new Facebook campaigns and your post will help me greatly.
Lisa such detailed experiments and reports! I trust you to get to the bottom of things. 🙂
I am on the not-paying for likes team. lol All the Likes on my Facebook page are organic. I would rather boost a post than pay for likes. I have done that once when people from a particular region complained that they did not see my posts so I tried boosting a post by targeting them to see if they will engage when they saw it but their engagement did not change.
Last year, I watched 2 videos by Veritasium on Youtube about fake likes he got when he paid for Facebook likes. Did you see that video? He did extensive tests so I am actually surprised to see that paying for Likes worked for you. The first time, 90% of his paid-for likes (all from Asian countries) gave him less than 1% engagement. In one of his experiments, he specifically targeted users in the States yet he got Likes from Asian countries with no engagement though he had an explanation for that in the video. There’s so much data and theories from his experiments that it is better for one to see it.
Is it correct to assume that when you say “U.S. traffic only”, you targeted USA users when setting up your campaign? If yes, please did you check to see if some likes came from outside the US especially at the initial stage?
Well done!
Hey Flo! Long time no see.
I’ve seen no evidence the likes are fake. I can tell by the comments that these people are really into the niche so I can’t speak on the guy’s experiment on YouTube. And if they were fake I doubt they would go through the trouble of sharing, commenting and engaging. There’s no way I’d be getting a reach of over 100% on many posts (and sometimes 200%) if I paid for fake likes. People are sharing, commenting and engaging like crazy. I only bought U.S. traffic and checked to make sure they indeed came from the U.S. Trust me, if it were legal to sell this page, I’d be able to sell it for a few thousand with the engagement it has. No doubt this is real traffic. And people have bought shirts. I’ve done this in 3 niches and no evidence of fake likes. The engagement is awesome on all the pages. The engagement is 100 times better than the engagement on my 2create page and I’ve never bought likes for that page ironically.
Five cent per like is pretty good. I have been working with my husband to grow my reach on Facebook and we have never gotten that low per like! Question… One the most difficult things we have found is choosing the right image to use and striking the right amount of text. Facebook only allows a 20% of text to image ratio. What image size are you using when you create “Like” promotions? Is there an ideal size? Also what type of text phrasing (if you can share) are you using?
Thanks, Helena Rogers
https://www.facebook.com/ChocolateTherapyForWomen
They just updated the image requirements. It was 1200×440 when I ran the campaign mentioned here; now it’s 1200 x 1200 and your main content needs to be near the middle or it will be cut off. The image I used had a large picture of a woman on the left and 2 lines of bold text on the right. Honestly it looked like a bit more than 20% but it was approved.
But the image is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO key to getting those good conversions and ultimately a low price per like. So take time to experiment and A/B split test. I’ve also learned that using a person that matches your audience helps. For example, if you are targeting 50 year old women. Use an image of a 50 year old woman and have her staring at the screen. That helps engage people.
The image plays such a huge role and I used the comedic approach as well. The ad was a funny joke about the niche I was targeting. Comedy is actually another key to having success (if appropriate for your niche.)
Me again, Shirleyb
The best I can manage is a tiny budget of $5.00 a day, one day a week. But I would run the ad on different days monitoring which days I would get any traffic. My primary goal is to get traffic to the page that would go to my website.
Currently, I have just a few likes from a few people who know me personally. They will sometimes like what I post but never share. Finally decided that since they are not really my niche, I need to stop trying to post something to impress them. So I now post from my blog which focuses on my niche. I’m thinking that I could run these ads using the popular content on my blog, particularly those that get lots of views from Pinterest & G+.
Does this strategy make sense?
Hi Shirley,
Sorry so late on responding. Yes you can use your blog content. The key is to be creative with your ad and specifically the image for the ad. Think about what would get their attention and WHO you would be advertising to. And I definitely agree you should be focusing on impressing people into the niche, not the people who know you personally. They may give you some courtesy visits, but they aren’t as likely to be loyal followers unless they are really into the niche.
Facebook, facebook what am i going to do with you.
GREAT article! Really well-written and entertaining!
I ‘m intrigued by your case study and would certainly welcome further instruction on this topic and strategy, on the other hand the repeated updates and changes in Facebook and Google drive me
crazy and I ‘m looking for a marketing business plan to deal with this frustration for once and for all !
Wooo – interesting but really don’t get it when it comes to social media. Sounds like something I can use however. Please start at a 101 level.
