If you post something on Facebook, it’s often your goal to maximize the amount of times it gets seen.
Facebook has a limit of content they can show a user before they get bored and leave the site (People average 50 minutes per day on FB), so they have to choose carefully what to show you. What if you knew how to game the system to your advantage so that YOUR posts get shown more?
This means more engagement.
This means more free exposure.
This means Facebook is more likely to show your other content.
That’s what we’re gonna do now. And here’s the secret to gaming the system…..
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To game the system you must first know its true motivation!
That’s right my young friend, if you dig deep and find the true metrics Facebook lives on, you can exploit that to your advantage. :::insert evil laugh:::
What is Facebook’s true motivation?
To keep you on Facebook long as possible.
What does Facebook get out of it?
Advertisers pay money to show ads to all the people looking at Facebook. The more time you spend on Facebook, the more “advertising inventory” they have.
Let’s take a look at some basic examples:
If Facebook keeps showing stuff to users that isn’t engaging and doesn’t keep them sucked in, then the person will leave quickly, spending only a littttlle bit of time per day on Facebook. This is bad for serving up ads:
However if Facebook starts “bumping up” sticky and engaging content in your Newsfeed, you will likely spend MORE time on Facebook, giving them many more opportunities to show you targeted ads:
So Facebook wants us to spend more time in their ecosystem so they can serve up more paid ads.
A quick side note:
“If you’re not paying for the product, YOU ARE the product being sold.”
This quote is often used to make social networks look evil, but I think it’s amazing:
Facebook shows me some harmless ads, and I get to use their $200,000,000,000 world-wide computer infrastructure to play with my friends, promote my stuff, and be entertained….all for free!
I personally think it’s a very fair trade. TV and radio have both worked the same way for decades too.
Now that we understand Facebook’s goal is to keep us on their site, we can see the reasoning behind their products:
- They noticed early on people pay attention to pictures, so they prefer posts with images.
- They noticed if you live-stream a video, your friends come to Facebook to watch and stay glued to Facebook, it keeps them on the site, and you bring other friends back to Facebook, you keep people commenting and interacting. This is why they encourage you to do Live Videos.
- They noticed that vigorous discussion on a post sucks people into the conversation, keeps them reading, and keeps them coming back to Facebook to check the thread. This is why they reward “higher engagement” posts with better placement in the Newsfeed.
Now let’s talk about how to exploit this for ourselves:
Imagine that Facebook assigns you “points” for every single interaction that happens on your post. As a rough example, let’s say the algorithm looks like this:
Someone comments on your post = +1 point.
Someone “Likes” your post = +1 point.
Someone shares your post = +1 point.
Someone “Likes” a comment on your post = +1 point.
Someone replies to a comment on your post = +1 point.
Below are two examples. One has zero “points” and the other has 15 “points.”
Now let’s take a look at another post, but that has a bit more activity and therefore “points”:
Now if you were Mark Zuckerberg, and your goal was to keep people active on your website, which one of these posts to show the user??
That’s right, the one with higher “points!”
Now this “point system” can sometimes skew your newsfeed to silly or infuriating posts.
It’s why crazy political articles get shown all over your newsfeed during an election year…..they simply generate the most buzz and discussion and “points” during that period of time. Here’s an example of a filthy, stupid, horrible, dumbly-written, spiteful post that creeped it’s way to the top before it was removed (seen in a FB group):
Even though this post was absolute garbage, it showed up in my newsfeed over-and-over-and-over again for days. It garnered 300+ comments before it got removed, and in total got more “activity” and views than any other post I’d seen on that Facebook group.
Behind the scenes, the Facebook servers were tallying up how many “points” this stupid post had, and it was through the roof! Therefore this post was ranked highly in multiple Newsfeeds, and dinged lots of people’s Notification Centers with updates bringing them back to the post.
Although if you don’t want to be a huge prick to generate discussion, here’s a handy cheat sheet on how to boost the visibility of your Facebook post:
Gaming Instagram for Maximum Exposure:
Instagram is fantastic for just browsing images. Turns out people kinda LOVE just browsing images with just a tteeennsy bit of text.
Instagram was acquired by Facebook a few years ago, and it has now quietly becoming one of the largest apps/site on the web. They have the same desire as Facebook: Keep you in the ecosystem for as long as possible.
Knowing this, we can game Instagram based on what keeps people on the site the longest:
Puppies, Food, Motivation, Working Out, Rich People Stuff, and Hot Girls!
Look how my own Instagram was built up:
https://www.instagram.com/neville_medhora/
Besides a few recent posts, the entire previous life of the account was spent writing motivational-style quotes overlaid onto motivational images and tagging the living shit out of every account and hashtag:
Oh dear god…..
Similarly to Facebook, Instagram thrives on your ACTIVITY within the app.
This means if you heart a lot, comment a lot, tag a lot, post a lot….you are rewarded with more exposure. If you have a post that gets “hearted” and commented on a bunch, they are far more likely to expose your post to more people.
Gaming Quora for Maximum Exposure:
Quora is sooort of like WikiPedia, in the sense it wants to untap the worlds information into one place.
Basically people ask questions, and the community of Quora users answer.
What Quora gets out of it:
Rankings. Lots and lots of rankings. According to my tools they rank for over 49,000,000 search engine keywords, pulling in 100,000,000+ visits per month from Google alone.
