292: Mari Smith On How To Build Organic Facebook Traffic Today

Steve: You’re listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrapped business owners and delve deeply into the strategies they use to grow their businesses. Now today, I have Mari Smith on the show and Maria is known as the queen of Facebook and today she’s going to teach us how to succeed on the Facebook platform today.

But before we begin I want to give a quick shout-out to Privy who’s a sponsor of the show. Privy is a tool that I use to build my email list for both my blog and my online store and right now I’m using Privy Display a cool Wheel of Fortune pop-up basically user gives your email for a chance to win valuable prizes in our store and customers love the gamification aspect of this and when I implemented this form email signups increased by a hundred thirty one percent. Privy also offers a low-cost email solution for e-commerce Merchants. So if all you need are the basic email autoresponder sequences, like abandoned cart went back campaigns pre and post purchase flows. Then Privy might be an ideal solution for you. So bottom line, Privy allows you to turn the visitors into email subscribers and recover lost sales. So head on over to preview.com Steve and try it for free. And if you decide you need some of the more advanced features use coupon code MWQHJ for 15% off. Once again, that’s PRIVY.com/Steve

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Intro: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle so can spend more time with your family focus on doing the things that you love. Here’s your host Steve Chou.

Steve: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. Today, I have my friend Mari Smith on the show now. Mari and I initially met at Social Media Marketing world and then just recently we both spoke at the many chat conference in Austin and just got back in touch. Now, Mari is often referred to as the queen of Facebook and she is widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts on Facebook marketing. She is a Forbes top social media power influencer, author of the new relationship marketing and co-author of Facebook marketing: An Hour A Day, that she has also shared the stage with many famous leaders, which have included Richard Branson Tony Robbins, Paula, Abdul and Arianna Huffington.

Basically Mari is the real deal and she teaches businesses and brands on how to properly monetize their social media efforts. And today we are going to have her teach us how to succeed in Facebook land today and with that welcome to show Mari. How you doing today?

Mari: Wonderful. Thank you for having me Stephen looking forward to this.

Steve: So I’ve always been curious about this. How did you get named the queen of Facebook? Like was there a ceremony you have to belong to a certain bloodline to qualify?

Mari: Haaa, Just consistency and persistent and it just after a while really that is all I focused on in 2007. I just fell in love with the platform became an evangelist kind of like within a few weeks. Everybody I knew I’m like, are you on Facebook? Let’s get on Facebook. And that’s all I’ve done for, you know 13 years and I’ve always loved the acronym Focus follow one course until successful and so I just over a short period of time and people just started calling me that and had that title for all this times.

Steve: You know, what’s funny is I met you before but I don’t I didn’t realize like how tall and Majestic you are in person. And so you actually do look like a queen if anyone sees you in person, you just need a tiara or a crown I think

Mari: Exactly that’s funny. I appreciate you saying that.

Steve: So 2007. Wow. So how did you get into Facebook marketing? I imagine you were a user at first. How did you become an expert?

Mari: Okay, so it’s really interesting because throughout my entire career I have had these two parallel paths. Two parallel loves if you will where I absolutely love technology and the internet and then I also love people and relationships and behavioral analysis. What makes them tick and so in the early 2000s, I was creating information products. I was doing email marketing and I was I was specializing in both email and internet marketing, but then I also had this certified relationship coach. I was working with couples and singles and coaching them on the relationships. And then I remember a mentor of mine. I’m not kidding 2007. She said, Mari, you know, you got this divided path thing going on you gotta pick, you know, which area of your relation, You’re a relationship person yet internet marketing person.

I’m like, I love them both. It is like that’s when Facebook like just kind of fell in my lap. I had a friend of mine invited me to be on this beta test team you had an app that you could like take taken teach classes and I’m like, I’m not kidding. I was like a bit of a hold out because I’m like, what do I need an online social network thing? I’m a natural networker. I’ve got big Network here in San Diego, so But I’m like, okay if I’m going to test this app, I probably better have an account and pull up facebook.com and like, oh my God it was like a defining moment Goosebumps heard the angels singing, you know, like oh, oh, oh my gosh.

This is this is going to be this is my future. I just loved it everything about it. So it’s like yeah, it’s just one of those meant to be things in and I remember people say to me within about maybe six months or so, they’d be like, oh my God Mari social media is like made for you. It’s a blend of your two loves people in the internet. I’m like, I know

Steve: you know, actually you joined like during the golden years of Facebook and what I wanted to ask you about today was, you know, Facebook reaches kind of been on the decline for the past several years and I was hoping you could kind of comment on whether like organic Facebook is dead. Like I’m a brand new business. Is it still like a good strategy to to focus a lot on that platform?

Mari: So it’s really interesting because when Facebook went public in 2012 they’re actually there’s a mash-up graph Out There Our Friend Jay Beard created it and you can see that the decline the line on the graph going down is is that the organic reach and it’s commensurate with the same line going up with the stock price. So, you know there was definitely some genius, Evil Genius whatever you want to call it with their you know plans that Facebook the way that they rolled this out because that’s our number one way to make money is ads always has been and So yeah, I sometimes I’ll speak to audiences and say, you know, sorry to say but organic reach is so 2012 or 2013.

