Hey guys…
Some people just get FB. They know what works, what doesn’t… and where the boundaries are. I’d love to say that I’m one of those people, but I’m not. At least not yet. But I’m learning.
Perhaps you’ve heard of http://outmatch.org. In my opinion, these guys are FB geniuses. And when you come across real geniuses, it’s worth studying, understanding - and where possible - emulating their approach.
The basics
These guys have a network of “health” sites:
The FB pages for these sites are:
- https://www.facebook.com/theheartysoul/
- https://www.facebook.com/healthyholisticliving/
- https://www.facebook.com/familylifegoals/
From their website (and FB) here are their key metrics:
- The Hearty Soul: 0 to 7.2 million monthly unique visitors in 10 months (797,414 FB Likes)
- Healthy Holistic Living: Over 2.9 billion Facebook impressions (1,582,012 FB Likes)
- Family Life Goals: 0 to 5.3 million pageviews in 4 months (108,000 FB Page Likes)
Inspiration and lessons learned
After studying their FB pages and sites for several hours, here’s what I’ve learned:
Focus is important – instead of dabbling across a wide variety of social platforms, and doing a half-assed job across all of them, these guys have a laser focus on FB. If you look at their websites, you’ll notice that (unlike many of their more established competitors e.g. magazines that have been around for decades) they don’t advertise any Pinterest, Instagram or Youtube channel for their brands. That means all of their expertise and resources are put into owning FB. They’re not attempting to source or create content for (or attempting to work out the intricacies of) multiple channels.
Key takeaway: Focus on one (or perhaps a handful) of social channels to give yourself the best chance of developing expertise and “owning” your niche for a particular channel.
Own a niche – these guys focus solely on health and wellness. They’re not attempting to create pages about diverse topics such as hardware, cars or get rich quick schemes (or whatever CPA offer appears to be paying out). This means they’re able to (and frequently do) cross promote their content.
Key takeaway: Choose a niche and stick to it. This will allow all of your web properties to benefit from each additional marketing initiative, thereby growing your brand/s and influence.
Leverage experts – There’s lots of crappy health and wellness sites out there offering content from non-experts. These guys offer lots of content from non-experts too. In fact, heaps of it… But they’re smart enough to have a smattering of articles authored by Dr. Oz wannabes on their homepages. These expert articles disguise the much larger pool of “non-expert” (fairly crappy) articles, many of which are probably authored by college students for tens (rather than hundreds) of dollars. Here’s the best part… their expert authors are enticed into their network for free (so they can gain more traffic to their web properties).
Key takeaway: Legitimize your site/offer by leveraging experts in your niche.
Use automated tools – A careful study of the FB pages for each of their brands reveals significant use of automated tools. It often takes a user of a tool like MP to know what to look for, but I’m sure if you look at the profiles of those routinely sharing their posts, you’ll see the patterns (one profile photo, 12 friends, posting lots of related content to their profile walls, etc etc) and reach the same conclusion…. these guys are masters of automation!!!
Key takeaway: Use MP… okay, you’re already doing that – good! (so just keep learning how to use it better)
Network with others of similar size/scale – These guys routinely share content from (and in return have their content shared by) other large FB pages. It’s not rocket science, but many of us (thinking of myself here) get caught up in the automation and forget/don’t have time to reach out to others and simply develop support networks.
Key takeaway: Find others in your niche of a similar size/maturity who you can develop relationships with to share each other’s content. Don’t wait until you’re big to do this. Start as soon as you can and keep trading up.
Learn as much about your social platform’s algorithm as you can – These guys clearly know much more about FB’s algorithm and what works than the hipster douche bag social media managers that work for their (much bigger and more established) magazine brand competitors. A good example is the number of shares their posts receive. These shares (as previously mentioned) are often going to the FB walls of non-existent (automated) accounts which presumably they own or control. While their large magazine competition focus on post “likes” these guys often have more “shares” than likes. I’m guessing they’re well aware that a “share” is weighted more heavily than a simple “like”.
Key takeaway: While it won’t always be possible to read the developers blog for your chosen platforms, you can get a good understanding of how the algorithm works simply by studying what those most successful (often without any right to be) are doing.
Consider advertising – These guys boost some of their posts. I’ve tested using a couple of my FB accounts. If you like one of their pages (but not their other pages) or if you like one of the pages liked by their page, guess what… you’ll occasionally see FB ads promoting posts from their network. If you like one of these posts, you’ll soon receive an invitation to like their page. We all know that this can be an effective way to boost FB likes, but I’m guessing it also supports their (basically pretty dodgy) use of FB. I’m not sure what level of protection it offers, but it seems at least plausible that FB turns a blind eye to their (fairly obvious) network of automated accounts that like their content.
Key takeaway: Pay the piper. Suckerberg is all about money. If you help him play the Jewish piano (also known as his cash register) he’ll sell his grandmother (not that you’d want her!) to you. But if you’re spamming his platform with CPA offers and not allowing him to twinkle the ivories, he’ll get really f@cking angry and ban your accounts.
There are other things I’ve learned (and will continue to learn) by studying the approach these guys take. They’re smart. They’re obviously doing things at scale. And they’re clearly making money from their efforts.
Hope these observations help and inspire you on your journey to screwing suckerberg in the arse and making some decent coin. Keep pumping my MP friends…