Facebook for Bloggers with Melanie Ferguson: Mediavine On Air Episode 18

There’s one platform that all bloggers know can be difficult.

That’s right: Facebook.

But Facebook isn’t as hard as it seems, and on today’s podcast episode we have an expert with a proven track record to show us.

Melanie Ferguson from Southern Crush At Home joins Jenny Guy, Director of Marketing at Mediavine, to share proven strategies to transform Facebook from a headache to an additional revenue stream + traffic source. No matter if you’re a Facebook master or novice, Melanie has tips that will grow your blog and finally shut down those fears!

Join us as she lets us in on her process, and stick around to hear her answer listener questions on how you can grow your audience.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Helpful Resources

• Southern Crush at Home — Melanie’s blog
• Melanie’s Presentation
• Melanie’s Instagram

Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING] JENNY GUY: Hey there, everyone. It is Wednesday, June 30. And that means it is time for another episode of the Summer of Live. So come one, come all. Climb aboard that teal van that we just saw. We go live on Facebook every week during the summer featuring experts from across the blogging industry on any and all topics relevant to content creators. I guess in this van scenario, and in the trailer that we just saw, that makes me the driver, which is perfect for all my childhood dreams of becoming like Otto from The Simpsons. Please don’t call me Otto though. I am Jenny Guy, your host for Mediavine’s lives.

And thank you for joining us on today, this most sacred of days. If anyone hasn’t told you yet, it is social media day. Yes, it’s a real thing. And it is an especially appropriate day for content creators because so much traffic can be generated for us on these different platforms. And it is also especially appropriate for our topic for today’s show. But before we get into all of that, tell us audience, what is your most successful social platform for earnings and or driving traffic to your website? So say hi in the comments. Tell us those things and we will see, have a little platform battle like West Side Story.

The only most list, however, that today’s topic might make is I would say maybe the most complained about social media platform for content creators. That is right. We are talking about Facebook, also known as Zuckerberg Squali. It’s not known as that. I just made that up. But it could be called that. I think that everyone would acknowledge that Facebook has the potential to be an extremely powerful tool when it’s used well. I think the issue with that is figuring out how to use it well since it has felt like a moving target for so many of us for a long time now.

However, my guest today is here to help. So let’s meet her. Melanie Ferguson, welcome. She is the creator behind the blog Southern Crush At Home. She loves home decor, crafts, and collaborating. She started the blog after her home decor storefront flooded and slowly transitioned her entire business into the online space. She quickly found a way to drive blog traffic and sales through the power of social media. And she is here to unlock all of these secrets. Melanie, welcome to the Summer of Live.

MELANIE FERGUSON: Oh, Jenny. Thank you. I’m so excited to be here. Can you tell? I’m over here dancing and making hand signals. I’m so excited to share. So–

JENNY GUY: I’m so excited that you are here. This topic is fascinating. I can’t wait to hear more about it. I’m going to go ahead and get your presentation going and we will go for it. Also living for her background, which of course, I mean she has to represent as an interior person. But it’s beautiful. Here we go.

MELANIE FERGUSON: Thank you. Thank you for the compliment. Yeah. So let’s get excited, guys. I know there’s so many things to be unexcited about when it comes to Facebook. But today, we’re going to give it a break. We’re going to get excited about Facebook and all the opportunities that Facebook has to offer us that maybe you already knew. But I’m thinking you maybe don’t already know. So we’re going to talk about making money. Don’t we all want to make money? This is just one more way that you can make money. And it’s with Facebook.

So I want to share with you guys how I personally grew my blog to over 52,000 sessions in yes, four weeks. That may sound crazy, crazy stupid, not real. But it was and I want to share with you how. So first, we’re going to cover the following things. We’re going to cover the power of having that engaged audience on Facebook. Four ideas to increase your blog traffic that you can use over and over again, because don’t we want to use things more than once? And then how to capitalize on time spent on social media if we’re going to sit there and spend our time on social media.

So I’m excited. Let’s go. A little bit about me before we get started. Just in case you’re like, well, why should I even care? Why should I listen to you? Who the heck are you anyway? Let’s see here. Well I have almost 200,000 followers on my Facebook page. And I actually was invited early on in my Facebook journey to join the First Leaders Network. This is a little group that Facebook put together to kind of create a think tank.

And so they pick our brains and kind of build their platform based on what we as creators share with them. I’ve earned over $50,000 from Facebook monetization in seven months. And I actually am one of the freaks that loves Facebook. So I send approximately 85,000 page views to my blog per month using Facebook. And I want to show you how you can too.

