How to Get Your Content Seen in the Facebook News Feed

Key Takeaways

Hey everyone, welcome to today's webinar. My name is Brian Peters and I am super excited to be here. I am just going to let everybody join us here very quickly and I will [Music] Hey everyone, welcome to today's webinar. Thank you so much for being here. My name is Brian Peters. I am the social media manager at Buffer. Super super excited to be talking about Facebook today. What I'm going to do is go ahead and let everybody get in here for a sec. I will pulling up the YouTube session now just so I can see who's here. And just want to say thank you again for being here and taking time out of your day here for a sec. I will pulling up the YouTube session now. jumping in the chat room. Hey there, Lexi from Austria. One ring to rule them all. Hey Stefan. Hey Saka. Hi Sarah. Hi everybody. Thank you for joining us today. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and just wait one more minute for everybody to get here and then we will go ahead and get started. Thank you again everyone. Appreciate it. Nightmare. Hey everyone, I am back. All right, we are all set to go. Today we're talking about how to get your content seen in the Facebook newsfeed, a topic I know is very, very challenging, especially for us at Buffer, and I know a lot of marketers and brands are struggling to kind of find that groove on Facebook. So today's presentation will hopefully give you some tools and tips and resources you can use to then apply to your own Facebook strategy and hopefully to beat the Facebook algorithm. Um I know it's a tricky situation. So cool. Let's dive into the a bunch of slides. Feel free to drop questions in the hangout on the side and there will be a part in the presentation where I stop answer some questions you may have and then we'll continue on. um these slides will be available or the full video will be available on YouTube afterwards and we'll go ahead and share any links or anything um in the comments below. So, thanks again everybody for joining and let's go ahead and and get started. I'm just going to go ahead and share my screen like I had before head into my presentation by the way if you're curious. Cool. So, how to get your content seen in the Facebook news feed? a big question I think we all struggle to figure out and um in this webinar we're going to talk about all about how the Facebook news feed works which I think is sets up the basis of creating a fa successful Facebook strategy how you can develop a strategy around that knowledge. So things you can do based on what Facebook factors into their algorithm things that you can do in your own strategy to then apply to your strategy to get your content seen. Uh, of course using Facebook ads and sponsored posts to grow your page. I would this would not be a great Facebook presentation without a little talk about ads and sponsored posts. And then of course I'll drop some favorite pages that we use and look to to get inspiration. That'll be at the very end. And then of course we'll stop for questions along the way. And I'm happy to uh help out in any way I can afterwards. My Twitter handle is down there in the bottom right corner. That's brian_g_pers and then we're atbuffer there on the left side on Twitter. Uh so feel free to reach out to either or and uh we can continue the Facebook conversation afterwards. So let's start with some Facebook fun facts. Uh, I think these are super cool and I think it points to the importance and massiveness of Facebook today and that's that 1.7 billion active monthly users which is absolutely incredible. Um, I don't even know if there's a platform that's coming close to that. Uh, it's it's absolutely and that number continues to grow. I think I saw that there's several thousand profiles created every second. Um, so it's just huge. It's a huge platform. Uh what I thought was interesting is that 47% of users are mobile only. And that's kind of uh interesting because it makes you really think about creating content that's going to be uh conducive to mobile and people's experience on mobile. I have a feeling that that mobile percentage is only going to get larger as we continue uh into 2016 and obviously beyond. Um one cool part uh Facebook takes up 22% of the internet time. That's compared to Google and YouTube combined. So people the entire time that people spend on in a day on the internet 22% of that is on Facebook. So it's pretty incredible. Uh you know for businesses there's 50 million active small business pages but only 2.5 million of those actively advertised. So actively advertised means uh not boosting posts but actually creating ads and trying to drive ROI that way. I think I think I saw a stat that 75% of small businesses boost posts or in brands boost posts. um where only 2.5 million actually actively advertised out of the 50. So just some Facebook fun facts to share with your friends and and kind of get the juices flowing for today's presentation. Uh let's go ahead and continue and um I won't be able to see your questions yet in the side. There'll be a slide coming up here in a little while where I'll stop for questions and pop out. But um so yeah, feel free to drop them in the comments on the right hand side and we can get to those later. And I appreciate everybody joining today. It's been it's a real honor to have you all here. So