#017: How To Use Facebook to Really Grow Your Business with Rachel Miller

May 17, 2018

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Today I’m talking with Rachel Miller, viral marketer and founder of Moolah Marketing. She teaches people how to use Facebook to really grow your business, because if there is anyone who has cracked the Facebook code, it's Rachel!

You definitely want to hear her genius advice on how to get Facebook to work for you, instead of you working for it!

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Transcript – How To Use Facebook to Really Grow Your Business

Intro: [00:00:03] Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie.

Jillian: [00:00:11] Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today, I'm excited to introduce my guest who is Rachel Miller. Now, Rachel started as a blogger and has turned into, check this out, she is an organic traffic specialist or as she calls herself a "viral marketer."

Jillian: [00:00:30] So really, in truth, she helps you understand social media, especially Facebook. So welcome to the show, Rachel.

Rachel: [00:00:39] Thank you so much for having me, Jillian. I really appreciate it.

Jillian: [00:00:42] We have to just say that we met randomly about a month ago at a conference but really, at a restaurant where I walked up to you and I said, "I know you."

Rachel: [00:00:52] You recognized me. It was awesome.

Jillian: [00:00:55] I know and then, we ended up having lunch together which was so nice.

Rachel: [00:00:59] It was fun.

Jillian: [00:01:00] Talk about how you started because I knew you back in the day as a blogger.

How to make a post go viral on Facebook

Rachel: [00:01:06] Oh, yeah. It's so funny because I feel like it was a lifetime ago. But it's only been like a year and a half, a year since I've started my second business.

Rachel: [00:01:18] Probably 10 or 11, 10 years ago, I guess, I started QuirkyMomma. I started that because I quit my teaching job. I had two babies at that time. I couldn't go back to maternity leave with two babies with Texas teacher pay. It didn't make sense with childcare and everything.

Rachel: [00:01:38] I was home with my kiddos, and I was going bored, crazy, out of my mind. I started QuirkyMomma. That was my first website. I wrote over 30 posts that went to over a million. I can't remember the exact number between each site but in total, 29 posts that got to over a million page views each.

Rachel: [00:02:00] I had tons of posts that went to millions and millions on Facebook. We wrote a book and it went on to a best seller, sold over 100,000 copies. I was just like having the time of my life, making content, seeing how many people I could get on it and be really excited at drawing eyeballs to an action.

Jillian: [00:02:22] And the action was come to my site.

How to sell products through viral Facebook posts

Rachel: [00:02:25] Well, that would be come to my site. Some of it was purchase something. I made rainbow loom bands go viral on my website and then, we sold a lot of rainbow loom kits so kids could make their own rainbow loom bracelets, or selling pins or whatever it is that I'm selling at the time.

Jillian: [00:02:44] And you're selling them. If you're affiliate, you're doing an affiliate link.

Rachel: [00:02:48] Originally, I started as affiliate links, but as I grew in my venture, I began creating my own products and filling my own products. You make a lot more money selling your own product than you do as an affiliate.

Jillian: [00:02:59] So with these online products, are these physical products?

Rachel: [00:03:02] Both. I have seven private label products at one point, and then also where you white label or where you have. Let's say, you go to your Walmart and you find that they have Star Wars. This literally happened.

Rachel: [00:03:16] They had Star Wars toothbrushes for like a dollar each. Light sabers, they light up and they make a funny noise. I'm like, "These are worth a lot more than a dollar." So I bought all those toothbrushes that Walmart had at the time which was like 250 of the toothbrushes and sold them for seven dollars and 85 cents on Amazon like two weeks later.

Jillian: [00:03:40] Wow. I love that.

Rachel: [00:03:43] That almost immediately.

Jillian: [00:03:46] Did people pay shipping on top of that?

Rachel: [00:03:49] No, I just sent them in Amazon and they send them out, however they send them out.

Jillian: [00:03:55] Wow. And how did you get the idea to do that?

Rachel: [00:04:02] I had heard about people selling on Amazon and so I got an amazon account but I didn't know what I was going to do with it.

Rachel: [00:04:08] And then I saw my son playing in a grocery store with this toothbrush and I was like "Star Wars is coming out in three weeks. These are really cheap. This is the time. Let's make a video of him playing with a toothbrush. Make it go viral on Facebook and sell off toothbrushes. Let's see if we could do it."

Rachel: [00:04:25] So $250 dollars later, I bought all the toothbrushes. That was my one of my first venture into selling physical products on my own.

Jillian: [00:04:33] Wow. By the way, QuirkyMomma was kids activities or it is kids activities, is that right?

Rachel: [00:04:42] Kids activities but yes, I sold it.

Jillian: [00:04:43] Okay, so then, you just started working on Facebook for kids activities or for QuirkyMomma.

Rachel: [00:04:52] Yeah, I helped QuirkyMomma grow from 13,000 into multiple millions. So I left the site when it was at 2.2 million.