All right. So we’re going to first start out with the power of having that engaged audience on Facebook. So let’s be honest. I wouldn’t have any of these page views if I didn’t first start with an audience. So in order to grow an audience, you’re going to want to try to think of it as creating your own tribe, your own group of people that probably at the beginning are similar to you, or what it is that you’re trying to portray as far as your page goes and your niche. You’re going to let them get to know you.

So the best rule of thumb is just to be yourself. The hardest thing you could ever do for growing an audience is to be fake or not real. You are going to want to share vulnerabilities with them. And that doesn’t mean putting it all out there, but definitely letting them see a glimpse of what it’s like to really be your friend. OK? Naturally, people want to support people they know, like, and trust. So they are going to want to take that natural next step with you after they get to know, you which is to do whatever the heck it is you tell them to do.

And in this case, we’re going to be telling them to come over to our blogs. They will become your built-in traffic source. They will see value definitely in getting more from you. And honestly, we talk about vanity numbers a lot. This is just when you grow your page to a certain size. But I will say I would like to argue that it’s not vanity when it comes to brands. They see you as an authority. So that’s just something to kind of put in the back of your head as we go along.

All right. Let’s see here. I have over 12 ideas. And actually there are 12 specific things that I did to grow my traffic to 52,000 page views in the four weeks. But I’m going to share with you because of time today four of the top ways that I found to grow that traffic. And these are things that you can use over and over. And I recommend that you do. The first one was my biggest success. It was a comic giveaway post. So how that looks is on your blog, you will create this– well actually on your page, I’m sorry, on your Facebook page, you’re going to create this giveaway. For me, I used some print on demand products that shared my logo, and that they would get excited about.

Just the rule of thumb is it does not take a lot to get people excited. They would love anything that you call free. So it’s a free giveaway. It was for five of my logoed mugs. I said that for a week, they had to go over to my Facebook page and leave a comment on any blog post they wanted to. And then they had to come back to the Facebook post and comment, done. And so that not only gave me traction on the Facebook post, but it also gave me comments and activity and page views for my blog.

I go a little bit deeper on this one over on my e-book. But that is the main gist. At the end, I said, listen, guys. I’m so excited to share with you the winners. And I went live and told them not the winners, nope, not the winners. I told them to go to a specific page on my blog to check and see if they were the winner. That is huge. That is where I got a huge influx of page views so that they could go see if they are the winners. And then I progressed and made them go back again the next day. Because I said, there were a few that weren’t claimed yet.

Be sure to go back and check and see if you were the winner. So there are several steps of each of these. But I just want to give you the main idea to get you excited and get you on track with growing your blog through Facebook.

The second one is genius, guys. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this out there. But it is where you give them a bar code. So I would go live, or you don’t have to be live. But make a post on your page that says, listen. I’ve got something I want to gift you. But the gift is over on my blog. So I wrote– I have a DIY niche. And so I do a lot of DIYs. I made a craft with leftover Starbucks bottles. And so I had this huge post about Starbucks bottles. Well at the bottom, I hid a little bar code to free Starbucks.

And so I went on Facebook and I said, listen, people. If you want to get some of this free Starbucks, you need to go over there to my blog post. So everybody rushed over, they all got some of the blog post bar code, free Starbucks, and they were so excited. And they commented below. I said, let me know below the post what you think. And they loved it. So that is my second way that you can use to grow page views from Facebook.

JENNY GUY: Are there strict steps that you have to do when doing a Facebook giveaway? We had a question from Stacy. And she said, is there a place we can go to find that information?

MELANIE FERGUSON: Yes. So a lot of times, you might be like, oh what if I do the wrong thing and Facebook cuts me off? I have a complete step by step guide over in my e-book. And then also if you’d rather just for free go over to my page on Facebook, Southern Crush At Home, and just you can find my blog post, I mean my Facebook post that I did with this, and just copy and paste it and put it in your own giveaway. So that’s kind of a good rule of thumb. But yeah, you’re not supposed to say– if it’s something that is of value, you’re just supposed to say, you don’t have to do anything specific to when this. Things like that.

So just copy mine. You’re free to copy mine. And we’ll be sharing those links that the end.

JENNY GUY: Yes. So onto the Help Me post. Looking forward to hearing about it.

MELANIE FERGUSON: Yes. So Help Me. Listen, people naturally want to help you. They aren’t out to get you on Facebook, despite what your fear tells you. They want to help you. So one of my tactics, and I did call this a tactic, is I tell them, listen. I created this DIY. And I really need help naming it. Can you help me? So at Christmas time, I made this DIY angel mesh out of decco mesh. And I said, I really need help naming it. Would you guys come help me name it?