How you can game Quora:
Posting frequently and getting your answers upvoted is a huge plus on Quora. But we’re here to game it, so I tried a little experiment:
Within 2 hours I gamed Quora for a keyword using this method:
1.) I searched on google “How to become a copywriter Quora” and found this post with only a few answers:
https://www.quora.com/What-course-of-action-do-I-take-to-become-a-copywriter
2.) I took info and images from an existing blog post about How to Become A Copywriter Without Any Experience and adapted the content to a Quora post. I removed a lot of the irrelevant content and took about 10 minutes to customize it to a proper Quora answer. I ended up posting this answer:
https://www.quora.com/What-course-of-action-do-I-take-to-become-a-copywriter/answer/Neville-Medhora?srid=2vV
3.) I then shared my reply on my personal Facebook page, and several friends upvoted the answer. Within about 30 minutes, I had only 5 upvotes on the post, but that was enough to firmly entrench me as the #1 answer on that thread!
So while it may seem like I “gamed” Quora…..I actually played into their true motivation of “getting great answers to long-tail questions.” So now when someone is looking for information on becoming a copywriter, and they land on this Quora post from a search engine, my answer is the #1 response, and it also links back to my own website in several places.
I get free exposure for my work. Quora gets a good answer to a question. Everyone wins. WUBBA LUBBA DUB DUB!!
Gaming Medium for Maximum Exposure:
Medium is a place where people write articles. It’s like one giant collective blog for the internet.
As you can tell from the other examples, Medium is a site that thrives when more people create content for it, and therefore read it.
They want you to keep reading, clicking, tagging, “hearting”, and commenting.
So let’s do ALL of those things.
I’ve never written a post on Medium, but I believe I know Medium’s true motivation, so we’ll see if this experiment works as I’m writing this post.
Step 1.) I’ll write about becoming a copywriter again like I did for the Quora post.
Step 2.) I took 20 minutes to repurpose my original How to become a copywriter post into a post for Medium. I came up with this:
https://medium.com/@nevillemedhora/how-to-become-a-copywriter-without-any-experience-at-all-b0d05c8d1313
Step 3.) I shared this new post with all my Facebook friends:
Results: In a few hours this post got enough traction to start showing up in the top results for becoming a copywriter in Medium.
That means with even this half-assed-20-minute-effort experiment I was able to work my way into the results by bowing to Medium’s true desires.
If you write a piece of content on Medium you think is truly epic, and you ask just 25 people to share it, it can start to dominate the results.
Gaming Reddit for Maximum Exposure:
Gaming Reddit is like the holy grail for most marketers, and (fortunately) the HARSHEST environment to do it!
This is good and bad:
The Good: Reddit isn’t completely overrun with marketing bullshit.
The Bad: If you ARE trying to promote your stuff on Reddit, you have to do it gently or creatively.
I’ll demonstrate two examples of gaming Reddit (by bowing to the Reddit audience’s desires):
There are many different sub-reddits. Some are small, some are huge. People often go after the big dogs, but those are difficult.
So as a random experiment a few months ago, with ZERO promotion from my email list or social followings, I posted this AMA (Ask Me Anything) in /r/copywriting:
At the time of the posting, it got around 45 upvotes just naturally (I admit, it was a pretty good title):
Text: Hey there copynerds. Working all day and thought I’d do an AMA in spare time. Ask me anything about how to conduct consultations, getting clients, writing articles.
I don’t have “magic answers” to start getting these rates, it took time and effort to get there. Will answer best I can.
That simple post leaped to the top of the “All Time Best Posts” on r/copywriting in one day!!
Now I will admit I put a few hours of time into answering every….single…..goddamn…..question in that thread, so it wasn’t super easy.
In the end, the trackable traffic back to my website was alright. Nothing spectacular though. From that post, here’s the stats from the day the post was published:
- 732 sessions sent.
- 3min and 50sec average session length.
- 5.19% conversion rate to email list.
- 38 emails collected from the direct traffic.
So it wasn’t like an INSANE avalanche of traffic, but it was something.
BUT my friend…..that was a very small sub-reddit. What if we set our sights a bit higher?
I aimed to take over the /r/Entrepreneur section. This is notoriously un-friendly to marketers, and notoriously harsh in the comments. However at 250,000+ followers of the thread (and immeasurably more casual lurkers), it’s an attractive target.
2 years ago I managed to take over r/Entrepreneur for about 2 days by posting an AMA and sending my email list to the post. It got about 250 upvotes the first day and stayed at the top for part of the weekend:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/3ebij7/as_of_today_ive_built_an_email_list_of_20836/
The post varied in upvotes, as there’s a certain constituency of downvoters on Reddit who hate ANY sort of braggy-sounding posts (which this of course sounded like).
However the response was overall pretty good, and I spent probably a total of 12 hours answering people’s questions.
Here was the copy I used to get this result:
Text: For 2015 I’ve been focusing on growing my site (www.copywritingcourse.com), and a happy side effect is a 20,000+ strong email list.
Total list size & a screen shot of my autoresponder:
http://i.imgur.com/M8yVon7.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/a9xfFVb.png
A number of people have been emailing me about how to build an email list for their biz. Rather than attempt to individually explain to each person, I just decided to come on here and tell you whatever you want to know about it.
Topics I can try to help you with:
–Copywriting. (duh)
–Building an email list on the cheap.
–What to give away to get people to signup.
–How to monetize the email list.
–Changing the copy on your page to generate more $’s.
AMA!
Providing genuine support and great answers is what will prop you up on Reddit.
Reddit DOES NOT WORK the same as most social media sites!!
Most social media sites will boost you to the top if you just create retention and engagement. Reddit will only boost you to the top if other users upvote your post enough. They can also DOWNVOTE your post which is where it’s really different from other sites.
Pretty much zero major social media sites allow you to downvote besides reddit. That downvoting feature is what keeps a lot of marketers out, because soon as the audience smells a whiff of self-promotion, they downvote the post to oblivion.
So back in 2015 I did two reddit AMA’s in r/Entrepreneur, and here were the (trackable) results:
- 5,234 sessions.
- 2min and 38sec average session length.