thank you. Why Facebook marketing? That is the question I think people ask and I ask myself every single day. Uh really when you break it down, it's the ability to reach a fine-tuned audience. Facebook offers so many different ways to target to create content that is for a specific audience that you're defining. Um, their insights are second to none, I would say, compared to other social media platforms. Um, it's incredible what you can really do to reach an audience on Facebook. Uh, I also think that it's a great platform with lots of content and advertising options. So, what I mean by lots of content is that you could do live video, pre-recorded video, you can do gifts, photos. I mean, there's there's so many different routes you can take. I mean they even have lot not a lot of marketers know but you can even write blog posts within Facebook through Facebook notes. So um there's just so many options for Facebook and also you know when it comes to advertising like I said before so many different targeting options and robust ways to reach a audience that you define that is so specific. It could be, you know, in your general area, age. We'll get into this later, but yeah, there's just so many options. And then it's a huge opportunity for brands willing to experiment. Uh we'll talk a little bit more about this as well in the posting strategy section, but you know, Facebook, as I say in the fourth bullet point there, it's not going anywhere. It's 1.76 billion monthly active users. Um, a I think a lot of people will say, you know, Instagram or Snapchat or Twitter are their favorite uh social media channel, but they're still checking Facebook every day. And we're and we're seeing people spend a lot of time on there. Even the millennials and generation Z's that I know uh still check Facebook every single day. So, it's not going anywhere. And it's a huge opportunity for brands who are willing to put a little time, a little effort, and experiment with content on there to uh to get their um you know, to reach a new audience. So enough about that. I think you're all here because you know that Facebook marketing is worth it. So let's jump into the next slide and uh continue the chat. So let's get into how the Facebook news feed works here for a second so that way we can kind of build a baseline for your strategy and then of course advertising strategy. Um here's a little quote from TechCrunch. I'll give you a second to read that. Uh Facebook's objective is to select the most relevant and engaging stories to show in the news feed. And I think though this is a very generic and highlevel quote about what the Facebook objective is, it's still very relevant to what we'll be talking about today. Facebook wants to show you what you want to see. like you may not think that look looking through your feed uh but they definitely want to provide the stories and the content that you want to see and they also want to make sure the ads that you're being served are the ones that you might want to see as well. So, a lot of people think like, well, you know, I'm seeing ads in my feed. That's not what I want to see. But, you know, obviously Facebook is a business and they want to deliver ads. So, what they're trying to do is provide the best content, no matter what that is, into your news feed. And so, Facebook's objective is select the most relevant and engaging stories. So, yeah. So, that's just remember this quote as we go through the next few slides. Um, so here's a cool little little uh image from TechCrunch. And I think this really gets at like the four key factors and there'll be another slide next where we'll dive into this a little deeper. But TechCrunch came up with this uh CPTR. It's creator post type recency and that's news that allows you you know that's the factors that Facebook uses for the newsfeed vis visibility. Creator is interest of the user in that creator. Post is the post performance against other users. Type is the type of post, status, photo, link that the user prefers, and recency of course is how new is the post. Um, obviously you'll see there at the bottom, this is a simplified equation. Facebook also looks at roughly a 100,000 other highly personalized factors when determining what's shown. But at the core of the Facebook algorithm are these four things. And so that's CPTR. This is a great one if you want to screenshot this um on YouTube. And let's dive in a little bit more to these so you can really get an idea of what Facebook uses and then we can use that to apply that to Facebook strategy and what we're talking about. So how let's continue just a little bit about this. So the who and that's the C the creator. Have you interacted with that person or that page in the past? This is huge for Facebook. So you'll you'll remember that Facebook recently moved to a friends and family algorithm. You know, that's just one part of the puzzle. But have you interacted with that friend or that family member or that brand or that page in the past? That's going to increase the likelihood of you seeing that post. And you're probably asking yourself, well, what if nobody ever, you know, no one's seen my page before? And then, well, you know, that's where we get into um, you know, targeting audiences and experimenting with content. But the more that people see your post, the more the chance I'm sorry, the better