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Driving Engagement with Joshua Parkinson

What I want to focus on now is once we've got our page built and once we have some likes, how do we start driving Riel? Meaningful engagement on our pages. And, you know, I met this guy have on stage about a year and 1/2 ago. You know, everyone was wondering how do you create engagement? But nobody had, You know, a scientifically proven way toe. Find the best content that converted all the time. So what I would like to do now is ask for your help and introducing Josh Parkinson to the stage to way Mike something. But it's good to have you. So Josh is the CEO and founder of a company called Post Planner. Now, Josh has been building this culture, baby. Oh, how many years given building the company? 3.5 years. We've been 3.5 years. Why did you get it started? Well, because I was in the game of, like, helping clients have Facebook pages like yourselves. And I just saw that there was a need out there for, you know, people didn't know what the post. So I wanted to create an app that could hel...

p people know what the post. So that's why I did it. Well, that's great. And guys again, thanks for joining us now. Josh has not only built this company over 3.5 years, but is it public? How many users you guys air serving now? Yeah, we have about 150,000 installs and about 25,000 monthly active users and plenty of customers paying us money as well. That's a good thing. That's always a good thing. So, guys, not only as you service just 150, free downloads, he works with some of the top thinkers in the space. This ranges from people that are influencers and have a lot of blawg traffic to people like Kim Garst that have been named one of the top 20 women in social media. And I'm so glad that Kim has been able to join us in the live audience. Tim will be on stage with us here shortly. And Kim is also an avid user and recommends everywhere. Post planner, right? Yeah, we love her. So you guys are in the right spot. What I'm gonna do is move forward in a strategy. I'm gonna let Josh take over and rock n roll and move forward. Alright, guys, let's talk strategy here, all right? And what I want to start with is look, sound strategy begins with having the right goal. So let's talk goals. All right? I know you've covered a lot of stuff on Facebook so far, but let's just back up and just try to figure out what our goals are. So Ana on Facebook, what is your goal wire as a business. Why are you on Facebook? I am growing my brand. So, um And in addition, wanting to position myself, um, as a thought leader, as someone who has a little bit of a different opinion on things. So Facebook definitely allows me to reach out to an audience and do that. Okay. Great. So Facebook helps you reach an audience. All right. Who else? Michael, What's your goal on Facebook? Why you on Facebook? Why would be there? I want to stay top of mind with my audience. Is the same thing. Reaching reaching people, huh? All right, Valerie. What? Your goal. Why? Why is your business even on Facebook? I would like to educate the people about our products. And that's why we're on Facebook, which leads the what? Once you educate them about your product than what happens, versions hopefully have a great loyalty and following Tar brand. Uh, and what happens when they're loyal? No book purchase. Thin gold. That's you know, I think it's important with Facebook marketing to step back and always remember this idea that, you know, we're on Facebook for a reason As a business, right? We want people to come to our website if we have a website where we sell products and give us money, right? That's how we That's how we make it as a business. Right? So we got a back up and we got to remember what the goal is. Okay, so let me tell you about what my goal is on Facebook for Post Planner. We have a pretty popular fan page we use. It will use a product on it every day. But what I want on the post point of fan pages, I want a post, uh uh, posts to my blogger posts and have people see them. Click them, come back to my website, read those blonde posts, love them, and old and openly see a little called the action in the sidebar click that install my app. And then I begin to nurture them right and turn them into customers. So my goal on Facebook isn't just to get engaged, but I don't really care about engagement for engagement's sake, right? I want engagement because I want. Ultimately that will lead to more people clicking my blawg posts, going to my Web site and becoming my customers right, And that's what it's all about. I think that all you in a different way have the same goal. You want people to click on a link, posts that go back to your products or services, and then they give you money to get those right. That's business is all about. So let's keep that top of mind as we go forward. That's our goal. Let's talk about how we're gonna achieve it. All right, All right. So this is what we talked about before. Cheap distribution of our website, right? This is what Facebook allows us to do. We go out there and we share our block post. We share our content and it's cheap, right? We don't if we do it right. We don't have to pay for it. All right. So that's that's the first goal distribution. Facebook is all about