- 4.05% conversion rate to email list.
- 212 emails collected from the direct traffic.
So that last part……212 emails collected over 2 AMA’s.
THAT was the ulterior motive for doing these AMA’s: To collect email addresses.
It works to collect emails if you do an AMA that genuinely is helpful, provides a ton of great answers, and you have a mechanism to “boost” your upvotes when you post (like a big email list).
But for all the time answering questions and emailing my list about the AMA’s, it ends up being for a relatively small return.
HOWEVER, these two examples show you CAN dominate big Sub-Reddits like r/Entrepreneur if you have a little marketing fire-power like an email list of fans…….and you can very easily dominate smaller Sub-Reddits with pretty much nothing.
So that my friend is how you game a social network. You first understand it’s motivations, and then play according to those rules. Use this information wisely (if it makes sense for you to use)!
Download this entire guide for your files:
Join my email list and the first email I send will be a downloadable copy of this Social Media Exposure Guide:
–Download it in PDF, Google Doc, or Word format–
–You can keep it in your files for future reference–
–Send it to friends or colleagues–
Sincerely,
Neville Medhora – Gamer of Networks
P.S. Which other hacks do you know to get your posts seen? Comment below, I love learning new ways!
What a great read Neville, I’ll be sharing with my husband. This is appreciated!
Every blogger wants his post to be seen. These points will greatly help the people struggling to build their online presence. thanks!
Hi, thanks for your Facebook “cheat sheet” – good tips! Can I ask if you would have a tip for the following? I post ads to several Facebook “Buy/Sell” groups that are quite large (25,000+ members with many posts daily). In big groups like that, most members have their “Notifications” setting set to “Highlights”, and therefore my post mostly just gets lost/bypassed in their newsfeed without ever getting seen. Is there something I can do or tweak to my post that will “force” it to show up to these members who are set to “Highlights”?
Thanks!
Shawn
That’s interesting. I hadn’t given much thought to how post rankings worked on Facebook.
I’ll keep this in mind as I build my web presence.
Thanks again for great info!
You’re very welcome Julie! If you know the rules of the game, it’s easier to win the game :)
Why does Facebook and Instagram have a place for.my website then block my post or ability to like and comment because of my link in bio…meaning a dotcom address?
Hey man,
Thank you SO much for these guidelines. I am officially not that intimidated by Facebook and Insta anymore. I have a question:
Does it matter WHEN you engage (reply or like back)? Sometimes, I am not in the mood to reply (by mood, I mean I’m in a depressive state) and I just cannot push myself to reply immediately. I feel like if I had to, it wouldn’t be the genuine me and I would struggle to develop a rhythm when engaging.
Does that make sense?
I don’t have any solid evidence to say that works, however through pure observation even old posts are resurrected in the NewsFeed when all of a sudden more conversation starts happening.
Social platforms reward activity!
Everything is very open with a really clear clarification of the issues.
It was really informative. Your website is extremely helpful.
Thank you for sharing!
As vicious Reddit can be towards marketers, it’s easy to sell a story to Reddit.
I’ve been on Reddit since 2010/2011 and have seen it all: The good, the bad, and the ugly. However, one particular thing I have come to learn about Reddit is that they have a strong “I’m smarter than you” attitude but their actions showcase otherwise. The people on Reddit love to pride themselves on being logical and reasonable while sniffing out the bullshit but usually end up swallowing the bullshit.
It’s a strange paradox but also a paradise for manipulators and scammers.
So yes, you’re correct, Reddit can be gamed but just in a different way that’s more complex but still doable.
As a matter of fact, you started off the right way: By becoming an authority who provided value and made the people feel good. There has been quite a few horrible people in Reddit’s history who have done exactly the same.
My point? Reddit isn’t as smart as they would like to believe.
Maybe it’s because I’m British (!), but i just cant get into that commeting on all comments, liking all comments thing – but that article made me think how i could do my Facebook posting better without sacrificing ‘who i am’. Does that make sense?
I think the key to posting follow up comments is to be honest, yourself etc – whilst reading this post, i actually thought of a comment i could make to a comment that someone else left. (Still couldn’t bring myself to answer a follow up question though….. )
:0)
Soooooo you’re just being lazy by not participating in the discussion?? :-)
I’ve noticed over the years that the more I participate in the discussion (on a blog post, Facebook post, whatever), the more OTHERS will participate.
You should try it next time you post David!
Good tips. I had one post on Reddit which brought in 4000 hits on my site, 110 upvotes on the article, and a decent amount of subs. The thing with posting on Reddit is being prepared to be mentally raped by lots of people who have no clue, and are angry at life lol.
YouTube is a weird one. One of my videos has 133,000 views but only 72 upvotes and 50 downvotes. Another video has 72,000 views but 1000+ upvotes and only 30 downvotes. Not sure how the hell that works in the algorithms.
Hahhaa, yeah Reddit can be a wildcard in terms of how people behave in the comments.
As for your YouTube videos, a lot of videos that are informational (Maybe like “How to take a screenshot on your Mac” or something generic) will often get lots of views but very little interaction. This makes sense as people are coming for a quick solution, getting it, then leaving.
Unless you specifically ASK for likes and comments, people often will do nothing. That’s why you see almost every big YouTube channel asking for subscribes and likes at the end of every video!
Makes sense! But Neither video is a how to, and I didn’t ask for anything on both.
I came for the Nev box, I stayed for the post.
Thanks Neville. You always make it seem easier.
Thank you January, hopefully this got you thinking of the motivations behind each network, and can boost results also!
Great tips Neville! I’m going to start implementing some of these NOW.
I’m definitely not an expert, but have used Twitter for a few years now so here are a few tips:
1.Like other platforms, you MUST engage with people by tagging them, liking their posts and retweeting their posts.
