That study yielded some pretty interesting, albeit expected results. Facebook and Twitter were particularly popular, while LinkedIn and Pinterest didn’t find much favor. Instagram was limited to fashion startups and Google+ was largely dead.

This made us think: how do B2B startups use social media? Are there any differences between B2B and B2C startups? If yes, what are these differences?

To find answers, we analyzed how 50 venture-backed companies in the B2B use social media.

The results were equal parts expected and surprising.

Our Process

As before, we followed a simple process in our analysis:

• We searched for B2B startups founded after 2015 in the Crunchbase database.
• To filter out startups listing themselves on Crunchbase for SEO purposes, we only looked at venture-backed startups or startups that had raised an angel round at the very least.
• From this list, we picked out 50 startups at random and analyzed their social media use.

We limited our analysis to the top 6 social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google+. We skipped Snapchat since it doesn’t really have a lot of uptake among B2B companies right now.

Our data looked like this at the end:

Notice the series of “NAs” under the Instagram column?

That’s not an accident – very few B2B businesses we analyzed were on Instagram, as expected.

Let’s take a look at some other top findings from this analysis.

Most B2B startups prefer Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn; Pinterest, Instagram and Google+ are widely ignored

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone: B2B startups are concentrated mostly on business-friendly platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn.

Facebook gets a lot of traction as well, but that’s mostly because of Facebook’s massive reach.

Pinterest and Instagram, as expected, find few takers.

Here are the numbers:

Social Network	Total Followers Across All Startups
Facebook	2,546,292
Twitter	450,045
Pinterest	276,807
LinkedIn	67,183
Instagram	11,560
Google+	10,237

You’re obviously thinking that Facebook has a substantial lead over all other networks, but that’s mostly because of a single startup – PlayBuzz – which has a massive 2.4M fans on Facebook. PlayBuzz is a hybrid B2B/B2C startup that offers quiz creation tools to publishers but also publishes quizzes of its own, which gives it this massive reach.

PlayBuzz similarly skews Pinterest numbers. This single account has over 274,000 followers.

LinkedIn is the most popular platform among B2B companies

100% of the startups we surveyed had a LinkedIn presence (even though the lowest ranked startup – in terms of followers – had just 3 followers on LinkedIn).

Similarly, 96% of the startups we surveyed (or rather, 48 out of 50) use Twitter to keep their audience updated.

In contrast, only 40 out of 50 surveyed companies had a Facebook presence. For Instagram, this was much higher with only 12 out of 50 companies maintaining a presence on the platform.

For Pinterest and Google+, these numbers were 14 out of 50 and 35 out of 50 respectively.

Social Network	Total Startups with Active Profiles (out of 50)	% of Total Startups with Active Profiles
Facebook	40	80%
LinkedIn	50	100%
Twitter	48	96%
Instagram	12	24%
Pinterest	14	28%
Google+	35	70%

A couple of things to note:

• A lot of Google+ profiles are empty or haven’t seen updates in months. Most of these profiles were likely created because of YouTube or Google Apps. So while on paper, Google+ is more popular than Pinterest and Instagram (35 out of 50 vs. 14 out of 50 users), this doesn’t translate into actual use.
• Similarly, a lot of Facebook business pages are scarcely utilized. Twitter profiles, on the other hand, are frequently updated with fresh content.

B2B startups have the highest median follower count on Twitter and LinkedIn

Looking at the median follower count for each startup and social network is much more illuminating than simply looking at the average or total follower count. This eliminates the outliers who often account for a disproportionately high number of followers.

For our B2B startups, the median follower count looks like this:

Social Network	Median Follower Count of Each Startup
Twitter	955
LinkedIn	905
Facebook	684
Instagram	529.5
Pinterest	67
Google+	40

The average looks quite a bit different:

Social Network	Average Follower Count of Each Startup
Twitter	9,375
LinkedIn	1,343
Facebook	63,657
Instagram	963
Pinterest	19,771
Google+	292

A few things stand out here:

• Startups have a much higher median follower count on Twitter and LinkedIn than on Facebook, even though the total number of followers on Facebook is substantially higher. As mentioned before, this can be attributed to PlayBuzz racking up 2.4M Facebook likes.
• Instagram has a much higher median follower count than Pinterest or Google+. This is again because nearly 99% of all Pinterest followers in our list can be attributed to PlayBuzz (274k out of 276k followers). Instagram may have fewer startups on it, but the ones that are there take the platform seriously enough.

There is no correlation between funding and followers

B2B startups are usually more capital efficient than B2C startups. One analysis by Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures found that “enterprise-oriented startups have delivered more value per private dollar invested” as compared to consumer-focused startups.

In the current funding environment, this means that an increasingly larger share of venture dollars are flowing out to B2B startups.

For instance, this study by PitchBook found that from 2014 to 2016, investment in B2B startups increased while the B2C investment market actually shrunk in 2016:

This is reflected in our analysis as well.

Excluding 6 startups with undisclosed funding totals, the 50 startups on our list have raised a total of $554.45M – or nearly $12.5M per startup.

These are the top 10 most funded startups on our list:

Looking at the funding vs. total followers, however, isn’t particularly insightful.

For instance, the startup with the second highest funding total at $59.77M – Magnet System – has just 90 followers on Twitter.