content you create, the more people that will see your post and then that increases the likelihood of them seeing that post again and again in the future. How are others reacting and engaging with the post? So what Facebook does, and you might have noticed this, is that what they'll do is when you post your post on Facebook, it's going to show they're going to show it to a few people first. Like it's going to reach like automatically 50 people or whatever size page is. buffer. You know, it's usually 50 to 100 people quickly. If those few people interact with that post, that's a really good sign to Facebook that that's an interesting post. So, that's one of the biggest factors they use is show it to people, show it to a few people. If it's interesting and those few people interact with it, okay, let's show it to more. And are those people interacting with it? Great. Let's show it to more. So, it's kind of like a snowball effect on Facebook. So, you know, when talking about posting strategy in a few slides from now, it's, you know, putting your best foot forward. Uh, the what, have you interacted with that type of post in the past? So, as opposed to who, you know, the person that's creating it, have you interacted with that post type? And that could be, you know, obviously videos, photos, gifts, uh, live video, uh, is it links or sponsored ads? Um, a lot of people are surprised to hear that they actually like sponsored ads and they don't even realize that they're clicking on sponsored ads. So, have have you interacted with that post type in the past? Um, you'll notice a lot of pages kind of stick to one strategy that works for them. And I think that's why uh, you know, because if a person's interacting with a certain post type a lot more, like I know Gary Vaynerchuk strictly uses video on his page a lot of the times, you know, 80 to 90% or the next web is usually strictly posts or links. And so what type of post are you interacting or your audience interacting with most? And then of course is the when and this is actually still you know it's still a considerable factor in the Facebook algorithm even with all their changes. They still want posts that are recent that are new. Um that's why you know the shelf life for a Facebook post is one to two days max. Um so yeah so that just points to the uh effectiveness of consistency of course and so you know keeping your post timely and and engaging. The challenge yes over time as more people and pages join Facebook and each share more content there's more competition for the limited available space in the news feed. I think that brands and marketers are the ones that have really experienced this one the most. You know, personally, I don't think I've noticed when I post on Facebook on my own personal page, like my reach declining, you know, I think brands and marketers are seeing this firsthand because they can actually measure via insights the reach that has declined, you know, from from a buffer perspective. Our reach continues to decline and it's it has been that way for for a year or two now. And that's a result of Facebook continuing to modify their algorithm. And so, you know, we could you we could complain about it or we can figure out ways to continue to try to beat the Facebook algorithm and provide content that's that's interesting and and fun for our audience. I think it's a really actually for me it's a fun challenge. So, uh, as as you know, and it's only going to get worse. So, as more and more people and brands start to advertise and post, you know, the Facebook reach is going to get more and smaller. But that also means that you're going to be able to reach a specific audience and deliver content that's really, really highly relevant and super interesting to them. So, that's the challenge that we all face. I'm with you all. I feel your pain. And, uh, we'll try to we'll try to beat this Facebook algorithm together. So, uh, let's get into a little bit of strategy. I think I have strategy. Yeah. So, let's let's dive into strategy next. And and I now that we have a basis of what Facebook uses to determine their, you know, what shows up in people's feeds. We've talked about, you know, the how, what, why, when. We've also talked about um, you know, posting engaging content that is great off the bat that a lot of people interact with. But now, let's talk about strategy and the ways that you can apply this to your own Facebook page. The best way for you to counteract this decline of reach for your own content is to learn what Facebook's algorithm prefers, and that means researching. Or at least to me, it means researching. So, the only way I think you'll get a really, really great handle on what people like on Facebook is by research. I mean, you might get lucky and you might jump on a Facebook and like find a gold nugget of like some content that works and like all the more power to you for that. But a lot of people, including myself, you will benefit from a ton of research on Facebook. And this means daily research, too. It's not like you can just research Facebook, you know, posting strategies and and forget about it. This is a constant work uh uh and constant effort to keep your strategy on Facebook changing and evolving and and adapting. So, time to research. Let's do it. Developing a strategy and this is all about research. So, what con what sort of content