2. Something as simple as putting RT at the end of your tweet gets more people to retweet it.
3. Stop looking like every other advertiser just posting links. Post quotes, memes, and tag people who may like them.
4. Tweet directly at people to get a conversation going.
Keep up the great work man, love your stuff!
Thanks Chris!
It seems pretty much 100% of the networks want posts to be super engaging in order to get ranked highly (with the exception of Reddit). Best of luck!
One line guide to dominating the following social networks
Facebook – Post about how life sucks or how “they” hurt you, reply to every comment saying “pm me”
Instagram – Beach pictures with an inspirational quote about how travel broadens the mind, use all 30 hashtags
Reddit – Complain about Susan G. Komen or other high profile charity
Meh.
I remember stumbling on that post by ~that guy~ in the Facebook group and indeed found myself sucked into the drama. Even though I didn’t comment/become part of the “conversation”, I watched obsessively, regularly refreshing for updates.
I can’t begin to explain why the human brain is drawn to ridiculous confrontations and name-calling; all I know is that we as humans LOVE drama. It’s exciting.
Perhaps if we can inject that excitement into other forms of content sharing, we can avoid becoming so engrossed in these catty posts.
(Maybe I’m just secretly a bitchy high school girl).
Bahahha, even Tim (comment above yours) was seeing it all the time! I personally kept watching it also because it was like mindless entertainment. Humans are weird :-)
Great outlook for the facebook ads (the only social media I bother with). But my favorite part of this was your inclusion of d’bag FB post from the CoC group. It wouldn’t stop showing up in my feed either!
Bahahaha, that stupid post was everywhere before it got pulled!
Great stuff. Prefer YouTube personally. More engaging. FB is ok as a content aggregator.
I agree. While YouTube won’t rack up as many video counts as Facebook (which I’m already suspicious of what they count as a “view”) the attention is FAR GREATER on YouTube!
So…what is the value of 77,000 instagrammers when you don’t really have a carefully tuned following? You just have numbers. I can buy that? Isn’t a powerful instagram aligned with your values and products? Or am I being naive – numbers matter?
You’re totally right, it DOESN’T matter. It’s a 100% vanity metric in terms of sales. Of all the tests I’ve seen (and seen close friends do), having a bunch of social followers means almost zero in a lot of cases. I’d trade 1 email address for 100 Instagram or Twitter followers.
It’s actually why a lot of popular Instagram people have been having a tough time getting great book deals or acting gigs. It turns out a lot of their following isn’t THAT dedicated or interested in them.
The platform I think is the most powerful is YouTube. When people have large YouTube followings, it seems it’s very easy for them to get great sponsorships and whatnot because their followings are very strong and loyal.
I’ve been marketing on social media for about 4 years but these tips are epic! I’m only just starting to pursue my dreams of writing (had my confidence knocked when I was younger by an arsehole teacher) and I’m honestly glued to all of your advice, training and tips nev! Got your book the other day as well after reading one of your posts on here and just yeah, you’re awesome and have helped me so much already! Thank you! #legend
Thanks Jess! So glad to have helped start get you back into writing. I would HIGHLY recommend you start a personal blog on Blogger.com for free and just start documenting your journey.
That’s how I started, and still think is a fantastic way to practice your writing!
Hey Nev,
Of all the email lists I’ve signed up to I think yours is the only one I read top to bottom :)
I don’t have advice on YouTube, etc but I would like to recommend LinkedIn for you. Some of your content would really resonate with frustrated employees and they just hit over 500 million users.
Without meaning to brag (because it was a complete fluke), I wrote an article in January 2017 which took off (by LinkedIn’s standards) garnering 785k views, 3300 comments and 60,000 likes. Before I wrote the article I literally had 3 email subscribers to my crappy site. By the time the article died down I had managed to build my list up to 1600 (my site is still crappy).
Recommendations:
-“How to” in the title (e.g how to make your first $100 freelancing. Wink face.)
– Short titles so they get chosen by LinkedIn to be featured on Pulse (their blogging platform).
– Listicles are popular “5 ways to become a freelance copywriter”
– Piss people off… initially. The title of my article was “To all the Bitches out there in the workplace”. It was risqué but it worked (the article wasn’t rude or sexist by the way, I promise).
– Useful content like your emails.
Anyway, I’m not sure if you use LinkedIn much but definitely worth exploring – maybe I can send you a connection request?
Thanks for the useful guides, really appreciate it.
– Sam Struan
P.s. Would love a chance to win a Nev Box :)
Thanks Sam! Very possibly a NevBox-worthy post. LinkedIN seems like it could be really useful, although I’ve only seen a select few people I know exploit it really well.
Might have to hire a part-time person that ONLY updates my LinkedIN stuff!
If you’d ever like to exchange ideas about LinkedIn and how it could be leveraged for your business I’d be happy to chat.
Thanks for the reply :)
I might actually take you up on that, I’ll be emailing you shortly cause you won a NevBox anyway :)
Sam, great tips man!
Read your post man (great headline BTW).
Short, informative and engaging.
Well done Sam, this has my vote for a Nev Box :)
Hey Sam, just letting you know: YOU WON A NEVBOX!! Email coming your way with shipping request. Thanks for the great tips :)
I learned SO much from the NevBox – a HUGE thank you for the opportunity to win one.
I like how you simplified everything, now it’s more understandable for me on how to explain to other people.
Most likely, i will share this post to my friends!
Thanks dude.
Awesome, thanks for any shares Muaz, much appreciated :)
These tips are pretty simple but can go a loonnggg way for people who post frequently!
Hi Neville, I’d love to hear your thoughts on when to pay to promote FB posts vs. not….
