Borrowing Blogging Techniques to Improve Ads and Drive Insane Organic Traffic

Show your work. 

I remember when I was in high school algebra and how we always got scolded to “show the work.” 

I was super frustrated because I couldn’t just jump to the end with the answer. I had to use the scribbles and scratches to show how I got from A to Z. 

As online entrepreneurs, I feel like we get ourselves back into a place where we’re simply not showing our work. Or, not looking at the work being done on our behalf…

Today’s featured speaker for the Smart[er] Content Formula virtual event does just that. 

I’d like to introduce you to Holly Homer. I wanted her to be a speaker at this event because she has a way of helping us all look at numbers in a way that they’re sexy. All the time. 

I’m sharing a few short snippets of her presentation here – but if you want more be sure to register for the Smart[er] Content Formula online event. It’s free, and this is just one of the 12 speakers we’ll be featuring, along with live interactive workshop and networking time. 

Register now for the Smart[er] Content Formula virtual hybrid event. 👉 https://www.thevirtualjenn.com/smarter-content-formula/

About Holly: 

Holly has been blogging for 12 years. That seems like a simple path, but “blogging” included about 18 different websites and projects that all lead to what she is doing today.

Holly’s main website is KidsActivities.com and the Quirky Momma FB page.

She is the co-author of three books:  101 Kids Activities that are the Bestest, Funnest Ever!, The 101 Coolest Simple Science Experiments, and 101 Kids Activities that are the Ooey, Gooey-est Ever!  There are 219,492 copies of these books in the world and counting!

While she loves blogging, her true passion is teaching what she has learned.

Holly has spoken at blogging, marketing & mom-centric conferences and has been featured on multiple radio and TV appearances, including Social Media Examiner and the Today Show.

The secret formula that grew nearly 4 million fans online without paid ads

(an excerpt from Holly’s presentation…)

So when you start being really comfortable with what your average is, and then kind of play that little game, Oh, how will this, how many people will this reach? And then coming back the next day or later in the day, depending on, you know, when you’re posting, is seeing if you were right and then figuring out, okay, wait a second. That performed way worse than I expected. Why? And then, Oh, that maybe that performed really, really well. Take a deep breath, let’s dive in and figure out why, so that we can use whatever pushed it forward in the next post or in the post, in a future post. And this is how you build a page, by the way.

In fact, this is how we built quirky mamma to over 3.5 million fans organically is just by pushing things that people wanted to see. So we opened up the numbers, we did more of what people liked and less of what people did it. I know it’s earth shattering. And I know that sounds super, super simple. And there’s people who will give you some secret formula, but it really absolutely comes down to that. And it’s not just Facebook. I’ve talked to people who have big Instagram followings it’s absolutely the same thing. I have a big Pinterest following, exactly the same thing. SEO, quite honestly, you’re just trying to please both Google and the, and the reader.

Cheating the Facebook algorithm to send more top of funnel traffic

(an excerpt from Holly’s presentation…)

So how does Facebook determine whether they want to send traffic somewhere?

And, first of all, Facebook would rather send traffic to Facebook. So if your call to action is on platform, it makes sense the algorithm is has a bias towards keeping you on the platform. We already talked about that. We know that Facebook wants to stay there. 

Okay. Let’s say we are sending you off platform. Well, Facebook is going to look for some signals as to what the quality and kind of what type of link you’re sending them to. So if you’re sending them to like a sales page, like on Amazon or Shopify… Facebook knows, you’re sending them to a sales page, okay, this is not any big mystery. Facebook knows an Amazon link, a Shopify link, a ClickFunnels, link, all these monetized platforms that are created for selling. And Facebook’s a little greedy.

And it’s like, if you’re going to send a lot of people there, we want a little bit of it. So you’re not going to generally get the organic traffic to those links as you would to maybe a blog post or something that’s on a WordPress or a blogger, or I wouldn’t even say YouTube videos, but Facebook’s not really that into YouTube videos. So, you know, thinking about like politically, what would Facebook want from you? And so you’re always gonna probably have to spend more money to get them to a monetized link versus a non monetized link. And so that’s where like your content, your free content that lives on a WordPress site or a blogger site or a Medium or something like that can be really valuable to you because it’s not viewed as a monetized site, but we all know that could be the top of your funnel.

Do social platforms mistake you for a spammer?

(an excerpt from Holly’s presentation…)

But the bottom line is, we all know spam when we see it on our feed. In fact, it’s kinda cringeworthy. But how does Facebook algorithm know that’s spam? The truth is that the only way that Facebook has set this up, because they don’t have enough staff just waiting for people to cringe, is they have to create signs and symptoms from when people do certain things in a row. So let’s say a really spammy thing comes through feed. You’re gonna flip through it really quick. So you’re going to hasten your scroll and then the next person might thumb it down, and a bunch of people scroll past it. So it’s a lot of negative or anti interaction. In fact, spam today is like in the early days, like we were so offended by spam and we’re like, how dare they try to sell me that crap? And now we’re like, whoosh, whoosh. 

So what if you post something, maybe it’s amazing, but if you don’t get the word across and people just do this to it, Facebook says, Oh, that must be spam. Okay. But it’s not spam. I mean, it could be the best content. It could be the best thing you’ve ever written, but the way people interacted with it was interpreted as spam. And that’s why this is so important to look at your numbers, because what if you just post three times a day to your Facebook page and never look at your numbers, you could be basically spamming the internet in a way that Facebook like shows your stuff to less and less and less people because Facebook has labeled you a spammer because of the way people have interacted with your, with your content.