Jillian: [00:05:01] And then, I guess, you fell in love with Facebook.

Rachel: [00:05:05] Yeah, I fell in love with attracting an audience. It could be anywhere. I actually also grew my Pinterest account by over 100,000 in one year. I grew up it to 80,000 over the course of like two or three or four years and then, in one year, I put a lot of effort into it and bumped it up to almost 190,000.

Jillian: [00:05:23] That's terrific.

Rachel: [00:05:25] The same love of people is in every social media platform.

Jillian: [00:05:29] Unpack that a little bit. Tell me what you mean by that.

Rachel: [00:05:33] If you love people, you're going to serve them with specific content that's going to help feed their bucket, like everyone has the desire to feel affirmation, to feel successful or to feel smart and fun.

How to create social media content that makes people feel good

Rachel: [00:05:49] We create content that makes them feel those ways, fill those needs in your audience, your audience will grow and as your audience grow, you ask them what they want and need and then, you deliver it to them and then your revenue in your pocketbook grows as well.

Jillian: [00:06:06] I love that because it's all about serving others. It's not about, "I think this is cool." I mean it's a little bit about that, but it's really about, "I know my audience will think this is cool."

Rachel: [00:06:21] Exactly. I don't care so much about what I think is going to be cool. People have asked me do you think you're a trendsetter, where you can see if something's going viral, and sometimes I can, I can tell this is good content or this is not good content.

Rachel: [00:06:34] But at the same time, it really depends on the people that you're serving as to whether some of the content is going to do well. It's not about us.

Jillian: [00:06:42] I totally agree. In fact, for Catch my Party, people will say, "You say what the trends are going to be in the world of parties, kids parties and stuff" and I go, "No. I just see what people are responding to and then, I create more content like that."

Rachel: [00:07:00] Exactly. That's it in a nutshell.

Jillian: [00:07:04] Like I can't tell you what the new trends will be. I can amplify a trend or I can identify it.

Rachel: [00:07:12] But all you do is serve our audience.

Jillian: [00:07:15] Yes. We're not soothsayers.

Rachel: [00:07:21] So essentially, I left Quirky Momma and then I created One Crazy House. And that's my second blog to a Facebook page of over 500,000 in 18 months. We had our third year anniversary, and we have 51 million page views on it. That's so cool.

Jillian: [00:07:37] Oh my God.

Rachel: [00:07:38] And we have two more websites. I've got Crazy Cat Lady, and I've got the One Pot Crock-Pot.

Jillian: [00:07:44] Okay. Explain the idea of why you create different websites.

Rachel: [00:07:54] Well, it was kind of a joke actually, a little bit. I started when Quirky Momma and then One Crazy House, and I was at a conference. I was speaking at the conference about how you can go viral and everything.

Rachel: [00:08:08] I was in the bathroom afterwards, and I was hearing two people talking and the one girl was saying, "These big bloggers, I can never be like Rachel. She just said she did this and this and this. Like how is that even possible?"

Rachel: [00:08:22] And the other girl goes, "Don't worry about it. They're doing that because they're so big so they had a big budget when they started, and they had these big pages that they all share from. So we can never become big because it's all the big pages are a cliche.

Rachel: [00:08:34] And I was like, "Oh my word." And I left. And it was like almost like I failed the entire conference because of that like one little conversation they didn't know I was listening to. They weren't trying to be rude. To them, they were just simply having a conversation.

Jillian: [00:08:44] It's like a scene out of a sitcom.

Rachel: [00:08:50] I know. I went home and I'm like bawling because I take things way too personally. I'm like, "They're right. They're right because I did grow with budget. Nobody else has that kind of budget. I had these big friends, when I was growing One Crazy House, I could contact and say 'Hey, can you share for me?' They're right. I couldn't do it the right way.

Building organic Facebook pages from nothing

Rachel: [00:09:13] So my husband's like, "Do it the right way. What's your problem, Rach? Just go do it." It's like "Well, I can't," and he's like, "Okay, whatever." You could do it with cats. Come on, everybody can do it with cats. So like literally at the kitchen table, we made a cat page and we put up viral cat content. And then, it went viral.

Jillian: [00:09:30] So you made a Facebook cat page.

Rachel: [00:09:33] Yeah, I made a cat page because my husband said, "Well, hello. You could definitely do with cat. Come on." So yes, I made a viral cat page and it was like, "Well, everybody can do it with cats. What's something that's really boring? I got to deal with that too."

Rachel: [00:09:49] And so then, I did crock pots because I thought crock pots were boring. I don't ever cook really. And so I thought crock pots were these boring things. But no, there were a very passionate group of people that love, a set or group of people that love their crock pots. And so yeah, I got to love and serve crock pot people next.

Jillian: [00:10:11] I love that. So you were able to grow these pages organically.