Hey Becky, I think it’s pretty simple: If you want to spend $100 or $150 to get a few hundred likes and shares, it’s helpful. However a lot of those don’t convert to worthwhile customers.
I think the best strategy is to:
1.) Post stuff on your business page.
2.) At the end of several months see which post was bringing you in the most clicks or signups (or whatever metric you are aiming for).
3.) Promote that post with at least $100.
Since it’s already performing well it will likely perform well when paid promoted.
Sweet! I had no idea what Reddit was. Still don’t, really. But it looks interesting.
Really valuable info Neville.
Sorry I don’t have anything to offer in the way of tips, just wanted to say thanks!
Chris
You have no idea what Reddit is?? THEN STAY AWAY!! It’ll suck so much of your time away once you get hooked :)
What a strange day to give away a NevBox, not even 24hrs ago I was re-watching the old NevBox video wishing I would have been subscribed to your email list when you were first selling those bad boys. Looks like the stars are really aligning on this, I’m feeling incredibly lucky.
Thanks for your blog and all your amazing content.
ps – I was scolded at work a few months back while trying to print the Boron Letters, I accidentally sent it to my Bosses desk printer.
Bahahaha, perhaps your boss should also read the Boron Letters, I bet they would learn a lot :)
Good on you for printing it, it’s 10x better that way!
Thanks for you suggestion. I will remind it next time. :)
Heh heh, I’m sure they will love the suggestion (or not) :-P
As always, primo material Nev! Now, damé una caja!
Thanks Shay, more good stuff will be sent out like this :)
Great insights sir, certainly worth a save. Reddit is certainly on my list to explore.
Any thoughts on Wikipedia? Knowing it’s a bit challenging and not for all businesses, I’ve helped with some bio pages for “celebrity” leaders of organizations. Getting the wiki style and references right is tough, but WikiP does really help SERPs…
Muchas Gracias and Tacos from Austin!
Hey Charlie, I never thought of WikiPedia as a “social” service, but I guess it is.
I think for celebrity bios and such it’s good, but never thought of it much for business. Good idea though!
The great part about having a brand page on Wikipedia, is it’s nearly always at/near the top of natural search results. Wikipedia is such a respected source, google (and others) see it as an authority… it’s not a perfect link to your site, but the credibility it gives you is huge.
Awesome thread/comments here, thanks all!
That’s super true Charlie. I could easily just ask someone else to make Wikipedia entries for me. I might actually do this :)
Great article, this is going to be helpful for a couple of stuff I’m planning to run this month
WUBBA LUBBA DUB DUB!!
Neville – you just cement yourself as the Rick Sanchez of copywriting.
Bahahhaa, THAT is the greatest compliment I’ve ever got….Nev Sanchez!
What an informative post Neville,
I never knew that getting lots of likes and comments on Facebook usually give the posts more exposure. It literally means that we can actually get more eyes on our FB posts without spending $$$ on ads.
Among all the hacks you shared here, I’ll try the Quora hack immediately as I’ve been planning to test it out.
Indeed, I’m not really a big fan of Reddit, maybe because I see it as a difficult place to be. I’ve tried using it to promote my sites in the past and all my efforts ended up being an excerise in futility. However, I might give it a shot once again.
Medium is also another area I’ve never tried before and I’ll definitely look into it.
Thanks
Yup, that’s the beauty of this, you can increase all your exposure for free. It might take a little effort in the form of time, but it’s otherwise free of monetary charge.
The good part is that you can game these social networks a bit, the bad part is that it doesn’t always equate directly to sales. I’d suggest for people looking to increase their business, building an email list and directly calling people on the phone would be a better use of time.
Reddit is notoriously difficult for marketers, and it should be. Perhaps it’s not always the best place to promote!
Nev,
Your tips and insight on many subjects really has helped me, and in turn some of my clients, a great deal. It is always something fresh and new each time I get an email from you. Sometimes you expand on a previous message and other times it is something new for me to think about. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Glad all this stuff has helped you and your clients out Dan!
Nev,
I cannot believe I just read a Master Class for free. Fabulous.
One tip is to engage a handful of like-minded people to proactively support each other’s business growth. Then, commit to share, like, retweet, post each other’s work. Guerilla marketing at its best. A rising tide lifts all ships.
My second tip is for people who is MS, but are not graphics experts. Learn to love the simple program, Paint. FB images don’t have to be fancy and you can make basic images with a shape and a few words of text in Paint.
Hey Teresa, I totally agree you don’t have to be all fancy with graphics, and any program will work. Try using Google Drawings also, it’s free, super easy, and you can export the images in any format:
https://docs.google.com/drawings/create
Very thorough and interesting post, as usual.
Being female, I hate that pics of busty half-naked women get you followers on Pinterest, but I get it. Men can be pigs. Or, written in a much more acceptable way-Science has proven many times that the male of an animal species’ main goal, besides survival, is to impregnate as many females as it can, to ensure the survival of the species. This accounts for its higher sex drive. It’s an instinctual biological function.
As humans with more than just the lower mammilian brain, I like to think we can override instinct.
Pinterest proves men have an issue with this. Clearly your readers are male, and this post was written with them in mind, even if, unfortunately, it is true.
Although I disagree with some of your Instagram/Pinterest ideas, I understand you are coming from a certain viewpoint. If you are truly building a brand, you post things that would appeal to those interested in your brand’s lifestyle, image etc. Those are the people who will purchase products and become engaged. Sometimes it’s not just about the number of followers, but the engagement of them and the conversion of readers into buyers.
Did you write that bit about beautiful women (yes, a fashion blog will have models but…) to get higher rankings on FB because women will obviously disagree or be offended, and leave comments? If you did, you’re a sneaky genius. I’ve noticed that about you. Sometimes I laugh and am amazed. Other times I wonder if you have business ethics. I do respect you for your funny, no bullshit writing.