distribution, right? That's the number one thing. Above all, it's a 90 percents distribution. Next communication. Why is communication important? Um, what we got out there? What's your name, sir? Wesley. Do you use Facebook? You have a bit of a rampage. Yeah. And what's your business again? Remind me. I felt I still IPhone gadgets. Okay. You sell the IPhone. Okay. Cool. So do you use Facebook for communication with your with your customer? Try to try to get him engaged of, but it's very hard. Well, we're not so much talking about engagement at this point with communication. What I'm talking about is when people have, ah, problem with your product when they have a question for you as a business owner, it's really easy for them to reach out to you on Facebook, right? And post on your fan page and ask you a question. So that's the other benefit. You had a question. Commentary. The downhill skateboarding community illustrates almost all of its meetups, all the events. It's all through Facebook. So you go Facebook there really wouldn't be much of a way for the community to connect. Perfect. And it's also free, right? Like you can post on your fan page, you've got those those fans. You post on your fan page, you share it. Everyone knows where they have any is and they go there and it's It's cheap and it's global. One has a translator, so it's literally everyone from Brazil to Europe to Germany to the U. S. Nice. So everyone watching right now, if you're like Chris and you're just starting building your Facebook fan page and you're really looking to create a community, maybe around events we talked about Angelina. When she's going to make the film festivals and she drink photography around different settings, it's again as Josh men's. And it's a great communication channel for your brands to keep that in mind again. If you're just starting out looking to curate strong content, definitely so on, then the other. So we talked about distribution communication, and the next thing is just growth, right? We want to grow our fan page, want to get more fans now. I'm gonna be using a metaphor throughout this presentation that it's about fishing. Right? So I want you to imagine Facebook and its one point 3,000,000,001 1.0.4 billion daily users. I want you to imagine those people as the Pacific Ocean. All right, now, that huge, monstrous ocean out there, I and this is so many fish in the sea. Right? But you want to grab a subset of those fish and bring them to your page to be fans. OK? Now, since we're in San Francisco right now, I'm gonna say the San Francisco Bay is your is your page, all right? You want to go out in the Pacific Ocean? You want to find the right fish, the ones that have the potential to become your customers. Then you want to take them into the San Francisco Bay so you can, you know, catch them later. All right? I'll just keep that in your in your mind. Okay, then. That's what it's all about. Was getting more likes, right? That's what I want you to imagine. As far as your growth goes, you want to keep on getting more and more fish into the bay so later you can turn them into customers. Okay? So keep that metaphor in mind. I love for the online audience. It's really important you understand why you're on Facebook. Because those folks are watching right now. And you've just heard great things about Facebook. That doesn't mean you should necessarily be there. There are businesses that Facebook is not right for, right? Some B two b Business is if you're in oil and gas or things like this. Others, like, if you're an artist or a photographer, if you're an entrepreneur, a freelancer, right? If you're like any of these great books having a live audience, Facebook is absolutely right for you. So is there anyone in the live audience? Angela, are you clear about what your goals are for your Facebook page? What are they? I would like to get more people to look at my page to buy my photographs. You got that down now? Right off your tongue on. And when it does really well, you're gonna take Josh and I out to a steak dinner and we'll celebrate one of those islands. I like this guy. Uh, what about everyone else? Clear. David, you're good with the wine company. Know what you want to dio? What's the number one thing you want to dio. So one great. So anyone else is watching right now? How does that happen? Good. How does that happen? Like, how did you go from Facebook? Page to someone bought wine from you. Just watch the process a little bit. Well, I'm gonna have to have an engaging post that encourages them to go check out my website and then from the website, click on the purchase wine page, and then they'll have toe klik the quantity and fill out their credit card information. Love that. Love that. How to get that credit card information. Good stuff. All right, Josh, take it away, man. How do we mix this content up? All right, So you know the way I like to think about content in the newsfeed because the news feed is everything. Let me make that clear for me. When I think about Facebook, Facebook is the news feed for me pages and all the other stuff, they're kind of not as important to me is just the news feed. Why? Because the average person who goes to Facebook, what do they do? Like I'm not talking about businesses. Just talk about the average Schmo out there