In June, Imperfect Concepts’ Facebook fan page’s reach grew by 1028% in 30 days. I have been debating since January about deleting our Facebook fan page and Google + page; they weren’t giving a return on investment. I decided to make some changes to my company as a whole, to see if I could grow my business more before ditching these pages.
Website Redesign
In May, this website was completely redesigned. This was a huge factor in my Facebook reach changing. I not only wanted a site overhaul but a brand overall. I had bought several templates from other websites; spending almost $500 in templates. Sadly to say, none of them actually worked for me or my vision. So I gave up for a while. Then, we came up with this design. I hated my old website design. Not to knock it, but the developer never finished. He went ghost during the project.
Styled Stock Imagery
I believe this played a huge role in my company’s reach growing on Facebook. Audra, my designer, created all the visual imagery for this website. If you’ve been reading the blog long enough, you can tell that my graphic designs have evolved tremendously, in a short period of time. For the last two years, I’ve been trying to determine what I wanted from my graphics. I would read articles and try to mimic their designs. None truly fit me. Until, I started learning more about styled stock photography. To make the landing page more cohesive, I purchased a couple sets of styled stock photography.
Content Creation
In the last six months, I’ve tried to be even more intentional with the content that I create for this medium. I feel that May, June, and July all encompass some of the best content that I have written, thus far. I put my blinders on and stuck to my mission of creating what my audience needed versus the things that are sensational and might go viral. Content matters and just like being consistent. To my surprise, the post I felt proudest in writing–, that I thought my audience really wouldn’t “appreciate”, –had the highest reach. Ironically, y’all actually loved those post more than the ones I thought you would rant and rave about.
Consistent Sharing
In previous months, I tried doing A/B testing for when blog post showed up in peoples feeds. Then, Facebook made all those algorithm changes. Basically, rendering my efforts useless, unless I wanted to pay for that specific page option. I decided to stick to the standard blogger posting; letting WordPress push the post out at midnight my time. Some of my favorite bloggers like Emily from Cupcake & Cashmere post at this time. Keep it simple for your audience. When I wake up on the actual day that the post goes live, the post has already done half of its reach for the day. Some of my readers have noted that it’s the first thing they see when waking up; either via their email and their Facebook feed.
Sharing Content
IC’s Facebook fan page’s reach was very low along with the “likes”, which only trickled in from new followers. However, by implementing all of the helpful tips listed above, I was able to reach way more audience members than before. More people were tagging friends, writing comments, and sharing the post. The week of my Facebook chat, my follower numbers grew by 49 people. Before all of these changes were made, I was bringing in maybe one or two new followers a month. Now, I am averaging 10 people a week.
Facebook Chat
During the 3rd week of June, I hosted a Facebook chat. I’m not really a fan of Twitter chats; they can be overwhelming. So, Facebook it was. At the start of June, I shared via company newsletter, that I would be doing a Facebook Chat on my most popular eBook; Passive Income: Make Money In Your Sleep. I created an event for the actual day so people could RSVP and invite friends to attend. The day of the event I made sure the blog post correlated to the Facebook chat; 45 Passive Income Ideas For Business Owners. The site views for this post were triple the number of any post my site has ever seen.
I have seen my Facebook reach change without doing paid boost or ads. The fiscal investment being a new website, styled stock photography, time, and better content. I made these adjustments and saw a change 30 days later. Women love pretty things, our eyes are immediately attracted to them. One thing I will implement more of is Facebook chats.
