Facebook Viral
Sniper Overview
There are a lot of successful Facebook pages being run by people that have no idea about Marketing... sure. But they most likely either started early, or had a lot of luck. Nowadays, it's simply dazzling how many people create FB pages without having a single clue how FB truly works, and so you always hear those things on forums and communities... "Facebook is dead" or even sillier "Facebook fans are worthless".
Let me tell you, these people don't know what I'm about to teach you.
The News Feed Algorithm is a complex script that evaluates what a story is worth to a user.
So when somebody "likes" your page, they won't see all your posts and activity (unless they explicitly choose to) - instead, they are only shown what Facebook thinks they want to see from your page. A lot of people don't know that!
So what you want to do is get as many of your stories as possible in front of as many of your fans as possible - so that they continue to "like" your content, and thus you get viral attention from friends of fans, and so on.
Of course, the algorithm that decides what gets published on the News Feed and what doesn't is Top Secret and only known to a few highly regarded Facebook employees. However, we can make a few educated guesses as with what the algorithm is all about: Engagement.
Facebook is looking to show its users the best content they could possibly want. So, when a user interacts with a page (be it through commenting, sharing or liking specific posts) they show Facebook that they are interested in that page's activity and that they would like to see more from it in the future.
On the other side, if a user continuously ignores the content they are being shown on the News Feed from one specific page, they will be getting less and less stories from that page.
So naturally, what we will be aiming at is to optimize interaction, and create posts that people truly like and want to share - just throwing in promotional links all day won't cut it.
How Do FB Pages Grow?
Naturally, FB ads are a great way to increase a community, and while they are a sustainable way to do it, what we are aiming at in the end is to get the right angle, so that all the page will need to grow is viral posts.
Your stories won't just appear to your fans News Feed, but once they interact with those posts, it is highly likely that it will show on fan's friend's feeds as well.
Here's an example:
This screenshot is from a News Feed of a friend of Seng Keat Teh. Although he has not liked "Social Cookbook" himself, he still sees the post because his friend has.
That's viral, and it's a goldmine.
The Strategy
Now that you know what we are aiming at with our pages, it's time to take a look at the overview of this strategy, as this guide will present it, to get there.
First of all, we'll focus on getting our initial fans, and kick- start the viral growth of our Facebook page. From then we'll look at ways to keeping a page active simply through viral methods, and in the end I'll teach you how to monetize this goldmine effectively and without annoying your fans!
It's a lot to talk about, so let's jump right into it!