Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing

Why do Most People Ignore Content on Facebook while “Liking” Them?

If you’ve been doing any kind of Facebook content marketing, you probably have run into a very annoying problem.

To the uninitiated or the completely clueless, this may not even seem like a problem.

You post something on your Facebook page, it gets on the timeline of some of your fans, and they “like” what they see.

Your content has more than its fair share of thumbs up as well as “love” icons and even an occasional laughter icon. It seems like it’s well received.

Unfortunately, you need to look beyond surface appearances. Sadly, until and unless your fans share your content, it’s not going to gain much traction.

If they don’t share or comment extensively on your content, chances are, only a very few of your Facebook fanpage’s existing fan base would see your update.

That’s how tight Facebook’s algorithm has become.

Back in the day, your content only needs to get a few “likes” for it to be shown to a lot of eyeballs.

And this, of course, triggers even more “likes,” and before you know it, almost all your page’s fans get to see your content.

Those days are over. Now you face a very annoying problem. It seems like, on the surface, people like what they see, but your content doesn’t get anywhere.

The Core Problem

The heart of the problem really boils down to the fact that people actually ignore your content.

They see your headline, they see the link, the see the preview, they obviously like enough of the text that you featured for them to engage with your content with a thumbs up, but that’s pretty much the extent of your impact on them.

Most would not click on your link to visit your site. Most would not share your link, much less comment. There’s quite a bit of a disconnect here.

What’s really happening is that people are ignoring your content because they are scanning. They are not really reading.

They just look for a few keywords, and if they get a favorable enough impression, they engage with your content.

But that’s all you get out of them. You don’t engage them to the point where they actually do something more.

These additional actions are what puts dollars in your bank account. Anything less than sharing, commenting and clicking through your link wouldn’t do you any good.

A lot of Facebook fanpage operators who boost their posts find this out in the worst way possible.

They spent hundreds of dollars, throwing good money after bad, and at the end of their campaign, they have very little to show for it.

Very few people click through, much less buy.

This is due primarily to how you write your content as well as content elements.

Somehow, some way, you did not connect deeply enough with your target audience members so they did not do what you wanted them to do.

Do This for Guaranteed Losses on Social Media

Usually, when you read social media marketing tips and advice, people would focus on how you can make money with your posts.

I figured I would look at the equation from a completely different perspective.

It’s one thing to learn about practices that would help you generate profits from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media platforms, it’s another to actually implement them.

As you probably already know, most people don’t really do what they should. We know what we should be doing.

If we simply follow through on the things that we should be doing, we would weigh less, we’d be smarter, we’d be making more money, and yes, we would be happier.

Instead, we focus on the things that we feel we must do. So we perform in less than optimal ways.

This is the harsh reality of life, and yes, this applies across the board and also impacts your social media campaigns.

So instead of telling you what you should be doing so you can make more money from your social media marketing campaigns, I figured I’d mix it up by telling you one guaranteed way to lose money on social media.

This is guaranteed to lose you money. No joke.

What is this one way ticket to potential bankruptcy through bad marketing? Well, it’s actually quite simple. You run ads with absolutely no advanced research.

You have to remember that a lot of entrepreneurs such as yourself get all freaked out when they find out that their competitors are already on Facebook.

They think it’s the end of the world. Well, I beg to differ because it’s actually amazing news.

When you see your competitors running ads and conducting campaigns on Facebook, they’re actually doing your homework for you. Seriously.

They’re running ad after ad, and let me tell you, not all those ads will be successful. In fact, I would bet that a vast majority of them will fall flat.

Instead of worrying that your competitors have beat you to the punch as far as Facebook marketing goes, pay attention to their ads. Pay attention to their pages.

Look at the content that they share. By looking at these different indicators, you should be able to connect the dots.

A certain pattern should emerge and you would be in a better position to formulate and run a social media marketing campaign that has a higher chance of becoming successful.

Now, this isn’t a slam dunk. You still have to roll up your sleeves and put in the work and the time. You obviously have to have a tremendous attention to detail.