Rachel: [00:10:18] It was more just to prove to myself like I did it with Quirky Momma, I did it with One Crazy House but I also did it with two other pages without a lot of money, under five dollars a day and without tons of friends sharing. I didn't have any friends sharing. Nobody knew I was doing it. I was able to replicate my success again.

Jillian: [00:10:39] Great. Can you break down just the elements of what that success means?

Rachel: [00:10:46] Well, most importantly, it means I get to help people. When a lady's cat dies, I'm an audience where she can share her cat, a video of her cat, photos of her cat and the people there will rally around her and support her when she comes home in those dark, dark moments.

Rachel: [00:11:06] We get to help rescue cats in different areas which is important to those people. I'm like giggling about it a little bit, but at the same time, this is a huge community of women who are loving and supporting each other that I am honored to get to be a part of that. It's most important. That's bigger than the dollar amount, but the dollar amount of my other audiences, it's a hefty income each year.

Facebook data collection, targeting, and privacy

Jillian: [00:11:35] Great. Facebook is in the news. Facebook is everywhere, and it's kind of negative.

Rachel: [00:11:43] It is. It is so funny because like they're talking about this whole tracking thing, and I'm sitting there like you guys had robo vacuums, and you connected them to Alexa and you could tell Alexa that "can you vacuum my floor please?"

Rachel: [00:11:58] The vacuum walks around your house and it picks up data like there's a chair here, it sends that information back to Amazon, and Amazon's targeting you with new products when you move a chair. That same data is being shared everywhere. All the data places share their information with each other because they're all data hungry. We have privacy. This is not new to us. This is like normal.

Rachel: [00:12:23] I've been using Facebook targeting for ages to find my die hard fans and then to love on them more. It could give them more information. But yes, it has changed. Yes. Is it going to continue to change? Definitely. I do think having more transparency is a good thing.

Rachel: [00:12:38] So when you have your Robocop robo-vacuum, if I'm going to vacuum my floor, it now has a layout of my home. It's sending that information back to Amazon. Am I cool with that? We aren't cool with that but we all want Alexa to have access to your vacuum cleaner. So you've got to understand that when you're giving Alexa access to your vacuum cleaner, what that means for you.

Rachel: [00:13:02] I know what that means for you because I'm a marketer who target people to buy their furniture. People are a little bit like, "Wait a second. You've been stalking in my house. You know what my layout of my home is. For real? Isn't that intrusion?"

Rachel: [00:13:16] They're like, "Well, no because now, we know if you're looking for new furniture because you're rearranging the room multiple times. We know what that means. It means you're hunting for furniture so we keep sending more furniture ads."

Jillian: [00:13:28] Right. Now, do you think that Facebook will ultimately change and that you won't be able to grow these audiences so they won't be as valuable?

Rachel: [00:13:39] Well, in some ways, it has changed a little bit. You're not going to be able to make as much money off of affiliates right now because you have to create your affiliate content.

Rachel: [00:13:48] So my son, with the toothbrush, I had him brushing his teeth and playing with the toothbrush. I didn't just use somebody else's picture of that toothbrush to sell it, to create the content.

Rachel: [00:14:00] We have to be more active as content creators. So does that mean it's harder for people to join in if they're not going to put in the time to be a good content creator? It will probably then thin out the number of people that are in the market.

Why you want to be a content creator

Jillian: [00:14:18] Right, but if you're one of those people who will make content, you can have a leg up because you're not competing with stock photos from Amazon.

Rachel: [00:14:30] Exactly. As long as you are the content creator, there is a need in the world for content creators. People are sharing content. People are looking at content at 1:00 in the morning. People are discussing articles that they're reading. People want content.

Rachel: [00:14:45] So there will be a need for content. Now, how difficult it is to provide that content or what kind of rules we have with disclosure? Those will all be changing. It's always changing.

Jillian: [00:14:58] It's like you get on the roller coaster, and you hold on tight.

Rachel: [00:15:02] Yeah, and even with Facebook right now. With Facebook targeting, we can no longer target new house buyers, but what we can do is purchase the list of people who publicly just changed their addresses in the state database which is public information, and we can buy that information, aggregate it and then use it.

How to target people on Facebook to sell to them

Jillian: [00:15:24] Could you explain what that means. Could you explain targeting, how you target people and why?

Rachel: [00:15:30] So you want to target people who love your content.If you're a home DIY or home interior design, when are people most likely to be focusing and obsessing about design? When they're either selling their home or buying a new home, right?

Rachel: [00:15:47] So for you, you'd want to target people who are new home buyers or selling their homes because the people that are going to be most likely to be nonstop watching Fixer Upper because they're trying to fix up their home or because they don't like the current kitchen but they like the rest the house.

Rachel: [00:16:01] What can they do to make that kitchen in that new house they're buying better? So those are the people that are the most passionate in the home decor realm. And in the buying of mindset, remember, you want them into buying lens so you can sell to them.

