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Changed Our Minds

Four minutes later…we just had to.

No Ad Budget? Here’s How Marketers Grow Their Audience on Facebook for Free

News flash: Facebook’s organic reach is terrible. It’s so bad that many of us are asking, “Should we really bother with organic marketing on the ‘book?

Our pals over at Databox say, “heck yes!” But, you certainly can’t just post links to your blog content and call it a day. If you want to get serious about using Facebook (without paying for ads), then you’ve gotta try a different approach.

Databox has a few ideas that have worked:

Take Advantage of Groups

Facebook Groups are a place where organic reach hasn’t been killed off. The Carnage FB Group sees pretty good organic reach. Usually, around 50% of our group members see any given post.

Databox recommends trying Ask Me Anything-style live videos in your Groups. Ask innovators in your industry to join your group for a live video session. During the session, group members can ask the innovator any type of questions. The group, Campaign Creators, increased their membership by 47% using this method.

You can also join existing industry groups. By engaging with group members and discussions you can position yourself as an industry “thought leader” (argh, can’t believe we just used the words “thought leader”).

Share Great Content

No matter how you use Facebook for marketing, you gotta share great content. But make sure you aren’t just sharing your own content.

Quoted in Databox’s article is a guy from Eternal Works. He recommends sharing 2 of your own blog posts and 5-7 third party posts per week. This approach gave them a 117% increase in traffic.

You should also try going visual. At least 50% of your posts should be images, 15% videos, and the rest can be text and link posts. And think beyond a typical picture with an inspirational quote. Try sharing infographics, helpful tips, etc.

Still three great ideas from Databox that we haven’t covered, including how to boost your posts fo’ free…

How to Make the Most Out of Your Existing Content

You know the saying, work smarter, not harder?

Well doesn’t it make sense to create quality content and then let it work for you. We know, we know you’re thinking what in the world are y’all getting at?

So there’s a thought running around that the only way to get noticed is to create content like it’s coming off of a production belt. We’re calling it fake news. There are plenty of other ways. You could dress up like a disco ball and rummage around NYC. Or you can jump out of a moving vehicle and dance beside it while the car continues to move?! 

We will say one thing, these youngsters are giving Evel Knievel a run for his money.

Aaaanyway, back to more important things. If you’re going to create content, then create gold. And repurpose it to your advantage.

Search Engine Journal is leading the way with three tactics to leverage the value of your existing content!

1. Reinforcing Content Purpose & Deriving More Value.

Each published piece of content should have a purpose. However, our everchanging industry gives that purpose an end date, which stinks like grandpa’s feet.

So to maximize and grow value in your content here’s what you have to include:

  • Targeting SERP features like featured snippets and rich results
  • Increase the depth of content topical coverage
  • Answer core audience questions
  • Use mixed content types
  • Expand the onsite authority passing to key topical pages

2. Increasing Your Domain’s Topical Authority.

Now, this is assuming you already have great content.

  • Go with a tiered approach to content creation.
  • Improve internal linking to topic pages
  • Promote external trust with backlinks pointing to key topics pages

3. Refresh, Revisit, and Refine.

Your content should be able to measure up to the following rules:

  • Are you able to hit the refresh button
  • You can revisit the content based on the latest datasets
  • Ability to update/refine the content based on the way the info is being discovered, interacted with and its general functioning.

We couldn’t fit in all the goods from SEJ so click through to dig deeper. Plus, they gave killer examples that put their words into action.

Pretending to Be a Good Parent?

Full disclosure: when we first started watching today’s Watch, we saw it was almost four minutes long and were like, “nah, no chance we’re featuring a 4-minute long brand video in the Carnage.”

Then, 4 minutes later, we were like, “yeah, we’re about to feature a 4-minute long brand video in the Carnage.”

It’s rare that a longer brand video captures our attention, but this one managed it. Chatbooks, a subscription photo service, are the masterminds behind this video. We think it’s got all the pieces needed to go viral (kinda like Dollar Shave Club’s and Squatty Potty’s brand videos). Even the title of the thing is viral-worthy: “If you’re a good parent or want to pretend to be one, you need this app!”

And just so you know, as of this writing it only has 191 YouTube views. So yeah, we watched it before it was cool. Remember that.

Okay, we’ll stop rambling. Just watch the dang thing.

“Always provide value. Value builds trust. Once you have that trust, you have the ability to do some selling.”

Mike Volpe

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