However interestingly enough. I just did a recently did a video for our friends at social media examiner is on there funnily enough. It’s on their YouTube channel. They’re really building out their YouTube, but I’m talking I give out all these great tips on how to increase your organic reach. And even though on average is literally like between one and six percent right between one and six out of every hundred people have liked your page. It’s really frustrating especially like you say to new business owners, but using technologies that I teach I can increase that up to about 65 percent organic reach.

Steve: That’s ridiculous. Okay.

Mari: Is it?

Steve: You’re going to tell us, right?

Mari: Yes. I am. I anything, I’m an open book whatever you want to know.

Steve: Actually the interview is over. Sorry everyone where Mari’s going to tell me privately. Sorry go on. I didn’t mean to interrupt.

Mari: No, you’re good. You’re good. But here’s the cool thing is that number one is that live Facebook live especially video if we just say video is a category so doing way more video than you do link post. And of course where marketers were business owners, we want to drive people to our offers or web pages or landing pages or opt ins whenever. But links, link post get the lowest reach in the lowest engagement. Instead, You should be posting maybe about 70% video content 20% photos and images and only about 10% link post. But the Nifty thing with all this is you can still put links in into your video post into your image post and actually Gathering an audience through video views is one of the most affordable least expensive ways to do it.

As you get people to get that view account, which is only three seconds and if you can get up to 10 or 15 or 30 seconds, the longer people watch your video the more of a captive audience they are and you could segment it out break it down and go into ad manager and do some retargeting which is really really great.

Steve: Let me ask you how do you embed a link? Into your video that’s clickable. Are you saying just post a video and then within the description post the link?

Mari: correct. So in the caption you include the link there ideally above the fold right because of the little more button but the cool thing is that you can add a clickable link. It’s not an embedded inside of the actual video but it is like a component of the it’s like a whole the whole bottom line where the description and the title and then there’s a call to action button that that is all clickable or tappable and mobile and even if you literally put $1 on boosting the post then you’re going to be able to add that button. They used to have it for free, you know Facebook gives with one hand takes away with the other.

But we used to have that CTA button organically, but now like, you know, any amount of budget will enable you to add your call to action button to a video

Steve: but that button only last for the duration of the Boost right?

Mari: No. No.

Steve: Oh, it stays. So you just

Mari: Once it’s added. Yeah.

Steve: Oh Okay. I did not actually know that.

Mari: Yeah.

Steve: Can you comment on boosting versus just going through and producing an ad through ads manager?

Mari: I can. Absolutely, So as there is a like a news feed algorithm as you just actually believe it or not as like a hundred thousand points or weights or signals that govern what goes into everybody’s individual Newsfeed organically, but equally on the ad side, there’s algorithms that pick up everything from you know, the obviously the pixels the URL and all the components of the ad and Facebook knows if you’re using the Boost button you are a novice Advertiser and I’m not saying don’t ever use it, but an actual fact this is directly from Facebook. Though they won’t necessarily say it publicly. But you really want to allocate only about 10% of your ad budget using the Boost button and it’s just for something like on the fly or maybe you’re on your mobile device and you just, you know want to get get a little boost of posted starting to do really well.

Give it give it some extra legs, otherwise 90% of your ad budget you’re going to allocate an ads manager and ideally you’re going to have the pixel installed throughout your website. You’re going to be using events even And so like add to cart and check-out and all that good stuff that can really track the individual actions people take custom audiences, look-alike audiences. And also you’re using business manager to manage your page. all of those signal to Facebook that you are a more sophisticated Advertiser and you will literally get a better ROI.

Steve: Okay. So basically if you can help it don’t even use the Boost button, right?

Mari: Yeah. Yeah.

Steve: Unless, you’re in a pickle and you’re just in a hurry and you want to do something on your phone, okay.

Mari: It’s Gotten better over the years that you can go in there and access your saved audiences and your custom audiences. And so it’s gotten a lot better. You can’t tweak the placement and you know, there’s a lot of things you can’t do so

Steve: since you mentioned social media examiner, so Stelzner a while back said that Facebook video like he completely I think dropped his Facebook video strategy saying that people are browsing on Facebook. It’s like looking at Billboards as opposed to someone on YouTube who is watching the video in its entirety and becomes a fan or subscriber. can you comment on that?

Mari: Yeah. Yeah. I love Mike I go back like 12 years long time friend and so it we often agree to disagree. He loves to be controversial.

Steve: Yes. He does. Yes.