Looking at the top 10 startups with the highest social media followers vs. the 10 most funded startups, we see just 4 startups in common:

Even though an increasingly larger share of B2B buyers research online before making purchase decisions (94% as per one study), a number of our top funded startups haven’t found it worthwhile to invest heavily in social media.

A few reasons why this might be the case:

• Social media isn’t popular among their target decision makers.
• Lack of in-house social media marketing expertise, and/or lack of time/tools to dedicate to social media.
• The product isn’t conducive to social media. For instance, one of the startups on our list – Vascular Graft Systems – manufactures medical grafts. Its target customers of surgeons and hospitals isn’t likely to be looking for solutions on Twitter or Facebook.

Part II: What Kind of Content is Shared

We’ve seen how usage patterns vary across different social networks.

In this next part, we’ll take a look at what kind of content B2B businesses like to share on different channels.

1. On Twitter

Simply Measured has the highest number of followers at 349k:

This is followed by SalesLoft at 10.5k:

That’s a mighty big difference.

The top 10 startups on Twitter looked something like this:

Startup	Total Twitter Followers	Twitter Handle
Simply Measured	349,000	@simplymeasured
SalesLoft	10,500	@salesloft
ShipServ	9902	@shipserv
Parsley	7906	@parsely
Funding Options	6484	@FundingOptions
MailJet	6471	@mailjet
Pixlee	6154	@pixlee
freee	5973	@freee_jp
Lattice Engines	4687	@lattice_engines
Proformative	4472	@proformative

Interestingly enough, with 411,547 followers, the top 10 startups accounted for 91% of the total 450,045 Twitter followers across all 50 startups.

What kind of content is shared?

Companies post more frequently on Twitter than on any other social media. Simply Measured has posted almost 30k posts that have got them 349k followers.

They post anywhere between 10-15 posts on a single day. It could be about news in their niche or even some development at their office.

SalesLoft is no different. They also post dozens of posts in one day and pin a new post every day to give more attention to that tweet.

Takeaways:

• B2B startups that do well on Twitter embrace its free-wheeling, no rules nature. They post often and don’t limit themselves to specific topics.
• Pinning a tweet is a good way to give it more attention.
• News, internal events, advice, blog posts, images – everything is game for Twitter.

2. On Linkedin

Linkedin is the only social channel every B2B company is using in our list. Most of them keep their profile updated with 2-3 posts every week.

SimplyMeasured tops the list with the most number of subscribers followed by Kantox.

These are the top 10 startups on our list in terms of LinkedIn followers:

Startup	Total LinkedIn Followers
Simply Measured	9758
SalesLoft	4305
Kantox	4022
Kapow	3774
Lattice Engines	3026
Jifflenow	2905
Velocify	2612
Cydcor	2572
Mintigo	2360
NuORDER	1879

What kind of content is shared?

Both Simply Measured and Kantox post more business focused stories. Linked is not where you’d want to post memes or a GIF.

Companies also post internship and job offers on their LinkedIn page.

Takeaways:

• LinkedIn is strictly business. For B2B companies, it’s a particularly important channel of customer acquisition. Maintaining a strong presence here is crucial for attracting business customers.
• Besides customer acquisition, LinkedIn’s other big role is in talent acquisition. A strong LinkedIn page gives potential employees a glimpse of your company, its expertise, and its culture. Posting stories about company culture, internal events as well as job openings can be particularly effective.

3. On Facebook

80% of the B2B companies surveyed use Facebook to promote themselves. Playbuzz has the maximum number of likes followed by Free.

Here are the top 10 startups on Facebook in terms of likes:

Startup	Total Facebook Likes
Playbuzz	2,420,270
Simply Measured	56336
freee	26464
Pixlee	6540
Cydcor	4621
Lattice Engines	4330
ShipServ	3293
Kapow	2973
Velocify	2929
Mailjet	2105

Facebook’s median like count per startup is lower than LinkedIn or Twitter. This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone – Facebook’s poor organic reach and constantly changing algorithm means that businesses don’t feel compelled to invest in getting likes.

That doesn’t mean that businesses aren’t actually using Facebook. As per research by CMI, 75% of B2B buyers are Facebook users. This reach, combined with Facebook’s superior ad targeting, means that businesses can use targeted ads to reach their customers.

Why spend on likes when you can simply buy clicks to your landing pages?

What kind of content is shared?

Facebook posts are a mix of all other social media post-types. It’s not as open-ended as Twitter but it isn’t as business-like as LinkedIn either.

As expected, there is a lot of visual content.

For example, SimplyMeasured posts videos, photos of their office and also the company and industry news.

Freee, which sells accounting software, links out to its blog posts as well (the pages are translated from Japanese).

Takeaways

• Facebook is a great way to humanize your brand. Sharing “behind the scenes” content, office pictures, internal events photos, etc. can be powerful branding and recruiting tools. Nearly all of your would-be customers and employees will likely be on Facebook anyway.
• Visual content dominates Facebook. GIFs, images, videos – anything besides a standard text post will help you reach a bigger audience.

4. On Instagram

Instagram is mostly ignored by B2B companies. Only 12 out of 50 use Instagram.

Playbuzz has the most number of followers followed by Cydcor.

