Redd: Hello and welcome to Fiverrcast, the official Fiverr podcast for sellers, by sellers. My name is Redd. You can find me on Fiverr as Reddhorrocks.Adam: And I’m Adam also known as Twistedweb123. Today we’re joined by Laura AKA GrowwithLaura. Welcome to the show Laura.Laura: Hi guys.Adam: So why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself today?Laura: Well, I’ve been on Fiverr since 2010 and on Fiverr, I offer social media and business consulting and advice. I help businesses connect with their people and understand what is and isn’t working for them and why.Redd: Well, thank you so much for joining us today Laura and welcome to the show. Today what we want to talk about is how to boost your sales with Facebook. We get asked all the time about social media and how that can impact getting sales and growing your Gigs and things like that. So what we want to talk about is how you can use Facebook, how you can use your feed or a company page, how you can generate a following, keeping people engaged and what types of content you can share to do that, with the focus of promoting your business. Laura, this is completely in your wheelhouse. This is one of your specialties, correct?Laura: Yes.Redd: So Laura, why don’t you give us just an initial little bit of an overview about how you feel the best ways are to boost your sales with Facebook?Laura: The way Facebook works, there are three categories of ways you can use it. You can use it through a personal profile, where you have friends. You can use a page where you have likes and there’s also a thing called groups.Profiles are for people. They’re not for businesses. There are people who will tell you that you can use them for it and while you can, Facebook is known for shutting that down. So the best thing to use for your business is a page.Adam: Yeah, I’ve seen in the past actually where I’ve noticed a lot of businesses kind of crop up on Facebook and a lot of people. There’s all these kind of like buy, sell or swap kind of little groups going on at the moment. One of the things that I noticed touching upon Facebook profilers are for people and not for businesses is I often come across pages where it’s a person trying to offer a service and whether Facebook shuts that down or not, as a natural buyer, as the consumer in that situation, it instantly puts me off because before I can either engage with them, I need to add them as a friend and accept them into my personal account which is an instant drawback from just being able to quickly get in touch and engage with them.Laura: Absolutely. Most profiles if you have it set up right should have very limited access. No one should be able to see your content unless they’re a friend of yours and that’s not helpful for businesses. You want people to see your content easily and quickly.Redd: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I mean you – it’s almost like a mini – like correct me if I’m wrong. But it’s almost like having a mini website like for your business just on the Facebook platform.Laura: Absolutely. Facebook should be an extension of your business.Redd: OK. So Laura, when you’re looking and you’re going ahead and setting up your Facebook page, what do you feel are the most important things to consider initially to create a strong page that you can then use for your business?Laura: To get started with a page, you need to have a cover photo. You need to have a page photo which is the smaller box. You need to have a completely filled out “about” page that really describes your business. It doesn’t say, “Hi, I like people,” or “I sell stuff.” It should actually go into detail about what you’re offering and who you are. It can have some other buttons as well like a call to – call us or contact us or there can be video links or a link to a shop. You can shop directly through Facebook as well.Adam: So in terms of Fiverr then, when we’re looking to kind of break down Facebook page and branding for Fiverr users who have their Gigs set up, I imagine the best way would normally be to go is to kind of try to brand your username or to brand your business with the username involved in that. So you’ve kind of got the interlink and then you bring that into your cover, maybe your profile photo, and then you can do the other stuff such as put your Fiverr URL as your website address and you can put things like your business hours, et cetera, from the times that you’re online and working, to try and just kind of interlink the two together so they become a complementing entity as opposed to two separate paths.I think that’s one thing that I’ve noticed when a lot of people start out on Facebook and they’re not sure what to do. Facebook almost seems to be like a complete subset to everything else that they’re doing and from limiting that, you’re always going to start up on a tricky foot because you need to kind of try and get that traffic and that engagement on the both aspects of your business and not split them apart.Laura: Yeah. You should have the same smaller image on your Facebook page as well as the one that you use on Fiverr. Definitely if possible, use your Gig name as – use your username as the URL, the custom URL for your