People really like a rags to riches back story:
• You only had 2 bucks in your pocket and the rent was due
• Living in your car for a while was the only option
• You tried so many times to be successful online and it wasn’t happening for you
• You spent all that you had in training courses but it still wasn’t working
• Your family thought that you were mad and tried to persuade you to get a job You get the idea right? What all of these things tell your visitors is that you were nobody and had nothing when you first started out. They will be encouraged by this and it will give them hope that you have the answer to their questions.
They will want to know what you did to make it work. What mindset changes did you have to make?
What people did you have to connect with? What methods did you use to become successful? There are many more questions that you can answer when you have a compelling zero to hero personal story.
OK now it is time for you to prepare your story. We are not recommending that you are dishonest here. But you do want to paint the most desperate picture that you can with your story. Maybe you had a job that gave you a comfortable life but inside you were miserable because you wanted to create your own destiny?
There are a number of ways that you can make your personal story really impactful. The best way to start is to write down your struggle and how you got started. Commit this to your memory so that you can always tell the same story on your website, your Facebook Page and in real life too.
Provide as much detail as you can in your story. Add in some high points (e.g. making your first sale online) and plenty of low points (e.g. you tried several different methods and none of them worked out or you had to take a menial job just to pay the bills while you were figuring it all out).
Show your Visitors you are Still Human
One of the dangers of becoming successful is that you lose touch with who you were. This is not something that you want to do on your Facebook Page (or anywhere for that matter). You do not want your visitors to think that you are aloof and unapproachable. A lot of marketers make this mistake.
Don’t add photos to your profile of your fancy cars and your fancy home. Some people will tell you that this is all part of showing your visitors what is possible. This is true to an extant but if you overdo it then you will just drive people away.
If your visitors cannot resonate with you then you will never get them on board. If it is well known that you are a marketing genius for example, then don’t brag about that in any way. People will be unable to identify with that. It is best to stay humble and remember your roots no matter how successful you are now.
Explain your journey in detail. Talk about the time that you had nothing or had not experienced any success all the way to the present day. Tell your visitors that if a “nobody” like you can do it then they can do it too.
Always remember that people will conduct further research on you to “check you out”. So your story needs to be consistent on all of your channels:
• Your website
• Your LinkedIn profile
• Your YouTube channel
• Any other social profiles
This is a good thing because it shows that the visitor is interested in getting to know you more. They want to be sure that you are the genuine article and not some Internet fraudster. So ensure that there is consistency in all of your public profiles.
If one of your other channels has a personal story that conflicts with your Facebook Page story then you will be in trouble. So take the time to check everything out and make any necessary changes. Your personal story really is critical to your influencer success so it needs to be good and consistent.
• In the next chapter we will discuss how to give your audience what they want…
You need to know what your audience wants and how they are likely to behave to drive the maximum amount of free traffic from Facebook. If you already have a Facebook profile and have been posting content for a while then you can use Facebook Insights to see what has worked the best for you.
If Facebook is new to you then you can other methods to see which type of posts get the most engagement in your niche. We will discuss this a little later. Knowing your audience is critical to success on Facebook. You need to know who they are, where they are and what problems they have.
Using Facebook Insights to find content that works If you have posted content on Facebook for a while then it is really easy to see what content your audience responded the best to using Facebook Insights. By doing this you can then plan ahead to create similar and post similar content as a way to drive more free traffic from Facebook.
Go into your Facebook Insights and below the overview charts you can see data on your last 5 posts.
Then you can choose to look at the data for all of your posts by clicking on “See All Posts”.
You will be able to see the reach of each post and the levels of engagement. The engagement metrics you are most interested in are:
• Clicks
• Comments
• Shares
The number of clicks is definitely something that you want to take a good look at as this is the number of users that clicked through to your website. There are a number of factors that can influence the number of clicks that a post receives on Facebook:
• The description
• The type of content – text, image, video etc
• The day the post appeared
• The time the post appeared
We recommend that you use a spreadsheet here such as Google Sheets and add your most clicked posts to the sheet along with the information above (post topic, description, content type etc). This will provide you with even more insight into what works the best. The aim with your Facebook posts is to get your audience to click so don’t skip this step.
Knowing when to share your Facebook posts is very important. There has been a lot of research in this area and the outcome of this is that posting on Thursday through to Sunday at 9am, 1pm and 3pm are the best posting times.
This is general information and you shouldn’t take it literally. These days and times may not be the best for your target audience. You need to find out when your audience is around and post at these times.
Facebook Insights will tell you when your audience is around. Under “When Your Fans Are Online” you will be able to see the most active days and times for your audience. Pay careful attention to this so that you can schedule future posts to coincide with this information.
Facebook has a schedule feature that is very easy to use and you should use it once you know the best times for your audience. All you need to do is to set a date and time and Facebook will post your content accordingly.