heading onto Facebook at night. What are they doing? What does that involve? Hanging out, talking to family and friends, reading the news, looking at Funny thing. What video? Which all takes place where you feed exactly there. Scrolling on the phone. You see him right at the bus stop there. Scrolling. Are they going to pages? And they're going to all these other stuff? Probably not. 98% of their time is spent in the news feed, Right? So what's what? I want to concentrate on the day. Let's talk news, feed, baby. Right, cause that's what Facebook is. The news feed. So we gotta figure out how we can optimize our presence in the news feed. Okay, That's what it's all about today. Content the mix. When I think of the news feed, I think I think I break it down into three types of content, right? And they're right here. It's really I've throw those into three buckets right there. All the posts I see in the news feed pretty much fall in tow. These three categories number one, they're text updates, which means they don't have a link. You can't click them and go somewhere else. You can't click it and view it like you can. A photo right. It's just simply text that may come in the form of a quote, right? It's the quote, an author that may come in the form of a fill in the blank that may come in the form of a question, but it's just a text update. All right, that's one component of the news feed. Second component visual content. Now I lump photos and videos into one thing here, right? These are the This is the contact you see and you're scrolling down the newsfeed and you stop and you just view it. You consume or you click on it. You blow it up on your desktop. You look at the photo you. It starts to auto play. It's a video. You click on the volume and listen to it. This is visual stuff. You. It's the kind of stuff you click and you sit back and watch right visual content. So we got text content. We got visual content, and then number three, the most important content there is. What's that links right now, if you're doing it right, then those links the majority of the links. That your posting? Where they going to hopefully to your website right now. That doesn't mean to be cells you all the time. We're gonna get into how you can avoid that later. But if you have a great blawg, for example, you know, share those block post those linked post going back to your blood like we do. Those were golden for us. Okay, You have a question for us of Facebook and a website. Totally separate. I mean, two separate things. Not using Facebook as your website. No, don't do that. You know, I mean, maybe in the beginning, as you're getting your website off the ground, right, you can use Facebook alone. But ultimately, those are the two. You just named the two components of online business, in my opinion, right. You got your website, which you own that your home base. Then you got distribution. And what's distribution? Facebook. That's how you distribute your website to the world, right? Okay. Through social and search, search is a whole nother topic. We're talking social today, right? Website Facebook. Good that you named those two so links. We got your links to your your own website. But you also have linked third party links. What we call third party links, right links to other people's websites that you're you're sharing to provide value. Okay, all right? Or entertainment, You know, Kim has been She's super humble, as you shall never come out and say, This is about you superjumbo. You know, she was someone that started her business at home, much like potentially a lot of you guys watching Right now, she's a great example of what it takes when you apply the right strategies, hard work, hustle, dedication and just doing the right thing. But more importantly, she has a really brilliant structure. Josh, I think, for mixing the mix that you just articulated Social Kim being a a Forbes top 50 or top 20 woman in social media. How do you think about the content mix on your Facebook page? Why? I have, ah, lots of conversations about this, actually, because people are like, you know, everybody has different goals sets and I think gold sets are very important for me. It's about building a community of connected people you know around my brand, and it's not you know racist content is king. And yes, content is king. But I think you can't create content just for content sake. It has to be relatable. It has to be fine. You know, people come to social media because it's social in its fund. They're not looking to buy your product or service at the gate. So you have to engage with them around things that they care about, um, outside of what your product or service does for them. So having I call them content buckets. I just had this conversation actually with Josh, um, you know, content categories of types of content that you think your ideal client would engage with. What do they care about? You know, if your ideal client is ah, woman between the ages of 25 45 you know, they probably have families. Your kids play sports, they like to buy shoes, you know, engage with them around things that they care about. Um and then we've in your marketing message, we've in the things that you sell, but I think the buckets are you know, the different types, the mix, whatever you wanna call it is incredibly important. Don't be constantly pushing your marketing message because it doesn't work. He will get no engagement and you'll just turn people off. We don't like to be sold. None of us dio. So keep that in mind and to give you guys a quick sense before Josh moves into understanding news Feed and Facebook's Ed drink an algorithm, you know, to give you context. Kim has about 80,000 Facebook fans to date, but she's had several of that now, actually, is it more hunting? 