If you are intent on getting your message ‘out there’ through FB, there may be some simple things to do that you are taking for granted.
As speakers, authors and coaches, we want to share what we know and allow our wisdom to make an impact on others and ourselves. Most of us use social media to some extent. And as it’s a constantly changing feast, it’s useful to review how you use each channel now and then to make sure your words and messages have the best chance of getting ‘out there’.
We’ve been reviewing our Facebook sharing processes recently & realised that there are many simple things that people take for granted. “How do I get more followers and engagement on my posts?” is also a common question we get asked in our FB group The Connection Hub so we thought we’d bring you up to speed and give you a few things to think about, just in case they increase the attention and eyes on your ‘stuff’.
Given that everyone is now on the newly updated FB ‘look’, one of the first things to do is to spend a little time getting familiar with what’s now possible. And to make sure all your fields are populated in the way you want them to do.
Set 30 minutes aside — it’s time well spent!
Here are our top current hacks to either optimise, grow or engage your audience. We are purposely making these as generic as possible, so that whenever you read this, they will be relevant, but there is something here about ensuring you check regularly, because every channel you use to share your message changes all the time. It’s useful to do a ‘review’ every couple of months. We like to look at our profiles, pages and groups with ‘fresh eyes’, as if we were our own audience. It’s a useful thing to set aside around 30 minutes for — and so well worth it.
Let’s talk about optimisation of your presence first.
First off, you can use FB to schedule your posts in advance for free. That means that you can actually make sure that not everything you post is ‘live’. That’s important because it means you can do things as we say ‘On Your Terms’ — so you post when YOU want, and come back to respond to what goes out when you are awake, alert and ready to answer. It also means that others can use and see your input when they want to.
Next, are you using the response assistant (or one of the other bits of software like Manychat) to send automated messages to incoming private messages? You can establish what to say and where to lead people so that those who want to be in touch with you don’t have to wait to know what to do next. It’s a simple and easy thing to do to customise the message and it means that your ‘voice’ is registered and you can begin the connection in the way you want to.
Some of you may have products and services that you want to share through the ‘shop’ feature on your FB Page. It gets people an idea of what they can do with you and whilst they might not buy direct, they become more aware of all that you do. It’s a simple and easy way to ‘communicate’ what you do. You might choose to only add things that are at the start of your product range, that gets them into your world. We know at least a few clients who’ve been surprised to find that their products have actually sold overnight. That’s the nirvana, right? So what could you add?
On your FB Page, there’s an option to share two calls to action. Make use of those buttons. Decide what will serve you best. There are numerous options, including these:
- Book with you (use your calendar scheduler)
- Contact you direct
- Learn more about your business (send them to your website)
- WhatsApp you
- Shop with you
- Send a message direct to you
- Make a donation
- Download your app
- Join your community (aka your group!)
- Sign up for your ‘thing’ or newsletter
You get the idea. Your job is to decide where you most want to direct them when they land on your page. This is an invaluable little button and if you only do one thing, it’s to think about where to direct people to. Is it time you updated this field?
Finally, in the optimising stakes, we all LOVE a bit of social proof, right?! Make sure you are using your reviews section to great effect. Get brave and go ask for some recommendations & testimonials from those you’ve worked with. It really does make a difference to how you are seen and how people engage with you. It’s easy to forget this one, so as part of your regular reviews, check when the last time was that someone ‘bigged you up’ and if you don’t like the answer, get asking!
Growth hacks — little things you can do to grow your impact.
Here are three ways you can start to increase the numbers on both your FB page and in your FB group.
To grow your page likes, especially from within a group, when someone likes a video or FB Live you’ve made, or a post you’ve written, you can click on the like icon not only to see who they are, but also check out if they already like your page, and if not, & invite them to. A small thing, but it soon starts to snowball.
When you are logged in as your page inside your group, you can also invite people in the group to like your page — it wont add them, only invite them to do so. We tend to focus on connecting people, with the awareness of the following maxim that we coined. But growing your FB page has different advantages, so getting people to like both your Page and your Group is a good thing.
Here’s another thing you can do. Use a lead page to promote your group — making sure that you share just what the benefits are. That way you not only get them to join the conversations going on in your group, but you also get their email addresses. An alternative to this is to have a call to action to join your group or like your FB page on the thank you pages for all the lead magnets you share.
You can always increase your engagement!
There are some obvious, yet often neglected, things that you can do to actively encourage people to engage with you — actively creating those connections and landing your message with people needs to take a variety of forms.
Firstly, use a combination of different types of posts. If you just do FB lives, or only do longer posts, you’ll miss out on people who like to respond to questions. Or who enjoy a little debate, or who just enjoy being entertained or inspired by a picture. We are all unique and creating for people’s different needs and likes means putting your message into different formats. Trust us when we say this is SO worth it.
Something else to do more of is just to watch what others are doing. When you see something you like, check if it would work for your group. Find yourself 3–4 FB groups that are similar and have your audience in them. We recommend that those groups have around 5,000 members or more, so there’s a good cross section of people in there, and then just spend 30 mins a day answering questions, hanging out, listening to what’s being asked and sharing your expertise and wisdom. You will learn what works that you can apply, and as a bonus most likely make some great connections.
One more thing that allows you grow your engagement is to save posts and make your own categories. You can assign tags to this effect that your members can click on to see all the posts within a category). Saving posts allows you to get inspiration, but also means that you’ll have a collection of ad-hoc future posts, things you want to share later. These can be business tips, images, links that will be useful etc. In your collecting, you may not want to share things immediately, so saving things off (you can create different ‘lists’ as you save them) means you’ll always have things that get engagement, even on your most uninspired days!
And of course, last but not least, do ‘go Live’ — we know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea to be on video or do FB Lives or even do FB stories. But they work.
If you are serious about getting your message out there, grow your reach, impact lives, we invite you kindly to ‘get over your big bad self’ and just share. We promise it gets easier.
We’d love to know how you get on so come and tell us in The Connection Hub.Speaker INsight
We support speakers, authors & coaches to monetise their message, market their purpose and create & manage their portfolio business, ON THEIR TERMS™.