Tag: social media

IIP013: How To Be Resourceful At All Times, With Amy Porterfield

Inspiring Innovation Podcast
Inspiring Innovation Podcast episode 013 Get it on iTunes

What would you ask Tony Robbins, one of the world’s top motivational speakers of all time, if you could spend 15 minutes with him in person?

Our guest today not only spent 6 years working alongside with Tony, but also was in charge of launching and managing his social media platforms. And wait till you hear how she got the job!

Amy Porterfield – Webinars, Social Media, Growing Your Business

On today’s conversation with Amy you will find a rare combination of an inspiring entrepreneurial story with actionable (and clear!) how-to and up-to-date tips on; how to use social media to grow your business, behind-the-scenes of Amy Porterfield’s webinars, how to build a brand with social media, and more.

Amy Porterfield
Amy Porterfield

Over the last few years, Amy became the go-to Facebook strategist for small and large businesses alike. In 2012 she was included in The Forbes Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers. She’s the co-author of ‘Facebook Marketing All-In-One For Dummies’ and a published author on Forbes, Social Media Examiner, ProBlogger, Mashable, The Huffington Post, Business Insider and more.

Now, let me put everything on the table: I really love Amy. She’s one of the sharpest people on the scene. The amount of knowledge she accumulated since she launched her business is staggering. She’s an amazingly good teacher and on every interview of hers, she shares an amazing amount of useful,  actionable, and new information. I guarantee today is no different. To be honest, today’s interview is one of my all-time favorite, and I’m so excited to share it with you. I know it will have some serious impact!

From Humble Beginnings To World-Class Entrepreneur

Amy’s story starts with one of the most important people in her life: her father. A firefighter for 30 years who never missed a day at work. Growing up in a “full-on blue-collar household”, as she defined it, Amy learned two lessons that guided her for the rest of her life:

  1. You need to find a work that you love and makes you happy to go to every day.
  2. You need to be your own boss so you can work on your own terms and call the shots.

One extra lesson was; Harley-Davidson motorcycles are super-cool. And thus, Amy earned her motorcycle license quite early in life (although after riding the Harley Fatboy several times, she decided to move on to cars!). Nonetheless, after graduating and having a few short-term jobs, she ended up working for Harley. She was working at dealerships level in the marketing department.

This experience gave her access to Harley’s top marketing materials and taught her storytelling, content marketing and event marketing — which later became the pillars upon she built her career.

Working For Tony Robbins

While working at Harley, Amy had an ugly breakup with her boyfriend at the time. She couldn’t sleep at night, and ended up in front of the TV – watching the late-night infomercials. One of them was of Tony Robbins. Enchanted, she went the next day to the local library and picked up some of his old CDs.

Amy was getting tired of her job, and wanted to move forward. She was very unhappy, but didn’t have any idea where to go next. So every day she was driving to work with Tony Robbins in her car stereo. At lunch time, she’d excuse herself and go to eat in the car – and listen to more of those CDs. She ordered the newer CDs and finally decided – her next job will be working for Tony Robbins!

She contacted the marketing department, went through the interviewing process and got a job offer: Travel the world and work 1-on-1 with Tony himself!

There were only two problems – she’d always be on the road, and salary was 40% less than what she was making.  Amy had to choose between the dream of working for Tony, and the lesson she learned from his own CDs, “You have to go for what you want!”.

She turned the offer down.

Six months later she was offered a managerial position; creating and leading Tony’s social media platforms; and with what was “a dream salary”, according to her.

“Little did Tony know that he had to pay me more because he himself encouraged me to go for it!” —Amy Porterfield, on working for Tony Robbins

Amy worked for Tony for 6 and a half years. She built his brand online and perfected her online marketing skills. But corporate life wasn’t easy for her. When she got married, she realized that the stress and the traveling reached a tipping point. Work was overwhelming and no longer fun.

One day, during a shoutfest with Tony, something clicked in her mind and she knew: It was time to go. Building upon Tony’s lessons and her father’s tips that she took to heart, she made up her mind to start her own business.

How To Use Social Media To Grow Your Business

Inspired by Marie Forleo, whom Amy met while working for Tony and had become her mentor, she started taking baby steps towards having her own business. She was excited and wanted to burn her ships at shore – but Marie told her to wait. She learned that:

“You have to burn the boats so you can’t go back, but you don’t have to burn them instantly, at the moment you make your decision.” —Amy Porterfield

She kept wanting to quit and make the switch, and Marie kept telling her she’s not ready. So Amy spend a 6 months transition period, educating herself and building up her name by doing various consulting and social media management jobs. Many of those she done for free — in order to build her portfolio and experience.