I actually do have a Twitter tip, as that’s where I have most of my followers, for now.
1. It’s not hard to get over that initial 1000 followers cap. Follow back. Simple. If someone takes the time to follow you, follow them back. If they don’t, cleanse them. Be brutal. Only follow people who follow back (unless you find the tweep posting content you truly disagree with. I don’t follow back anyone who posts pics of half-naked busty women, for example, because my brand isn’t about that.)
2. Always comment, and like/retweet every mention or comment you get. Always. If someone takes the time to engage, make it worth their while, and yours.
3. Participate in the hashtag games, and #FollowFriday mentions. Shoutout and tag the members of your Twitter list, thanking them for following, for mentions. Suggest to others that they should be folllowed. It will be reciprocated, and soon you will have loyal followers who give you free promotion to the Twitterverse every Friday.
4. Invest in simple/free/cheap apps that allow you to mass follow/unfollow, tweet #ff (etc), #shoutouts, #mentions. Some may not like you flooding their feed, but most times they are just happy for the exposure.
5. Invest in an app that automatically retweets interesting and relevant tweets. Make sure you schedule this carefully! Only RT content that is valuable to your readership/brand. Don’t do it like crazy. Don’t be spammy about promoting your stuff constantly or your follower list will drop. Be very thoughtful about which tweeps/hashtags to retweet when using an automatic service, but do it, because you can’t be on twitter 24/7.
6. Be active at least once every two days. Respond to your mentions personally. Do your likes. Housekeep.
7. You can get apps that will post tweets you have created at optimal times according to analytics. A good thing to do, but only after you’ve followed the previous steps and have a list that’s worth that investment in time/money.
8. Understand you don’t have to implement ALL social media outlets to succeed. You will drive yourself insane. If you hate Twitter, don’t use it. I’m not into videos right now, so I don’t use YouTube other than for old SNL skits and music.
9. Don’t give up. Follow these tips, especially the pruning and following back, and your list WILL grow.
10. Do NOT send DM’s (direct messages) as a way to get people to follow you on other social media. Lots of automated services can set this up, but no one reads those DM’s. In reality, most HATE those DM’s. They are just bots and make the person feel unimportant. Gotta make your followers believe they matter!
Hey. I should turn this into a blog post
Forgot to click that I would love to hear follow-up comments, so doing that now.
I appreciate your tips Stacy, but next time please leave out any weird rants about how males are terrible.
It’s like you wrote a freaking book on getting started getting results online, I love it! Saving it for when I need it with my marketing efforts, thank you!
Awesome, use it wisely my friend :)
The easiet way to create engagement on fb is to create posts kinda “comment yes if you want more info” and reply to every comment
That was sorta the gist of this post Mike! Engagement = Better Placement.
Twitter Hacks:
Overarching philosophy: Twitter is a firehose of content, so you have to get real specific on who you want to talk to.
1. Use images, then tag users in the images. This allows you to tag more people than just @mentions in the Tweet.
2. When people @ you, reply to them with a video. This is super-easy on the mobile app. H/T Gary Vee for saying this first.
3. Find the Twitter chats that are in your industry. These are scheduled times that people meet and have a conversation about a topic (marketing, education, finance) using a specific hashtag. EVEN BETTER: Start a new Twitter chat with people in your industry. (Example: This Saturday, 2PM-2:30PM join me for #KopyChat. Topic: how to game social media.)
4. Retweet the tweets of popular accounts in your niche WITH A COMMENT. Use the quote tweet feature, NOT the retweet feature.
5. When it’s appropriate, use the enter key to create white space in your tweets, like this:
///
First line of tweet…
More good stuff…
Conclusion of Tweet.
///
6. Give really good answers to the questions of other users, especially popular accounts, so they retweet your tweet.
7. Give positive reviews/shoutouts of stuff that you love, again so you get retweets. Bonus points if you include a real image of you actually using the product (e.g. you reading Neville’s book on the beach).
8. Go live on Periscope because you can link it to your Twitter feed.
9. Don’t use integrations like Instagram –> Twitter or Facebook –> Twitter. Those don’t get retweets.
10. Search for common topics in your niche, and answer people’s questions, possibly by pointing them to other accounts or links/resources.
Phew…that’s how to hack Twitter.
Who dude, great tips!! Possibly NevBox-worthy!
I never knew about most of these. I haven’t really focused on using Twitter much lately, but it’s good to know all these, I might even add them to the post so other people see it.
Thanks again Gerard!
Hey Gerard, just letting you know: YOU WON A NEVBOX!! Email coming your way with shipping request. Thanks for the great tips :)
Fantastic post, in fact probably the most helpful yet for me given I’m about to start pushing offers on Facebook.
I can’t add any tips for other social networks, but I can share some tips on ‘Gaming Neville for Maximum NevBox Exposure’
1) Comment on his blog posts. That’s the first goddamn step, but 87% of people fail at this simple task.
2) Post some really useful comments. They don’t have to be things that no one else has ever thought of but they do have to be relevant to the topic of conversation, well thought-out, and explained in a way which everyone finds easy to follow.
3) Be super nice to Nev. Compliment him on his work, his dress sense, or even his hair. Whatever it is, just find something to be nice to him about.
I think I have completed 1 and 2 in this comment, and I’m sure someone as intelligent and funny as Neville will appreciate number 3!
1.) Appreciate the kind words.
2.) This comment was Meh.
‘Meh’ is better than ‘Bah’. I’ll take that!
Hahaha, thanks Paul. The advice was OK, but not fantastic. To be fantastic it would need some concrete examples, or specific tactics.
Like instead of saying, “Leave a useful comment.”