So I had a DIY post of how to create this DIY. But at the bottom of it, it said, please help me name this creation. And they all commented, I would call it, Susie Q Angel or whatever. And I got so many comments on that post. And I told them, there might be something in it for the winner, the one I choose, what have you. But it’s just a fun way to engage your audience. And it’s just a creative way to, again, pull them back in to the process. And this would work across the board with anything.

OK, so the final idea that I have time to share with you today is an event post. All right? So I created an event that I hold every single quarter in correlation with my brand. And this doesn’t have to be something as big as what I put on. But you could have it even as something as I’m going to be live but I’m going to be doing something special on this live. And you create this event blog post. And you tell your Facebook audience, listen. I want you to participate in this event. Go find all the information of it on my blog.

And they can register for free prizes, they can grab a t-shirt, they can opt in for your freebies. Maybe you have sponsors. I don’t know what your event looks like. But it can be as simple or as ornate as you would like to make it. But definitely think about sending your Facebook followers to your blog to check it all out. So those are my top four ideas for driving traffic from Facebook to your blog.

JENNY GUY: Phenomenal.

MELANIE FERGUSON: So we are to my favorite part, which is talking about how to capitalize on your time spent. So I don’t know about you guys, but all social media for me can become easily a time suck. And you can literally get drawn in for hours. And so I want to make sure that your time on the platform is spent very wisely, because let’s be honest, there are better things out there in life than spending all your time on social media. I always recommend to the people that are in my groups that you are more of a creator than a consumer. And so when you are creating, whether it’s a blog post, a Facebook post, or a video, I want you to keep these three things in mind. And I’m a big aliterator.

So I like all of it to kind of be like, these are all C’s. All right? You’re going to capture, connect, and CTA. Capture, connect, CTA. So you want to capture their attention. You have 3 seconds, three split seconds to stop their scroll. It is a crowded space out there no matter what platform you’re on, but especially Facebook. And you have 3 seconds to capture their attention. So you want to do that with stats, head, heart, and humor. Stats, numbers, things that they’re like, what? And humor. Of course, any time you can be funny, or make a joke, especially if it’s niche related, that is huge.

And then heart. If it’s something that you’re scrolling and you see this sad puppy, of course you’re going to stop. So head, heart, humor is going to be your way to capture their attention in the first three seconds. Your second is to connect with them. And guys, this one is so easy. Anyone can do it. You on video need to smile. Not like I just did, but a sincere smile. Smiling is universal. It is a universal act of affection that will bring people in. Listen, there’s enough sad things out there. And if we can just brighten someone’s day with a smile, they’re going to remember and they’re going to come back.

They may not remember what you said, they may not remember what you did, but they always remember how you made them feel. And smiling makes everybody feel good. So connect with them on some sort of level, even if it’s just smiling. And then a call to action. This one is super hard to remember. So you might end up having to put a little sticky note on your phone or something to remind you not to forget to tell them to do something. They are literally sitting there begging to know what you’d like them to do. Because they’re on the other end just going, oh maybe I’ll just go to the next one.

If you tell them what to do, they will do it. So you want to tell them maybe even a few times what to do. And always try to remember to remind them to follow me, to let a friend know about this video or this post. If it’s a static post, where you want them to go, if you want them to go off Facebook. So call to action, connect, and capture are my three ways to capitalize on the time you spend on Facebook.

All right. So I know Jenny asked a ton of questions for me. I cannot wait to dive into this section coming up next about this interview. But in the meantime, if you loved these four ways that I shared with you to grow your blog traffic using Facebook, then I want to invite you to grab your free copy of all 12 ways that I use to grow my blog traffic. And yeah. I’m excited to share that with you. Right there is the link. It says that it’s to my podcast. It is to my podcast. I have a podcast on growing your audience online. But the opt in is right there as well. So I’m excited to give that.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. And everyone, not to worry. We are going to share Melanie’s slides with you at the end of the presentation. So you don’t have to worry about writing that link down. It’s not a problem. We have a few questions from the audience before we get into my questions. So one of them was, it’s from Jenne. And she wanted to know how many followers did you have before you did the comment give away post?

MELANIE FERGUSON: Excellent question. I think about that all the time. People are going to want to know. Did you start with an audience built in? So I want to start with saying that, yes, I did have an audience when I started the give away, all of these things that I use to grow my blog. But it doesn’t mean they don’t work for every size audience. Here me well. There are people that make six figures off of half the audience I have, off of a third of the audience I have.