Mari: He’s kind of bugged me. It was like Oh my God. Facebook video is dead. Everybody’s like migrating to YouTube. I’m like, no wait, not so fast people. And but so Mike’s concept is like yeah, he’s there’s absolute truth in any what you see here is the bottom line was with all of this is, that you’ve got to experiment with your own page. Because at the time I know social media examiner crew were producing a show called The Journey and and really wanting to get people to consume retain like the full 6 or 10 or 12 minute episode. And that’s tricky that is a little bit I can be it can be a little bit tricky on Facebook, but they’re definitely shows are doing that. I mean The Runaway success on Facebook with a show is red table talk with Jada Pinkett Smith and her mother and her daughter you have 3 generations they take on really challenging topics and obviously there are celebrities.

Certainly helps, but there’s a lot of people that are emulating this. I mean I literally have in my community because I teach a lot of how did how to set up your whole in home video studio and to create a show and whole, you know, developing a business around that and so I have like one of my students is a animal behaviorist and she every every week she has a show called coffee with the critters and she’s all these animals and she said, Just talking to people about animal behavior. And so, the thing is..

Steve: live or is that a show?

Mari: Live.

Steve: That was I was live, she does it live. Yep. Yep. And that’s the thing too also for your listeners here Steve, but it doesn’t have to be live because live can be really scary for a lot of people but you can do a beautifully produced. It doesn’t have to be super high end fancy expensive. But you know, well produce good audio good video good lighting and some editing, light editing and then you can air that quote unquote. Publish it. That’s what red table talk does this never live. It’s like, you know very well produced. And so back to Mike’s Point is like if yeah, it’s kind of drive by as people just thumbing through the newsfeed. But but there’s this term called thumb stopping if you produce thumb stopping content because it’s like 90% of people access Facebook on mobile predominantly.

So and then you’re doing some repurposing. So you’ve also go to an IG TV and on Instagram and in your stories and sure you can have a version on YouTube or maybe a longer version but the beautiful thing with all of that is on Facebook any of the Facebook family of apps including Instagram, course is that now you can do some retargeting you can you do a watch party. A watch party is a very underutilized tool for marketers in its it’s extraordinary it actually..

Steve: Can you walk us through how that works. So you specify they’re going to launch a watch party. How do you get do people just naturally find it or do you have to advertise the watch party?

Mari: You can’t advertise it yet, but they are adding more features where you can actually schedule it and in essence what it is is kind of Hosting movie night, right and get your popcorn out and you’re like, hey guys, come on over at my house tonight. We’re going to watch this this movie or you have a playlist and you’re going to binge watch, you know, whatever your show is. so you can host a watch party on your business page your personal profile and a group adding any kind of group and you can host any public videos. It could be anybody’s video plus your own your own videos and it’s a great way to get more mileage. So let’s say you do have a weekly show and it’s not live. It’s produced and you put it out there Facebook gives you two options to air it on your page like as if it were live. It’s called Premier, Premier, you can schedule and gathers an audience and it notifies people and it’s airs like quote unquote live.

And there’s another one called new release which goes right away. You don’t schedule it. So let’s say you’ve done that. You’ve got some traction some mileage. I usually the lower limit 24 hours. Let it kind of get out there then what you could do is go in your group. You’ve got a group where Going deeper with your audience your super fans as Pat Flynn calls them and now you’re going to say okay guys. We’re going to go deeper on this topic. I’ve got this watch party coming up Tuesday at two o’clock. And so they know it. Maybe it’s a weekly occurrence there and you’re going to eat more mileage. And now you say okay, you can be in the comment and answering questions and then use the watch party host.

You can control fast forward rewind pause, whatever. You’ve got all the questions, but what’s also pretty dang Nifty now is if you initiate that watch party on the mobile, you can hop on live and so you could like kind of talk over something or pause and just pop in for a little live commentary. There’s some really creative things that you can do with the launch party its literally only kind of the beginning has been out for a little while, but I think that there’s marketers out there that are going to really caught on to this and go. Whoa. Okay, there’s some creative ways. I can repurpose content reach a wider and wider audience and yeah. Gets get more mileage out of what you’re already producing.

Steve: so you mentioned so we were just talking about Mike and his Facebook video strategy. Can you kind of provide some guidelines on like the perhaps he was going about it a little bit wrong or something that was challenging. What are some of the guidelines that you have for Facebook video in particular?

Mari: Well, it’s funny because like you I’m sure when you start talking to people about a specific component of business building or marketing you realize you really have to take a holistic approach and So it was me and I teach Facebook marketing, but you know, I’ve been in the world of online business for like 21 years and so it’s like okay if I look at your content or your messaging or your branding or your website go to your website. I’ve really no idea what you offer. All right, or I go to your landing page and it’s too confusing you get too many options. One common thing is this people don’t don’t collect email addresses. I’m one person in my community right now. She has a page of a couple hundred thousand and something happened. I think she got hacked and her page got And she’s just devastated her home world is like ended and I’m like you do have an email list.