You could say something like:
——————————————–
Make sure to:
1.) Acknowledge the person and thank them for their comment.
2.) Make sure to tag their name in the comment.
3.) Reply back with your own personal experience.
4.) Ask the person to respond back if they have a similar experience.”
——————————————–
Something like that is more helpful in the future, but I do appreciate your feedback this time also :-)
haha! There is your master class right there ^ people!
As soon as there is a post I can add something to I will apply the method. Waiting for something on split-testing, usability, or layouts for CRO. :-)
Awesome Paul, glad you’re applying what you learn!!
For Pinterest, the magic is in group boards. You ask to join other people’s group boards relevant to your industry, ideally those with many followers, and post your pins on those group boards. Each group board has its own rules, make sure you follow them! If you’re just starting out, this is how you get more exposure for your pins.
Another thing is you want to drip feed your pins and not load a particular pin at the same time to multiple group boards. This is seen as spam.
On your own account, make sure you pin from a variety of sources and not just from your own website. Otherwise, moderators of the group boards will see you as overly self-promotional and not accept your request to join.
Cool! I need as many pinterest tips as I can get. Didn’t even know about group boards.
Great tips Arnaud! Possibly NevBox-worthy!
Have you built a Pintrest following this way? Pintrest is a network I have barely used at all, but have heard amazing things from some people about getting traffic from it.
Really useful info, thanks Neville for sharing.
From what I know about LinkedIn, it operates in a similar way to Facebook, but a post on how to boost results on LinkedIn would be really valuable one day. If you ever run out of things to do…
I second this! I’ve only joined LinkedIn today (oops), after feeling a bit intimidated by it in the past! Would love to see what tips you have for it!
I’ve “bumped” posts similar to Facebook before, but I’ve never got any of them to super take off.
Quite honestly I never even look at LinkedIN, so I’m no expert by any means. I know a few people who’ve made LinkedIN work for them, but I’m not sure how reliably well it works.
I might dig into it a bit more IF I can see evidence it would be worth the time!
Hi Neville,
It’s a great post. You’re a genius in your craft. Well, I can suggest some tips regarding to exposing yourself on social media networks.
1. On Youtube/Snapchat, you can make inspirational videos, in which you can give tips and suggestions regarding your topic/niche to your audience. Neville, You’re doing same on Youtube. :)
2. On Facebook, Join in various groups belongs to your niche, give your valuable comments on something, you could help somebody to solve his/her problems.
3. Share your guest post’s or your writing work’s link on your social media networks. I always do it.
4. Your answers should be valuable and helpful on Quora. Become a answering machine on Quora.
Thanks.
Best Regards,
Sulaksha Gad
Thanks for the tips Sulaksha!
You’re welcome! Waiting for your NevBox! :)
Never count your Nevbox before it hatches Sulaksha.
I agree, be careful about just flat-out asking for something like that, it never works UNLESS the comment is super great :)
I agree, be careful about just flat-out asking for something like that, it never works UNLESS the comment is super great
I agree with it. Actually I already knew that my suggestion is not super great. I was just kidding abut asking that question.
I’d also be careful about giving advice on “exposing yourself on social media networks”. You can definitely get locked up for that! ;-)
Great stuff as always Nev!
Here some takes from me for another FB ‘Hack’.
When in ‘launching mode’, I usually will do this, because it’s fun, and really engaging with my audience.
What it is?
It’s a simple ‘Lucky Draw’, using FB post, either using personal profile or a fanpage.
Try it, your audience will love it, what I usually did, ask the audience to comment my website url in the comment to participate.
What I get? Traffic, awareness and engaging audience !
Here one of the lucky draw I did (it was in Bahasa Malaysia though),
Check it out >>> https://www.facebook.com/rajakamil.biz/photos/a.10150100488555087.304288.295771930086/10155345202745087/?type=3
(308 point, love it when you give scoring to post .. genius)
Very interesting way to run a contest Raja. I can definitely see that working super well!
Great stuff as always Neville, even for lowlife part-time writers like myself!
Reddit truly is a beast of its own, but you’re right when you say it can be the holy grail for some niches. For starters…well, everything is divided by niche so you’ve got segmented audiences at your fingertips. However, it does seem a tough nut to crack.
I’m just writing to share a little thing that happened to me on a certain subreddit (r/seduction):
Back when I was promoting my soon to-be-defunct blog (Started it just for fun and practice as I was bored of my writing jobs on Upwork), I realized most writers on that niche would simply link their blog articles on a reddit post and hope for the best.
I followed the same route (of course!) and each of my posts got me barely 20 views and a shitty bounceback rate – I talked to bigger guys and they said it was the same for them. We were all pretty baffled, since these were good written 3000 word articles that provided good value to that specific demographic.
And that’s when it hit me: if you’re posting anything there, the actual Reddit post has to provide value and be engaging – no matter how good the links you’re posting are!
i.e You could be giving away uberrealistic sex dolls on a Warhammer subreddit and people wouldn’t give a damn unless you put together a half-decent few paragraphs. Why is this?
1. Maybe Redditors like to stay and engage mainly onsite.
2. As you mentioned, they smell pushy-pushy people easily.
3. Even if you’re not pushy-pushy and just genuinely tryng to help people, you’re guilty until proven innocent with a good post that helps them.
4. Reddit users might be the highest IQ users of any social network, and thus have THAT kind of attitude
The next time, I posted a link to an article that looked like a very low key, mini sales letter explaining a problem I had and the solution I found – then once I decided the reddit post provided enough value I added a ts;wr (Too short, wanna read!) and the article link.
The result? Top of the subreddit in an hour, 8000 visits to a website where I got 100 on a lucky day.
Revenue? 0, but I’m not Neville and I didn’t even read him back then (facepalm).