So it’s just a matter of how you have grown your audience and if it is in a way that they are engaged with you. I did have about, I even hate to say the number because I don’t want people to think that, oh, well I don’t have that many. I could never do this. This isn’t going to work for me. I won’t qualify for Mediavine if I follow these steps. Yes you will. Because if you remember, I said that these are ways that you can grow your traffic that you can use over, and over, and over.

So if you even just do that first thing, which is the comment give away every single month, I promise you you’re going to see results. But I had about 40,000.

JENNY GUY: OK. So a lot of growth from 40,000 into 200. So you are doing this rinse and repeat. So here’s a question that I think will help because we definitely do want things that are replicable that we don’t set and forget so we’re not having to reinvent the wheel every single time we want to do a Facebook post. But Stacey asked, how do you make sure these types of posts don’t become linkbait or click bait with Facebook where they’re penalizing you?

MELANIE FERGUSON: Well none of these should be link bait or click bait because what they consider click bait is things that you say, when the people put like A, B, C, D, and you just comment with A, A, A, A, B, B, B, B. That’s a complete instant red flag to Facebook that there’s something off about this post. So for the details about how to carry out these actual ideas, they’re completely spelled out in the e-book. But the comment giveaway, they didn’t just come back and type done. They had to tell me, what did they think about the post, or what day they did it.

So there’s more than just the word done, done, done, done, done. So–

JENNY GUY: Getting a little more information when people are entering into whatever the giveaway is. Brenda said, I joined in a little bit late. Is this working for on a Facebook page or a group? And this actually is what our audience is so great at doing this, jumping into questions that I had planned to ask. But how do you differentiate what you post between the group and the page?

MELANIE FERGUSON: So I have five groups. My page runs on a little bit of autopilot. And I know this was something we might cover later. But I’ll go ahead and dive into it really quickly. I do use a scheduler. I did not always use a scheduler. So your number of posts per day depends on the size of your audience. Anything less than 5,000 followers, you really only need to post a couple times a day. At my level, I need to be posting five to six times a day. So when it gets to that level, I really need a little extra help because again, it’s about creating, not consuming. And I’m sorry, every time I get on, I end up consuming.

So I have a scheduler that I do have in place. And then so that is for my page. Now I use a hybrid. So I will share automatically the links to my blog in a round Robin type of a fashion so that based on the season, based on what’s going on is when they’ll get those posts. And then I will go live. I sprinkle in a little bit of memes. I sprinkle in a little bit of actually reward style products. So I have this magical mix of media that I like to call it that I use to draw traffic to my blog on Facebook.

But as far as my groups go, totally different animal. Groups are just, again, completely different. So I have a group that is just an offshoot of my page, which I think is what a lot of people start with. And it’s my free group. And what gets put in there is a lot of times just what the people in the group want to post. So I let them put posts in over and over again. Mine’s in the DIY niche. So it might be a little more simple because they want to share their projects. OK. So they’re over there sharing projects.

It is not a– I do share, come see my blog. But a lot of it is just a share from my page over to my group.

JENNY GUY: So great with the group. We might be able to get in, this is a quick, this is down and dirty with this episode. But do you do prompts in that group that are getting people to share those projects? Are you encouraging that engagement? Or is it just to a point where now people just know, I just read my bathroom and I’m definitely sharing it?

MELANIE FERGUSON: A lot of times, it is organic. It is literally up to the people and they share it. You can’t– OK, that’s just a side note, just so we sidestep over– Facebook does have a lot of technical rules. And they don’t really like you to say, share this. Even in print, even in– the bots are there. And they will pick up on things that you do and say. So honestly, let me see. I do have this little– I had this little block and you have to get creative. And the block says share. So I just hold it up. And don’t forget to do this for me. Or things like that.

And it’s just kind of to trigger. They know they should share my stuff after all of these years of watching me. But it’s a good reminder. Because maybe they watch 50 other things before me.

JENNY GUY: So that is great actual– that is gold. So in print, do not say, share this. Just stay away from it. There are ways around it, but just to make sure, don’t get yourself into Facebook jail. OK. All right. Everybody, I wanted to ask an audience question. And then I’m going to ask the same question. You said you’re posting five to six times a day. For your audience, is there a particular time of day that you guys see higher performance on Facebook? And that’s for the audience and also for Melanie.