She’s like no, I don’t I was like, oh gosh, you know, yeah. So yeah. Absolutely. It’s vital that we also have an aspect of you know, I would say Facebook’s rented land all these social platforms are rent land. So yeah as a strategy you want to be having this real strong Clarity that your message is clear who you’re speaking to your avatars as they call multiple avatars. And you have clear offers and it especially now, I I teach a lot of women my about 80% of my audience is women, my students, my clients. And I typically find they have great deal of difficulty asking for the sale, you know, putting that call to action button over there asking those. Oh no I need to do I read somewhere that you need to do know 8 meme posts and two marketing host.

Don’t do that. It’s okay to ask for the sale but then when it comes to video content, it’s like having that balance of adding enough value. Giving away, don’t be afraid really if you’re in the information marketing business to to give away all your best stuff because you’ll always come up with more and you can always go deeper with people.

Steve: Let me tell you where I was going with that.

Mari: Yeah. Yeah, please.

Steve: Length of the video and your recommendations because I’ve seen a lot of one minute videos. I seen longer videos, but nothing longer than I would say five minutes. Is that okay usually the right length?

Mari: Okay, so I actually have different categories that I recommend. So for example start with the shortest. For ads if you want to have an ad break that means it shows up with the beginning or in the middle of a Facebook video, 15 seconds is your max. So 15 second ad break that’s going to be either square or four by five vertical or landscape. Then you’ve also got stories ads now, even though stories can only be 15 seconds. You can have up to two minutes a hundred and twenty seconds for a stories ad and and both Facebook and Instagram and and I would recommend ideally produce in that native. So you’re going to the full 9 by 16 vertical format and it Looks more natural. If you don’t do that fine. Facebook has automatic placements and you’ll just have your landscape video fit into a story format.

Then you’ve got what Facebook calls long form, long form video is anything three minutes or more and they’re actually right now craving really wanting creators to make more three minute or longer videos because they need us to produce that long form content in order to insert those ad breaks into them and actually just like YouTube, you know you Have to meet certain criteria in order to do your ad breaks like to have a drinks in your own videos and monetize them. But so then that’s the three minutes and then with your live. I usually like to recommend just like red table tag you go for like that television episode length, which is somewhere between 18 and 25 minutes. An hour or so a lot of people doing an hour and that’s great. If you’ve got an Engaged audience and you have good retention like I do.

Like I could do a live for 10 minutes or two hours and people would be and I just I have a very engaged audience in a as long as I’m getting given them Great Value, but if you find, you know, you’re going for an hour and people are just drop it off after 10 minutes. Then I would shorten it up. But yes.

Steve: I guess, arw people going back to what Mike said, you know, even for the long form video are people actually willing to spend, you know, three to five minutes watching a video and their feed?

Mari: Okay. So yeah, and I know he calls it like YouTube is more of a lean back experience and he’s right. as far as like people go to YouTube always as a search engine, right? It’s the number two search engine behind Google. Of course Google owns YouTube. And nobody, nobody goes to Facebook and start searching, you know how to learn to play classical guitar, how to bake a perfect chocolate cake. I mean, you just don’t do that. So it’s more about just not really Discovery. It’s almost just like happenstance or ad or you also have your favorite channels or pages that you follow and I know a lot of like my community have my page notifications enabled so when I go live it will show up and I know instant audience comes along and that but You have to cultivate that.

But people are asking you they willing to spend three to five minutes watching video. They are, when it’s done in a community fashion. And this is where I think marketers and the media the world over are missing the point in the differentiation that Mark Zuckerberg and team are attempting to do and that is the reason doesn’t sentiment analysis around this tons and tons of sentiment analysis if people watch a video solo by themselves scroll through the feed they spend three seconds or three to five minutes as you say their sense of well-being goes down. They feel not as good about themselves or about Facebook.

If they watch that same video with other people whether it’s a live a premier and you release a watch party. It’s in a group then their sentiment goes up. They feel better about themselves and about Facebook and about the video and everything and they’re more likely to consume more. So video, Yeah Facebook actually has a mission statement. Specifically, around video that is to create a sense of belonging and they don’t want people to sit back by themselves. they want people to lean in and watch with other people which is the whole purpose of the watch party.

Steve: So earlier you mentioned that you’ve had posts have 65% engagement where those videos where there’s part of watch parties or how did you achieve that number?

Mari: No organic reach it so tips. I’ll do like a there’s like a PSA, Public Service Announcement, and it’s like some me more some rumor and I Like to get in there and dispel the myth or the rumor and sometimes, something like that will pick up go viral or just a new piece of content or I’m just helping people understand and this is you know, this is in my field of expertise, of course translate that to other niches or verticals and it’s like where can you be the go-to person for fill in the blank whatever that is people come to you because as it is you’re a trusted voice your thought leader you you know, your audience knows that you’ve done your homework. And you’re what you’re sharing is fact, so that’s one area is that you’ve built that up over time.

And then if you know, it sounds counterintuitive, but earlier we’re talking about ads manager and you know promoting posts if you spend even a nominal amount could be like a hundred bucks a week or a hundred bucks a month anything. That tends to feed the algorithms to know that you’ll get more organic reach you get a little more organic reach than if you don’t spend a dime on ads and then there’s other Aspects is just like timing, you know to know like when your fans are most online or people that follow you or most online. You’ve got all that information in your insights. You can check that the 65 percent organic reach that particular post was an image post some of my videos if it’s a tutorial like for instance.