Wow. This was very confusing to me. My first thought was, if this was so easy, everyone would be getting that kind of engagement. I hope you can replicate the results and teach it. I would be interested, but first it seems I’d need to learn the fundamentals of FB advertising.
Awww sorry Tessa.
The moral of the story…. buy cheap likes, build up engagement through relevant memes so you have an audience to market to. Ignore the shirt stuff. That was just what I’m doing but you can use this strategy to create a more engaged page for your website.
How do you figure out which audiences buy a lot of tee shirts?
Also in my experience, having an engaged page hasn’t helped sales any. I have a page with 213K fans in the pet niche. The engagement sometimes goes over a million reached, they are very engaged and I have worked hard at keeping it up. However, whenever I post something for sale such as a shirt or something off of Amazon, the reach is next to nothing and I might get 1 or 2 sales, top.
Either I suck at converting, or my niche just doesn’t want to spend money or Facebook is thwarting those posts.
Some of it was educated guessing but the key is to find passionate audiences. For example, a Facebook page targeting casual bloggers are less likely to buy a shirt that says “I love blogging” than a page targeted to entrepreneurs who make a living blogging. Pages that target professions and people who like pages related to certain causes are more likely to buy a shirt because it represents what they do for a living or their beliefs.
And yes, people don’t go on Facebook to buy/shop, so it’s natural that promotional posts are going to have less engagement. I agree. But there are ways to boost engagement.
I can’t speak for affiliate or Amazon links, but for shirts I’ve learned that you don’t make it look like an ad. Just post a picture and ask a question like “Would you wear this?” Or say, “OMG! This is so cute!” If people agree, or want to comment, they will like/engage more and that naturally improves reach.
But yes, overall promotional posts are always going to have less engagement because people don’t like being sold to as a rule. But if the product really speaks to them (referring to shirts) people will buy. So the audience matters a lot. The same goes for other products you promote too. The trick is getting them to engage by posting a question or something that encourages comments.
Thanks Lisa! Those are great suggestions.
After hearing about your 213K fans I had to come back and add to my first reply. I just went to your page and wow look at all those fans! The pet niche is one of those niches that has been saturated with Teespring campaigns. And I bet Teespringers are targeting YOUR page specifically because of all the likes. So your poor fans are probably sick of Teespring. lol
But try this next time…
First of all, I wonder how many people from New Mexico like your page? And with the reach for that New Mexico shirt being so low, it probably wasn’t seen by many relevant people.
Second, don’t just post the Teespring link and let FB populate all the Teespring stuff. It looks very promotional and people are starting to get Teespring blindness. Instead, open up Paint (free) or Photoshop and find a model wearing a blank shirt. Add the image to the shirt and save it.
Post the very large image to your page and make a comment as if you just happened to come across the image. “Don’t you just love this???” and then link to the campaign in the description. But I have a strong suspicion that your page is probably targeted a LOT with dog campaigns since Teespring came out. I have the same issue with one of my niches so you have to get creative.
Actually that particular teespring campaign belongs to someone else, not me. I stay away from teespring after multiple failures with it. He wanted to know the 5 top states who visit my FB page and NM was one of them. He made campaigns for all 5 of those states and told me what to post. I feel bad because I don’t think any of them have tipped.
I never thought about my page being targeted by other marketers before but I bet you are right. Guess I will have to get more creative. Thanks again for your suggestions and if you do come out with a course on this stuff, I will be buying it!
Oooohh! OK, I see. Yeah Teespring has hit the dog market hard, hard, hard! I wouldn’t give up on shirts just yet though. I would try the larger picture technique and make it look more like a picture of a shirt you happened to find. Don’t add any pricing or make it look like a promotion.
Also experiment with Spreadshirt. There is no campaign limit before shipping (that may deter some) and you can still make just as much per shirt. Or charge a little less ($18) and still get a $7 commish per sale. Because you aren’t buying ads and have an existing audience to market to, you can charge less and still make a decent profit.
No offense to the guy who created that design, but that just won’t cut it today. I’m not surprised people didn’t bat an eye. lol Did you see that football mom shirt on this post? That’s the quality you have to aim for in most markets. Teespring has raised the bar. Competition caused “springers” to up their design game and the simple designs don’t sell as well. Since markets are so saturated, you HAVE to bring it with the design.
Good luck! Really impressed with your fan page! Wow, I’d love to have a page with that many likes.