Working early mornings and late nights building her business while working her full-time job, Amy was excited. She was working way too much, and took many projects she didn’t enjoy, but her motto was:

“You gotta say yes to more stuff than you say no to in your first year. You need to figure out what you like and what you don’t like… and you need to make money!” —Amy Porterfield

This motto guided her through her first year in business, but she slowly started to pull back. She stopped working for big clients and corporates,stopped doing social media for other people, and set to create her own online marketing program.

She KNEW she loved teaching, and she finally found a way to mix all of her interests into a single profession – a job she loved doing, a field that was interesting, and being her own boss. Amy has arrived!

How To Get 10,000 People On Your Next Webinar

Amy’s main programs today focus on generating leads and business from Facebook, in the most engaging, cost-effective and brand-building ways. She attributes her webinars to growing her business and brand in such a quick way, and on today’s interview we dig in and break down the behind the scenes of her webinars – how to choose a subject? how to get over 10,000 people to attend your webinars? how to handle competition? and more. We discuss the most up-to-date Facebook ads techniques, conspiracies and common mistakes.

What are you waiting for? Hit the play button right now!!

In this episode you will learn (A LOT!):

  • How Amy’s childhood shaped the type of career she ended up creating.
  • How Tony’s tips built the foundation of Amy’s business.
  • Why Amy turned down an offer to work close to Tony Robbins and travel the world with him.
  • Why Amy left her position as manager of social media for Tony Robbins?
  • When is the time to burn your ships at shore and launch your new career?
  • How to build the foundation of your next business before you launch.
  • How, when, and why should you take customers for free?
  • What’s Amy’s key tip for your first year in business?
  • How to use webinars to build your business, and Amy’s best tips for creating amazing webinars that over 10,000 people attend.
  • What words should you use in your Facebook communications.
  • How to define Facebook ads to maximize your conversion rates – including a step-by-step guidance on how Amy sets up her own ads – Today!
  • How to use free, valuable, content to build your business.
  • How to get more traffic to your blog.
  • How to handle competition.
  • How much does Amy Porterfield REALLY spend on ads.
  • What parameters should you monitor on your Facebook ads campaigns?
  • How to get engagement on Facebook, and what to do if you have no engagement yet?
  • How to improve your FB page, based on your competitors pages? <<< This is soooo slick!
  • Why, and when, should you pay Facebook to reach your existing Fans?
  • What’s the one thing that Amy would’ve done differently?
  • What’s the best tip Amy took from Tony Robbins? (It’s Not what you expect!)

Items Mentioned In This Episode Include:

Sharing The Love – Gratitude For Reviews!

My deepest appreciation to all of you (comment or email me if you want to be removed from the list):

  • Ben Putman
  • DL Schroeder
  • Will Merchan

YOU GUYS ROCK!

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Transcript

Continue reading IIP013: How To Be Resourceful At All Times, With Amy Porterfield

5 Ways To Create Engaging Content On Facebook

engaging content

Chris Ducker has recently launched his New Business Podcast, having Amy Porterfield, the Facebook and social media expert, as his first guest. I found myself franticly taking notes while listening to this episode, so I thought it’d be a good idea to share them with you.

It’s the first time I write this kind of post, so please do let me know if you’d like to see more of these in the future.

Why Should You Care?

Let’s face some facts:

  • No matter who you are, your audience is on Facebook.
  • No matter who you are, your competitors are on Facebook.
  • Facebook is one of the first places where new audience will find you. Do you want to have a say in their first-time experience?

What’s This Thing About Fans Not Seeing My Status Updates?

Some time ago, Facebook admitted that any given post you make on your Facebook page will only appear in the Newsfeed of about 16% of your fans. There has been a lot of distress ever since — as most people (including me) expected that a 100% of their fans will see a 100% of the messages they send out. After all, these are hard earned fans!

But listening to Amy (and following a great article by Dan Raine on the Digital Marketing Magazine) , I suddenly realized something. Something that has eluded me, no matter how obvious it may be:

Facebook is not here to serve our business needs. Facebook is here to serve Jane and John Smith. The people.

“Wait a second,” I thought. “That sounds a lot like the way Ed Dale talks about Google!”.

You see, Google still lives and dies on its search engine product. We all know what happens if our website becomes irrelevant in the eyes of Google: _Its ranks drop_.

What Do Pandas Have To Do With Facebook?

Here are some news for you, sunshine: Facebook is exactly the same as Google in this way. Just like the Smiths want to see relevant results when they use Google, they want to see something interesting when they log on to Facebook.

Just like they do not want to see spammy websites on Google’s results, they do NOT want Facebook to serve them a massive shitload of self-promoting content from the tens or hundreds of pages that they follow — every single time they log in.

This is exactly what Chris has mentioned when I interviewed him for the magazine — you must switch your marketing from B2C (business to consumer/customer) to P2P – People to People.

It's about People to People (P2P)
Chris Ducker. It’s about People to People (P2P)

What Do People Welcome On Their Newsfeed?