But by choosing to learn from your competitors, you save a lot of money and time.

A lot of people who try to reverse engineer their way to social media marketing success use a trial and error approach that cost them a lot more money. 

Adopt this Practice to Explode Your Social Media Content Results

When I first started marketing on Facebook, I really did not have a clue.

I thought that if I produced content, somehow, some way, my audience members would love what I wrote. To a very limited extent, this was true.

Maybe 5% of my audience would appreciate my content.

But given how expensive it was to produce content, it quickly dawned on me that this was a dead end.

As hot as the content may seem to me, my friends and my family, it fell flat with the vast majority of my page fans.

I was pretty much ready to throw in the towel because I was not getting the return on effort, much less the return on investment that I had hoped for.

I was spending thousands of dollars and getting only a few dozen bucks in return. Not exactly a winning proposition, right?

Well, I was pretty much ready to quit marketing on Facebook until I discovered something by accident that led to an explosion in my profits.

I found out that when I posted articles on Facebook, people would wonder if there is some sort of cheat sheet, shortcut, or even tutorial video.

A significant chunk of my readership on Facebook love the content.

They would “like” my stuff, they would post comments, but somehow, some way, I wasn’t able to take them from engagement all the way to profitability.

All that changed when I paid attention to the comments they were leaving on my Facebook page.

People were clamoring for diagrams, infographics, explanatory cheat sheets, resource sheets, and videos. So what did I do?

I took the exact same articles that I’ve written several months before, and turned them into short videos, which were essentially just glorified slideshows with voice-overs, diagrams, infographics, and a whole host of derivative or repurposed content.

I then posted these materials on Facebook as well as on other platforms that specialized in that type of format.

For example, for infographics, diagrams and explanatory pictures, I would use Pinterest and Instagram. For videos, I would upload on YouTube.

For good measure, I would make sure I would submit everything to StumbleUpon.

After repurposing a couple of articles, I was just blown away by the results.

I was getting a lot more traffic, a lot more engagement, and finally, a small but increasingly significant portion of my traffic was actually converting into cold, hard cash.

People were signing up for my affiliate products. Some signed up for my webinar.

Based on my experience, repurposing content can go a long way in maximizing the results you get from your social media content.

While it is far from some sort of slam dunk or magic bullet solution, it definitely goes a long way in maximizing your reach because if you have more content to post on your Twitter feed, Facebook page, Facebook groups, Pinterest pin board, YouTube channel, you have many bites at the apple.

Also, if you go the extra step of making all these pieces of content refer back to each other, you are essentially branding your target audience members several times on many different platforms.

Don’t be too shocked if a lot more people sign up to your mailing list and eventually you start making a lot more money. 

Just like with anything else in online marketing, there is a right way to do it and the wrong way to do it. Let me warn you in advance.

If you repurpose content or create derivative materials the wrong way, you will end up in a much deeper hole than when you began. 

3 Reasons Why Build It and They Will Come Does Not Work in Social Media Marketing

I remember the first time I heard about blogging for dollars, I was unemployed, living in a foreign country, and didn’t really know what to do with my life after graduate school.

I ran into this free book that talked about blogging your way to millions. Of course, I was very skeptical because those kinds of books are a dime a dozen.

Let’s face it, there’s a lot of hype when it comes to internet marketing, internet promotions and making money online.

I was a pretty tough cookie about it and I was not exactly the type of person who would spend my hard earned dollars on pie in the sky, get rich quick schemes.

Well, it turned out that back in the early 2000s, you need to just put up a blog and target the right keywords with a badly written article and you can make a lot of money.

The secret? AdSense.

Google AdSense is a contextual advertising platform run by Google where certain keywords on a page would trigger certain ads.

The trick is to target high value ads by focusing on certain content niches.

To cut a long story short, I was making hundreds of these pages and I was banking hard. I’m talking about no less than $8,000 per month.

Since I was living in Southeast Asia at that time, the conversion rate meant that I was very comfortable indeed.

Since my overhead costs were close to zero, it was pretty much all profit.

