This might sound like a clickbait title, but it's exactly what we accomplished yesterday.
We used a killer marketing hack to siphon over 1,000 unique non-Steemians from Facebook to Steemit.com. Each and every one of you can do it too.
If you wanted to pay for that kind of traffic, how much would it cost? $100-$1,000 ($0.10-$1.00 per click)?
Two days ago, before employing this simple tactic, this post of ours on our @tangerinetravels account had less than 200 views.
In the last 24 hours, it has gained over 1,100 views.
Edit: It's now two days later and now has over 1,700 views.
How we did it
Let me preface this by saying that I abhor Facebook. I dislike everything they stand for, their total disregard of privacy, the way their users act, and the censorship they employ.
Despite all of that, it's still an excellent place to get free traffic for specific topics. We're members of a handful of Facebook groups related to our niche: English-speaking US and Canadians who live in or are considering moving to Mexico.
We take many of our Steemit blogs, post them in these groups, and let the highly-opinionated Facebook users work their magic.
Controversy sells
While you can take just about any blog post and put it into these Facebook groups, we've done this enough to know that you're more likely to have luck if the topic is controversial.
People love to add their two cents when they disagree with you. Controversial posts will get you more clicks, the post will get more comments, it will rank higher in Facebook's algorithms, and it will be shown to more people. This all means more traffic for Steemit!
For example, in this post I'm featuring here, we said quite a few negative (but honest) things about Puerto Vallarta, and posted it in a Facebook group called On The Road In Mexico. A group which has many members who call Puerto Vallarta home.
The day before this, I posted another one of our videos on a different Mexico expats group. In the video, I had tried tamales for the first time and didn't like them at all.
With the knowledge that tamales are a very popular Mexican food and loved by many I called them "Kind of gross" in the Facebook post. It was the truth, but I chose that wording because I knew it would stir the pot and people would want to add their two cents. I could've said I didn't like them, I've tasted better, or they weren't my favorite. But I knew none of those phrases would be as controversial as "Kind of gross."
Be prepared for negativity
Using Facebook to generate traffic can take a little bit of willingness to stir the pot, read mean comments, and be called names. The hatred that comes out of people on Facebook is ridiculous sometimes. The hate feeds off of one another until it turns into a cesspool of rude and down-right mean comments.
This is one of the reasons I love Steem so much! Most people are extremely nice and the occasional mean individual gets flagged into oblivion.
Take advantage of this Facebook hack, so we can grow Steem, and make Facebook obsolete!
I love it! Great job man. Personally, I love tamales and would never call them kind of gross.
Thanks @papa-pepper! In fairness, they were 90% masa and most of the contents were chicken bones, ligaments, and other inedible things. There's probably a reason they were $0.50. I'll keep trying them and hopefully find some good ones :)
Jordan
Got it. Also, I don't facebook, but somehow my recent post on a Brown Recluse Spider jumped up over 1000 views in just some hours. Must be the time of year that people are googling them or something...
Good idea. Facebook can be useful but i've also found it very inconsistent with results. Sometimes I get my best views there, in the thousands, but other times I struggle to get any attention.
This has been our experience as well. Through trial/error and studying some psychology, we've come to learn that posting things (some) people will disagree with, go a long way towards making Facebook posts succeed.
Even if a user leaves a mad "reaction" or a negative comment, it still helps boost the post in Facebook's algorithms and it will be seen by more people.
We're not ones to purposefully create conflict in most situations, but we're willing to do it for the purpose of growing Steem.
If you're willing to go the controversial route, I think it will help your results a lot. However, there is a fine line between posting something controversial and portraying yourself in a way that you don't want. Plus, a lot of people on Facebook are downright mean, so you have to be able to stomach all the negative responses that you'll get.
I guess if you are not afraid to stir the pot a little this could be a good process. The results do kind of speak for themselves. I'd like to get a decent number of followers first before I start scaring them away though. I don't think I am quite ready for this tactic yet.
You definitely need to be ready to stomach some mean comments and there's a certain balance to having something controversial versus people feeling personally attacked. We're not trying to do this as a way to get more followers on Steemit, but rather an increased-level awareness of Steem.
Amazing have been using my facebook to drive traffic to my blog too. Well have not had much luck with it. You get a lot of likes but not many pay attention. Thanks for sharing this wonderful piece I'll put in more work.
For us, in addition to the things mentioned in this post, I think one of the keys was finding our niche and the specific groups that are interested in our content.
Good idea 💡 : Controversial Marketing I have seen this too at LinkedIn, and most of the times I have felt in the need to jump in.
Really? I actually have never read about controversial marketing. I did read a book relatively recently where the author talked about peoples' need to say something if they disagree with you.
well if they do want to reply they have to make a steem account so that helps I guess
all the replies on FB are useless anyway
Really interesting post! It seems to me when I link to my steemit blog post on my FB page, very few people respond. I figured FB was possibly burying steemit links...?
I can't do controversial FB posts, though, 'cause there's nothing negative to say about bananas! :-D