Rachel: [00:16:16] Those are people who are most likely to be also buying to fix that solution. Before, you could just go to Facebook and say, "I want to target anyone who's selling their home or who is buying a home." That used to be partner information that Facebook collected.

Rachel: [00:16:30] So Facebook would reach out to partners which would be like the DMV, when you're changing your address or your driver's license. There's different things that are public. GoDaddy, with your registration, you can have a new website and that information is public if you did not pay your $7.99 or whatever to hide your private information.

Rachel: [00:16:50] There are places where your information is given out publicly. Home records, that's a public thing. Everyone knows. There's like you can go onto your state website and you can see the people who are buying houses, even with their house price was.

Rachel: [00:17:05] That's public information as well. So you can see that information. So what they basically do is buy that information and then, upload it into Facebook into their partners. Now, we could access that targeting.

Rachel: [00:17:18] And I would say, "I want to target new home buyers where I can target somebody who drives this type of vehicle" but we can't do that anymore. Now, we have to buy the data from those data companies ourselves and upload it.

Jillian: [00:17:29] And how do you find that data? How do you find those companies?

Rachel: [00:17:34] Oh there's like a list of them. I guess I could give to your audience later. But you just go online and says, "I want to buy data" and buy aggregated data.

Jillian: [00:17:43] Got it.

Rachel: [00:17:47] I'm using my content to segment the audience. But that's something that's gotten more difficult because Facebook just changed that law.

Jillian: [00:17:55] And then are you putting your posts in front of them? Are you putting your products in front of them?

Rachel: [00:18:02] Yeah. You want to start always with your content and then work them into your product. So I want to find the people that are most likely to be interested in farmhouse chic and then showing them farmhouse chic then I'll show them, "Here's my buying guide for farmhouse chic products."

Rachel: [00:18:20] So you first have to find who loves this look first, before you send them your buying guide. You have them trust who you are and interact with you. I like people that interact with me, even up to seven times before they see that I have a product for sale. I don't give them my product for sale until they've interacted with me several times.

Jillian: [00:18:40] Wow. And then they trust you?

Rachel: [00:18:42] If they trust me, they're more likely to buy and I'm more likely to know what they want to.

Jillian: [00:18:47] Got it. And is this all happening on Facebook or are you also getting their email, that kind of thing?

Rachel: [00:18:55] I don't focus on email as much as a lot of other people do, and I know that's probably a detriment to my business, but I know I could probably be a lot better at email. I do collect people's emails but that's not my focus because I know if I can get them to click on any of my websites, I can re-target them and I can re-target them on Facebook, I can re-target them on YouTube, I can re-target them on Pinterest. All of those locations, you can re-target.

Jillian: [00:19:19] Can you explain what that means?

Rachel: [00:19:21] When someone visits, say one landing page like your DIY farmhouse kitchen, you can show them all the fun things to do in your kitchen. And then here's the thing, they don't have a whole lot of time.

Rachel: [00:19:32] They don't want to spend four hours doing whatever type of paint treatment to the cabinet. Next thing you know, you're going to send them to the second. Everybody who sees that first website, you re-target them and say, "I'm going to send them an ad with my next website," which might be your buying guides so that they don't have to do it themselves.

Jillian: [00:19:53] And these websites are landing pages.

Rachel: [00:19:57] It could be a blog post. So you know where you're sequenced. I can't remember her name off the top of my head. Penny savers, I think, does this really, really well. She had one. It's just a regular blog post, but it segments people whose kids are in college.

An example of a sales funnel on Facebook

Rachel: [00:20:13] She starts them off with, "Here's just a DIY getting ready for your college dorm, helping your child get their dorm room ready," and so they just see this. And then, she sends them a "College is so expensive. Isn't it horrible how college is so expensive?"

Rachel: [00:20:29] So now you see her post: "Oh, we're just getting ready for dorms." Now, we're seeing college is so expensive. That puts it in your brain "Oh my word. It is. I can't afford that." Then she send them "Here's your guide to a hundred different scholarships your kids can get."

Rachel: [00:20:48] But then you think: "Oh my word. That's a lot of scholarships. I'll never be able to fill out this paperwork out. Oh my." And then, she sends you the fourth one is, "We'll do a scholarship matching and searching and applying for you, done for you." S.

Rachel: [00:21:01] He works them through that. So now, she knows these are people who are really looking for college scholarships. They've already proven that they have kids in college. They've already proven that they have an issue with paying for college. They've already proven that they're interested in scholarships. Now, we're going to send them a "One thousand dollar done for you" that we could find them scholarships.

Jillian: [00:21:22] That is brilliant.

Rachel: [00:21:23] Exactly.

Jillian: [00:21:24] So you are this tour guide. You are leading people down the path.

Rachel: [00:21:33] I have never heard of anybody described it like a tour guide, but that is definitely the path. And the thing is you're literally just asking your readers, "What do you need help with?"