has worked for you in the past? I put this here and I know it's super generic and so I apologize in advance, but what sort of content has worked for you in the past? Um, if you take if you go into your insights tab and you look at published posts, you're going to see you can scroll through all of them. I I do this probably weekly and I'll go through and I'll look at all of our posts. It's going to give you the post type. It's going to give you the reach and it's going to give you the engagement factors. What I suggest you do is just spend an hour going through all of the posts you've ever posted on Facebook. You can even export export the data from uh you know the Facebook insights tab or if you're a buffer for business user, you can export all the data into your um Excel spreadsheet and then you know sorry filter from top engage to lowcape. That's a great way to do it too. But go in there and really take a look at what has worked for you in the past. Was it what what type of post was it? Was it a photo, video, link? What was the wording you used? What was the character count for that wording? What was the image that you used? Really really try to break down every single factor to that and then almost cluster the successful factors. So you might notice like, okay, one post was only 50 characters long in the caption. it was a link and we tagged another person's page in there or maybe our audience like I know Mari Smith Mari Smith writes like three paragraphs in her captions on Facebook but that worked for her. So what worked for you? What kind of content has worked for you in the past? What are your peers doing and what is your competition doing? Your peers and competition this is like probably the key factor when you're researching your Facebook, you know, Facebook strategy. I highly highly suggest and I think I show it on the next page. I highly suggest using the Facebook pages to watch feature every single day. And that may seem daunting, but it only takes 5 to 10 minutes every day to go in there and look at your peers and look at your competition and see what they're posting and then use that to create content of your own that's in line with what's trending. So like what I've seen on Facebook is like it's waves, right? Like sometimes video will be really popular. Sometimes gifts are like whoa the hottest thing. Sometimes photos, sometimes links. So use that Facebook pages to watch feature which I'm going to show you on the next slide uh to really develop a strategy. And then also what are pages outside of your industry doing? Another Facebook pages to watch feature. Don't be afraid to set your sites high. I mean I follow, you know, Buffer. We as Buffer follow Buzzfeed and Netflix and Google and Square. It's like, yeah, we're probably never going to be Netflix on Facebook or BuzzFeed on Facebook, but that doesn't mean we can't strive to be like them. And so, I would say set your sights high when you're putting these your, you know, your peers and competition in there. Get out of your comfort zone with with what you try to succeed or achieve on Facebook. And this is what the pages to watch feature looks like within Facebook. This is under your insights analytics tab. Um, if you go into insights, I think you only have to have 25 page likes to actually get this feature. You might have seen this before, but you'll see there add pages and you can add pages. Look, here's a few of the ones we follow. It even shows your own there at the bottom. Um, Buzzfeed, brain picking, Zappo, Shopify, LinkedIn. I mean, we follow some of the biggest brands. And it's not because we're like them, you know what I mean? Like, we're not brain picking, so we're not BuzzFeed. But that it doesn't mean that they don't have like like look at BuzzFeed. They had over 2.1 million engagements this week alone. They also had 8 8.2 million fans, but you know, 2.1 million engagements is quite a lot. So, yeah, use this watch pages feature. It's one of my absolute favorites on Facebook. And it really helps you to go in there. And so, actually, one of the cool things I didn't mention is when you click on BuzzFeed or when you click on Zapos, that little blue link right there, what that is going to pop up are all of their top posts from that week, which is super interesting. So you'll see like the 2.1 million engagements there next to Buzz Buzzfeed. If you click on BuzzFeed on the little blue link, it's going to have a menu that pops up. It's going to show you what makes up those 2.1 million engagements. So a lot of times what I'll do is I'll find that there's a super, you know, there's a trending news story that we haven't caught on to yet at Buffer that we need to talk about or maybe there's like uh I've like, you know, they post a video and it's a really cool idea that maybe we can turn into a buffer idea. So, it's not stealing. Of course, you don't want to copy content from this, but what you do want to do is is get ideas and get creative. I think, you know, what's the old saying like no ideas original? Everything's just like a better version of the previous. So, yeah, I'd say, you know, consider that when when um when posting to Facebook, developing a strategy. Okay, so there's no oneizefits-all strategy. Unfortunately, I will not be able to provide you today with a magic formula for a successful Facebook strategy. So, I I apologize. I