There’s a thing right now the schedule Facebook’s moved to schedule the ability to schedule into Creator studio and people are freaking out going oh my God. I can’t find it. So I did do a little video tutorial and show Here’s what you do.

Steve: All right. So we’ve talked about a number of different things. There’s one question. I do want to ask you, you can have a page and you can have a group. Is it even worth building up a page or should you just go and start a group right away and start getting people to join that?

Mari: Okay, so you absolutely need to have a page as well because the only way you can advertise is if you have a page you can even advertise on Instagram without having an Instagram account. If you have a Facebook page. Now, it’s not necessarily always about, you know, building a massive audience. It’s about Having that budget, so I want to give a quick example here. And this is a colleague of mine who’s worked with my partner and his name’s Dr. Pete and he was brand new to Facebook its long-established. He’s like in his 60s and he’s an expert on opioid addiction has this patented technology. So the Facebook page this Dr. Pete what he did bran brand new to Facebook, but he wanted to get the word out more about his patented opioid addiction Technologies.

Pain-free, withdrawal free, It’s only three days amazing. So what we did is create a Facebook page and an event and he hosted an event at UC Irvine and invited licensed psychologists and therapists that were targeted laser targeted right down to zip code in Orange County area and they had a bunch of $350. Oh and is Page Six fans only six fans on the page. And a budget of $350 and what that was used for was to promote the event which was a talk and in person talk and with these licensed psychologists there and therapist, and they had a room that would hold about 25 people and I’m not kidding.

They got a hundred and twenty registrations and they had to get bigger room and that yielded ended up yielding a $15,000 referral patient. So I tell that story because it’s not about a gathering lots and lots of fans. I’ve seen many many advertisers with a have just a small number of fans, but the whole goal here is that there actually is reaching their exact target audience.

Steve: If you sell an Amazon or run any online business for that matter, you’re going to need a trademark to protect your intellectual property. Not only that but a trademark is absolutely necessary to register your brand on Amazon. Now, I used to think that any old trademark registration service would work and that could even try to register my own trademark by myself on the cheap, but I was dead wrong. Securing a trademark without a strategy in place usually results in either an outright rejection or a worthless unenforceable trademark. Now, that is why I work with Stephen Wiegler and his team from Emerge counsel. They have a package service called total TM, which provides the same attention to detail and process that large law firms do at a fraction of the price. Now for me personally, I like Emerge Council because of their philosophy, their goal is to maximize IP protection while minimizing the price. So before you decide to register a trademark by yourself or file for other I could protection such as a copyright or a patent, check out Emerge counsel first and get a free consult. For more information go to emergecouncil.com and click on the Amazon sellers button and tell Steve that Steve sent you to receive a $100 discount on the total TM package for Amazon sellers. Once again, that’s emergecounsel.com over at emergecounsel.com. Now back to the show.

Right through engagement, right? Yeah. I mean that’s what I found over the years like my page, even though it has a lot of fans like think, I hadn’t done a good job of Engagement. I was sending out a lot of Link posts. And so that engagement drops but on my group is still okay. And so what I was getting at with that question was, is it worth trying to build a ton of likes on a page or should I just be staring everyone over to a group where it seems to be the reaches higher on a group?

Mari: Facebook just like giving video more reach in the news feed including live and watch parties as we talked about Facebook is also giving much more emphasis priority to group. So you’re absolutely right on that part, but I would caution against kind of like going all in on a group and not so much on a page because either way each takes resources, time, you know effort to and also you want to be really clear what’s the purpose of the group. sometimes groups have a Limited shelf life and which is not about a use of it to do like a pop up group in for a challenge and it’s over a short period of time and then you just archive it maybe start a new group. Or you have a support group or something our user group or for customer service.

It just depends and thinking about what is the purpose of the group and but utilizing still using the page to reach a broader audience, gather your audience, you know that gather your like your custom audiences do it’s where you do your look-alikes and your ads.

Steve: so let me ask you this then. So I mean it’s clear that you have to have a page. But how do you actually get more engagement on your page? So if you have some guidelines to share that be great like how often you should post what are some good rules of thumb for what types of content work? What should you avoid?

Mari: Brilliant. Yeah, so the interesting thing is as we talked about at the beginning of the interview where you know organic reaches is really gone down over the years. What I’ve seen is that many marketers actually think that the solution is to post more content and they may be previously posting, you know, three times a day now, they’re posting six times a day and actually that’s worse. It’s counterintuitive. Facebook doesn’t want you to post more they want you to go deeper on individual posts. HubSpot For example, they kind of pulled back a bit and though they go like much more video content spaced out more well-thought-out and so it’s better to put more emphasis on deeper post.