I think Spreadshirt (Which I started using after reading your post about it) is the past now. I will try to give what you taught in the post a try.
thanks for sharing
I disagree and I think it depends on your audience/niche. Some audiences buy more shirts more than others and the natural hair space is one of them. I just got a check for nearly $900 from Spreadshirt and I make far more with that than Teespring.
With Teespring you have to be good at getting a lot of sales at once in order to get paid, which is why I’m doing the Facebook page approach. I don’t think it’s necessarily the site you use to sell the shirt, it’s the audience. If people want to buy a shirt, they are going to buy a shirt. They don’t care as much about what company is is fulfilling the order.
I just think Teespring is a great model IF you can get a lot of sales at once…. AND I like that you can advertise to your existing customers to sell more shirts.
The key with shirts is finding passionate audiences. A casual reader is less likely to buy a shirt that says “I love reading” than a person who belongs to a reading club. So find the people who belong to reading clubs or like FB pages related to reading. Those are the real fans and more likely to buy a shirt.
Hi Lisa,
Interesting results. Thanks for sharing.
Magz
Thank you Lisa for this post. If there is a bottom of the pile of FB users, I’m there. But then I’m a FB hater which is probably half my issues. I like your take away about stop complaining about FB and learn how to make it work for you.
Question: Do you think this strategy would work for a freebie/paid campaign. I’m in the process of adding another category to my blog. Maintaining the category will result in producing something that I can offer as a freebie in a small size. But I can offer the product in a larger size but for sale. So my goal would be 1) get more FB likes (and hopefully learn how to get engagement) and 2) get viewers to my website.
If your audience is engaged, it can work. Just make sure as you’re building up the page, you ensure you are warming them up and posting info that is relevant to what you’re going to give away. Otherwise when you start promoting your freebies, they won’t be interested.
Hi Lisa,
Interesting results!
I’m also struggling with engagement on FB. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Magz
Great post Lisa. How does a well liked Fb page tie back to my site? Should my call to action also be on Fb page?
Hi Beth, Facebook was my #1 traffic source back to this article yesterday. So you would simply do what I did and post your article on your page as a tease to get people to come to your site. Use a nice large, colorful image with the post.
Hey Lisa
I share the same pain as yours when it comes to organic reach of my blog page. I really loved this case-study & made me rethink of my Facebook page strategy. I’m thinking to delete me Facebook page which has about 52K likes but really bad reach (Like 4-5 likes & 1-2 share)…In between I focused more on getting any likes (Using viral images & irrelevant updates), which made the page less targeted… So I’m considering to re-create a page with hyper targeted approach..What do you think about it?? What would you have done at my stage?
Hey Harsh ! I did enjoy that you shared that article, very insightful ! Gonna read more of that blog 😉 Been following you a lot lately, and I got to say that I feel the Shout me Loud facebook page lacks the proximity that you have with the public on your blog. I really feel more pushed to buy thing (like a hostgator account) than informed and helped. But hey, that’s just my feedback !
Selling on Facebook is an art and certainly not easy. It also works better for some things than others. But make no mistake, it is still a GREAT tool to drive people BACK to your site. And that’s really the point of all this. Facebook was my #1 traffic referrer to this post yesterday. Imagine if my 2create page was even more engaged like my examples I shared. I’d have much more traffic coming back here. So why not build up an engaged page to send people to your hub? That was really the point of this article. The shirts just happened to be what I’m doing but that’s not what I’m suggesting everyone does.
Have you tried posting something very relevant to the audience and using the Boost feature? I tried that on one of my pages for $5 and it REALLY got a lot of views, likes and shares. That will help re-engage those who like the page. Try that once (don’t spend a lot) and then post some more stuff regularly to see if that works.
Hello Lisa, this is a really great post. i run a page where I throw reflections on Sports. Now I don’t put content on it everyday but let me say weekly and sometimes monthly. I recently boosted the page for about a total US$21 and I got more page likes but then I realized no one comments or likes the posts. What’s more is that the number of those who see the post seems to be reducing. Someone has suggested I delete the page because it’s not worth pouring your energy into something people are not reading. What’s your take on it? do I go ahead and delete or change strategy? The page is http://www.facebook.com/dkfcolosseum. Thanks.
Awesome post Lisa. I also use FB ads a lot and they are cost-effective. I like this approach, thanks
Will this also work with Google Adsense?
Are multiple business pages creation for the same website allowed on Facebook? Or am i confused? Can i create multiple business pages all of which have links (pictures etc) leading to that same website?