Rachel: [00:21:39] Oh, you need help with getting your kids into college. Okay, well, how can I help you with that? Can I help you the best by just saying "Hey, I've got the service for you that will help you find scholarships.".

Rachel: [00:21:47] That's not going to help you because you're not going to jump on it. But by helping you in all these other little ways and then say, "Oh, yes and we have the extra projects. By that point, they're ready for "Okay, Yes, I need the help. Thank you."

How to budget on Facebook advertising

Jillian: [00:22:01] And you are putting money behind each of these steps.

Rachel: [00:22:07] Yes. Now, here's the thing. Because of the way Facebook and organic traffic goes, the first steps are not very expensive at all. We're talking, they might be free. They might be a post that you just put up and then, they do well on their own. They might be posts that you put up with two dollars a day or five dollars a day. The emphasis is not on money. Collect an audience. And then later on, in that last one is the one you're going to put money behind.

Jillian: [00:22:35] Got it. Right because you already know this is what they're looking for.

Rachel: [00:22:41] I might spend a little bit ahead of time but I'm not to put the big budget until that last one.

Jillian: [00:22:44] Got it. Let's say that I sell the service where I will find the scholarships that are right for you, for your kid and that product is a thousand dollars, how much would I spend in an ad to attract that person?

Rachel: [00:23:03] Well, it depends on how much your revenue is. So one rule of thumb is 3 percent of whatever you want to. This is something like my mastermind people have said like general rule, three percent of total revenues. You want to put to ad. That said, what that is, what that looks like for you, it might be different. Let's say, you've got a $2,000 product but you can have $1,500 that is profit because you only have to pay $500 of it out to whatever to manage , to deliver the product. Well, at that point, you've got a huge ROI. you've got $1,500 dollars.

Jillian: [00:23:40] In return on investment. Yeah.

Rachel: [00:23:43] You can spend up to $4,300 and still be making a profit on that.

Jillian: [00:23:47] Yeah. Okay. And is this what a Facebook funnel looks like?

Rachel: [00:23:56] A little bit. Yeah.

Jillian: [00:23:56] Okay because I keep hearing about Facebook funnels which seems slightly different than email funnels, but it's kind of seems like you're moving the tour on Facebook. Okay, that's fascinating to me.

Jillian: [00:24:16] If I were starting out today and I'm a new blogger, what advice would you have for me in terms of trying to grow my page, or like how should I focus?

Find your niche as a blogger

Rachel: [00:24:31] Pick one thing to be known for because when you have one thing to be known for, you're going to be able to attract people who would trust you more in that topic. They're more likely to buy from you because they realize you're the place for XYZ.

Rachel: [00:24:44] They could go to Amazon for everything, right? But if they're looking for something specific, for example, little boys' Star Wars stuff, they want to know that all that you have is really truly vetted as the latest, coolest kids' Star Wars stuff.

Rachel: [00:24:57] You're the financial adviser for women who are recently divorced. They want to know that you have all of your content is in their best interest. So you can't be the financial adviser for people who are newly divorce, also sharing your favorite recipes and telling them stories about your dog.

Rachel: [00:25:16] You've got to focus on what's most important to you. Now, could you just focus on stories about your dog? Definitely. And then sell dog products or something else? Definitely. Could you be about your favorite recipes, sell cookbooks, sell kitchen supplies and even your own line of kitchen utensils that are the best for people? Definitely.

Rachel: [00:25:32] But doing all three spreads your credibility. And so it's harder for people to attract to you.

Jillian: [00:25:39] Yes. And I talk about this all the time. Find your niche. Find your lane and go deep.

Rachel: [00:25:45] Definitely.

Jillian: [00:25:46] Like there's enough content for you to create. There is enough of an audience for you to find, and it is really setting yourself up as an expert. And what I find is if people trust you, for example, if you're my Star Wars go-to person, I guess I could go to Walmart and buy the toothbrush, but if you've already vetted it for me, if you've already told me this is the one I should buy, I'll pay more to buy it from you.

Rachel: [00:26:23] And they want the convenience of knowing that you've got a collection of products just for them.

Jillian: [00:26:29] Yes, totally. Yes. I mean, that makes perfect sense. So again, as you're starting to think about what business you're creating, think about it in a very narrow way. You became the Rainbow Loom person.

Rachel: [00:26:47] For a little while there, yeah, till the fad fizzled out.

Jillian: [00:26:52] And how do you feel about that, riding different fads, things like that? Should you jump on that bus?

Rachel: [00:27:00] Yeah, really. I mean, you love your audience. So if your audience suddenly start loving rainbow loom bracelets, you love rainbow loom bracelets too. If they love Play Dough, you love Plato. If they're cat people, they don't like talking about cat food, so I won't talk about cat food because I want to love my audience. You see what your audience really respond to, and you serve and love them.

Jillian: [00:27:22] Got it. Okay, so let's go back to this, which is I'm a new blogger. What do I do on Facebook? And I get it. Ultimately, my goal is to sell them products. But how would I start out?