You’ll see that in my own page like sometimes I only post like three times, four or five times a week. So it’s okay to even miss a full day doesn’t have to be like every day. But the point is that when you’re really adding value you’re educating or you’re giving good information that helps people in the litmus test is, you know, what kind of traction are you getting at is It getting some good organic reach then you’ll know. Okay, I’ll do more of that type of post. So there’s no hard and fast rule for every page but I would say experiment it if you’re getting really low reach and you’re posting, you know, every day just try miss a day miss a day or two. Definitely post more video as I mentioned about 70% video, Try integrating some live in there. Also another one. That’s a good one is just a simple question, maybe like one sentence like one question no image. No graphic. No, nothing. Just a question.

And that does really well. Sometimes I’ll say you know in my industry about legal. Okay, what is what is if you could change one thing about Facebook, What would it be? people kept me this letter and that was that’s like that’s some, no UGC is a crowdsourced user-generated Content that I can use a lot of that for blog posts in order to create a video on

Steve: looks like I’ve found that creating long-form Facebook post almost like a little mini blog post has been working well, I guess it just comes down to what people want to read ultimately.

Mari: you are right and there’s that whole style of writing. I forget what they call it, but it says likes where you literally put like a line break after almost every sentence and it just makes it really easy as opposed to big long paragraphs, but you’re right. I do a very similar one. I’ve always been kind of more verbose with my posts and people just get used to that. They are like many blog posts. My brain just seems to work well and I’ve got something to say instead of writing on my blog. I’ll write it first on the on Facebook post.

Steve: Oh, yeah, that’s actually a good idea and then based on the engagement you can decide whether you actually want to follow through on that post on your blog that how you do it?

Mari: Yeah. Yeah or will embed the whole post or yeah, or make a video about it.

Steve: What about Facebook Stories? How does that come into play?

Mari: Oh my gosh, so I posted not long back on my page. It was a study that HubSpot had done on where people are more likely to see stories whether it’s Instagram or Facebook and they find it with Facebook. There’s a very small number of people. I forgot the name. Is only like I don’t know a couple hundred people and and I got a lot of people push back including Mike, he said Mari that stat’s not even legit and I’m like it totally is. it totally is it’s like to be legit. It’s like I forget what the stats are out there that people can Google it but there’s definitely was a legit stat. Now, the thing is that because Facebook has just really empathized, you know stories. They got bigger and bigger and then they know that take up a whole big chunk of space on your mobile phone for sure.

And then also you can cross pose. You can link your Instagram to your either your profile or your page depending on if you have an Instagram business account, and so it just depends on like your follower. So I know for me I can pose a contact I can post something on Instagram. I have over 30,000 followers over there and you get you know, reasonable number of views into the several hundreds and sometimes it pops way up and you know thousand or something and then it gets a some views on my Facebook page, but Then on my profile where I have, you know, almost 5,000 friends and three over 300,000 followers and just depends on what I post. I find definitely something a little bit more personal so, you know picture of me or something. A selfie would ever do something fun.

Then I can get like 8,000 views. So I want another week they’re on my profile. So I just like to mix it up and no matter what no matter where you do your stories. Just keep in mind that what you’re In is creating top of Mind awareness top. I like to call it top of mind and top of feed. So and every time you post a new story, it bumps you back along to the kind of the beginning of the row for your followers. And so yeah, so just you know, it best you can have a definitely have a story strategy.

Steve: I recently just started putting out regular Instagram stories and Facebook stores that kind of post the same to both platforms and I was told that just for building super fans for just creating awareness of yourself. Unfortunately it’s not really measurable in the dollar sense like an ad would be but in the long run it will put you it will gain you more mind share with your potential customers

Mari: Mind Share. You’re absolutely right. And then what I like to do is I like to build up good will , right? I really spend time. You might have like you’ve got different periods of time throughout the year where you’re doing a marketing campaign and during those periods where you’re not doing a marketing campaign. I mean you should I be little always be marketing. But but you just have to value letting people really see behind the scenes, living vicariously through you pictures of family or travels or whatever, pets. You know, we’re always good are just like thought-provoking things.

And then also with stories by the way, keep in mind that people love to touch their phones. There’s been studies done where average person touches their phone 2,600 times a day and the power users like us folks the top 10% It’s over 5,000 times a day. And so..

Steve: That’s crazy.

Mari: It’s crazy, It’s ridiculous. We’re addicted. And and so if you can get people in your story, especially Instagram, you give them a reason to touch their phone. So the slider pole or the yes, no pole or a quiz or questions or any of the stickers like the, you know people to follow recommending people to follow that kind of thing then people just love that so fun and interactive and engaging content and then you intersperse your marketing content. And if you don’t have those the swipe up you need 10,000 followers still don’t have the swipe up, but you could anybody can swipe Up to an IGT video and you can put links clickable links and IG TV video.

Steve: you know, Mari I like the way you do it because it’s good to see like how the queen lives everyday life and it kind of humanizes you a little bit also.

Mari: thank you.

