Welcome to episode 368 of Hit the Mic With The Stacey Harris.
This month inside of Hit the Mic Backstage, we are talking about how to run an ad campaign that reengages a stale audience on Facebook. Today, I want to share with you three other tips, and then we’re going to talk a little bit more about Facebook ads, so four tips total today on how to engage your audience on Facebook this week. These are tools that I want you to legit implement this week and then come tell me about.
Now, you are not going to suddenly, magically, miraculously see huge engagement tomorrow if you do this today, but if you build this today, you’ll start to see little incremental wins with your reach, especially if you are not doing a very good job of being consistent right now. So let’s start with this.
Why do Facebook pages go stale?
The audience goes stale because generally one of two things happens. There’s a lack of consistency due to a lack of confidence, or there is a lack of consistency due to a lack of knowledge, both of which are usually hidden behind the excuse of, “I don’t have time.”
Sound familiar? Did anybody, did you just go, “Oh, she knows”? Yes, I know because I’ve done it, too. I’ve absolutely done it, too. That’s why planning matters, that’s why strategy matters, that’s why scheduling matters, but in a bigger sense than that, that’s why sometimes we have need to go in and reengage. Now, I’ll be totally transparent with you. Sometimes even when I’m consistent, my audience goes stale. The second reason it goes stale is because you get bored. It happens.
You get into this habit of sharing the same thing over and over again and you just sort of keep doing and keep going, and it just all becomes monotonous. So they slowly but surely stop engaging. Then you go, “Wait. Wait. There used to be people here.” Then it’s time to change the strategy. Those two instances are where I like to pull out these tools, the four tools we’re going to talk about today.
The first one I want to talk about is asking questions and being honest.
Now, I’m assuming that if you listen to this show and you are a part of this community, you are not an asshole, which means, I’m assuming you’re not currently lying to your audience. I’m just going to make the grand assumption that you’re not being a total jerk and lying all the time. What I mean by honesty is this: share your opinion, even if it may not be super popular. Now, I’m not necessarily saying get political. I’m not necessarily saying bring religion into it. If those are not things you are comfortable with on social, then don’t deal with them on social.
I’m talking about in your industry. What is something that happens in your space that you’re sick of? A great example for me, the thing that drives me the most crazy is when I see Facebook ads or I see email copy or I see sales pages from people who do what I do for a living and are telling you that they can completely revolutionize your social for just $1000 in two weeks of your time. Social media is a long game. It is not a slow, quick … I shouldn’t say slow. I should say sprint. It is a marathon, and yes, you can absolutely see results in two weeks from social and make sales, but it takes ad revenue.
It also takes knowing your ideal client. It also takes having something to sell. It is not just giving some person 997 and saying, “Oh, it’s cured now.” It takes a lot of work, and it takes a lot of ad revenue, and it takes also knowledge. Now, that’s all things you can acquire or things you can do. It’s absolutely going to happen in the right circumstances, but these crazy all-out claims and ad copy, it manipulates and makes people feel dumb, drives me crazy. That’s something I could share something very honestly on social and start a conversation. Have you seen this? What’s something in your industry that drives you crazy? What is something that you absolutely run up against in ads that you’re just like, “Oh, yuck. Why are you saying that,” because we all have those stories.
Several years ago now, and I should really bring it back. Maybe we’ll bring it back as a Facebook Live this month. In fact, maybe we’ll do that this week, maybe, maybe. If you’re listening to this, show up on Thursday and see if I did it. Well, I should say if you’re listening to this on Tuesday or Wednesday. One of the most popular pieces of content I’ve ever done, and it was all about pet peeves on social media, auto direct messages and sleazy ad copy and bought replies, and stuff like that, but it was hands down one of the most engaging pieces of content, and it all started from a super engaging social post. It just got built into an actual blog post a million years- …
This was before the show even existed. In fact, we may have brought it … There may be a podcast episode version of it, too, but I can’t remember now. I’ll have to look. If there is, there will be a link here. If there’s not, there’s no link here, so there you go. On the show notes, not in the podcast. You can’t click my voice, guys. I’m very, very blah today as far as being snotty, aren’t I? I apologize. Let us continue.
All right, so that was one of the most popular things I ever did, one of the most engaging things I ever did because I was totally honest, I was totally transparent, and I gave them something to talk about, something very specific to talk about. So ask specific questions, and then engage with them back. Don’t ask a question and then disappear. If someone leaves a comment, engage back. If someone shares an opinion you don’t agree with, don’t go into some sort of nine-tweet argument with them. Say, “Wow. Yeah, totally. Here’s my counter-argument.” Discuss with them. Absolutely. Engage with them. Don’t be a jerk.
Also, don’t allow people to be jerks to each other. This does, depending on how far you go, sometimes take a little supervision. I didn’t want to say policing, supervision, but yeah. Again, this doesn’t have to be a hugely polarizing experience. This can be something very simple and even fun and interesting, but give them something to engage with. On the more fun side of this, one of the ways, I’m actually really enjoying people doing this right now, is in a GIF, tell me what you do. I saw this in a Facebook group the other day, and I cannot for the life of me remember what group or who posted it, but I apologize. It was a marketing coach, and she said, “In GIF form, in the comment, show me how you feel about your marketing right now.”