105,000 is a really amazing job here. And you know, many of her updates, though, have gotten Mawr engagement than the total quantity of fans she's had. In other words, all these people talking about declining reach. Kim is a shining example win. And if you do it the right way, not only can you reach your entire fan base, but you can reach your going to see an example later by Josh. You know, Kim got 750,000 shares on a single status update, and this was probably back when you still had about 80,000 fans. Remember, it's not just the number of shares. Tell me people she reached which was above 25 million. Something like that. Credible? Yeah, that's like bigger than Tokyo folks. That's like That's like reaching every citizen in Tokyo with your message, right? Okay, cool. Let's get let's let's talk about Facebook's goals right? We already talked about our goals. Let's talk about Facebook's goals. Let's get in Facebook's head for a second. What do you think Facebook's goal is for its users? What is Facebook? Want to make money with advertising? Which means what? What actions make them money, the more we have to pay to be seen. What about the average user? What do they do that makes Facebook money? They click. Click on ads, right? Every time they click on an ad or they see an ad. Facebook's make makes money right, Facebook. But money is not the only thing for Facebook. What else is Facebook want? Uh, what do you mean by that? They want you to remain there for its longest. Exactly. They want you to spend time on Facebook, right? Because the more time you spend on Facebook, more action click and their brand rose and their power grows right and they become a better site that more people are on it, right. More people share and more more contents there to consume. And it's just better for everybody, right? Okay, so let's get it. So let's get into Facebook's head and try to figure out you know why they show the content they do OK? Because they want never. They have a goal. They have a goal in its for you to stay on Facebook. Now that means that they have to figure out what makes good content, right? That's their That's their question. Okay, Mark Zuckerberg sticking its head. Okay. How can I figure out what makes good content? Because I want to show good content, all these users. So how do I figure this out? Well, luckily, Mark's not the first guy to have to figure this out. Just add a quick for those of you joining us that are new to Facebook, Mark, who's the CEO and founder of Facebook along the suck along of his entire executive team are constantly thinking about what Josh is about to articulate exactly that they're thinking about. How can we have How can we show each user mawr good content, right? And luckily that they weren't the first to have to figure this out. People have been trying to figure this out for years. You know who those people are there called? Journalists write. For thousands of years, there have been journalists and they've been trying to figure out what kind of content to give the people because they want to give people content that those people think is good. What does that mean? Good? Well, we can see it. What They come up with, the solution they've come up with. We can see it every single night on the 10 oclock news. Alright, what do we see on the 10 0 clock news? Well, we see a lot of information, but what are the characteristics of that information? Negeri video? Yeah, it's scary. It's true often. Well, first of all, it's popular. What does that mean? That it's popular. Why would they want to show popular content so they get more people? Exactly. You want right? Popular means people like it. They want to see it right? People are talking about it because if the new shows you a story that people were talking about during the day you heard about this story all day long you saw it on Facebook or you saw it in the newspapers, right. Then you're gonna be more interested to see that story, right? So they want to show you popular content. What about relevant? What does that mean? Why would they want to be relevant? Content Something people can relate to. Which means what I would affect them. Would you want to see the 10 oclock news from a city like four states away from you? Why? They're telling talking about news stories that happened in their city, that you don't live and you don't care. It's not relevant to you, right? So that's the other component that the news wants. It wants toe. You know, they want to create content that has that characteristic. They wanted to be popular, want everyone. They want to show you the stories everyone's talking about. And they wanted to be relevant, right? They wanted to be relevant to you. And what's the last one recent? All right. Do you want to go on the 10 oclock news and see a story that happened two years