Here is the Instagram top 10:

Startup	Total Followers on Instagram
Playbuzz	5461
Cydcor	1559
Simply Measured	1428
NuORDER	885
Kapow	734
SalesLoft	584
High Alpha	475
Handshake	225
Velocify	104
Newtopia	55
Balluun	35

What kind of content is shared?

Cydcor shares a lot of pictures and short videos from work on Instagram:

PlayBuzz, meanwhile, mostly shares memes. Fitting given its hybrid B2B/B2C model.

Both the companies don’t miss out on a chance to use relevant hashtags

Takeaways:

• Instagram isn’t a great platform to acquire actual customers. Its traffic is too far up in the funnel to convert into leads without significant effort. However, Instagram is a great branding and recruiting tool, especially if your business wants to target younger talent.
• Sharing behind-the-scenes images and brand-focused pictures is a great way to use Instagram’s reach for branding and recruiting.
• Since Instagram won’t likely net you leads directly, it’s recommended that you keep it out of your marketing mix until you’ve exhausted all other social channels.

5. On Pinterest

Pinterest is used by only 14 out of 50 companies from the list – fitting for a B2C focused startup.

The top performing one is PlayBuzz, an online content publishing platform. They have 275,000 followers.

However, because of its hybrid B2B/B2C model, PlayBuzz is an outlier. Other startups on our list have just 310 followers on average.

The others in the top 10 are:

Startup	Total Followers on Pinterest
Playbuzz	274000
Simply Measured	1900
SalesLoft	194
Newtopia	187
Cydcor	171
Kapow	168
Balluun	90
Mailjet	44
NuORDER	32
Talentory	9

What kind of content is shared?

SimplyMeasured has 14 boards with 205 pins covering marketing topics and images.

Given SimplyMeasured’s social media heavy target audience, this makes for great marketing content.

Besides tips, SimplyMeasured also shares images from company events, such as this board:

There are also boards showing off a “day in the life” of a SimplyMeasured employee, along with boards with short team biographies:

Additionally, SimplyMeasured shares a lot of its tweets automatically. This isn’t really ideal but when you’re short of resources, it can get you at least some traction.

Takeaways:

• Again, Pinterest’s audience skews younger and more female. This traffic is likely to be very high up in the funnel to be actually lucrative. It’s best to use Pinterest as a branding and recruiting tool.
• Automate sharing on Pinterest from your more used platforms if necessary. This will ensure that you have a presence on the platform without spending too many resources on it.

6. On Google+

Most of these companies do have Google+ page but with zero recent updates.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise – Google+ is largely a ghost town with just 1% of Google’s actual users active on it (although the claims vary).

PlayBuzz and SimplyMeasured top the list with 2,642 and 2,545 followers respectively.

The top 10 looks like this:

Startup	Total Followers on Google+
Playbuzz	2642
Simply Measured	2451
Velocify	2044
Parsely	594
Traxpay	486
Mailjet	386
freee	287
Proformative	254
Funding Options	185
BellaDati	173

What kind of content is shared?

Velocify posts one post every week on Google plus. Doesn’t matter how attractive they make the headline they get little to no engagement from the users.

Parsely use to post a lot of statistics but now they have stopped and the reason is simple – there is no engagement from the users.

SimplyMeasured uses Google+ just to share its YouTube videos:

Takeaways:

• There is no need to generate new content for Google+. If you can keep posting posts that you share on other social media channels, it should be enough to keep your G+ profile updated. Else you’ll just waste time creating content for a channel that doesn’t give you much engagement.

Conclusion

B2B companies tend to focus on social channels that can deliver immediate ROI or help broadcast company news. For most businesses, this usually means LinkedIn and Twitter. The former serves to contact and capture leads while the latter works as a broadcast medium.

Other networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. are more visual in nature and thus, fall further down the priority ladder for B2B startups. Startups that do use them do so mostly for building their brands and attracting quality talent.

If you’re running a B2B startup, LinkedIn and Twitter seem to be the best two social channels to start your social media marketing with. As you grow your audience and learn the ropes, use a tool like Jarvis to expand further to Instagram, Facebook and other social channels.

Do you actively use Social Media to engage and build relations with potential customers in your town or city?

You are robbing yourself of some great opportunities if you are not taking full advantage of Social Media to promote your local business.

Social Media is a gold mine for small businesses that rely on word of mouth marketing and long term relationships to grow.

Growth of local Business depends on who you know in your community and what’s better than Social Media to get to know more people?

If you are still in doubt and waiting for one final push to start using Social Media, let’s have a look at some examples of local businesses killing it on Social Media.

They are consistent:

Don’t wait to get a lot of fans or followers before you start posting regularly to your Social Media pages.

Just set up a business page and start updating on a regular basis because local customers will prefer to deal with a business that is approachable, both online and offline.

Here’s the analysis of a local business page that offers domestic services like cleaning, gardening, home removals, and the likes.

As you can see, they are posting more than once on a daily basis and they are mixing it up nicely between photos, videos, and links.

It doesn’t have to be your own content.

You can also share great content from web (It’s known as content Curation).

These businesses are also cross-promoting the content between different social media channels.

Cross promotions or Content Repurposing allows you to use one piece of content on many different channels for maximum exposure.

You don’t necessarily need to create unique content for each and every platform.

Just modify it a little bit and use on different channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, or SlideShare.

They are focusing on building relationships:

On social media, put your entire focus on building strong relationships with your customers.