Facebook. Include a link as – if you don’t have a regular website, put your Fiverr link as the website link. Make it clear that you work with Fiverr because there has been a lot of publicity around Fiverr and that can be a good way of building trust instantly with people who come across your page.Redd: What do you think about – when you’re looking at building – to start building content because obviously you have to like start building content on your Facebook page. When you’re looking at doing that, should you do things like bringing other people’s content or should you just be posting like content maybe generated by you, like things that you’ve done for other Gigs or like work portfolios? Like, how do you start building content?Laura: The thing that you have to remember about Facebook is that it’s part of social media. So yes, you absolutely should share other people’s content. That’s part of being social. But at the same time, people are coming to your page to see what you’re doing and hear from you and get your insights.When people are on Facebook and other social sites, typically they don’t want to have excessive sale posts in their news feed. They appreciate knowing that you can help them. But at the same time, they prefer helpful content like tips and articles, videos. Inspirational quotes are very popular.Adam: So you would say that it’s kind of good to – when you’re going to post or you’re going to put any kind of content up, to kind of put yourself in the mindset of you as a Facebook user and think about the sort of things that you see in your feed that grab your attention or strike or engage with you as opposed to something that you know is going to put you off.So to come and give a quick example, obviously one of the services that I offer is logo design. Now I could put up a post saying logo design available on Fiverr, blah, blah, blah, trying to sell it and just put a link there which probably isn’t going to get much traction. I could go the next step up which could be to write a similar sort of thing but uses visual representation of a logo to maybe catch your attention more. But it’s still very kind of salesy or I could go a step further and do something like record a video of me designing a logo, speed it up, make a quick draw, make that the feature of the post and then have a little link through to my service as the subset.So people are going to be drawn in by seeing these cool skills and the logo being designed and then think, “Oh, this guy is actually a designer. He sells these,” as opposed to thinking, “Oh, this is just an advertisement.”Laura: Yeah, those are all really great ideas. It’s great to share something as engaging as doing the video of your logo design. You had mentioned wanting to see stuff that you’re interested in and that’s really important. It should be something you’re interested in but it should also be relevant to your business. So while you might like puppy videos, sharing a puppy video that’s not about designing a logo for the vet business wouldn’t be quite as relevant as designing a logo would be.Adam: Let’s say I have a customer here who’s quite – got a very interesting business. So let’s say puppies as an example. Let’s say someone hires me and they want a logo to create for their puppy business and I go ahead and create a logo. I double check their permission. It’s OK. But I grab a photo from their website of really cute puppies, put my logo on top of there and kind of say, “Just designed this logo for blah, blah, blah,” and then you’ve got cute puppies and the work that I’m doing as well. So you try to mix that together.Laura: Absolutely.Redd: I think you touched upon something really important to think about there just for a second Adam. I know that it’s really easy to want to post everything that you’re – everything that you’ve done or everything that you’re doing. But I know for me as a voiceover artist, I have some of my clients that would much rather I not post their finished products for the world to see because sometimes – and it’s for very innocent reasons.Sometimes they’re working with another client and they really don’t want their main client to know where the work is coming from. It’s just a standard thing. So I think it’s almost important as much as you might want to go ahead and publish all of this crazy, cool work that you’ve been doing just to bear in mind whether or not that’s OK, like whether or not your client would want it added to your live portfolio on Fiverr for example. If they wouldn’t, then you probably shouldn’t put it on Facebook.Adam: Yeah, that’s the rule that I use when looking to post work examples is I always check to see if they have activated the sample to share my live portfolio. Then it’s kind of a case of OK, they don’t mind it being shared because sharing on Fiverr is the exact kind of way or sharing on Facebook. So that’s the general rule of thumb I look for. If someone has activated to share my live portfolio, it’s good to go to be shared. If they don’t, then I will usually reserve that.Laura: If you work with a lot of clients who don’t want their content shared, your work with them shared, you can use it as an opportunity to share your creative