MELANIE FERGUSON: There is no perfect time. However, after a certain amount of time of being committed to your Facebook page and the growth of it, you will start to notice patterns. And if you go into Creator Studio, which is going to be your Bible for your Facebook page, it is going to show you when most of your people are the most active. And you just kind of get a rhythm. And so at this point, I’m posting every couple of hours during the daytime. Now there are pages with millions of followers that post throughout the night as well.

But I just haven’t seen the value in doing that. And I will say this caveat. It matters what you post. So don’t just post to post. Post with a purpose. It is better to have one good post that is at a good time of day that has a wonderful call to action and gets your point across than to have five just, i slapped it out there because Facebook, the algorithm wants me to keep my page going. So–

JENNY GUY: That is great advice too. OK, I have a great question from Cyd who actually works on Food Fnatic here. What if you have a large Facebook following but they’ve gone dormant? She runs two sites, each respectively have 90,000 and 200,000 followers. Is there any advice for jumping back in? Or do you just do it?

MELANIE FERGUSON: So that is a great, awesome, amazing question. I’m assuming that they’re talking about groups. And–

JENNY GUY: No, I think these are pages.

MELANIE FERGUSON: Oh pages. OK, well either way, I just did this with a group that I have. And it’s a slow go. But I’m going to tell you why I decided to go the route of trying to revive a dead group versus starting a new one. Number one, and again, we’re back to the vanity numbers. People want to join groups that look like there is other people. It’s kind of like that grocery shelf. If you go in and it’s empty, you don’t want to take the last thing. But if there are several things, you feel comfortable. You’re like, oh it’s good. I can fit in here.

So I kept it large. But it has been like pulling teeth to get it up and running again. But it’s just that continuous consistent activity in there that every time I post now, it went from just a couple people commenting to 10 people commenting, to now we get 30 and 50 people commenting again after just a few short weeks. So I would say just do it. And as far as your pages go, if you are trying to revive a page, I want to give you this– I want to give you this piece of encouragement.

So funny story, I started a second page because I just had this URL that I thought was amazing. And I started the second page and I just kind of published it and set it there. People have been following it and joining it for over a year. It’s almost at 2,000 followers. I’ve never posted. I’ve never done anything to it. So I just want to encourage you the fact that you can still make a page that’s sitting there work.

JENNY GUY: Very helpful. All right. We’re going to get into a little bit more with schedulers and things like that in a bit. But I’m going to go ahead and address that elephant in the room that I think a lot of content creators feel that with all the algorithm changes and the constant just general changes overall on Facebook, a lot of people, I’ve seen it over and over again, and particularly in the Mediavine Facebook group, people are saying, I’m done with Facebook. I’m not going to try anymore. I have no reach on my posts. It’s so frustrating. I feel like I’m screaming into the void.

How do you stay up to date with all of those changes and beat the algorithm, or at least live with it to a point where your reach hasn’t completely gone down?

MELANIE FERGUSON: So that’s amazing. That is something that we’re all completely dealing with right now, myself of course included. So I have several ideas. Number one is to get yourself a group of groups. So if you have a group of groups that you know that you’re allowed to post your links in or share to, and they’re not going to slap you on the wrist, or tell you you’re out, then that’s gold. So I personally have a list that I try to keep adding to all the time of 32 groups that are in my niche.

And so when I post something that I really want eyeballs on, I share it to all those groups. All right? And then it just kind of starts this little bit of traction. A second thing to say about giving up. Obviously, sure. You can give up. But Facebook isn’t going anywhere. And I’m hoping to ride the wave. So every time that something comes down the pipe that we are just like, oh I can’t believe Facebook did this. Now it’s even harder. I just remember, well, that’s what they said this last round of things that came down. And look at how much growth I got in between.

So the only thing you can be guaranteed is that there will always be change. It’s social media. And so if you do nothing, you will get nothing. It’s kind of like dieting. Every diet works but no diet does. I mean doing no diet doesn’t. So I like to think that they’re going to come around and change it up a little bit. I know that they’ve done that with lots of things like watch parties, they realized that wasn’t working well. So they stopped. Just all– they do listen. They do listen to our feedback. So–

JENNY GUY: And that’s great to hear. And this is from somebody who has worked directly with them. So very helpful. We have a comment from Just That Perfect Piece. You just keep on working. It is not your fault. It’s summer. It’s happening because all those upgrades that keep on working. Excellent feedback to give to ourselves and to each other. And then another question I have, which is a lot of us feel like it’s going towards a pay to play model with Facebook that we keep getting those emails over and over again, boost. You have a free account to boost. Here’s $5.00 to boost your post.

