4 WAYS TO CREATE RAVING FANS Want to get a picture to spread from your fan page? It’s pretty easy really. Step 1: Find picture of hot girl half naked Step 2: Photoshop a motivational phrase on top. Step 3: Upload it to your page. Unless you’ve been on Mars, in a cave, under a rock, with your fingers in your ears for the last year, you will have seen these pictures in your Facebook feeds. Entire pages have sprung up for the sole purpose of sharing workout pictures. “Spot me Bro”, “She Squats Bro” and more more like it are a couple examples. I actually built a couple pages like this to test my theories and have since shut them down.It took me as little as 3 weeks to build a Facebook page of 15,000 using a combination of Facebook ads solely paid for via affiliate links and the spreading of motivational pictures. NOBODY REALLY WANTS TO MOTIVATE First, let’s be honest. The majority of people sharing the material are doing it as a way of selectively self-representing, meaning that it’s considered uncouth for them to brag that they are fit. But, by sharing a picture of a sweaty model with a couple oft-repeated motivational words they are masking their boasting under the umbrella of being helpful. I don’t believe these pictures motivate those who really need motivating. If you’re already active, they may give you a push. But if you’re not and the gym is a daunting experience for you, these pictures may have the opposite effect. In fact, the sharing of these pictures throughout Facebook under the guise of motivation and helping is working to make the fitness industry even more elitist. But these pictures share, and they will help you get fans to your Facebook page. Which is good right? Well, maybe. THE REASON YOU HAVE A FAN PAGE... …is to sell your stuff. This can be direct via sales linked to in Facebook status updates (which doesn’t work all too well) or indirect via offering up value and ethical bribes so that your fans join your email list. Facebook fan pages are relatively easy to build, especially in the fitness industry. But fans are not the end goal, sales are. Before continuing to read this article, make that mental shift. Facebook is a great way to find, collect, and build a relationship to your audience—once you do that, get them off of Facebook and onto an email list as fast as you can. I consider these pictures of models with motivational phrases to be a tool used by LAZY MARKETERS. They gain an audience, but that audience isn’t especially valuable. The only real options you have to sell them are clothing and affiliate products for workouts. Most notably, it’s near impossible to build a brand you’re proud of using these techniques. I mean, how many times can you really publish photos of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jamie Eason and tell people to “get after it”? Whether you sell online products or are using Facebook to get more clients to your practice or gym, you should be creating viral materials specific to your page. These materials will gain you audience that’s avidly interested in your product and that adds value to them. TYPES OF VALUE ADDITION Value does not mean educate. Unless you’re a top-level researcher, you probably have nothing new to add to the conversation. What you are saying has been said a thousand times before and will be repeated a thousand times after you. Anybody who currently has a Facebook page with lackluster interaction can attest that attempting to educate the fans on that page doesn’t do much to build it. There are 4 different wants to add value to your audience that will work to increase the fans of your page while maintaining your integrity and increasing your value towards those fans. They are: 1. Allowing them to be a part of a greater whole 2. Giving them the opportunity to share your words as a way to articulate their own thoughts. 3. Entertaining them. 4. Letting them show off that they are intelligent by agreeing, or even disagreeing with you. Let’s go into all 4 separately. ALLOWING THEM TO BECOME A PART OF A GREATER WHOLE Your Facebook page isn’t about you or your business. It’s about the message or purpose behind what your business is trying to accomplish. The Personal Trainer Development Centeris about improving personal training as an industry, not about me trying to sell information products, affiliate promotions, or fill seats in conferences. Your gyms page is not about your gym, it’s about what makes your gym special. Do you specialize in hard-core conditioning? If so, your fans will want to share material about being hard core from your page. ALLOW THEM TO ARTICULATE THEIR OWN THOUGHTS A Facebook page is a great way to gather a whole bunch of like-minded people in one industry. With any industry, there are public misconceptions that everybody in that industry wish to change or are frustrated because it hasn’t changed yet. In the fitness industry, one example is female weightlifting. Trainers know that lifting weights higher than 3lbs won’t make women bulky for a myriad of reasons. Yet, there’s still a large public misconception that women shouldn’t lift weights. Aside from this being stupid and unfortunate, it’s a topic that fitness professionals will avidly share materials about because of the break down in knowledge. When trying to get material to share, make a list of topics that affect your industry where public misconception or confusing exists. Share information on that subject voicing your opinion in text-based updates, video, pictures, or memes. Say the same message in as many different ways as possible. ENTERTAIN THEM Be yourself, be funny, be emotional, be a human being. See something funny? Share a story about it. Sharing jokes and memes related to your industry (or even sometimes completely unrelated) is a nice break from your call to actions and value-add materials that you share. LET THEM SHOW OFF You own the Facebook page that your audience is visiting, so you’re the expert. It’s important to allow people to both agree and disagree with you. In fact, people disagreeing with you is about the most powerful way to get your material to spread for one simple reason. Everybody wants to boast that they know more than the expert. So, they’ll share your material and openly disagree in an attempt to increase their social standing. On the other hand, if you look at the words people use when they preface a share of an article, there’s a pattern that emerges, “so true”, “amen”. Loosely translated, these words mean, “I told you so”. People share what they already know because of how they feel it makes them look. So learn to write entertaining and varied explanations of common issues that plague your audience so that the various experts that hang out on your page can share them for you, becoming your brand ambassadors. ==================== Most of all, be unabashedly yourself. “To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.” - Elbert Hubbard
Posted on: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 01:10:00 +0000
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