ideas and share the stuff that your clients don’t necessarily want but are examples of what you can do without revealing client information because you didn’t design it for clients. It’s your ideas.Adam: So let’s say for example we’re looking at a Fiverr seller who isn’t as visual. So for example, logo designs with that I do is very visual. It has got a lot of different opportunities from that.But let’s say that is a writer on Fiverr who has thought about setting up a Facebook page and they aren’t really sure what would be applicable or appropriate for them. What would you recommend in that scenario?Laura: The simplest way to deal with something like that is to do what everybody does with the quotes and share your written content and just attach a relevant photo to it.Then you don’t necessarily have to do the fantastic logo design that you mentioned Adam. But it does have the visual content that everyone likes and they will see the photo and they have the opportunity to read your text then.Redd: So would you consider – like say that you were – say again that you’re a writer. What about going ahead and creating almost like your own personal series, like some continuing content to engage people and to keep them coming back to your site? Could you go ahead – it might not be like exactly what you would be putting up on your Gigs. But would you think about going ahead and doing that, like creating almost like an arc of content that people could keep coming back to?Laura: The challenge with that is – the challenge that everybody faces with Facebook is that Facebook uses algorithms to deliver what they call as relevant content to the millions of Facebook users.So while the idea of having a content arc is a really great one and one that I would recommend if you have a blog or way of storing that content other than on Facebook – because if I were to tell a story about my week and I started with Sunday’s post, say Sunday’s post got a lot of attention but Monday and Tuesday’s post didn’t and then for some reason Wednesday’s post resonated with people. So all of a sudden, my story arc has jumped from Sunday to Wednesday and people missed out on some really important details of Monday and Tuesday but you can certainly get creative with what you put up there but you have to remember that not everybody is going to see it.So like I said, if you’re going to do something like a story arc, make sure that you have a way of getting the whole story to people in an easy fashion so they don’t have to search back through all of your past week’s posts to see the whole thing and put it all together.Adam: So consistency is a good thing but sometimes you need to look to creating content as well that is going to stand alone. However in that scenario, I imagine what we could also do is when we’ve written Sunday’s post and I’m going to go ahead and write Monday’s, we can go back to Sunday, edit it and then put in a link to the next segment if you like of Monday and then on Monday, put in a previous and next link, one back to Sunday, one to Tuesday and then so on and so forth. Is there another kind of technique that we could use or we could go back and edit posts to relate the content as new contents develop?Laura: Yeah. Editing posts is especially effective if the situation changes or like you said, that you want to connect posts between one and another. Like if you shared a big preannouncement post saying, “Get ready guys! There’s going to be something really special coming,” then you could link to the new post where you actually share what the news is.But again, if you do that, you – if you did the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday thing, you still wouldn’t have a way of connecting them all which is why I never suggest that people just have a Facebook page. I always suggest that they have another way of displaying what they do and how they can help people like a website or a Fiverr profile or even a blog that allows them to present information in a more straightforward fashion. You don’t have to keep searching through old Facebook posts to find what you want.Redd: So moving on to how to go ahead and get people to start looking to your page or accessing your page, like is there a good, solid way or any advice you can give people on how to organically grow their network?Laura: That’s part and parcel of maintaining existing Facebook and staying active on Facebook. I was working with a client recently who I commented that they really didn’t have any content on their page. He replied to me that there was content there and I said, “Yes, well content from 2015 isn’t totally relevant for 2016,” because it hasn’t – it’s not new. It’s not currently being taken by the Facebook algorithms and put into people’s news feed. Only newer content is unless of course you’re using a post boost or paid ad to get that post seen again.But you mentioned it already that one of the biggest secrets to being successful with Facebook is being consistent. You need to consistently be posting content, consistently doing ads, consistently interacting with other people and companies and you need to be promoting your Facebook off of Facebook because there’s a lot of the