Well, unfortunately, Google went through several algorithm changes over the years.

You probably have heard of Google Panda, Google Penguin, and more recently, RankBrain. Suffice to say, my Adsense empire crumbled to dust.

Now, I make my money doing something completely different.

But I raise this story because back in the day, you can build something and people will come to your page as if by magic. That’s how Google’s algorithm was set up.

In fact, prior to the year 2010, Google would actively look for new blog posts using RSS feed technology to find the “latest and greatest” content.

Back in the day, you can just publish a blog post, ping your post, and you are assured to get quite a number of eyeballs.

Even if one page doesn’t get that many visitors, I set up my system so that all my pages, when put together, got thousands of visitors, and this led to lots of clicks.

That’s how I was banking.

Well, I don’t roll like that anymore because the old rules don’t work anymore. Sadly, a lot of people missed the memo on this.

There are still a tremendous amount of books and seminars out there who convince people that we are living in circa 1999-2000.

Let me tell you, building a website doesn’t mean anybody will show up to check it out. The same applies to social media.

There’s a lot of hype regarding Facebook and Twitter marketing, but here’s the truth.

Just because you post content on those platforms, it doesn’t automatically mean people would be interested in what you have to share.

“Build it and they will come” is as equally bankrupt nowadays on social media as it is with content publishing on blogs.

Sadly, I see this all the time. I do a lot of research on Facebook pages and a lot of people publish post after post with no engagement and they just keep at it, until eventually they stop.

I keep observing the page, and then soon enough, it gets delisted.

It really breaks my heart to see that because as an entrepreneur, I know what they’re going through. Before I got my system down, I was pretty much starving.

I know how bad it can hurt.

If any of this applies to you, I’ve got some great news for you.

While the whole “build it and they will come” approach does not work because of traffic technology changes, consumer content habit changes, and evolving monetization rules, there is still a way to generate the same results through social media.

In fact, the answer is actually quite obvious. It’s probably staring at you right now.

A Quick Guide to Reverse Engineering Your Competitors for Social Media Success

I know you probably freaked out the first time you realized that a lot of your competitors are already on social media.

You probably had this idea in your head that you only need to publish content on places like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest for all that yummy, free online traffic to start pouring into your website.

Eventually, enough of that traffic would convert and you would start seeing a few thousand dollars in your bank account month after month.

I’m sorry to report this, but your idea is actually quite common. There is no shortage of wannabe internet millionaires.

The problem is, a lot of them have the wrong mindset.

Too many would-be marketers get freaked out by the fact that regardless of their niche, somebody else has already beaten them to the punch.

Somebody in their niche is already competing with them on places like Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, you name it.

In fact, quite a number of these would-be entrepreneurs get so discouraged that they throw in the towel.

That’s too bad because the only way to lose in anything is to quit. You probably already know this.

Make no mistake about it, just because your competitors are already on social media, it doesn’t mean that you have already lost.

In fact, I would argue that it’s the precise opposite.

The more competitors you have on social media, the happier you should be. Why? Chances are, they are committing mistakes.

Chances are, they are throwing good money after bad and blowing through thousands of dollars every single month in Facebook ad buys.

In other words, they are committing errors. They are learning hard lessons.

They are going through an educational process that shapes their content strategy and the look and feel of their Facebook page.

In other words, they’re doing your homework for you.

Don’t get depressed by the fact that they obviously have a far superior budget. Instead, pay attention to the changes on their pages.

I can guarantee you that they are making these changes in reaction to the feedback they’re getting from their campaign statistics.

This is free money, my friend. Instead of you making those costly mistakes, let your competitors do it. Let them do your homework for you.

This is how reverse engineering works. You just need to pay attention to their most successful content.

How do you know? Well, look at the number of likes and shares and comments.

The more shares and comments there are, the higher the likelihood that the particular piece of content you’re looking at from your competitor, gained traction with your target audience members.

This is precisely the kind of content you yourself should be publishing on your very own Facebook page, blog, and other online communication platforms.