That’s the only way to convert a follower into customer and a one-time customer into regular client.

As earlier mentioned, it’s all about who you know in your community.

The more people you know the better your chances of getting new business from referrals and word of mouth.

Even if they don’t need your services, they will recommend or refer a friend who’s looking for a similar product or service.

Relationship building starts with great customer service.

Smart businesses respond in a jiffy when someone leaves a message or mention them in a tweet.

They don’t mind giving the limelight to their customers by sharing their photos or comments.

Here’s another example.

A happy customer posts a positive review and the business makes the most of it by giving a public shout-out (and highlighting the review in their post).

Another way to build relationship is to encourage your customers to share personal stories, opinions, or ideas.

They are Promoting the business without being too salesy:

You must not think of Social Media as an advertising channel.

However, you can promote your business without going overboard.

Here’s how a local kitchenware business is doing it by sharing special discounts and promo code with their fans.

You can also share the photos from your office or premises.

It will add a lot of credibility and they will be tempted to visit your store or office in person.

Here’s another way of promoting your business.

A professional photographer has created this board on Pinterest to highlight her professional achievements.

You can also use Social Media for recruitment purpose.

In fact, you can save money on job advertisements by posting directly to your social media page.

Similarly, you can announce an upcoming event or sales.

They are showing the human side of their business:

Smart local businesses are not shy of showing the human faces behind their business.

You can do it by highlighting your staff and team members every once in a while.

You can also share personal stories and opinions.

Just avoid political triggers or controversial topics but there’s nothing wrong with sharing your thoughts on a topic which is not relevant to your business.

There’s no need to talk about your business or profession all the time.

You should not come across as a robot.

You can also draw attention to the human side of your business by participating or talking about a local event.

And when there’s a special occasion like Christmas or Halloween, you should be the first to share greetings and best wishes with your customers.

They are trying to engage people:

Social Media is not supposed to be a one-way communication.

It’s a two-way conversation.

You need to engage your customers and encourage them to interact with your posts.

Engagement rate is one of the biggest factors that affect your organic reach.

The easiest way to make them respond is to ask questions.

Even better, you can create polls or surveys to make it easier for them to respond.

Takeaways for Local Businesses:

Hopefully, you have got a good dose of motivation by now.

Let’s recap the lessons that we have learned so far.

• Post great content on a consistent basis.
• Try different types of content that includes but is not limited to graphics, videos, infographic, and links to articles or blog posts.
• Make sure that you are sending out greetings and best wishes on special occasions like Christmas, Halloween, Mothers Day, Valentines, etc.
• Collect social proof while you are at it. When you get a good review or a thank-you tweet from a client, share it on all of your profiles.
• Share photos of your staff, office, and premises to build trust and credibility.
• Encourage them to share your posts with their friends by offering discounts or launching a contest.
• Ask questions, start polls, or initiate discussions to improve engagement rate.
• Respond to all of their messages, mentions, and queries as soon as possible

Do that and you will live happily ever after.

Good for you because Social Media marketing is worth all the time and investment.

You can manage some of your Social Media accounts and post updates through services and apps, but a dedicated Social Media manager can do a lot more.

Social Media manager will monitor different social media platforms to find posts, discussions, and trends related to your brand or business.

They will come up with strategies to engage and interact with your target audience.

They will keep an eye on the progress through analytics to make sure your social media strategy is on track.

However, you need to make sure that you are not handing over your business accounts to someone who doesn’t know anything about the scope of Social Media and who’s entire strategy is not based on finding random stuff and posting it to your profiles.

What Makes a Good Social Media Manager?

When used smartly, Social Media can produce amazing results for businesses of all sizes.

When used not so smartly, social media marketing can be a waste of time and resources (and sometimes cause massive embarrassments for brands and businesses).

When you are hiring a social media manager, you need to make sure that you are hiring someone who knows how to produce engaging  and conversion-oriented content, interact with your target customers, and use analytics to find opportunities.

A good Social Media manager will be able to come up with social media marketing plan while keeping your goals and objectives in mind.

They will know the right platforms.

They will not be obsessed with vanity metrics like the number of followers or Likes. Instead, he’ll be looking to create content that engages your target audience and converts them into customers.

They’ll know the right tools to make the most of their time

Last but not the least, good social media managers will have the experience of setting up, monitoring and optimizing Social Media advertising campaigns.

In short, you are looking for someone who is good at content creation, curation, analytics, communication, and PPC at the same time.

Someone who comes with this kind of skill set and expertise is not going to work for peanuts.

Before trying to get an idea of how much a good social media manager costs, let’s see how many hours do you need to manage social media for a small business.

Ideally, Social Media marketing and management needs to be a full-time job.

Posting updates, replying to visitors messages and tweets, scanning social media for relevant posts or discussions, creating new content and coming up with ideas, going through competitors’ accounts, doing the outreach, and following up can take an entire day’s work. But that’s for fairly large businesses.

Small or Local businesses have a relatively small audience so we can safely assume that 3 – 4 hours a day are going to be enough.

The below-mentioned costs are created while keeping that time in mind.

How Much a Freelance Social Media Manager Costs?

Let’s start from Upwork, which is one of the biggest freelance jobs portals.

We searched for Social Media Managers and here’s what we get.