wish I actually had that myself because I think I'd make a lot of money. But, there's no one-sizefits-all strategy. Um, only post your best content. I think this is really important for two reasons. Number one is it it makes you think outside the box. And then number two, it makes you think twice before posting something to Facebook. So what happens is let's say you post three links in a row to Facebook that do not do well. And you know these are just straight links to content on your blog. A lot you know that's a popular posting strategy is try to drive traffic to your blog. If you post three in a row that are not interesting, what's going to happen on the fourth post is that Facebook's going to say, "Uh, you know, that those first those last three posts that were not, you know, didn't quite hit the mark with our audience. Maybe we should show this to fewer people, you know, until they get to good standing again." And what I've talked with a lot of marketers about that. And so what you need to do is to put your best foot forward. Don't just throw a link on on Facebook because it's your recent blog post or, you know, don't just throw up a photo there because you think it it might do well because you personally like it. What you need to do is after you've done this research and you see what your peers are doing, put your best foot forward and put out stuff, put out content that is that you think is going to have the maximum input uh impact. What that does translate into is that you don't have to post multiple times a day. Um, you know, a lot of people say, you know, you got to push three to four times on Facebook to get your, you know, your reach up because the more you post, the better. I would caution in that strategy. If you have three to four excellent pieces of content, post them by all means. But if you're struggling, you know, if you have one great piece of content, you're like, h, these other two are like okay, well, we'll just put them on here because I know Facebook rewards consistency, I would recommend not doing that and only putting that one piece of content forward. So my a little piece of advice is is try to think of that. Also experiment with off hours and weekends. Uh off hours have been really successful for us. I think some of our most successful posts have gone out at 4:00 a.m. Pacific. Uh they've also gone out on the weekend. So mess around with times when you see that you know when when you're in the insights tab and you see when most of your people are on Facebook, try posting at the lowest point of that and see what happens. I I think you might be pres pleasantly surprised. And then video, of course, I'm not going to dive into video strategy today, but videos earn the highest rate of engagement despite only making up 3% of the entire Facebook content. Uh, and then if you're ever, you know, I won't dive into video strategy, but if you're looking for live multi-person broadcasts on Facebook, I know those are getting quite uh trendy and hot right now, uh, Wirecast is a great option. Huzza and then Blue Jeans AL all have great options for multiple person live broadcasting. And then if you have any more suggestions, I'd love to hear them in the comments, too. But yeah, I can't I can't speak highly enough of video right now. Uh we host a Facebook live session every single Friday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on our Buffer page with me. Uh and so that's been really fun and exciting for us and it's been a great way to connect with people in a new way. So that video and I, you know, without beating it over the head, Mark Zuckerberg at the FA concert conference said that by 2018 he sees that Facebook will be a majority of video content. So that just kind of shows which way the industry is going. Uh here's a fun little graphic for you to kind of digest. Uh I won't stay here too long, but essentially it's just like a a funny version of what Facebook says. So you know they give it each post a score. So, you know, the the publisher who posted a link gets six likes that was, you know, two minutes ago. So, that's a 1.4 because of relevancy. But then, you know, the the the family photo or the family video that was posted two like a day and a half ago still gets a great score because it's family and, you know, the engagement's really high. Whereas, you know, the photo that a friend posts might have been a day ago. So, this is just kind of a fun overview of what Facebook does internally to score each post and then factor that in your newsfeed. developing a strategy. Here are some of the things that are working for us right now. Uh so right now we have you know six it looks like uh factors that are kind of working for us. First of all it's sharing content from relevant sources. So we found that curating content is actually making a big comeback on Facebook. Not that it it was ever gone. Maybe it's just a big comeback for us because we weren't doing it before. But you know sharing relevant content from sources has been awesome for us in increasing our reach and talking about relevant news items. Uh funny or interesting gifts. Gifts are really really popular on Facebook. They uh are awesome for telling a story in a short little clip which is super fun. Uh we also have been experimenting with shorter captions and a compelling headline. I can't stress the importance of a compelling