Well good you’re finally realizing it!
Most people trying to market on Reddit are SO lazy and just blast a link in everyone’s face. That’s not really the spirit of Reddit.
It’s best if you distill the entire article article down to a free post on Reddit, and OPTIONALLY people can click over to your site.
I think if you give 90% of the content, and leave the rest on your site, people are ok with that. But Redditors are NOT down with blatant promotion, and that’s awesome because Reddit is more fun that way :)
Fantastic post here Neville.
I’m not really truly present on ALL of the social media platforms so I’ll just talk about Facebook.
In my experience, I’ve found that Facebook lives are probably the fastest way to get engagement AND you can make sales or collect leads WHILE you’re creating content which is…well the “Bee’s Knees”.
I’m no expert but below are a few things that I’ve picked up along the way.
Before your live:
>You can schedule your Facebook lives (you can do this via your Facebook page via API: https://media.fb.com/2016/10/18/scheduling-a-live-broadcast-via-the-live-api/) or using software like Belive.tv or Just Broadcaster which lets you do this from a group, your timeline or any page. This way you can tell people when you’re going live and have more people show up by inviting your FB friends, email list…basically you’re entire following if you wish. ONE MORE THING: people can get a reminder 3 minutes before you go live AND they can share your scheduled FB live post as well.
During your live:
>You can drop a link in the comments to an affiliate offer or your own product when you have a good talking point and you can tell people that they can use _____ to help them with _____ or something like that.
>Ask people to say where they’re watching from, type the number 1 if they can hear you or just comment _____ if they agree/disagree or something like that.
After your live:
>Right click on your FB live video and click on “show video URL” and share that with your list showing them the replay. You can also make another Facebook post where you say something like “Earlier I made a video where I’m showing you how you can ______ in just ____ without _______. Who wants the replay, comment ‘Me’ and I’ll send you the link.” Alternatively you can say something like “If I get 20 people that are interested I’ll share the link”. ALSO, you can also share this link to other social media platforms too of course.
>Use the Google Chrome extension “Awesome Facebook Video Downloader” (or something comparable) to download your live videos and then you can use them on YouTube, Vimeo, or even create a digital product out of them if you wish.
Just a few other tips on FB from a fellow Texan (I’m in Dallas).
Great stuff brotha, definitely sharing.
~ Phil
These are awesome tips for Facebook Live Phil!
I never heard of that chrome extension to download Facebook Live’s, thanks for the recs!
Sure thing Nev.
Have a great one bro.
Nev, Box this man! – Thank you Phil. I’ll be putting this into action immediately.
Thanks for the love Hector lol.
I’m glad to see you’re gonna take action with this!
~ Phillip “a.k.a. Uncle Phil” Lopez
Bahahhaha, wow, I guess someone thinks this is a NevBox-worthy comment!
Just realized I used your instead of you’re…3 TIMES.
#FML
Bahahaha, I’m purposely NOT going to edit it for you, just to make you feel worse :-P
Awesome tips for Facebook Live! Thanks a bunch!! :-D
Hey thank you Lenka! I’ve made like over 100 live videos or so now.
They’re SUPER fun/a bit nerve-racking (wracking?) lol.
-Phil
Damn Phillip! How are the results so far?
I think they are great for certain things, but I don’t know how much time to dedicate towards them. I still see the most engagement from my email list.
Hey Neville, results are that they’ve helped me make some affiliate sales, sell my own product, become WAYYYY more comfortable on camera, and I’ve got a f**k ton of content I can repurpose.
Like I said, I’m no expert but…having 100+ FB live videos does help me look more like one.
People come to me asking me how to do this or that on FB live because they see my face often.
I do think that you should ultimately be building up your email list BTW. You can use these live videos for that too. It’s just a really easy way to get some traffic & engagement back to where you want IF you do it in a non-spammy way EVEN if you have no email list at all.
– Phil
Good point Phillip.
The good part about Facebook Live Video is that Facebook is trying to actively promote it a lot, so anyone who participates gets rewarded with higher exposure than a normal post.
And for you the experience of being on live video hundred+ times is going to be invaluable. Great job dude :)
Thanks for the tip my friend, I was looking for something like that. A hug.
Neville fantastic roundup of tips! I would like to contribute my YouTube tips for clients. I think they are pretty basic but helpful for people new to YouTube:
–Pick a title that describes what’s in the video i.e. “Cute pitbull playing with 2 cats”
–Make at least a two sentence description of what’s going on in the video. It helps YouTube pickup more keywords describing your video.
–In the description include links to relevant products.
–In the description give the name of your website or contact information where they can find out more.
–In the description list any links to social networks you are on.
These are basic but surprisingly help a lot of youTube newcomers. Thank you again for the quality posts you put out.
Great tips Rita! They are pretty basic, but as you said, a lot of people don’t even know these basic rules of uploading YouTube videos.
I bet these will help a lot of people :)
One thing to add regarding YouTube. If your video is educational, have the audio transcribed. Then add the transcription to the video.
This will help your video be found in Google because you’ve added more searchable text.
If you use automatic captioning You tube makes a crude transcript.
Transcript = keywords
Also. . .
You can also download that transcript and edit it into something more readable.
Access the transcript for download from the the “More ” link with three dots in front of it at the bottom left in the “tray”under the video once it’s up and going.
More on creating the transcript via auto captioning:
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2734796?hl=en
Very helpful, thanks Dave!
If you do use transcription in your video be sure to mention some “hot” keywords in an example when talking about your subject. For example, if smurfs are really hot in searches, mention smurfs somehow in the example (“if I were a smurf and wanted to fix this lawn mower I would…”). This will increase your video indexing on google.
Good tip JC…..especially if you’re a Smurf :-P