And then it feels, I’ve heard this feedback from other people, that once you boost, then your reach goes down if you don’t keep boosting. So it’s like shaving your legs. You have to keep shaving. So what is your opinion on that? Have you been spending money on Facebook to boost? And what is your advice?

MELANIE FERGUSON: OK, excellent question again. Thanks Jenny. Number one, I would let everybody know I don’t spend a penny on Facebook. I have not spent a penny for years. I am of the thought process that if you do boost, you will continue to need to boost. I’m also with the thought process that, what other advertising that you get in this world in this universe is free? Tell me where that is. It doesn’t exist really. And so to have to pay to play, I don’t know that you’re necessarily playing. I think that you are building a online business.

So if you have to pay, you have to pay for every other platform that you use, your email provider, your blogging– you a piece of everything to somebody in exchange for something else. So I don’t really see it as pay to play. Personally, I have found different ways, kind of grassroots, organic ways to continue to grow and sustain my platform on Facebook. And one I wanted to mention that it also goes with the question we had just before about Facebook being dead and what should we do.

I like to interject niche specific memes. So people love to laugh, they love to see things that make them think. So if you can even create them yourself, or if you find ones that have done well on other people’s pages that are similar to yours, those are amazing resources. Because it’s not just any meme. I have a DIY blog. I wouldn’t just go put cat memes on my page. Because that’s not the people I’m trying to attract. But if I want to put a DIY meme, or create a DIY meme that fits my niche, then I can grow quickly.

And I go in and I do that little invite those people to follow me on every one of those that does really well. So just another little secret way to grow your Facebook following.

JENNY GUY: And I wanted to jump to this one too. Blending that content, because we talked about before that you do a giveaway post, or you do a bar code post, you do a meme, you have your sharing of your blog posts on an autopilot round-robin. So how do you blend the content that you share? What types of posts are going in there? And old content versus new content.

MELANIE FERGUSON: So I use MeetEdgar. And I have a link for them. But basically it’s just one of those that’s made my life a lot easier, at least for the blog post posts. Blog post posts. Yes. And so I load my blog post links into there with a catchy description. It needs to have those three things. It has to have that capture, connect, and CTA for the description. Everything matters. And so then I have the link. And it automatically for me will process those in an order based on the category I put them in.

So I have summer posts. They’re all and then I’ll schedule all summer posts. So it kind of does that for me. If you’re just getting started and you don’t want to use a scheduler, I would recommend you just start a Google spreadsheet and you have your blog post categorized by maybe what your categories are on your blog. And then you can just kind of go through those. And if you wanted to add a date next to when you last post it, that might work as well. As far as the mix of the rest if it goes, it is your preference.

I found for my audience, they are really active early in the morning. So I will put in some sort of meme that I think is niche specific. I call it an engagement post. Sometimes it’s simply just typing out a question to them like, show me what you’ve made lately. And I just watch all the comments come in. Then if it’s a meme and it goes viral, which I did have one. Oh my gosh, Jenny. It had 401,000 comments.

JENNY GUY: That’s insane.

MELANIE FERGUSON: Yes. I feel like it too. And so and over half a million reactions. So I’m going in of course, and slowly. You don’t want to invite people too quickly. But I am inviting people methodically back to my page because I know they’re in my niche if they like this meme. And so what I’ll try to do is add those type of posts early in the morning. And then right after it a couple hours later, I post my blog thing. And so I already have the algorithm, loving those people who have reacted to that post, showing them that blog post.

But if I didn’t start with the one that created the activity, Facebook may not have shown them my blog post because it has a link. So–

JENNY GUY: Right, because you’re sending them away from Facebook. So you’re priming the pump with something that’s getting all of the engagement going, getting people talking, getting them loving it. And then you hit them with the thing that’s going to drive them away from the platform.

MELANIE FERGUSON: That’s exactly right.

JENNY GUY: Love it. All right. Brenda said, how much time do you spend each week scheduling posts and or with live interaction? If daily, how many times per day do you check in?

MELANIE FERGUSON: So Facebook is one of my larger platforms. It is my largest platform. I’m on others, but I don’t dedicate as much to it. It just, again, it’s not for everybody. I don’t want to say that. It’s literally the platform you’re the most comfortable and you feel like you fit the best with. Because it’s not easy. It’s hard work. So it’s going to have to be something that you are OK with enough to do over, and over, and over every day. So Brenda, I would just say that I spend about an hour on Sunday afternoon getting my scheduler all loaded if I have any new blog posts that I want to load in or anything like that.