headline if you're sharing a link on Facebook. It with all the experiments that I've ever done with captioning and gifts or I'm sorry with captioning and emoji in the in the caption and tagging pages, nothing comes close to having a compelling headline. I think that's because people's eyes go to the link and the headline of the article before they actually read your caption. So, make sure to spend time developing headlines that are getting it clicks on Facebooks. There's hundreds of resources out there on on developing compelling headlines. Live and pre-recorded videos we talked about in the last slide of course is working well. And then here's one that I would love to spend just a second on and that's engaging content to balance promotional content. What I see, you know, all I think all too often I'll go to a Facebook page of a of a brand or a business and all I see is one type of post and that is usually links to their blog. And that's because, you know, the using a standard equation is post to Facebook, drive traffic to my blog. What I would encourage you to do is mix it up. By all means, post links to your Facebook page. I would never discourage that. I I think it's great and I think people are on Facebook to find educational and fun resources. But what you also need to do is is is balance that with engaging only content. So, what that means is like posting a photo or video or gift that doesn't try to do anything at all but engage your audience. So, that might be a fun Friday photo. It might be a video of your team. It might be a gift, but there's no links and there's no call to action. So, what that's going to do is it's going to send positive vibes to the Facebook algorithm because people are going to engage with that more likely than not more often than your link post. And that's what we found with Buffer. And so that's going to give positive vibes to your next post. So what I mean by that is so if you go link and then you post an engaging photo that gets, you know, with no CTA that gets a lot of engagement and then you post another link, well that second link that you posted after the engaging content has a much higher chance of being shown because what Facebook thinks is, oh wow, you know, Buffer's page is is getting some action right now. Let's show let's show another post from them and see what happens. So I would highly suggest you mix up your content and not everything that you do on Facebook has to drive business results. Though you know if you think about in the bigger picture it all kind of works into one big thing. So anyways, and then remember why people on Facebook of course I you know this is another thing that I I suggest you do and that's people aren't are not necessarily on Facebook to read 100 posts on social media strategy or you know what I mean like they're not on Facebook to to you know take a course on data analytics though some people are um Facebook is really a place to you know engage catch up with friends and family and and yeah, people do want to see brand posts, but just try to remember that it is fun. It's a fun environment. It's not like when I go on my Facebook, I'm not like, you know, signing up for like analytics courses, like I said. So, you know, keep it fun, keep it light, and try to figure out ways to work that into your strategy. And I promise that will definitely help uh in the long run. So, I'd like to jump out. I know we're actually kind of running late, so I might actually just skip the question section and say hi to you all. Hey everyone, I'm back. Um, let's see. Hello from Nashville. Okay, so we have some questions. I'm gonna try to answer two because I know we're running behind and I'm super sorry for running over here. Um, does Facebook prioritize links in the instant article format over standard links? Ask for brief. That is a great question and yes, they do from what I've seen, but not in a huge way. So, what I think brands and a lot of marketers are still experimenting with instant articles. So Facebook definitely prefers them, but there's not enough data out there right now to say yes or no because not a lot of people are jumping on that. So I think Facebook is continuing to show just regular content posted to external sources. But I do see Facebook over time making a push for on-site content. So right now I would say don't, you know, try experiment with Instagram instant articles, see what it does for your own traffic, but also remember that it's not going to count in your Google ad analytics for the time being. Um, so whatever you see in instant article traffic is not necessarily going to show up on your website, but there's an argument for people seeing your content. It works no matter what. So, hey everyone. Hey from Italy. Uh, okay. So, what I'm going to do is jump back into the presentation because I know we're at 8:33 already and I apologize for going over, but I would love to jump in there later into the comments and answer some questions. So, thank you so much everyone for joining. Okay, so we're going to get back into the presentation really quickly and I only have a few more slides to go and then I'll I'll set you off on your Thursday. So, thanks again for for joining us. So, I'm going to share my screen. We're going to jump back into the cam presentation. All right, Facebook advertising. So, I'm going to go quickly through this because