It was hilarious, and it started some really great conversations. I would be willing to bet, although I do not know for sure, it started some really great sales conversations with her, but that’s just a really super fun, in no way controversial, way to engage your audience. Ask them a question and give them a way and a reason to engage. Connect with them and then be honest with them. Talk to them back. Share with them. All right, so that’s number one. I need to move along because I’m getting a bit long at the mouth here.
Number two, we talked about this last week, share stuff from behind the scenes.
Share what you’ve been working on, especially if you’ve gone dark because you’re working on a project. I’m working on a couple of massive things right now, including a book that’s going to come out in January, and so the time of day where I used to spend a lot of time on social, I don’t now. There used to be a big chunk in my morning where I did social stuff. I did group engagement, I scheduled, I looked at other people’s content, and so my content consumption, which is how I curate, all of that happened in this big chunk in the morning.
That’s writing time now, so that’s me writing the book now. So that, that’s kind of caused me to have to look at what happened, and it has caused a decrease in my overall engagement on social. Be honest about that kind of stuff. Maybe you’re launching a program, and so you’re actually building the program. Maybe you’re writing a book, maybe you’re launching a second business or a product line to go with your business, or whatever it is, share that behind the scenes. Maybe you’re swamped with clients because you have a more service-based launch that went really, really well. Awesome. Celebrate with your community.
Say, “Hey guys. We are swamped on this side, but we are still here for you. Here’s how we’re working with clients right now, and you know what? Here’s a really killer swipe file that we’ve been working with a lot of our clients on for X, Y, Z.” It’s a great way to engage your audience, and you can repurpose that post and turn it into a bunch of different content over time, but just be honest. Again, honesty, because you’re not a jerk, honesty is important, that behind the scenes.
Number three, this is my last organic one, go live.
Seriously. Not just for the live engagement, because I would say my live engagement is probably the smallest part of my overall video engagement. I tend to get the bulk of my engagement afterwards because people can watch it on their time versus whenever I show up, because a lot of times I show up during my workday, which is, guess what? Also, during my community’s workday, and so yeah, they may be on social and clicking my links, and doing that kind of stuff, but they’re not necessarily watching a video for however long I ramble on, on social, on Facebook live, so Facebook Live can be a really great way to get engagement organically because it’s delivered to the newsfeed, especially if your page has gone cold and your page has gone stale, or maybe you have not been posting in a while.
Yes, maybe? Facebook Live is a great way to jumpstart engagement, reach, all of it, so Facebook Live. Map out a plan for a couple and do them. If Facebook Live makes you incredibly nervous, start in a group. Start in your Facebook group. If you don’t have a Facebook group, then get over it and just go live on your page. Not that many people are really going to watch it when you first start, and if you don’t like it, you delete it. Easy breezy, okay? All right.
The last one is exactly what we talked about in the new training that went live at the first of this month, run an ad campaign.
So inside of Hit The Mic Backstage, we actually have a four-ad ad campaign training where on camera I’m talking about some of the content, how it plays out and then I jump into the ads manager, and I kind of show you how we put them together real quick. Of course, you have the whole Facebook ads training with a whole module on ads. Well, it’s Facebook training with a whole module on ads inside of Backstage so you can learn how to use the Power Editor and boost the post, and all of that, but it’s a really simple four-ad campaign.
Put a little bit of money behind it. Get your content in front of your audience, and you’re going to do a lot of the same things we’ve talked about. The first ad is all about an engagement post and running an ad just to get engagement. That can absolutely be your asking a question and being honest, your “Post a GIF and tell me how you feel about X, Y, Z in the comments.” That could absolutely be your behind the scenes photo. In the sequence, we talk about doing a live so that we can retarget those people for a launch. That can absolutely be the Facebook Live you do.
You can combine this ad strategy with the other three things we talked about and really, really, really accelerate, sort of reenergizing your community. It’s a really, really killer way to get connected with your audience. Now, if you really, really, really, really, really want to do this, in the show notes, I will have a link to purchase just that training, just the stand-alone, and we’ve never done this before, so this is super exciting. I don’t know if we’ll do it again, but for right now, just right now, if you listen to this show and you really want to see that training, and you’re not sure if you want to join Backstage, there’s a special offer to grab just that stand-alone training on the show notes page, so check that out.
There will be a link to get it on the page all the way at the bottom of the content because obviously there’s a transcription for this show first. For those of you reading this, you already knew that. Yeah, so there will be an opportunity to grab just that training. Then, if you do want to join us backstage so you can get the rest of the Facebook ads training, you can absolutely do that at HittheMicBackstage.com. Other than that, that’s all I’ve got for you this week.
I want you to take action on this stuff, so this one is intentionally very short. Go take action, and then come into the Backstage community and tell us how it went. All right? All right. I will see you very, very soon. I will see you Backstage, of course. Have a wonderful rest of your week.
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