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Episode #055: Facebook Strategies For Success With Lorena Grater

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Blog Title: Green Healthy Cooking

Social Media:

IG: https://www.instagram.com/greenhealthycooking/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/greenhealthycooking/

About: On Green Healthy Cooking I offer healthy omnivore recipes made with clean ingredients! It’s all about offering real food recipes made out of 95% unprocessed food. Not 100%, because I’m keeping it real in a real-world scenario where all of us have about 39372920 other things on our daily to-do-list after “preparing a healthy meal”.

Notes from Episode #055: Facebook Strategies for Success

  • Fun fact: She was born and raised in Germany by a Peruvian mother. Lorena married a Mexican and is a trilingual cook who lives in Montreal, CA. 

  • Definition of success: real engagement! Not specific numbers.

  • Facebook success means that there is a connection with your readers and followers. It’s not a pedestal to shout out your new content then wait for reactions and hope for success. You have to be social with your followers to get a social reaction. 

  • You don’t go to a party and stand on a chair and yell “I am” and “I have” and “I know”, this isn’t social. 

  • Without social interaction, you won’t have success on social media. 

  • Look at the numbers, not just your followers but the whole engagement. Analyze them, see what they want and give them what they want. 

  • You want to be interacting with all of the people who show up in any form. You want anyone who says anything to know that this is a place for them. 

  • You want to engage your readers. You can also ask questions of them! Even the negative comments of readers can be an interaction. Fulfill their needs. 

The importance of knowing what you want to offer, what your niche is!

  • Post content related to your niche

  • Stay niche: if you’re a vegan blog and then you suddenly share a non-vegan recipe, you could put off a bunch of readers then maybe they’ll hide your post or your site and then Facebook will see that. Every post should be within your niche. Funny things are ok from time to time but if someone starts following you for a cat meme and then the audience realizes you’re food blog, that won’t be a success for you. Stay true to your niche and it’ll keep your page alive.

Analyzing content that’s working > create more of that!

  • Analytics: What should we be looking at? Engagement because we know they are interacting. Go to Overview, then look at Insights. If you have videos, you’ll have more Insights than if you just do photos. 

  • If you click on a link and direct people off Facebook, that might be good for you to get traction to your site but Facebook won’t reward it because you’re taking readers off their platform. You have to keep it balanced to keep Facebook happy. But then the analytics aren’t helpful because you didn’t do what they want you to do. But if you post a video to your Facebook page but you don’t include a link to your site, you may be able to analyze more clear analytics and can keep your Facebook page healthy.

  • Start with the social media platform you like the most as a reader and learn about that platforms analytics. Whether that is Facebook or another site. You need to learn to navigate it well. Once you understand it, learn to navigate another site, then you’ll get more comfortable in using that site. The social media sites have a goal of you engaging your readers on their site; but that’s not the goal of your blog so in order to use social media for your business strategy, you need to learn a separate strategy for social media than your other marketing strategies on another platform.

  • You have to commit some time to learning the social media platform of choice. This isn’t a 15 minute commitment. You may spend some hours/days digging into Facebook. 

  • You can’t expect Facebook to be your friend without investing time learning about it.

  • If you are just starting out, or haven’t really used Facebook, then you need to start posting. You need to build up some analytics. Be engaging in the comments!

  • Loyalty and Retention rates are now being analyzed by Facebook for you in regards to video. 

VIDEO! Video formula for success.

  • Video will always give you more analytics because Facebook favors it. So you need to provide videos to your account to make Facebook happy.

  • Lorena’s currently creating 2 videos per recipe: one is a Hands and Pans video because it attracts people on Instagram and then she’s making a 2nd video of the same recipe that’s hosted by her and it’s longer and narrated good for Facebook. 
  • Lorena can train her audience to like the new video formats that Facebook favors but also attract new followers with this change up of video styles. But be careful how closely they are posted because you don’t want to show the same video in 2 forms back to back. 

Engagement Posts, strategies to boost engagement.

  • Facebook might push out your content to 10 of your followers. Based on their engagement (likes, comments, shares), Facebook will then decide to push that content out to more of your followers. That can grow based on more interactions. 

  • You want engaged followers, not a large group of followers.

  • How often to post? There’s no exact number. It’s up to how diverse your audience is and how big your following is. If you have a small following, then maybe post once a day because you don’t want to spam your small group. If you have a large following, you could post multiple times a day because you have a large group.

  • If you’re a small niche, quality is more important than quantity. Everything you post, Facebook gives you a grade. If you do well on one post but then don’t get any engagement on three posts, then your average goes down. 

  • Don’t download or upload other people’s content. This is illegal. Use the Rights Manager through Facebook. Then you can see if someone is illegally using your content. You will be notified and can block them. You should be using the Share button to use share a video from someone else. Cross Posting with another content creator can be done too. But it has to be original content. You accept them as a cross posting buddy in the Rights Manager, but be sure its someone you trust. 

  • Your videos have to have a certain style to do well on Facebook. You have a short amount of time to capture someone’s attention. While people are scrolling on their phone, you have a second or two to get them to stop and stay. Jaw dropping, using an odd or weird process that grabs someone’s attention to stop is good. Go for the “hero” shot. 

  • Food Video Academy: is a course Lorena helped create with Brita Britnell. 

    • The kind of content and format is different on different social media platforms. You don’t want to film 5 videos for the same recipe. So its important to think ahead when filming to get all the shots you need and then make it possible to repurpose the same footage but edit it to be useful in multiple formats.

    • The course talks about video creation.

    • They created a group within Facebook to let people connect and ask questions.

  • You can follow other blogs you like on Facebook in creators studio and see what they are up to and get some ideas.

  • Don’t ever “Boost” a post. It’s complex and a waste of money. Don’t pay for traffic that will only get your pennies for the traffic you gain anyway. Your time is better spent adding video and learning how your video traffic can be analyzed to grow more. 

  • Facebook advertising can be an amazing tool if you have a great product. But then you might hire someone to help you get good results.

  • Favorite Quote of Lorena’s: “Done is better than perfect.”

Helpful references from the episode:

The Food Video Academy: https://www.foodvideoacademy.com/optin-page

Megan
Megan

Megan started her food blog Pip and Ebby in 2010 and food blogging has been her full-time career since 2013. Her passion for blogging has grown into an intense desire to help fellow food bloggers find the information, insight, and community they need in order to find success.

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