Amy explains that people want to see content that falls into (at least) one of the 3 E’s:

  1. Entertaining
  2. Educating
  3. Empowering

That’s the kind of the content you need to produce on your Facebook page. But wait, it doesn’t end here (does it ever?).

“90% of the people that LIKE a Facebook Page will never visit it again” —Amy Porterfield

Read that again. 90% of your fans never enter your page for a 2nd time. There are two conclusions you must draw from this statistic:

  1. You need to stop wasting so much energy on making your Facebook Page look drop-dead gorgeous.
    • Your cover and profile photos are your storefront. You need them to look professional. Help people want to enter and check out the goods.
    • Don’t go bananas with tabs and all that.

  2. You must find a way to get your content into your fans’ Newsfeeds.

    • Right now, only 16% or less of them are seeing it.
    • You can bet your ass they’re not coming over to your page to look for it on their own.

How To Make Your Content Reach More Newsfeeds

Just like Google judges your website’s popularity and relevancy to determine search rankings, Facebook judges how engaging your content is to determine how many of your fans should see your posts in their Newsfeed.

Here are the factors that determine how engaging your content is considered to be, and therefore how many of your fans will see it (ordered in ascending importance):

  1. Likes
  2. Shares
  3. Comments

Obviously, one question remains: How to make my content more engaging, so that it’ll get more likes, shares, and comments?

I’m happy to report that Amy delivered 5 key-points to help out:

Image of Amy Porterfield
Amy Porterfield

5 Ways To Make Your Content More Engaging

1: The Three E’s

As mentioned earlier. Every single post you write must be either educating, empowering or entertaining. And you should mix them. Don’t focus just on one. This is true for any kind of content, not just Facebook.

2: Make It Count

Every post you make is seen by some of your fans. Make it count for them. Don’t waste their time. Make something they want to engage with (like, share, comment).

Remember that every engagement action that your fans make will improve the EdgeRank score – the Facebook ranking that determines which stories people see on their Newsfeed.

3: Use Photos In Your Posts

You MUST. USE. PHOTOS. And use them often.

How often? Amy suggests that 90% of your posts should have a photo attached. Why?

  1. It’s the most engaging format of content on Facebook today — even more than video (read: it gets the most likes, shares and comments).
  2. It gives your posts more space in your readers’ Newsfeeds, compared to text posts (read: you get noticed).
  3. It’s much, much easier and faster to produce than video.

Now, don’t stress! Finding photos can be easy — if you make it that. You don’t need breath-taking photography; You need real life photography. Start using that iPhone camera of yours. Then, the next time you post something, take a quick look at your photo library. Find something nice and voila! Problem solved!

How far can you take this relieance on your smartphone’s camera? Pretty far:

If you don’t have a photo appropriate for your post, why not write the subject down on your whiteboard and take a snapshot of that? —Amy

4: Curate Content

It ain’t easy to create awesome posts every single day. This is where curation comes into play. Share some of the great stuff that your peers, idols, colleagues, market leaders and fans make. This is beneficial in more than one way:

  1. It gives you great content to share without having you create it all.
  2. It shows your community that you care (you spend time on finding them interesting stuff).
  3. It shows you’re on the top of your game (you know what’s going on in the niche).
  4. It creates relationships with the market leaders that you promote via curation.

Two caveats (making my humble addition to Amy’s tips) are:

  1. You should always, ALWAYS, include your own opinion. It can be as short as 1-2 sentences, or even 2-5 words. But add something of your own.
  2. Whatever you share has to be great. Don’t share “just becasue you need content and can’t be bothered with creating it today”. Share stuff because it’s great.

5: Contests and Giveaways

Amy points out that contests and giveaways are a fantastic tool for getting traction, engaging and getting to know your audience. But there are a bunch of pitfalls, so be sure to check out 6 Ways to Keep Your Facebook Contest on the Up and Up (so it Doesn’t Get Shut Down) on Amy’s blog for 3rd party tools, terms, conditions and tips.

Advanced Stuff

As you can see, Amy & Chris shared an amazing amount of great content. There’s more stuff that was covered on the episode that’s more advanced, like Facebook ads and (my favorite) “how to turn LIKEs into $$$” — but this post is already pretty long, so here’s what I’ll do:

If you liked this post, and want me to cover the more advanced subjects – let me know via the comments and I’ll make a “part 2” post soon enough.

More Info & Sources

  1. New Business Podcast – Episode #1 Show Notes (ChrisDucker.Com)
  2. Subscribe to the New Business Podcast on iTunes. I’m really excited to see more invaluable stuff coming from this podcast in the future.
  3. Amy Porterfield – Facebook Page
  4. Amy Porterfield – Homepage
  5. Chris Ducker – Homepage

Please let me know if this post was beneficial to you, and if you’d like to see more of these in the future!