ago? No. Right. You want to see what happened today or this week? Well, this right here this little this little algorithm that we're talking about. This is exactly what the solution that these the 10 oclock news came to. This is what basically Facebook has decided on as well, Right? Zuckerberg is realized that a This is what people want to see. They want to go on to Facebook and look in the news be they want to see stuff that's popular. Everyone's talking about it. If one's clicking it, they want to see stuff that's relevant, right? That's like, for example, I love climbing and surfing. I want to go onto Facebook. I want to see just bunch of pictures of climbers and surfers, right, because that's relevant to me. But my mom, she doesn't want to see that right? She wants to see stuff that's relevant to her. All right, we'll talk about how Facebook does that in a bit. And then then they want They want to show your recent stuff, stuff that's been posted recently. You don't want to go on to Facebook and see a post. It was published, you know, two weeks ago, right? Okay, cool. Four. Josh, we go into the how to. I love to ask guys online I want to make sure everybody understands exactly what we mean when we say Facebook ed drink. It's a critical piece to getting the exposure and engagement that you'd like Cindy for you and your business and how Cindy is. Ah, she's currently looking to join a larger company in a social media role. So all of you watching right now that would love to be working in the social media space. You're just like Cindy So Cindy for you. If you were trying to post a status update or content that was strictly optimized Teoh for popularity. What kind of update? My new post by my post something if I read something off of dosh. Is Post Planner blogged saying, E, just read this. I think I might want to try this out and see how it works. For me, it's something he just published. So there's this recency thing. I know his articles, a really popular, and it's something relevant to Facebook and something that I want to do in a job rule. And we Josh, we spoke a little bit earlier about the specific components in an earlier segment. The specific components that actually go into this popularity factor in Facebook's algorithm called the Weight. Do you guys remember what the three things were that basically make up that W variable? Valerie, What are they gonna go back to? My notes? You are fantastic notes that I love this and what I'll do is well, Valerie's looking. Ah, Leanne. What do you think? You remember the three things that specifically makeup that w factor? No. I would be flipping pages, flipping pages to Michael. You gotta guess. Common shares likes comments and shares. That's a very SIM for the sake of the course and understanding popularity, literally adding those up one share plus two comments plus three likes on your last status update Guys is a good way to quickly figure out popularity. You can even get Make it simpler than that. Just clicks That's it clicks right. Someone clicked like someone click to make a comment. Someone clicked. Share someone click the photo to view it. Someone clicked the link to go see it right. Every time someone makes a click on Facebook, they're sending a signal to Facebook, right? Facebook's up on the top, won t signal comes in And what do you saying? The Facebook. When you click on something, I want to see more of this kind of stuff. Show me more of this kind of stuff every time you click. Show me more of this kind of stuff. Facebook's listening. So if someone clicks but doesn't like, doesn't share, doesn't comment, that still count? Sure, if they click Teoh view a photo, they click a link and they don't They don't like it or they don't comment on it. They're still it's still click and not, You know I'm not. I don't claim to know exactly what weight they give each of these click types, but it's still a click, right? Facebook smart. They're gonna They're measuring everything there, even measuring what you're scroll when you're scrolling there, medicine, what you're seeing, You're not even They might even be measuring as you scroll on pause there. Probably measuring that as well, right? Measured everything. So the trick and the thing to keep in mind here. If we're Teoh, put a kind of a one sentence surrounded as you know, we're friends were getting to know each other here, Live on set. I'm learning about your rises stories. We now are quote unquote closer to each other where more like friends. So I'm interested, say, a month from now, in seeing your content, remember back to the experience we shared together. So the key in building affinity or, as you see here on the side relevancy, is to just figure out ways to get the ideal fans. Who again? In last segment, we spoke to Giselle, who's looking to take holiday photographs of families, and we know her ideal client is that family that doesn't want to take a photo that needs one right now, right? The way to build affinity is to get those people as close to you as possible. And the easiest and quickest way to do that, as Josh's articulated, is to get them to click, get them to engage even it's even if it's getting them to pause on your content in the newsfeed, which is harder to measure right, But it is important because you're telling Facebook they're