And then I kind of for my lives, I do at least two, maybe three lives a week that I plan ahead for on my page. And so what I mean by that is if it’s a DIY, I’m going to get all the supplies ready, I’m going to already know what it is I’m going to share, and then I also usually have a blog post that ties in with it that’s ready. And I may do a YouTube video for it. I don’t know.

But I already kind of know in my head what those events are going to look like. And then if I want to go live on the fly, I know what time’s my posts are going to be scheduled out. So I’d be like, OK, between 3:00 and 6:00, I know there’s a big blank. And if I want to go live, I can go live any time in there. And just maybe I take them shopping with me. Or maybe I show them something I saw really quick or some behind the scenes.

So as far as each day. I will go in the night before and just look at my queue and see what looks like it’s going to be posting, does that all look right? Do I still like the way that looks? And that little five minute peek at what’s going to happen the next day frees me up that whole next day to not even think about my Facebook page. So–

JENNY GUY: Super helpful. And just that, yeah. You can sleep soundly knowing that you’re all set to go for the next day. Deb said, at what point were you able to hire an assistant? As your page grows? As messages increase?

MELANIE FERGUSON: OK, great question. I do not have an assistant right now. I’ve asked people in groups before if they would be happy to volunteer to help me keep engagement up. And I have a friend that is in one of my groups for free. And she actually approves posts for me in the group because she gets it. She knows kind of what that group’s about. And so you can always just grab people from within. They’re super honored, they’re excited, they’re flattered, they want to help you. Again, if you have built that foundation, people are going to naturally want to know what they can do to help you and what you want them to do.

So I don’t have an assistant.

JENNY GUY: But you’re utilizing people from your groups to help with those particular groups. That is really helpful. Something I wanted to go back to is that you were saying that you are going live two to three times a week. Obviously, that is something you’re seeing is a huge advantage towards driving traffic. Could you talk a little bit more about that?

MELANIE FERGUSON: Definitely. So when Facebook rolled out lives, they were really encouraging people to go live. In fact, now we haven’t even touched on monetization directly from Facebook. But there is a ton of opportunity to get a really good income straight from Facebook itself. OK, so the blog is like this third party way to get an income. But and of course affiliates and all sorts of and reward style I mentioned. But directly from Facebook, you can be monetized for uploaded videos that are already recorded. And then also live videos.

It’s two separate things with them. But you can make easily a couple thousand dollars a month just off of monetization directly through Facebook. And as far as the lives go, you will see about seven to 10 times more engagement from doing a live video than if you were to just do a post or a pre-recorded video even that is not in the monetization.

Now there are a few hoops you jump through to get approved for monetization. But it’s amazing and awesome to always have that goal in front of you. And you can find it in Creator Studio, you can check it every day. How much more do I need to do? And that kind of can keep you going as well.

JENNY GUY: And speaking of Creator Studio, tell us where– for those of us who have only dabbled in Creator Studio, give us where your favorite spots are in there. Because you said it would be like your Bible. Are there any special tutorials you’ve gone through that you love? Tell us where we need to look.

MELANIE FERGUSON: Well that’s hard to do with just words. But when you log in, they kind of mess with it all the time. We talked about how change is the only thing you can count on. But they have a pre published and published– don’t worry about the pre-published. The published is where you want to look. And that is literally going to be every single post that you have published. And they allow you to drill it down to, do you want to just see static posts? Do you want to see videos? Or do you want to see live videos? And when you get to that part, you can actually click on the insights for those posts and see how they did, see where you lost them is what I like to call it.

When you do a video, it’ll say, this is when people dropped off. This is how long they stayed. This is how many people liked it. And this is what time you post it. So you kind of can start to look and see what trends are for your particular page. And there are also insights on the sidebar as well that have to do with the same exact things or monetization. So if you have monetization, it will also tell you kind of where you’re at with that specific video as far as income goes. And then you can go back and you can add things to the video to make it even more robust so that you can make even more money on that video.

But as far as if you’re just getting started, the Creator Studio, I would use it for the published section just to see how each of your posts is performing. I don’t do the A/B testing, I don’t do all of that for me. That just sounds like extra work. But I’m sure it’s valuable. But as far as the insights go, I would definitely look into that part.

JENNY GUY: You said something very interesting that I want to drill down on. And we’re very low on time. But you said, go back to the videos and add things that make it more robust. Give me a little more detail on that because I am fascinated.

MELANIE FERGUSON: OK. So when I post a monetized video, I don’t put a link in it immediately. I kind of see how far it’s going to get with engagement on the front end. And after maybe a couple of days of it being kind of out there on the platform, which by the way, a good statistic that you can put money on is your average post, your average video, live video, has a Facebook life. I call it Facebook life. Remember in high school when you had like a, what is? When you had a half life. That’s what it was. Yeah.