This is the quickest way for you learn from your competitors and replicate their success while avoiding their mistakes.

Unfortunately, this process can burn up a lot of time. Also, it’s very easy for you to quickly reverse any progress you make, unless you are very careful.

If you don’t know what to look for, chances are, you will be creating a lot more problems than you would be solving.

Stop Wasting Your Money on Facebook Post Boosts

Do you want to know a secret? One of the easiest ways to lose money on Facebook is to boost your post.

You have to remember that when you buy a post boost, Facebook will do everything it could to boost the engagement of that post.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself that this is a great thing. Well, let me ask you, does a “like” or a reaction put extra dollars in your bank account?

The answer should be quite obvious. The answer is a big, fat no.

Even if people commented on your post, that still is a far ways away from people putting extra dollars in your bank account.

Even if people shared your stuff and a lot of people talk about your post, until and unless people click on the link to go to your website and enter their email addresses into your squeeze page, you’re just wasting your time.

Facebook post boosts are, by and large, worthless. I know I’m not supposed to say that, but the cat is out of the bag.

And unfortunately, Facebook would bend over backwards to give you the impression that it is worth your time and money boosting posts.

But believe me, it’s a one way ticket to early bankruptcy for your online venture.

There is a better way to drive traffic from Facebook. In fact, this method is absolutely free.

You don’t have to spend money on the Facebook ad system if you know what you are doing.

Best of all, the more you engage in this type of Facebook marketing, the more tightly focused your results would be.

Your return on investment improves dramatically and, most importantly, you are able to create a holistic marketing system where you start pulling in traffic from places outside of Facebook.

In other words, you learn certain important data points from Facebook, and then you project it out to other social media platforms.

This is how you go from making a few dollars here and there to making bank off your online properties.

Make no mistake, thousands of entrepreneurs just like yourself are making a living off the internet.

We’re talking about $5,000, $8,000, or even $25,000 every single month. This is not a fantasy, nor is it speculation or theory.

It doesn’t matter which part of the world you come from, it doesn’t matter what your main language is, it doesn’t matter how educated you are, as long as you’re able to put in the work after spotting the opportunity and coming up with a solid plan that you can commit to executing, you will come out ahead.

I’ve got some bad news for you. If your content gets a lot of likes, shares and comments on Facebook, that engagement does not necessarily mean you will be making money.

At the end of the day, there’s only one metric that counts. Either people click on your links or they don’t.

Adopt this Procedure to Get More Results from Your Original Social Media Content

I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I come across people who produce social media content in a way that pretty much guarantees they will fail.

Now, these people are not stupid. In fact, a lot of them are quite smart, clever and creative. Some are even quite innovative.

When you look at their content, you can see that there’s a lot of work put into it.

They are not superficial, they are not shallow, they are actually quite deep, useful and insightful.

Now, given this reality, you may be scratching your head and wondering why these people are failing. What are they doing wrong?

Well, the sad reality of social media marketing is that, by and large, it’s not the quality of your content that determines your success.

I know that sounds crazy. It sounds almost heretical because all the other books out there tell you that content is king and people should focus on quality, quality, quality.

Well, here’s the truth.

No matter how awesome your original content may be, and no matter how much value you bring to the table, if nobody sees your content, it’s worthless.

I know it hurts to hear that. I know that’s probably not the kind of thing that would encourage you, but this is the absolute truth.

And it really breaks my heart to see so many would-be social media marketers getting out there, publishing their content, and have very little to show for it.

The reason why they fail is because they do things manually, they do things randomly, and they really do not have a content promotion plan.

I’m sorry to be the one to clue you in on this, but no matter how awesome your content is, if you can’t get it in front of the right eyeballs at the right time, you won’t get people to do the right things that would put money in your bank account.

It’s as simple as that.

It’s not enough to target your content for the right eyeballs. It’s not enough for you to add a tremendous amount of value into content. You have to go all the way.

You have to have a plan that gets that content in front of the right eyeballs.