I've been obviously rambling for too long, but so ads can help you to reach people that off are most interested in what you have to offer and boosted posts are a great way to reach new people. There is a difference and we'll talk about that difference right now. This is what I use. It's Facebook bids business and ads manager. I don't know how many people are in there. I would love to hear your experience with it. It's a really cool tool to essentially manage all of your ads pages for those of you who manage multiple Facebook pages. uh payment information. It's a really great tool. Takes a little, it's like the learning curve is a little steep, but it's really really nice to manage all your stuff in one place. I suggest you check John Loomer has a great resource on Facebook business manager. So, check that out. Okay, so Facebook ads general targeting options based on interest, location, age, in general. So, so those are like your targeting options are just the general stuff. You know, you can target based on age, location, gender, and then there's another option now that's specific targeting options based on email lists and website traffic. I put a little recommended here because I highly recommend it. What you're going to need to do, you're going to need two things to to get specific with your targeting options. That's one is you're going to need to install a Facebook pixel on your website. Go to Facebook pixel, check it out. If you're on WordPress, there's a there's a plugin, the Facebook uh can I think it's Facebook pixel plugin on WordPress. You simply copy copy the JavaScript code, paste it into your website. If you if you are if you have a web master or you do not use WordPress, you paste it into the header and all of the pages that you want to use that on. Um I know a lot of you own WordPress, so that that that plugin is really great. So, install the Facebook pixel. Go do that right after this presentation. And the second thing you're going to need is an email list if you want to base your advertising B on on your let's say your newsletter list or your uh product list or whatever that is. Little bit of advice, create ads that look to deliver on certain key objectives you want to accomplish. So, you know, it's really easy to just go into Facebook and spend money, but what I would, you know, get specific with your ads and and really try to drive home your objective. Your objective is to grow your page, great. Create ads that do that. Okay, so here's what we do. Here's our quick little buffer strategy on boosting posts. Um, and and I I know a lot of you we only set this until 8:30, so if you have to take off, no worries at all. This will be available on YouTube. We're going to tweet about it later at Buffer down there in the lefthand corner. You can ask me questions at Ryan GP Peters. Um, yeah. So, this will definitely be available later. Um, so this is our boosted post strategy for Buffer. If you see there on the right, you're going to see engagement. And then if you see there in the middle, you're going to see reach. What we do is total engagement divided by reach equals potential. So going back to the last slide, you add up your engagement numbers. So you know for the YouTube post at the top 204 plus 57 and you divide that by 4,000 and that's going to give you a percentage. And what we found is the higher the percentage the more potential for your posts. And so what we'll do is okay maybe Facebook didn't show this or maybe this post is doing extremely well engagement wise but Facebook isn't necessarily showing it to people. Like you can see that on 913 we had a big one uh 456 engagements 8,800 reach. Well 456 engagement that's a lot for only reaching 8,000 people. So that might be the post we decide to boost. And all you do is you just go in there and you press boost post. put in your credit card information and then Facebook will show that to the audience that you select. So you can also create audiences based on age and gender. So what you do is you start with your general audience and you boost posts within that audience. And we found that it works really really well. And we, you know, if you put five bucks, 20 bucks, you know, whatever you can afford behind a post, it's going to it's going to allow you to grow your page. Um, what what we do is we I think we boost a different post for a few bucks every single day. And what I'll do is boost a post after about eight hours. I'll check it out. How is it doing? If it's not doing well, I'm going to boost another post. Once I find a post that is doing it quite well within like that Facebook algorithm, I'll let it ride for a while and I will let people interact with that post. Sometimes I'll let a post post go for three, four days before I before I take it down. It also helps to kind of switch up your content so people aren't seeing the same advertising or same sponsored posts over and over again. I also suggest that you experiment with different target audiences. Uh try different locations, demographics, age. Um I would caution against targeting anybody in, you know, I'm not even going to get into that right now, but if you want to talk about an experiment we had with with our our targeting options, uh message me on Twitter and I'll tell you the story. Okay, so slowly but surely. So, one of my favorite features right now on Facebook is the invite to