The Facebook life of a video is four hours, four, 4 and 1/2 hours. So with that, know that that’s about the time frame that you have to get it into the other groups. I call the first hour your golden hour. And I have all these tips of ways that you can make sure that that golden hour is solid. But if it’s been a couple days, I’ll probably go in and drop in maybe for the supplies that you saw in this, go to my blog post. Or I want you to go see this also. Or down in the comments, you can start adding links to other videos.

Hey, if you liked this one, you may want to go see my one that’s similar at this link and send them to a different Facebook video. So you don’t want to just, again, just leave it alone if it’s doing really well.

JENNY GUY: I feel like we could keep talking for the next four or five hours because there’s so many things I want to ask you about. And you’re such a great expert. And you’re helping us so much. But we’ve got to cut it a little bit short. But before we go, I wanted to ask you the last thing. If people feel like they are very frustrated, can you give us a couple of things that they can start doing now, tomorrow, today, this afternoon, this evening that will help them re-engage in Facebook?

And I’m going to give you a second to think about that will I make a couple of announcements. Guys, it’s the 4th of July weekend. So we will not be live next week. We’re going to take a little break, go on hiatus, get the van serviced to make sure that everything’s clean. There’s like Cheetos all over the floor. But our next live will be back on Wednesday, July 14 at 3:00 PM Eastern as always. And we will have Jane Ko with us from Taste of Koko. And we’re going to be talking about stories, all the stories, all the different platforms.

We’re going to be talking about different ways to make them and to make them easier, make them feel personal. So we’re really excited to have her. Please feel free to go subscribe on YouTube. We put all of our live videos edited there after we’re done. And then also just a reminder that these videos are always available any time. They’re very convenient. We want you to watch them. So if there is going to be a replay, there’s always going to be a replay because they’re always here. So don’t ever worry about that.

Now we’re going to share Melanie’s slides so that nobody has to worry about trying to take their notes or read their notes. You’ve got links in there. She’s got her 12 different types of posts that work to help bring in traffic. But Melanie, before we leave this wonderful time together, will you please give us a couple of things that will reinvigorate us to go out and attack Facebook?

MELANIE FERGUSON: Yes. Thank you, Jenny. So and plus before I go, before I forget, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time here and I appreciate you and every single person watching. Because I know this is taking time out of your day. And hopefully you’ll find it super valuable. But I would just recommend that what I’ve learned over years of being in business for myself is that action always squashes fear. And I know it’s fearful. If you have left a page alone for a long time and you’re just like, oh, what are they going to think? What are they going to say? They’re going to think I’m an imposter syndrome person.

No. No, no, no. Fear is a liar. So you just need to hop on the horse. Get on the bike again. Just go in there and go live. Listen, if it’s helpful, just put a sticky note over your entire phone. And then just hit the little live button in the bottom. Just talk to it like you would your best friend and watch what happens. I would just say, give it a shot. See what they think. They’re going to be nice to you. A lot of times– I have a friend. There’s an episode on my podcast that specifically deals with this where my friend had to take a hiatus. And she was off of her Facebook page for several months because of personal.

So when she hopped back on, she said that the people– there are so much content out there, they barely knew she wasn’t on there. They were just like, oh, oh. Glad to see you back. And they were just happy to have her there. So I would just say, jump in. Do whatever it takes to just go live. If you don’t want to show your face, just show your hands, something behind the scenes, opening a package that just came to you that has to do with your business. Just something that can get you out there.

And the people will warm up. And I would say one last idea to keep yourself in the game. And this is huge. Commit to a time every single week that they can find you. If you will commit and post it, and pin it, or make it your banner and say, I will be here every Monday night at 7:00 PM, watch if they don’t start showing up. Watch if they don’t start engaging with you. They are there to support you. They just need to know when to be there.

JENNY GUY: I adore that. And I adore everything you’ve said and you. You are a delight. Thank you so much for being here, Melanie. We’re going to drop those slides in so that people can find you. And are there any particular– you were mentioning your podcast. We’re linking to that. Any particular podcast episodes that you recommend people start with?

MELANIE FERGUSON: They’re all good. I have about a handful. So I would just sit and binge on them. I keep them about 15 minutes so that you can listen on the go. And so hopefully that’s helpful.

JENNY GUY: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Melanie, for a wonderful episode. Everybody, happy 4th of July. Have a great safe weekend. And we will see you in a couple of weeks talking about stories with Jane Ko. Bye now.