Too Many Marketers Lose Money because They Do This with Their Social Media Campaigns

I remember the first time I launched a social media campaign, and I was just over the moon by the results that I got.

Now, let me be clear, I’m not talking about monetary results. In fact, my first few Facebook ad campaigns got me a net profit of exactly zero. That’s right. Zero.

As in nothing. Goose egg.

But I was still excited. Why? When I look at Facebook Insights, I was just over the moon.

People were liking my stuff, people were sharing, and there were tons of comments.

It seems like my content really plugged into this community of users on Facebook and I couldn’t be happier.

So I launched another campaign and I got the same results. People were happy, people were engaging with the content.

I did this over and over again, and at the end of the campaign, after several thousands of dollars in ad buys, I still had zero conversions.

At some point, I felt like I can’t stop my campaigns.

I just have to keep clicking that ad campaign button like some sort of sugar-addicted monkey in a conditioning psychology experiment from hell.

I was hooked on the engagements my content was getting.

At the back of head, I kept thinking that it was only a matter of time until all those likes and reactions will turn into cold hard cash in my back account.

Sad to say, this did not happen.

I tell you this very painful story because too many marketers lose money on social media platforms because of this exact practice.

I’m telling you, likes do not put your kids through school. Facebook shares do not put food on the table. Comments on your content are not going to pay your mortgage.

You have to focus on your bottom line cash conversion. This is the key. Otherwise, you are throwing good money after bad.

Now, there’s the right way and the wrong way to do this.

You can be so focused on making cash from Day One that when the cash doesn’t come, and there’s a high likelihood of that, you become so discouraged that you want to quit.

You don’t want to do that. But you don’t want to take it to the other extreme as well.

The other extreme is what happened to me. I was just so excited about the likes, reactions, shares and comments my content was getting.

But unfortunately, even if my content were to get 1 million likes, that’s not going to make much practical difference in my life because there are no dollars involved.

Do you see how this works?

You have to focus on what counts.

All the engagements in the world won’t help your company until and unless you are able to turn those engagements into a form of success metric that can have a real world effect on the finances of your company.

This is the bottom line… as unpleasant as it may be to a lot of people.

Read This for the Truth About Viral Social Media Content

I wish I had a penny for every time I see a social media marketer get excited about “viral” social media content.

Let’s get one thing clear, “viral content” is one of those phrases that get kicked around the internet so often and used by so many self proclaimed experts that it is in danger of having absolutely no meaning.

If you were to ask ten people how they define viral content, you probably would get ten different answers.

Still, if you look through the patterns of these answers, one idea comes to mind.

It’s this idea that unites all the different personal definitions of viral content on social media.

The idea, put in rough terms, is that the quality of the content pretty much determines how well it would be received.

According to this thinking, you only need to come up with the right content and somehow, some way, people would instinctively push your content to their social networks.

This is classic magical thinking. Seriously.

You’re basically hoping and praying that your content would resonate with different people going through different circumstances, living in different situations, to act the exact same way.

In your mind, they’re just going to get so impressed by your content that they click the share button without thinking.

It is not surprising that a lot of people who try viral social media content fail. They really do. And I don’t fault them for trying.

In fact, it’s common practice for these people to take content that is already viral and try to republish it.

They end up failing again and again. Why? Well, they did not do it right.

While they’re definitely on the right track and they have the right concepts, they did not execute the right way.

You have to understand that viral social media content can only spread if you have two ingredients present. First, it has to be compelling content.

Now, like I said above, there is a shortcut to this.

Instead of creating your own from scratch, you can reverse engineer this content or you can republish already viral content and share it in “virgin” areas of Facebook.

The other ingredient involves the network. Now, by network, I’m not talking about Facebook and Twitter as a whole.

Instead, I’m talking about the network of people who are friends with each other or who belong to certain groups together.

In other words, you get your content in front of individuals that are already talking about a particular subject. They’re already excited about certain themes.

When you share your compelling content in the right networks, people are more likely to share.

People are more likely to add their comments to try to get more eyeballs to your content.

The best part to all of this is that they would do this voluntarily. You’re not paying them any money, but they are still motivated to do this. Why?