like option. It's desktop only. It's amazing for marketers who have small Facebook pages and are trying to grow those with with hacks. Basically, this is a growth hack and I love it. So, under the photo or link that you boost or you post on your Facebook page, you're going to see who's liked it before. So, you know how you see like, you know, John John Kaine and 30 others like this post? Well, what you want to do is click on that those names. It's like a little hyperlink. Click on those names from your desktop and a screen is going to appear. And the screen is going to look like this. So, what I've done, this is a picture of our buffer newsfeed. I I clicked on the names under the post that said, you know, Melinda and 30 others like this. This pops up. So, you're going to see a list of all the people that have liked that post. It's amazing. Like, I'm like, oh my gosh. And what Facebook allows you to do is invite people to like your page who have liked your post but do not like your page yet. So this is a recent example from yesterday. Um obviously Thomas and Punid and Kyla and Sam and Eric all like our page but Julie doesn't. So what I did was I clicked invite and it's it there's literally no other steps. All it does is say hey we sent an invite to Julie. So, what I suggest you do if you're boast if you're boosting post or running ads is to make the most of those dollars. And part of that means getting everybody who's liked that post to like your page so that hopefully they'll like it in the future. So, I do this with every single one of our boosted postes. Boosted posts. I go through I invite all the people who don't like our page like our page. It probably doesn't convert at 100%. But it definitely helps to grow our page little by little. Even as buffer, we still use marketing tactics like this because you know it's hard. Facebook is a challenging environment and I just went through this. So yeah, after slowly but surely you will build an audience in this way. Okay, so last but not least, here are my favorite Facebook pages right now at the moment. Uh KA's doing an awesome job. The next web, Mari Smith, Gary Vee, Shopify, Buzzfeed, Netflix, and of course yours truly, Buffer. We love you all. Thank you all so much. Whoever follows us on Facebook, we love you. And even if you don't, we still love you, too. But we are at facebook.com/bufferapp if you want to check us out. We have a bunch of cool stuff. We're doing Facebook live videos on Friday every morning at 10, like I said. Uh, yeah. And the next web is just absolutely killing it with engagement right now. They post, you know, they're a great example of of a brand who posts a lot of links, but then a lot of engaging posts in the meantime. So, that bolsters link posts. Gary Vee is obviously the video master. Um Netflix has a lot of fun things. They're they they have fun with their Facebook page. Buzzfeed is Buzzfeed. They're they're great. Mari Smith is the Facebook master. I spent probably 30 minutes last night just going through Mari Smith's videos. Uh she's she's great. So, and her main thing is Facebook. So, if you ever want to stay up on Facebook tips alone, check out Mari Smith. She's she's great. Um and then Shopify. They're awesome. Um so, yeah. Cool. These are just some inspirational pages for you. Key takeaways from today's presentation. And I hope these help. Uh number one, research your peers in competition. Number two, only post your best content to Facebook. Number three, experiment with live video. Oh, sorry, experiment video live and recorded. Use Facebook pixels and emails lists with ads to get very specific. Uh number five is boost posts that are performing well. Six, invite people to like your page. And seven, remember to have fun because at the end of the day it is Facebook and not a business news site. So have fun with your Facebook page. Interact with your fans, give them an inside look to your company or your brand. Uh do live video experiment, experiment, experiment, and you will for sure see some some results from that. If not, tweet at me or tweet at Buffer and we'll try to get a new strategy for you going. So thank you so much everyone. I hope you enjoyed today's presentation. Uh, my name is Brian Peters. I am the social manager here at Buffer. And we want to thank you on behalf of the Buffer team for joining us. Uh, like I said, we host a Facebook live session every Friday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. Uh, that's tomorrow at 10 a.m. PST. Uh, we talk about everything from social media marketing to trends in small businesses to trends in the social media industry. And it's just a, you know, 20-minute chat. And we always give away some fun Buffer stuff. So anyways, I'm going to hop back in here and say goodbye to you officially. Thank you so much. It has been wonderful having you all. I hope you enjoyed. And I apologize if I went over time here. I know it's 8:45. Uh I'm excited. I hope that you know you take this out in the world and and your Facebook, you know, your Facebook marketing efforts see some fruit from all your hard work. I know what a challenge and what a struggle Facebook marketing can be. So from me to you, good luck. Feel free to tweet at me orbuffer and we can continue this conversation further. So everyone have a great Thursday. I will talk to you soon and uh stay awesome. Love y'all. Bye.