If yes then would those be “follow” links which search engines do not frown upon?
Thank you Lisa!
You absolutely can. And Facebook makes it convenient because you automatically post “as the page” when you are on it so you don’t have to keep switching identities. There’s a difference between creating multiple pages and multiple accounts. You can have multiple pages managed under one personal account. So I can be “lisa irby” but own several pages under my personal account.
Links aren’t even relevant here. All FB links are nofollow. I would not even waste time on doing this for links. This is purely for real engagement and physically getting people back to your site because of your great content. Not building links for SEO.
Hi Lisa. When you say engagement, is that a specific metric or just a collective term for likes, comments and shares? Is frequency of posting the most effective way to maximise engagement or is it more about what you post?
Outsourcing is also a challenge for me. I have always been hesitant to outsource because of the fear of getting poorer quality work than what I can do myself and losing control over the finest details.
Also, I like how you now have the newest comments at the top. It’s good for people like me who are usually late to the discussion.
I can’t believe I never arranged my comments this way. It’s weird how I always see it like that and prefer it on other blogs but never had mine like that. lol!!
I know what you mean about outsourcing but I have learned it can really hold you back… especially when you spend insane amounts of time on something when someone else can do it faster and better while you work on more productive things. I got my first glimpse of that when I started having my podcasts transcribed. Ahhh such a relief not to do that tedious task.
It’s a collective term for likes, comments and shares. And it’s a combination of what you post and frequency, but definitely more about quality of postings. If you post a lot and the engagement stops, the reach is significantly lowered and your content is seen less and less. So I’d say quality trumps frequency.
It’s much better to post really good stuff less often than a bunch of mediocre/boring stuff more often.
Funny thing is, it’s the same rules that apply to blogging really. The more quality stuff you post to your audience, the more they are engaged. If quality suffers for quantity you lose engagement.
I thought you might say that about quality of content, but the reason I asked is I thought most Facebook posts are kind of low quality, like your ecard meme example and cute animals etc? You’re not going to post a 3,000 word article on Facebook are you?
No but you use those memes to keep your engagement up so when you do post a teaser for your new blog post, you get the maximum reach. I wouldn’t call it low quality, though….especially if your audience enjoys it. For example, if you have a blog about nursing and your page posts funny nursing memes, that’s relevant to your topic and what people on Facebook like. So when you post your next post about a nursing topic, you’ll have a better reach. It’s about balance. The memes should be relevant. I’m not really into posting cats and dogs…. unless they are relevant to the niche of course. lol
This is really an awesome experiment Lisa,
Your result is quite encouraging. I’m also one of the people to was very angry when Facebook carried out that algo 2 years ago and i even wrote many articles encouraging people to ditch facebook and focus more on building an email list back then.
But as time goes, i started loving it more and more even though I’ve not really done any ad campaign with it but, I’ve read so many success stories from people that tried it like you.
I guess maybe you should start teaching us how to best to do Facebook Ads soon :).
Thanks for sharing and congrats on your Facebook breakthrough.
I have been following you for a couple of years and I am really impressed by how much you have learned. I do not know how you have time for a life. Great post!
Hi Lisa,
this is a great article. I need a low cost strategy to promote my products.
I would be willing to invest in a course to master your techniques.
I really like the way you have this campaign setup : The Heading, the twitter post, the content and your page layout and the calls to action. What platform do you use for your blog articles and call to action?
Thanks great article
James
Knightdale Travel
Thanks James! I use WordPress and I use the Genesis Daily Dish theme for the layout/design.
Not sure by what you mean for calls to action because I don’t have many actionable links or what I consider traditional calls to action here. Do you mean the arrows on the graphics? I create them in Photoshop.
Hi Lisa,
Thanks for this post. Very informative and useable. Looking forward to your next post
Hello Lisa!
I might be missing an obvious point, but I want to be sure what you mean rather than assume.
You said: “a lot of the successful “Springers” were not buying ads at all to sell their shirts. They were just marketing to their existing niche Facebook pages and their customer list. (Once you start selling, you can advertise to existing customers you’ve earned using Teespring’s messaging feature.)”
1) When you say “marketing” do you mean targeting ads towards existing FB pg? Or simply posting/interacting with tshirt mentions thrown in?
2) Does Spreadshirt offer a messaging feature to reach out to customers?
3) Are you moving over to Teesprings, or keeping Spreadshirt in the loop?