A total of more than 31k freelancers with the following price ranges.

• More than 12k freelancers are charging well under $10/hour
• Around 13k are charging rates between $10/hour to $30/hour
• There are more than 3.5k who will work at $30/hour to $60/hour
• And then there’s the most expensive category charging at least $60/hour or more

We filtered the results to get the freelancers with at least 100 hours billed.

As you can see, we are getting pretty much the same results.

Around 8700 freelancers out of 9700 are charging $10/hr to $30/hr.

Let’s use another filter to find the ones with the highest job success rate.

As expected, that takes out a big majority of freelancers offering a rate below $10/hr.

Still, more than 80% of these freelancers fall into “$10 or below” and “$10/hr – $30/hr” categories.

While quickly going through the top-rated freelancers, we can see that most of them are charging at least $20/hr or more.

According to these rates, a decent quality social media manager for your small business will cost anything from $1000 to $2500 per month.

The range is quite similar on other platforms like Guru or PeoplePerHour.

How Much an In-House Social Media Manager Costs?

To get an idea of the cost for an in-house social media manager, let’s look at PayScale that allows you to research and compare average salaries in different fields and professions.

According to PayScale, social media managers in the US earns $46k per year on average. The salaries range between $27k and $73k.

Source: PayScale

It actually conforms to our earlier estimate i.e. $1000 to $2500 per month (remember we were calculating the cost for just 3 hours or half a day’s work).

Looking at “Social Media” marketing jobs at LinkedIn, we can see that the average salary ranges from $40k/year to as much as $200k/year but these are estimated figures coming from the same source i.e. PayScale.

Estimated salary for “Social Media Manager” jobs at Indeed range from $35k to $80k.

Looking at all these figures, we can come up with a fairly accurate estimate of the cost though your actual cost will differ depending on your goals and objectives.

Remember that someone working at a relatively low rate of $1000/month or less will only be able to do the basic stuff like content curation, responding to direct messages or mentions, and coming up with monthly reports.

You cannot expect the advanced stuff like conversion oriented campaign, influencer outreach, measuring and establishing the ROI of different campaigns or social listening.

Conclusion:

It’s your call and it’s your money but in case you are just starting and looking for a way to maintain a social media presence, you will be better off using a tool than hiring a social media manager.

Go for a dedicated Social Media manager only when you are looking to take it to the next level.

Simply having a lot of followers or fans is not enough. You need to make sure that users are interacting with your brand by liking, commenting, or sharing your posts.

You must use Engagement rate as the metric to evaluate performance at social media.

Remember, we are talking about meaningful engagement. Techniques like click bait, sensationalisation, or hoax stories can be counterproductive.

So what’s the secret of high engagement rate?

Here are 7 social media hacks to boost your engagement:

1 – Videos

Everyone loves videos. It’s the easiest way to digest information, so engagement rates are usually phenomenal. The Facebook team realised this too, so they decided to give any video uploaded to Facebook way more exposure than any other type of post. Then they went one step further and made videos auto play when people scroll over them.

Most videos on Facebook are of a viral sensationalist nature (like in the screenshot below), but the algorithm still favours videos in general. Out of all the types of content you can share on Facebook, a video is by far the type that will consistently trump any other in terms of engagement.

2 – Polls

Create a poll to know their preferences, likes, and dislikes. You can ask them to choose between two different options (relevant to your business). Apart from the engagement, it will also give you insight into their preferences that you can use for product creation or marketing.

3 – Quizzes & Questions

The easiest way to make someone speak is to ask for their opinion.

Quizzes can also work equally well.

4 – Feel Good Posts

Humorous or feel-good posts are often shared the most. Any post, quote, or message that makes your target audience smile will get a boost in interactions.

You can ask them to like or share the posts but remember that Facebook and some other platforms don’t like pages that explicitly ask people to like or share their posts.

Besides, ending all posts with a request to like or share the post will make you look desperate.

Instead, wait for the right content, for example, a post with a tip or information that will be of help to their friends, or a heart touching message like the following.

5 – Identify the best time to post

People will usually like & interact with a post in their spare time. During work, they are too caught up to comment or share, even if they like the post.

Various studies have proved that engagement rate is usually the highest on Saturdays and Sundays, but it can differ from one platform and target audience to another.

The best way to figure out the right time is to post at different timings and use analytics to find the best time.

You can also get an idea of the best time by going to Facebook Insights and clicking on “Posts”.

It will tell you the days and the times when the maximum numbers of people are online, so you can post your best content at those days and times.

Once you’ve figured out the right time, all you need is a tool that allows you to schedule posts.

Jarvis can do that for you (and a lot more).

Just click on Schedule, and choose the timings that you want to use.

6 – Post more Often

Most online businesses are targeting users in different regions parts of the world, so you should try to post more often to ensure that you are reaching out to users in different time zones at their own peak time. Don’t treat this as an excuse to go and send out an update every 5 seconds. There is a balance to be maintained. Try post as much as possible without making your followers feel like they are being spammed to death.

7 – Say Thanks

The key to improved engagement is remembering that it’s not about you or your business. It’s about your target audience and what they are looking for.

Make them the center of attention and they will be compelled to respond.

As earlier mentioned, content for “traffic generation” will be different than the content intended for “lead generation”.

You can choose from three different types of content.