Your content fits their interest profile. This is exactly the kind of stuff that they are searching for on Facebook.

By simply getting the right content in front of people who are actively looking for that content produces a viral spread. This is the truth about viral social media content.

You have to pick the right tried and proven content and get it into the right networks.

Simply spamming hashtags or posting your content on your Facebook page or spamming groups is not going to cut it.

Unfortunately, as awesome as this advice is, it can also burn up a lot of your time.

It takes a tremendous amount of effort and at the end of the day, you might not be any closer to your goal.

Neglect These People on Social Media and Your Campaign will Disappoint You

I remember the first time I placed an ad on Facebook. I was really excited because I was spending hundreds of dollars on that ad campaign.

At the back of my head, I was convinced that my campaign will not fail.

I had back up ads, I’ve written all sorts of copy, and the target website that I’ve set up is very compelling. Well, at least I thought it was.

So after several hundred dollars of campaign buys, it quickly dawned on me that I was throwing good money after bad.

It turned out that regardless of what I tried and regardless of how awesome my ad graphics were, somewhere along the line, my content simply was not connecting with people I wanted to reach.

There was a disconnect there, and I really can’t quite put my finger on it.

After swearing off paid social media ad campaigns for the better part of a year, I stumbled upon the answer.

It turned out that my free campaigns involving social content sharing on Facebook produced better results than my paid ads. How did this happen?

Well, I added one thing to the mix. With this one modification, I was able to transform my results. What did I do different this time around?

Well, I was sharing basically the same content, but instead of just paying an ad and boosting posts and just getting in front of eyeballs, I reached out to influence leaders.

Believe or not, regardless of how esoteric or seemingly obscure your niche may be, there are people who specialize in that type of niche.

They live, eat, breathe that niche. They can’t have enough information involving your niche.

These people have Facebook pages, they have personal accounts, they have blogs—whatever the case may be, people follow them because they know that they are the “go to” source for the specialized type of information they’re interested in.

When I figured out who my niche’s influence leaders were on Facebook, I made it a point to network with them. I told them that I pitched them on my stories.

To make a long story short, I told them that I would like to pick their brains regarding topics to write about, and if they could help me spread the word about the resulting articles.

It worked like a charm. Why? People are driven by ego. When you approach these people, you are essentially acknowledging the fact that they are experts.

You are bowing down to them. You are stroking their ego.

Second, when you ask for help, they get a chance to contribute to the community. They give you valuable leads, and you produce your content.

What do you think their attitude would be about content that was produced with their mental DNA?

Let me tell you, even during those rare times where I produced a complete and total pile of crap, the influence leader that I consulted with when researching materials for the article still published it on her blog.

She still talked about it on Twitter. She still posted the link to her blog post which links to my article on her Facebook page. The secret? Emotional investment.

Even if the influence leader knows at the bottom of their hearts that the resulting content that you produced from your collaboration with them isn’t really the best in the world, they would still feel proud about the content.

After all, they are mentioned in the content. It helps them feel appreciated. It helps further build their authority and credibility in your niche.

When I did this, I was able to explode my traffic, and guess what? A large chunk of that traffic actually converted into paying customers.

People either bought books, signed up for seminars or entered their email addresses for CPA leads.

Whatever the case may be, they engaged in behavior that ended up putting extra dollars in my bank account.

The secret? Influence leader outreach. Market to these people, turn them into allies, and they will take care of you.

Now, you may be thinking that this takes a lot of work. You’re absolutely correct. It also takes a lot of time.

If you don’t know what you’re doing or if you don’t have a certain strategy going for you, don’t be surprised if you burn up a lot of time, effort and energy, only to end up with a whole lot of nothing.

Thankfully, there is a shortcut. Click below on the picture to read my book on how I was able to solve this problem.

The best part is that I was able to create an autopilot system using software.

Download my book today and get on the inside track in figuring out how to make real money off social media marketing. People are doing it right now.

If they can do it, you can do it too.

Social Media Marketing