Make your Facebook page about your reader, not you

Rachel: [00:27:35] First up would be making your page about your reader. A lot of people pick their page about them. When people come to the site, they see a person's face, the person that they're not friends with and they don't know who they are and some of their interests.

Rachel: [00:27:49] So it's hard for someone who doesn't know you to feel attached to the page because they've never interacted with you before, but they might be pickleball. I did not know that was a thing. It's totally an up and coming game with like newly retired people.

Rachel: [00:28:06] It's like a cross between baseball and ping pong or something. Anyway, it's a fanatical thing. I did not know this was a thing. A guy in charge of the pickleball pages, put his face on all the pages. People will connect with him but they don't understand pickleball.

Rachel: [00:28:25] They're just a random person who's newly retired and heard about this game called pickleball, and he wants to learn more about pickleball. He doesn't know about the person, Joe, who's running the pickleball page. You have no problem falling in love with Joe. That's weird but I mean -.

Jillian: [00:28:40] Eventually, right? I get it.

Rachel: [00:28:42] Loving the content, loving who Joe is and loving Joe's love of pickleball, and building Joe into a personal brand. He doesn't mind that but he wants to keep coming first just to learn what is pickleball, who is playing pickleball, we're going to find a pickleball tournament or a group of people playing pickleball, and what do I need to play.

Rachel: [00:29:01] That's what he's coming for. Give them that, that thing. And so when they come to your Facebook page, it should be the name, the cover of the photo, the profile, your pinned-to content, your story, your description, those should all be what your reader is coming to you or what you want to be known for about your reader. Not about you.

Jillian: [00:29:21] Totally, okay. Okay, so then I want to start to build my page so I've got my page set up then. Am I just sharing content that other people are creating about pickleball? Am I making my own content?

Rachel: [00:29:39] Yeah. You want to be making your own content. I suggest when you're a brand new page, one fourth is your own content and three fourth is somebody else's because you're going to be riding their coattails.

Rachel: [00:29:49] You're going to use those other pages to help you grow a little bit. Now, pickleball's kind of a new niche, hand-embroidered ribbon. One of my students had hand-embroidered ribbons. That's a new niche. There's not very many people out there talking about hand-embroidering ribbon.

Rachel: [00:30:03] Not hand-embroidering tea towels, only hand-embroidering ribbons since she's going to have to create all that content on her own. That said, she was able to create a 10,000 person fan page and a membership where they're buying monthly subscription box of ribbons and ribbon embroidery supplies.

Rachel: [00:30:23] They have a Facebook group where they talk about how they embroider these ribbons, whatever. She's got a huge business. She was able to create off of her niche but she did have to focus in very tightly into what she was about.

Jillian: [00:30:36] Okay. And then just in terms of logistics, how often should I be posting on Facebook? Let's say I'm the pickleball guy.

How many times to post on your Facebook page a day

Rachel: [00:30:44] Yeah. New pages, I suggest two to four times a day. And then when you are over 25,000, you can move slowly into eight to nine times a day. You can still stay that four or two even when you're bigger, but I would start it to two to four and then, you could just keep adding another post. I'm trying to be consistent as long as your engagement per post has not dropped.

Jillian: [00:31:08] Okay. And then, when do I start putting money behind my posts to try to draw a bigger audience?

Rachel: [00:31:14] I start that almost at the beginning. I'll start because I want to get people who are engaged. When I have zero fans, I'll put money behind every single post, I'll put the same exact money, same number of days on every single post I put out.

Learn what kind of content your Facebook audience wants to see from you

Rachel: [00:31:28] And I'll put that out and see what type of content they're most interested in. First off, I want to find out the content. I will take two dollars a day for every post for three days, and I'll boost it all to the same people.

Rachel: [00:31:40] So in my cat page, I'll take this post, put it out and they'll all go to people who are just interested in cats, just a general interest, and I'm doing this to find out what messaging of my post does the best.

Rachel: [00:31:51] I'm not really looking for whether a photo does better or video does better or a link does better. What I'm looking for is what is the message that's being shared by this piece of content that seems to perform better with this audience.

Jillian: [00:32:04] I love that.

Rachel: [00:32:04] For a few weeks, I'll see that, "Okay, I am a cat mom." All the posts that did really, really well, they were all posts where they're treating their cat like a kid. The cat did this, the cat misbehaved. We're shaming the cat for whatever he did.

Jillian: [00:32:24] Right. We're potty training our cat.

Rachel: [00:32:26] Exactly, like literally, that's the type of content that was doing the best. So now, I know just general cat people, the stuff that does the best is treating my cat like a baby.

Rachel: [00:32:36] Well, now, that we know that the content as well, now, we need to find out where that content gets people that are the most active. So I'll then go into my audience insights.