interested in that content. So, Angelina, if you are building a brand or for your page engine, is a photographer photographer who photographs islands. If you're looking to build affinity with the right kinds of customers, how might you do that, I might, um, linked to travelers that air traveling somehow Trip advisor I don't know. So I'd have to explore that more. But I would link to travelers that also linked to people that are in the boating community, Um, and to the islands themselves. A lot of them have what I have Facebook pages. These are the questions we want to be thinking of because we want to always be thinking about OK, what can I post that's gonna get clicks? Because those clips were going to do two things. They're going to signal the Facebook that this contents popular, but they're also because you're a fan of that fan page. You're clicking on that post. You're sending a signal to Facebook. Say I like this fan page in the past, but now I'm clicking on its content, and that means I think this is relevant to me. So show me more of it. Have a quick question on this Facebook. Give more weight to people liking oppose versus sharing it, I don't know, but I would guess that shares are much more highly waited because it's more of ah, it's so much. It's a harder thing to do right? There's more friction involved in sharing, like you just click like. But if you actually share something, you're also saying something about yourself. You don't. Most people don't know, but sometimes when you click like a story is created in the news feed, you probably see them that your friends liked something. But that's not that doesn't happen all the time. That probably happens less than 20% of the time. But when you actually share something, it's like you posted it on your profile, right? It's like you uploaded a photo of your kid or something, right? You're sharing it, and more people are gonna see that. So I think Facebook would would count that higher. Yeah, we actually have a follow up question online from Scott airs. We had six other people voting on this. Now we're talking about these three elements for EJ rank, but they're saying that they have also heard that there are thousands of other elements to go in there. How much is this? Is just sort of secret sauce that Facebook doesn't share about how it's totally secrets, right? And as it should be, it's there, it's there. It's what makes Facebook Facebook. It's what was talking about before the news feed is Facebook and the and the best, the better. They could make the news feed, the better Facebook is. So, Scott, I'm I'm thrilled issue joining down there from from God from sunny Texas. Thanks for the question we should re articulate again. Just like nobody understands eggs. The exact way to get on the home page of Google. They just kind of know the right things you should be doing to optimize the feedback and advice we're giving you right now is to the best of our knowledge. But, Scott, you're absolutely right. There are hundreds of variables that Facebook takes into account when determining what to show Kim Garst, orleon or Valerie when they upload and they and they view their own Facebook feeds. These are the big ones, though. Yeah, but in the end, don't think about all that stuff, right? You don't know what those hundreds of things are. Thousands of things that you don't care. You're trying to do what the 10 oclock news is trying to do. You're trying to share content is going to be popular, relevant and recent because you just posted it. So don't get confused with all the thousands of things. Just think about these three. Keep it simple, baby. Right. All right. Cool. Christie had a question about a drink. Kind of a commentary thing. Something I've noticed a lot more with Facebook is now on videos. It will show, you know, the likes. And now also views is something that is trackable. So is that I am. I guess there's not too much weight, a leverage to get more views. That isn't something that you're already doing with likes and shares, but probably not other than to show videos to post videos. Yeah, so I guess if you don't pose any videos, you're not doing any video views. All right, so So Kristen and those of you watching me now that are in kind of the action sports space or live event space. Okay. When you're at a live event, you're competing at the competition next week, and you're just going all in for first place. Your mom and dad are back there cheering for you. And you Do you lay down a winning run where you do some who back 3 60 double ankle touch spin outside curve thing is that cool in my like, don't touch. But when you lay down when you lay down that I guess performance and it's on video and you take that video and you share it back to your Facebook page, that the fact that that views number is now public right, you can use that as leverage when you're trying to go out and get sponsorships right, which you might have had in the past. So if you know some brand new sporting company sees this, this guy's up and coming. You know, he's doesn't have hundreds of millions of followers yet, so it's not gonna cost us a boatload of sponsor. But he's up and coming, and we think he's gonna be a big deal. You can use those videos as leverage to get distribution deals. Good idea. Yeah, that's great idea.