Thanks Lisa!
darlene
p.s. Altho I’m dying to know your sub-niches, I’m with you 100%. Aside from skewing the numbers, you know all the little copycats would start popping up. :-/
Hey Darlene!
Yes, the copycats are also the reason I don’t want to share. Let me explain.
1) I mean just casually promoting to their page by posting a link to the shirt
2) Yes they do.
3) No. Spreadshirt is still great for casual sales because you don’t have to sell in X amount of time and the commissions can be just as good. So I can’t see myself moving away from that on my hair site. But if you can get a bulk of sales in a short amount of time then Teespring is the best.
The downside to Teespring is that if you don’t get enough sales, you don’t get paid. But if you use Spreadshirt you get paid no matter how many you sell. So if you can’t get a lot of sales in a short amount of time, it may be best to use Spreadshirt or one of the other affiliate programs.
thx Lisa 🙂
2 years too late.
I suggested this to you on your Facebook Page around 2 years ago. Paid advertising on Facebook “and other sources”. You and some of your vocal fans made me out to be a fool LOL.. . the Organic Reach, SEO, Great content, debate ensued.
LOL! I don’t remember this but I wouldn’t doubt it! (a fool? Oh my!) I was not trying to hear anything about paid advertising back then. Noooooooooo way!
This is a very useful post.
I guess Facebook advertising works the same way as Google AdWords advertising in a sense that the key to success lies in analyzing the data behind the advertising campaigns. Both Facebook and AdWords offer excellent ways to analyze your advertising campaigns and adjust where necessary to increase the ROI.
Advertising to get traffic to your online business used to be something that was frowned upon by many. This seems to have changed completely in the last 3-4 years as the Internet has grown so much. To claim your spot on the Internet, good old SEO and content writing alone is often simply not enough, and advertising through channels like Facebook and AdWords can work wonders.
If you treat your online business as a true business, with a decent plan in place to convert your advertising budget into concrete sales, you will succeed.
Thanks for sharing! I would definitely be interested in your course if this comes out.
Well said.
OMG.. I needed this information so bad because I am considering FB ads. I ran an ad on facebook for 1 day and the results was amazing, my ad reached so many people. Thanks for sharing your story. I literally look forward to receiving your informational emails.
That means soooooo much, thank you!
Hi Lisa,
The big, unstated takeaway that I hope every reader gets is this:
Don’t worry about what you can’t control; instead, study the system to see if you can use it effectively.
I’m impressed with your mindset – your go-get-’em enthusiasm. Keep on learning!
Cheers,
Mitch
Ha ha! Well said, Mitchell. Good to see ya again!
As always…Lisa does it again! This is a fantastic post ladybug. I have some tee shirt designs via my Spreadshirt store that I need to generate more sales for. Again, great post.
P.S. I am glad that you decided to remove the superwoman cape. Also, I see that youve mentioned that you attend meetup groups. Have you by chance attended any conferences for bloggers, etc? Would love your recommendations.
Hi Kim!
Thank you. The only conference I frequented regularly was the affiliate summit. I have actually never attended a blogger’s conference.
Hey Kim!
I know you asked Lisa… but I’m pretty excited about an upcoming “conference” I’m going to this year.
Quite frankly, I don’t attend many; maybe one every other year, but this year I signed up for Hal Elrod’s “Best Year Ever Blueprint” in Dec.
He’s the guy that wrote “the Miracle Morning” best seller.
Anyhoo, that’s my unsolicited two cents. 🙂
darlene
Glad you shared, Darlene! That’s a book I’ve been wanting to get my hands on ever since Pat Flynn mentioned it. Thank you for the reminder!
Heyyy there Darlene. Thanks for the recommendation. I will have to check out Hal’s conference. It’s time to get from behind this keyboard and start getting back out there to do some good ole fashioned networking.
Oh and Lisa…Thanks for the response chica. Appreciate it.
Hi Lisa! Could this be used to promote a book? Also, is it possible to promote your own products like books and article via this method.
I really enjoyed this post and will look further but need to finish my current book. Also I am inundated with people selling Facebook posts and tweets for like $19.99 adn it seemed to me to be I’d be better off chasing tumbleweed! LOL Thanks Lisa! Rick =)
Hi Rick, it can be used to sell anything. The point is to build up an engaged audience so that when you do sell, you have someone to sell to. So yes, I think this can work for a number of different things.
Very interested in this subject. I’m looking forward to your training on this.