world outside of Facebook as well.So to grow a page, you start with the content because that’s the foundation. Then continue the content throughout the entire life cycle of your Facebook page. So as long as you’re on Facebook, you should be posting new content.Most businesses can do a post a day. There are some like CNN or other news sites that would be able to post several pieces of content each day because it’s more up to the minute and people need to have more information from them and get more information that way.Once you’ve got a consistent content plan, then you should be doing paid ads and post boosts so that your fans and the people who are not yet your fans but could be your fans see your post and hear about your company and are able to go to your page to find out what you offer.Adam: Coming back to the consistency and the dated element of that as well, I think even aside from the algorithm, it’s very important that you need to be consistent because I mean I do this a lot as well. I often run out of time but there’s nothing worse than going to check out a company to see if you want to work with them and seeing that their page hasn’t been updated in like eight months because you think to yourself, “Well, are they actually selective? Is it worth me reaching out to them?” I mean there are some people behind these pages where you can message them and they message back within five minutes. But the front of the page doesn’t look like that at all and that can be an instant factor to me disengaging or not reaching out to them.Laura: Absolutely. The thing about Facebook and social media is that it is active. If you’re not active, if you’re not posting the content, if you’re not doing stuff on there, it is very easy to see that you’re not. It’s not as easy with the website but even on Fiverr, you can see when the last time someone checked in was or the last order delivered and other great information like that and people notice that. They definitely will judge you or choose not to like your page based on that.Adam: So a lot of people may say that they want to post regularly and OK, I’m actually one of these people. They want to post regularly but they often struggle for their time or they don’t really get the consistency they want to.Is there kind of like a general rule of thumb or something that you could advice me and other people who kind of have that train of thought where you maybe say, look, every morning when you have a coffee, post a Facebook status or spend 20 minutes in the morning or a certain time of day. Is there any kind of advice you were to give to people about how to keep a consistent momentum with it?Laura: My advice would actually be two-part. First would be to schedule every single post that you do on Facebook or at least 95 percent of them. You can schedule your posts through Facebook itself. That would be my recommendation, not using HootSuite or any of the other post scheduling tools that you could use. But scheduling your posts directly through Facebook so that you have the best chances with the algorithms, if you’re not boosting your content.Secondly, yes, absolutely when you’re having your coffee in the morning or at the end of the day, you should go on there, check in, see what’s going on with your page, see if anybody has commented, reply to their comments, go do some interaction, reach out to some other pages and just see what’s going on, on the network that you need to know about from your business.The scheduling – I typically schedule once a week. I do it on Sundays but that’s just me. You may have a different day preference but you can schedule a long time in advance so it doesn’t matter when you scheduled as long as you do it. Then preferably every day if not three or four times a week to go on then and check what’s going on with Facebook.Adam: I think scheduling is actually really important and I like to kind of call it the “eBay rule” but I remember back in the day when eBay was very popular, I used to always go and look to buy at odd hours of the day because no one else would be online.So if you look and go bid at 11:00 PM, no one else would be online or very little people would be online. So it’s likely – you know, it can work. So when you’re going to actual – you know, write posts on Facebook, if you only have 11:00 PM free on a Sunday night and that’s the only time you have to post, well, if you post it live there and then, the chances are most people aren’t going to be online or seeing it. So scheduling it for primetime between 1:00 and 3:00 PM kind of thing is probably more likely then to gain more traction.Laura: Well, yes. Every page though has different best posting times. So that’s something that you should really check and need to check on like a monthly basis because your times do change. The 1:00 to 3:00 rule, maybe the current general rule for best posting times. A couple of months ago, it was like 11 o’clock in the morning.So it changes depending on people’s habits and availability. But each page is different. So you should use something like Fanpage Karma or something measured or Facebook and their information to see when you posts are most – when your fans are mostly on the page.Adam: So your scheduling also comes with tools on top of that as well. So for example, one of the tools available when you schedule a post is to stop news feed distribution. So you can say to Facebook I want this to post at midday on Monday but I want you to stop putting it into people’s news feeds as new from midday on Tuesday.So let’s say for example you had a quiet Monday at work and you wrote that you were going to offer some sort of discount or a special or something. You can promote that for 24 hours if you like by showing up in your follower’s news feeds but then have that cut short as well. So you can kind of – you can schedule everything. You can schedule everything from just normal posts to even figuring out your work schedule and when you’re going to be quiet and looking to kind of put offers and things like this that gain traction on those quiet days.Redd: Say that you’ve got your page up. You’ve got your content generated. You’ve got your posting down. When you’re looking at your success and what’s working out and what isn’t, are there metrics built in that you can follow, that you can use to sort of track and see what’s working and what isn’t?Laura: Metrics that you should be keeping track of would be post reach, how many people were given the opportunity to see your post, what kind of engagement. In other words, clicks, comments, shares, likes happen with the post and even negative feedback, like loss of likes or the negative comments that you see on your posts.If you’re getting a lot of negative comments, you should probably see if it was a particularly controversial post or if it’s just people having a bad day.To increase post reach and engagement, one of the things you can do is to do paid ads and boost those posts. The other thing you can do is to make sure it’s content that’s relevant to your fans, which we’ve talked about. Also including some type of visual with your posts can greatly increase the post reach. People are more likely to engage with posts that have something visual to them.While I don’t recommend it in every post to increase engagement, you can ask for people to click like, comment, share, et cetera. But if you do it too often, it will wear them out and they won’t do it after a while.Redd: So the other big question that I think we would probably get from some of our listeners about Facebook, “Are paid ads worth it?”Laura: Facebook has made it such that you really can’t avoid it unless you can really do a huge grassroots movement and really get a big following that you’re interesting and active enough with people who comment and like and share your posts that they’re creating the momentum. But most of us need help with creating the momentum on our posts and getting that content out there.So with the algorithms and how Facebook has them set up, the organic reach of a post is not very high. The last one I heard was six percent of your fans will ever see a post if it’s not boosted or you’re not doing paid ads. However, that said, of course a lot of people I hear from have not had success with paid ads. Part of that could be because they don’t know how to set them up. Part of that would be because they have chosen the wrong audience. Part of that could just be because they chose the wrong time to send one out.There are resources online. There are different sites that have posted what they’ve done with paid ads and the successes and failures they have had and like I said, part of that has to do with how you set up the ad in Facebook itself. But part of that also has to do with whether where they’re ending up is what they wanted.Now do you have the relevant content on your Facebook page? Have you updated it consistently? Do you have the content coming that’s going to support the paid ads that you’ve done? What about the landing page that you send the paid ad to, the clicks to? Does it tell people what you’re offering? What about the website? Does it look dated and unwelcoming?So there are a whole lot of factors to consider when doing paid ads but unfortunately or fortunately, the bottom line answer I feel is that you really have to do at least some if you truly want big success or even moderate success with Facebook.Adam: So Laura, if there are people listening to this podcast now and they’re thinking about setting up a Facebook page or they’re still umming and erring about it, what would be the biggest thing you would recommend that they do?Laura: Be social. Be friendly. Post content that you would want to read yourself but is relevant and helpful to the people who would find you and like you. Be consistent about being who you are as a business and promoting your brand and do your best to set a good example of who you are as a business leader and the standard of products or services that you offer.Redd: Well that sounds great. All of that is wonderful information and Laura, thank you so much for being here with us. That’s about all we have time for this week. You can find Laura on Fiverr as Growwithlaura. Our jingle was made by Customdrumloops and we were edited today by Dansha. Thanks so much and we will see you next week.Transcription by: Trans-Expert
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