Rachel: [00:32:45] I'll see what type of pages are related to my niche that have the highest activity level and see if I can target them or niche neighborhood with them, which is like a term I use, which is when we connect our pages to them with Facebook SEO. We link to stuff on their page and put links to our own page from their page. We tag each other.

Jillian: [00:33:05] So you then reach out to these people who have pages that are similar?

How to niche neighborhood on Facebook

Rachel: [00:33:10] Sometimes, I reach out to them and sometimes, I just niche neighborhood with them without their permission and just connect our pages. So I'll go onto their page and say how awesome I think something is or I'll leave a comment on their content with something of my own content, not in a spammy way.

Rachel: [00:33:24] Or I'll share something from their page onto my page and then, I'll take the thing that I shared, and I'll leave it as a comment on their page. It'll be like "I found you because I was here." I did that in a nice way that doesn't seem like so spammy but it just shows Facebook that I'm similar to that other page.

Rachel: [00:33:43] I wanted to pick a page that has the highest level of activity. That way, I can pull in the users who are the most active in their niche so they're more likely to bring on other people who were most active.

Rachel: [00:33:54] It's like targeting myself or targeting my husband. Facebook has even said this, that Facebook want people to have a meaningful connection. It was decided, January 11, what meaningful connections is a long comment.

Rachel: [00:34:09] Facebook want people who are going to leave sizable comments on your content. Even though my husband and I have similar interests, you don't want to target my husband for any of those ads because he doesn't comment on anything. He's just online, not a stalker but just he just reads, scrolls.

Rachel: [00:34:26] He's never going to like something. He's never going to share with me. So in comparison, I'm like the non-stop talker everywhere. I'm leaving comments in everybody's stuff. I'm like tagging people I don't even know to say "Hey, did you read this?" You want the person who's going to bring everybody else to your content.

Jillian: [00:34:48] Right. So you want to find the connectors.

Rachel: [00:34:51] The connectors. Yes. They will find people like my husband who are the scrollers.

Jillian: [00:34:57] Got it. Could we talk for just a minute about this idea that you need other people, other pages like your page to help you grow?

Rachel: [00:35:11] Yes, you do. Nobody is in a vacuum. Our readers aren't in a vacuum. We are not in a vacuum. They are all interconnected. So think of yourself and the things that you love as a reader to engage with. Probably podcasting, right. So you're not going to follow, one, "how to podcast" page.

Rachel: [00:35:29] You're going to follow several podcasters. You're going to be in several podcasting groups. You've got a really awesome podcast, and you love blogging. You're probably going to be in more than one blogging group. The same type of thing for our readers, what they're most interested in, the pickleball person, whatever it is. Pickleball.

Jillian: [00:35:47] Yes.

Rachel: [00:35:48] He's probably in every pickleball group there is. They're probably looking for more pickleball groups. Same with the person who's interested in World War 2 retouch photography. They're probably looking for more World War 2 stuff in other places online.

Rachel: [00:36:05] You're just helping them find other places and establishing yourself as a leader in your niche because you're connecting them to other content they want.

Jillian: [00:36:13] Okay, so I'm the pickleball guy. I find five other pages, five other people who build businesses around pickleball. Do I then say "Hey, guys, let's get in this group and let's share each other's content"?

Why Facebook share groups can hurt you

Rachel: [00:36:30] Yes and no. Because share groups, Facebook knows when they're not organic and they're not real, so it will hurt you to be in a share group where you're requiring each other to share.

Jillian: [00:36:40] Really? Because I remember back, maybe it feels like an eternity, like three or four years ago where we were all putting ourselves in these share groups.

Rachel: [00:36:51] Share groups can hurt your page because you're putting content into, it becomes an echo chamber. So when your fans already have seen the content once because they've already interacted with that page and they've already shared that content, so now both pages are sharing that same pieces of content to similar readers. This is only going to show that to your readers one time. So you've now cut your organic reach by half.

Jillian: [00:37:18] Okay, so you don't recommend share groups.

Rachel: [00:37:23] The share group can be helpful. They can also be misused.

Jillian: [00:37:27] So would it be something like I've got a post, and it's got juice. It's getting some virality. I'm going to contact you. My friend, we create similar content. "Hey, would you share this?"

Rachel: [00:37:39] Once in a while, I would but I wouldn't use the same friend regularly because it can come back to bite you. You become an echo chamber. If she is sharing the same content, you're sharing the same viral, now, Facebook's only showing that viral to one time to your related audience.

Jillian: [00:37:54] Okay. Okay.

Rachel: [00:37:56] Now, if she's already shared it to that person, now, you've shared it, that person's not going to see it again.

Jillian: [00:38:02] Got it.

Rachel: [00:38:03] So you cut that person out of the ability to get organic traffic.

Jillian: [00:38:08] Interesting. Okay. But that was a strategy.

Rachel: [00:38:10] Well, you can still use it. It's probably more nuanced than we can go into a conversation on a podcast, but it is helpful to start with some share groups that other people sharing their stuff is good, but once you have an overlapping or similar audience, Facebook's only going to show that post once. If two people shared it to that audience, only one of those shares will get any eyeballs.