Steve: So I did want to kind of end this interview. I just kind of talking about e-commerce and that’s kind of the focus of the podcast. Are people selling physical products on Facebook right now. And what do they have in the future and if you were too kind of formulate some sort of e-commerce strategy and Facebook. How would you do it?

Mari: Oh gosh. Yeah. It’s pretty exciting. Some of the things are coming down the line because a while ago, they tested this but now it’s more than likely becoming which is it was live Facebook being able to do Facebook live in having people just tap the screen in order right there all the while they’re still watching live. So it’s kind of like QVC or NHS, you know, Home Shopping Network meets Facebook live. Then what just came out this year is, you know, they’ve got their portal which is In home video chat devices like, you know, Google has one Amazon has one and I know that trust is definitely a all-time low trust is definitely pretty precarious with Facebook, but you’ve got your Die Hard fans, will have a portal.

And what they brought out is the this the television set top device that has the camera on it. So now what’s happening down not that too distant future is people be able to watch a full screen, 4K streaming videos. And with picture-in-picture having friends and family or possibly clients. I’m seeing that markers would probably be able to use this where you’ve got almost like a new way of doing a webinar. And so you’ve got the big screen you could picture in picture and then with the touch screen to be able to on your mobile device, anyway, be able to make it in place orders. I think that’s going to be an absolute Game Changer.

They tested about two years ago the ability and that just like that particular project cutting the team got deployed somewhere else. But it’s an area where I would keep a close eye if you’re a retailer. If you could if you have products that could be sold on likes of a QVC or NHS and then Facebook live with that instant shopping is not that far away now and I think it’s going to be epic.

Steve: I just want to let you know that tickets for the 2020 Seller Summit are on sale over at sellersummit.com. Now what is seller Summit? It is the conference that I hold every year that is specifically targeting e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online and unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS. Mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. And in fact, every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e-commerce business entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. The other thing I can assure you is that the Seller Summit will be small and intimate every year we cut off ticket sales at just a couple hundred people. So tickets will sell out fast, and in fact, we sell out every single year many months in advance now if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over 250K or 1 million dollars per year, we are also offering an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. Now, the Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. From May 6 to May 8. And right now, we are almost sold out of Mastermind tickets already and I will be raising the ticket price regularly starting the day after Cyber Monday for more information, go to sellerssummit.com. Once again, that’s SELLERSUMMIT.COM or just Google it. Now back to the show.

I know right now like you can have products on your page. But when you click on it actually takes them off site to your actual site. Do you know of anyone who’s actually taking transactions on Facebook directly?

Mari: Oh, yeah, absolutely. You can do that. You just do through Stripe. Yeah. I’ve sold my books on out. When they first brought it out. I should put one of my books on there and and that was yeah you just processes there, but you’re right. I think most people because if they already have an existing store, then they just drive people over to shopify or whatever they might have. Interestingly enough, I have Pinterest reach out to me. I’m going to be doing some stuff with Pinterest had no we’re talking all about Facebook and I’ll always be on Facebook and Instagram, you know Die Hard first and foremost but for your listeners, if there, Predominately more on the retail side than absolutely, Pinterest.

There really going all in with their ads and the research I was doing some doing some work with them. I just hired somebody to help me with my Pinterest because it’s been kind of neglected but Pinterest is actually the only social network where people actually look for the ads like they’ll punch in a search and it will pop up and they don’t even sometimes they can’t even discern whether the looking at somebody else’s pin or they’re looking at an ad. Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve had any Pinterest experts on your, on your show

Steve: We have yeah, Pinterest is actually a big try Versailles, especially since it’s like a search engine. the thing with Pinterest though is that people like to just create Boards of things. They might not be immediately in the market for something, like they might be to redesign their kitchen. They’re putting together different components that they want to buy. So the the sales cycle is a little bit more delay than it is on Google.

Mari: interesting, interesting. You know, what you just reminded me as a new placement on Facebook as they’re bringing out search as a placement. So but again back to what we’re seeing about videos. Like it’s not native for people to punch in and search for something but you’ve also got Marketplace. In Marketplace has eight hundred thousand users is an integral part of Facebook is not a separate app. So if somebody was searching for something and then you had your ad there and therefore your product on with the search placement and that certainly could be effective.

Steve: I haven’t actually I’ve run ads to that placement before but the volume is just really low.

Mari: I would imagine I think in the funnily enough to have four years, you know, y’all saying, Mike, that Facebook search is so broken if you’re looking for anything on Facebook just Google it

Steve: Yeah, does your Instagram strategy differ at all from the way you deal with Facebook. It seems like two are somewhat similar.

Mari: I mean does someone and I’m also just working with a new team member to really dive deeper into my Instagram because I just haven’t done a lot more on the personal side which seems to people really like that a long caption and it’s really kind of a little more in depth. I don’t do as much to my feed is I really need to also just need to kind of like do the whole grid thing and make it look real compelling and pretty and on brand. and so yeah, I’ve got the whole strategy coming on the old, just really pick up speed in the early 2020 where, just focusing on more like the tips based posts and driving people to offers and free downloads. My good friend Chalene Johnson does a great job of that and there’s certain accounts. I just love to follow. they do a great job with that

Steve: What are some absolute, no nos that you shouldn’t be doing in Facebook. I know I know posting YouTube videos is probably a no no.