 

Your own unique content that you will CREATE

Great content from others that you will CURATE

Some of your best performing content that you will RECYCLE

An ideal content marketing strategy will have a mix of all three types.

Content Creation:

You can create content in many different forms.

Blog Posts & Long Form Content: It includes your blog posts, articles, and some detailed guides or eBooks thrown in, every once in a while.

Write a short preview and include a call to action that directs the users to your website for the complete post.

You can also post the complete articles on platforms that allow long-form publishing, for example, LinkedIn Posts or Facebook Instant Articles.

Short Updates: Give a quick pro tip; ask questions, give a shout out to some customer or partner, or comment on a recent news or development from your industry.

Graphics: The easiest way to create a graphic is to take a quote or tip and use tools like Canva or Snappa to create a visually attractive post.

You can also use product photographs or pictures from some recent event.

Graphics have much better organic reach but that doesn’t mean you should keep posting images because “reach” is not the only thing you’re looking for.

 

Videos: Producing videos doesn’t always need a huge budget. You can use the following methods to create videos without breaking the bank.

• Whiteboard lectures
• Using tools like animaker or videoscribe to create simple animated videos
• Using a screen capture software like Tinytake to create “how to” videos
• Using slideshows or presentations as videos with voice over

Promotional Posts: When you are providing lots of good, useful content, your target audience won’t mind getting some promotional posts every once in a while.

However, keep the mood and style of the platform in mind while creating a promotional post.      

Content Curation:

Your followers will appreciate if you are sharing some great content from the web (which is, of course, relevant to your niche).

Sharing third party content is important because it gives you an opening to engage and network with influencers or bloggers.

In addition to that, looking at the response will give you an idea of the content that works well with your target audience.

You don’t need to spend extra time searching for the right content.

 

Insert Screen Shot & Text about Jarvis Chrome Extension here

 

Right Places to look for Curated Content:

Start from following the influencers in your niche.

They are known as influencers or power users for a reason. They know how to engage and influence their target audience. Following influencers and bloggers will give you a lot of ideas and inspiration for content creation.

You can also follow your competitors or relevant businesses.

Similarly, joining some relevant communities or groups will give you plenty of ideas to talk about.

Buzzsumo is another option to find relevant content that has been shared and liked the most on social media.

Content Recycling

When you don’t have time to create unique content, you can reuse some of your old content, ideally after a little bit of recycling.

Repurposing allows you to use the same content on many different platforms.

For example, you can create slideshows or videos by using the content of a guide or tutorial. Slideshows works really well on LinkedIn and Google+.

You can also use quotes and excerpts from your old posts.

Pro Tip: Use Social Media Analytics to identify content that received the most clicks, likes, or comments, and recycle. Content recycling ensures that your best content will get maximum exposure.

We’ve analyzed everything with 100 or more votes at Inbound.org to get an idea of the topics that get the most attention and upvotes.

Content that works at Inbound.org will most likely click with your target audience as well.

This analysis will be of great help for anybody looking for topics to woo the B2B audience.

Existing work on the topic?

We’ve tried searching for posts on similar topics but I found just a couple.

This one barely scratches the surface.

It makes some valid points like the length or the person submitting the posts matters but most of these findings are not practical or makes much sense.

For example, the posts submitted in the month of January will do well or title length is everything.

There’s another analysis but with similar results though it mentions that AMA and Google related topics get the most views.

We are more interested in the real thing i.e. content type and topics that work.

If you are an inbound marketer, knowing your target audience and the topics that grab their attention can make your life easier.

When you go through the most popular posts, you will see that certain topics are doing better than the others.

A big majority of these posts are How To’s and all-inclusive guides. Case studies and success stories are not far behind, while some posts have worked simply because of the shock value or controversy in the topic.

We went through the posts one by one and marked the biggest contributing factors.

It’s our personal opinions but you can do your own marking and we are sure that the overall results will not differ a lot.

We’d love to hear your take on the results.

But before we go into that, let’s look at some factors which are constant in almost all of these posts.

The Constants:

Simply choosing a controversial topic or carrying out a quick case study is not enough.

It will get you some clicks or eyeballs but no upvotes (or likes and shares).

Give no value and you will Get no value out of your post.

It’s important to pick the right topic but make sure your posts have all the necessary ingredients.

Quality & Writing Style:

You will need above average writing skills to engage and impress professionals.

At the same time, you need to keep it casual and easy to read.

Use short sentences and informal language.

Comprehensiveness:

Most of these posts are at least 2000 words or more.

People are more likely to vote when they see the effort behind it.

Length matters but it’s not about the word count.

Strive to be the best possible resource on the topic.

Hitting the right nerves

Content marketing is all about keeping your finger on the pulse of your target audience.

Posts like “We’re ignoring Google and it is working” or “How to get an Influencer to write for you” have worked so well because the audience can resonate with the topics.

Don’t waste time on creating the ultimate guides or case studies if it doesn’t address a common pain point.

It helps to be well connected:

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of a strong network.

It can be the difference between a celebrity and a wannabe.

Take this post as an example.

Look at all those votes and remember no other post has crossed the 700 mark yet.

But here’s something really interesting:

The post has barely managed 37 votes and was on its way to obscurity until it got the mentions from influencers like Rand Fishkin, Dharmesh Shah, even Matt Cutts.

Every connection matters.

