As a start-up or freelancer you want to grow your Facebook page. But Facebook is cutting off publishers and mainly wants to promote posts with high social engagement. In the meanwhile you see strong social engagement on Trump memes and cat gifs. How do you cut through the noise? Get attention and create value.
Welcome to the attention economy
While information grows exponentially, our own neurology imposes biological limits to the amount of inputs we can pay attention to. Time scarcity creates a poverty of attention. We live in the attention economy. In this economic paradigm, everyone competes for attention.
One way of getting someone’s attention on Facebook is by making your business relate to something they are truly interested in e.g. music, fashion, games. Post and advertise to people based on these specific interests and discover their emotional triggers.
Good value for time
When going to a new restaurant, someone might ask you: is it good value for money? The difference between consuming food and information is that one cost money and the other cost time. When you receive a lot of likes and shares, it means people thought it was a good investment of their time.
Fundamentally, your Facebook posts create value when they inform, inspire, enrich, amuse, and/or surprise. They will give you a like or share when you exceed people’s expectations of value gained for the time they spent. Aim to give 10x more value than everyone else for time spent (GVFT).
The consequences of conversion
When people like and share your posts, you are building reputational capital. They start trusting your opinion. Now you’ve got their attention (at least more of it) the next time around. People are more willing to listen to you.
As a start-up or freelancer you may post 95% with the purpose of building reputational capital. When your followers are engaged, it will be a lot easier to sell something in the other 5% of posts. Use Facebook initially to give out 10x value, build reputational capital and sell later on.
A content formula for Facebook
- Attention (use a specific interest to trigger people’s emotions)
- Value (10x value for time spent)
- Conversion (reputational capital)
The formula
Attention + Value = Conversion
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Examples
Here are three examples of content I have created to fire up social engagement for my clients’ Facebook pages, where you can see the formula and conversion (social engagement per £) in action.
#1: The Inspirer
The Inspirer is the poster boy of content. Instantly-gratifying, straight-forward loving. Seeing The Inspirer pop-up on your feed is like a pleasant unexpected surprise.
ATTENTION Interest: artist. Matching an artist’s appeal with target audience’s core believe system.
VALUE To inspire. It has a relaxing effect, like a digital health snack.
CONVERSION 4.4K likes on this Pink Floyd post with £14 ad-spend.
#2: The Trendsetter
The Trendsetter is the novelty geek & coolest kid on the block. The Trendsetter keeps you ahead of the game.
ATTENTION Interest: sneakers. A sneaker-head sees something they haven’t seen before
VALUE To inform. Simplifies and speeds-up the target audience’s discovery process.
CONVERSION 21K likes on this page for £700 (£0 spend on posts).
#3: The Moderator
The moderator has ‘social’ running through her digital veins. Power users intrinsically want to connect with people who can understand them.
ATTENTION Interest: vinyl. To see the passion of a like-minded enthusiast.
VALUE To enrich. It facilitates a meaningful interaction between power-users and niche-interest-groups.
CONVERSION 40 photo comments on this post with ad-spend of £10.
Thanks for reading!
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Elco