Mari: you’re right. And it’s so funny because I was like, Mike stelzner is video there the YouTube video about Facebook organic reach and then I, you know, they posted the YouTube video on Facebook and that was actually one of my no nos. But there’s always a caveat is always a caveat because I even said right there in that tip. I’m like, you know, Facebook has these algorithms if you post about any other competitors YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest, Twitter, and it’s just going to get way less reach in the newsfeed. However, I actually had one of my community members had messaged me not long back and he has a page about 25,000 fans and he posted a YouTube video and it got half a million reach.

Steve: What. Okay

Mari: So you just saw there’s always going to be an outlier and anomaly and you’ve got to be able to test on your own and don’t just take a hard and fast rule go. Okay. I’m never posting YouTube video because it really just does depend and so one of the signals of the news feed algorithm is speed and so if Somebody, you have a raving fan, fan base and they start to pick up my oh my gosh, that’s a great video and if it goes get engagement quickly from the time you posted it that’s helps it literally feeds, you know

Steve: you know what the window is? for that quickly

Mari: really like minutes

Steve: Minute. Oh my goodness. Okay.

Mari: Yeah

Steve: Are there any special words that you shouldn’t be using in your posts?

Mari: Yeah. So this is a good question because it was, they call it engagement bait and Facebook’s got more and more strict about what they call Engagement Bait including what you say in your videos, even your lives they listen and they got these algorithms are really AI, excuse me, that will pick up what you’re saying and so engagement bait. So if you’re actually saying, you know comment below or please share that that’s one of those like, please share this or please like they don’t like you asking for likes or shares or comments so you can say you can just easily just say naturally like what do you guys think?

You know, or let me know your thoughts or you know, if you get value from this let your let your tribe know as others ways that you can just do it very naturally but not say those trigger keywords.

Steve: Okay, what about terms like free or buy do they care about those?

Mari: All those are fine.

Steve: Those are fine.

Mari: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah what they’re mostly looking for because I know like the whole chat bot. I like to integrate a chatbot strategy in there too. And so if possible, I don’t know you and I were just at the conversations conference. But so some people have like the keyword trigger. Let’s say you’re doing a live and you’ll say no comment below with the word, you know coupon and I’ll messages coupon and it just depends on again so many different factors of the page how regularly they go live how engaged the audiences but ideally the algorithms are looking for what Zak calls meaningful social interaction and that’s usually about five words or more.

So if you can get your audience to comment with more like full sentences than just a one trigger keyword, then that’s a good thing.

Steve: I know in this one as that’s doing really well for me. We sell handkerchiefs which is here’s a common thing. So we said hey, let me know if you’re a handkerchief lover and what you use them for.

Mari: Oh nice. That’s a great question. Yeah, because that you’re not going to just say one word answer to that. Yeah, that’s a good one.

Steve: And then it says they commented leads to a message and messenger where they can get a coupon. That’s kind of how I run it

Mari: brilliant, genius. Hmm. Love it.

Steve: So, Mari. I know you’re on a tight schedule here, and I did want to give you an opportunity to talk about where people can find you and I know you’re working on some courses. You mentioned earlier before the podcast started working people find you?

Mari: You betcha. So Marismith.com and I’m pretty much Mari Smith across all social channels and @Maria_Smith on Instagram. And indeed, I’ve got some new courses coming on probably my page and my Facebook page @MariSmith, the one with the blue check is the best place to find out anything new that I got going on and join some of my groups and stay connected and get all the latest and greatest of what’s happening in the Facebook family of apps.

Steve: and if you go to any social media conference, anywhere in the world chances are she is speaking at it. Haha

Mari: Haha Yeah. Thank you Steve. Yep. That’s true.

Steve: I really appreciate your time. Thanks a lot for coming on the show.

Mari: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Steve: Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now, Mari is my go-to woman when it comes to Facebook, but one thing that I’ve learned over the years is to never put all of your eggs and Facebook’s basket because it changes so often. For more information about this episode go to mywifequitherjob.com/episode292.

And once again I want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode, Klaviyo is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce Merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned cart sequence a post purchase flow or win back campaign. Basically, all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitherjob.com/klaviyo. Once again, That’s mywifequitherjob.com/klaviyo.

I also want to thank Privy for sponsoring this episode. Privy is the email capture provider that I personally use the term visitors into email subscribers. They offer email capture exit intent and site targeting tools to make it super simple as well. And I like Privy because it is so powerful and you can basically trigger custom pop-ups for any parameter that is closely tied your eCommerce store. Now, if you want to give it a try it is free so head on over to privy.com/steve. Once again, that’s P-R-I-V-Y.com/steve.

Now I talked about how I use these tools in my blog and if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store heading over to mywifequitherjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini-course just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.

Outro: Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com