Jillian: [00:38:33] Got it. So it's a little bit like you don't want it with somebody who lives in your virtual neighborhood, but maybe in the neighborhood next to your neighborhood.

Rachel: [00:38:44] Exactly. I mean there's so much that goes into it. It's more than we could probably talk about in 20 minutes.

What is Moolah Marketing?

Jillian: [00:38:49] So we didn't talk about Moolah Marketer. So can you explain what that is?

Rachel: [00:38:54] Oh, I've got over 2,300 students so far that we've helped grow their Facebook pages and their Facebook audiences. It's my little, happy place on the Internet. It's a lot of fun. We've helped pages gain engagement on their content. That's pretty much the goal of Moolah.

Jillian: [00:39:14] And is it the goal to, this has always been my question, is it to grow your Facebook page, is it to grow your traffic, is it to grow your income or is it all of those three things?

Rachel: [00:39:27] We want to help you grow in engagement in the way that will help you reach your goal. We have some nonprofits in our group where they're not necessarily looking for money. What they're looking for is a movement. We've helped them grow their movement.

Rachel: [00:39:46] We've got political campaigns. There were three people that are on political campaigns. One is a high level Democrat governor, I believe, and the other ones are like city council and lower level House of Representatives. And we've helped them.

Rachel: [00:40:00] They're not looking for money. They're looking for brand awareness. They're trying to get their message out to their constituents. We help people who are just out for money. We help people that we get a couple students who they basically create websites and sell them so we help them build the website fast, build an audience fast, sell that audience and then he goes on to make another one.

Rachel: [00:40:26] So there's all different types of students. We have one person who is a llama wedding farmer. If you want to get married with llamas in your wedding.

Jillian: [00:40:35] I would.

Rachel: [00:40:36] I know. Isn't it fun, kind of crazy? Some of the niches, I'm like "That's a thing? Okay, that's a thing." I did not know all the niches that need Facebook. There were more than I was aware of.

Jillian: [00:40:48] Wow.

Rachel: [00:40:49] All of them.

Jillian: [00:40:50] That's terrific. So what is the one piece of advice that you could give to our audience that you wish you knew right when you were starting?

Rachel: [00:41:04] To make my content be about my reader and to live in a life of abundance not a life of "I don't have it." Does that make sense?

Jillian: [00:41:12] Explain.

Rachel: [00:41:13] A lot of time, you sit there and think, "Well, if I help someone else go viral, I'm not going to have this viral or if I help someone else's business grow, it's not going to help my business grow".

Rachel: [00:41:24] So some people would say, "Wait. Why are you giving away your viral title? You should charge for that. People shouldn't get that for free." I've got 25 of my 29 posts, I've got 1 million eyeballs. I give away those titles to people so they can make their own post off of the title.

Rachel: [00:41:42] I've had people tell me, "Why are you giving that away? Now, they're taking it." I'm like "Yeah. It's not they took my viral away. I still have my viral. This will bring me in traffic. They're fine. All I'm doing is helping the world, all the marketers, have more viral."

Rachel: [00:41:59] That's a good thing. Seeing it as a good thing to give it all away is like not giving it all away but loving your audience is enough to give them what they need to be a success.

Jillian: [00:42:12] What I think is so interesting about what you're saying is that the world is big, and there's room for everybody.

Rachel: [00:42:24] Exactly.

Jillian: [00:42:25] And to stop focusing on yourself and just start focusing on others, to give to others.

Rachel: [00:42:33] And I'm thinking of all the time that I wasted my energy, I wasted my time, I wasted my effort when somebody used similar recipe that I did. "How dare they?" I could have taken all of that time that I spent into getting upset about that type of content to realizing, "I'm just going to make my next video post."

Jillian: [00:43:01] Exactly. I was just reading a blog post on Seth Godin's blog about this and he said, "Wow, good for you that somebody wants to copy what you're creating."

Rachel: [00:43:13] Exactly!

Jillian: [00:43:13] Like that's such a good statement about your content versus nobody wants to copy what you're doing.

Rachel: [00:43:23] Exactly.

Jillian: [00:43:24] So what about your business or Facebook are you most excited about?

Rachel: [00:43:30] I love seeing other people go viral now. There was a time when I would go viral, and I get all excited when I saw my content get out to the world. What's really exciting for me right now is helping other people make their content viral. And that the skills I had are actually transferable is pretty funny.

Jillian: [00:43:48] That is amazing. So how could people reach out to you, learn more about you, learn more about your course?

Rachel: [00:43:56] I do have a course that help people gain more engagement. And it's called Moolah. You can find me on Facebook, in the Facebook group Page Strategy.

Jillian: [00:44:08] Awesome. Well, Rachel, this is such a pleasure. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Rachel: [00:44:14] Jillian, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

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