If your post can get those early votes or comments, it will be featured in “Content suggestions”.

It’s something members get when they log in (depending on their interests).

Even better, it will make its way to the newsletter, which means massive exposure.

Karma:

Don’t try to achieve this traction by getting your team members or friends to vote because it can backfire.

What you give is what you get.

Try to be a generous part of the community and let Karma do its thing.

If you’re leaving quality response on other people’s posts and questions, they are more likely to vote when they see something posted by you.

And now, let’s get down to business and see which content type or format has found the most success at Inbound.

Content Types:

Posts with Controversial Topics & Shock Value (4.8%)

• I Stopped Selling SEO Today. You Should Too. Here’s Why…
• We’re Ignoring Google & It’s Working – Here’s Why

The easiest way to get everybody’s attention is saying something that goes against the popular beliefs.

Internet trolls use this trick all the time at discussion boards and it seems to work on Inbound as well (not the trolling part but taking a different stance).

A great example is the recent case study “On Page SEO is Dead – We Studied 2M search queries to learn that”.

Now, the study only marginally proves that On Page Factors play a much smaller role as compared to backlinks.

It’s an established fact but the controversial topic has worked due to the shock value.

The post has 144 votes and a lot of views in less than 24 hours of posting.

You don’t need to troll or purposely try to upset people but there’s nothing wrong with voicing your opinion especially if it goes against a norm.

If you can back it with some data or solid proof, it’s going to be the icing on the cake.

Case Studies & Success Stories (13.4%)

• We Analyzed the HTTPS Settings of 10,000 Domains and how it Affects Their SEO – Here’s What We Learned
• We Analyzed 37,259 Facebook Ads and Here’s What We Learned For YOU

Case studies and success stories work so well with B2B audience for obvious reasons.

Online Marketing industry is so full of hearsay. Every time we see a data-backed answer, we are naturally attracted.

Besides, who’d mind learning a lesson or two on someone else’s expense?

The case studies like “How to Not Blow $10,000 on Google Adwords” or “Four Lessons from Creating over $20,000 Worth of Slide-Share Presentations”.

If you can’t spend such huge amount, put in the time and effort and it will get the similar results.

Success stories work because everybody wants to see and replicate a successful strategy.

For example “How an E-commerce Store generated $18,750 In Sales From $114 Facebook Marketing, In 48 Hours” or “Content Promotion: How We Grew from 0 to 32,977 Users in 5 Months With Zero Paid Traffic”.

Out of the Box Approach & Stand-out Titles (10.8%)

• Finding Your Voice Through Your “Sh*tty First Draft”
• Expert Roundups Must Die Since SEOs Can’t Have Nice Things

It’s next to impossible to come up with new topics on a constant basis.

How do you manage to create something unique?

The trick is to use a distinctive title and format.

For example, this post titled “So you want to start an agency – LOL” actually shares standard tips for startups.

It’s a good post but the idea has been reincarnated so many times. It wouldn’t have worked if it wasn’t for this unique title.

Thanks to the title, the post has more than 59k views while most others don’t manage even 50% of these.

That tells you something about the power of a good title.

And it’s not just the title.

Joel K. used an over the top strategy to get paid and shared it in “Ho Ho Ho … Pay my Invoice”.

At times, a little bit of humor or sarcasm is all you need.

For example, “How I earned 1,859 Twitter Followers in only 8 Years”.

How To & Guides (22.9%)

• How to Get an Influencer to Write for You
• The Ultimate Guide to Guest Blogging: 250+ Opportunities
• How to Improve Title Tag CTR by 20%+

Guides and How-to posts are one of the most recurring types in the list of most popular posts.

These posts work because they take a pain point and solve it for once and all.

For “How to” posts you must choose a burning question and strive to be the best possible answer.

The “ultimate guides” need to be the most comprehensive resource on the subject.

Lists & Compilations (10.1%)

• 19 Strategies to Acquire Links and Drive Traffic (Oh, and EXACTLY How to Execute Them)
• 21 SEO Techniques You Can Use Today to Get More Search Engine Traffic
• 31 Brilliant Landing Page Examples (With 71 Takeaways)

List posts are probably the easiest type to pull off.

Numbers grab people’s attention and you can easily get your point across.

However, you need to choose your topics carefully.

Successful list posts at Inbound.org are mainly on advanced topics like “21 User Activation Tactics” or the extensive ones like “123 Ways to Get More Website Traffic: A Sumo-Sized Guide”.

AMA Sessions (14.9%)

• I Am Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz Founder/CEO, Ask Me Anything
• We are Conversion Rate Optimization Experts. Ask Us Anything.
• I am Noah Kagan, #30 at Facebook, #4 at Mint. Chief Sumo of AppSumo.com. Ask me anything.

Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions work for two reasons.

First, they are heavily promoted, and second, when you have the guys like Brian Dean or Avinash Kaushik willing to answer your questions, people will naturally jump on the opportunity.

It seems Inbound is not accepting requests to appear as a volunteer in these sessions.

But you can consider hosting one on another platform (or host one on your own blog or social media page).

Questions & Discussions (13.1%)

• What’s your content ideation process?
• How long does it take you to write an in-depth article (1500+ words)?
• What is one growth hack you used to increase blog organic traffic?

Inbound is an active community and every so often there’s a discussion where everyone wants to share an opinion.

You can also initiate discussions to get some attention (and Karma points). Just try to keep it relevant to your industry.

Misc (10.1%)

• Goodbye Inbound.org
• Welcome to Inbound- New Members Introduce Yourselves Here! April 2015
• Welcome Mary Green – our new Content & Community Manager!

These are mostly community-related posts that you cannot use in your strategy.

Conclusion:

Choosing the right topic is the first (and the most important) step towards creating content that connects with your audience.

It’s easier than you think.

Start from adapting one of these popular types to suit your niche and target audience.

For best results, combine more than one factor into a single post.

For example, create a detailed guide and then choose a stand-out title instead of the clichéd ones like “the ultimate guide” or the “complete guide”.

Pretty soon you’ll have it figured out ?

Perhaps you’ve applied to dozens of social media jobs and haven’t received so much as a call back. Perhaps you’ve noticed that many of these jobs require a four-year degree, and so you’re considering going back to school to get a leg up.

Unfortunately, I have some bad news: a social media degree is worthless.

Your social media degree is worthless

So why, in 2016, does the company advertising your social media dream job require a University degree? For two reasons, and admittedly, one of them is quite reasonable.

The good reason is that a university degree mostly proves that you are capable of doing work on time, mostly correctly, and committing to something for multiple years and then following through on that goal. That’s valuable, to be sure.

The dumb reason is that they require a degree for all positions. It’s simply a heuristic; They want to ensure that you are a competent individual and this is the simplest way of ruling out people who aren’t. Requiring a university degree has replaced requiring a high school diploma. This is the equivalent of a “you must be this tall to ride” sign for a job. Making it a company-wide policy is a good way to prevent your hiring manager from making a poor bet on an incompetent employee. Unfortunately, while this does rule out a lot of poor candidates, it also makes the error of ruling out many competent candidates who simply don’t have a degree!

If, however, you were able to prove your competence without having a degree, and able to overcome the bureaucracy of the organization, then this will no longer be a factor in their decision making.

Why not get a degree? Because they are very, very expensive. Let’s break down the true cost of University.

The cost of the degree, taken at face value.

Let’s assume you are considering a four-year program and will be paying $20,000 per year. Over four years, that will add up to $80,000.

The other costs involved, which are never obvious up-front.

Conservatively, we can estimate that you will spend an additional $20,000 over the same four-year period on required books, and increased rent due to needing to live closer to campus. Most books cost about $10 on amazon, but for some innocent reason the academic textbooks published by a company that pays the dean of your school “consulting fees” typically cost hundreds of dollars and you need to buy a new edition every year, never mind that Newtonian physics hasn’t changed since Newton’s day and that O’reilly’s 2016 Guide to Social Media was out-of-date two weeks after it was printed.

The real cost of the money spent on the above two costs.

If you don’t have $100,000 laying around, you’ll probably utilize some form of debt in order to cover at least some of these costs. Let’s assume you are able to work while studying and only need to use debt to cover half the cost, and that you qualify for a relatively fair government loan with a 6% interest rate.

National data on average repayment periods among US graduates show us that someone making a typical social media salary will pay roughly an additional $25,000 in interest in addition to the $50,000 in borrowed principal.

How much will you actually pay for $30K in student loans?

The opportunity cost of working in the meantime.

Assume you currently make $40,000 per year and manage to squirrel away $10,000 per year in savings. Over four years, that’s $160,000 in total earnings and $40,000 USD in savings.

The numbers simply don’t add up.

Using our above figures, our degree cost us $125,000 and, additionally, we lost $160,000 by not working during the same period. That’s a total loss of $285,000. Now let’s optimistically assume that as a result of our degree, we earn $10,000 more per year than we otherwise would have, and that there was no other way to attain this pay increase (not true). Let’s neglect the fact that in a job market where seemingly every job requires a college degree, 51% of college graduates are currently working in jobs which do not a degree at all. Lastly, let’s ignore the fact that starting University is no guarantee that you will graduate (less than two-thirds of freshmen will graduate, and if you drop out, this money is very much wasted).

Assuming these numbers, it will take 28.5 years to make back the true cost of your university.

The opportunity cost of educating yourself in the meantime.

Universities used to be an easy sell.

In an age before blogs, podcasts, and e-books, Universities offered access to information which would have been hard to learn otherwise.

In a time before YouTube videos, and Udemy and Coursera courses, Universities were one of the only ways to learn from an expert in the field you are interested in.

But today, there are other ways to become educated. In addition to the above, there are intensive training and certificate programs specifically about social media marketing.

What do you really need Universities for now?

Four years is a lot of time to learn a skill. You could spend the same period learning on your own, or as an apprentice under an expert, and build up a portfolio which would separate you from the ocean of college graduates with little real-life experience four years down the line.

The choice that feels risky is actually much safer

At the end of the day, businesses make decisions that benefit their bottom line. Businesses do things that make them more money. If hiring a college dropout will benefit them, they will do it. Results matter more than anything else.

Doctors and engineers who will be building bridges need to be certified. But doing a bad job at social media isn’t a fatal error (well, actually, sometimes social media can be disastrous). It’s not at all obvious that you need a degree to work in social media, or that there’s any correlation between social media degrees and expertise or results.

Further, the social media landscape is changing so quickly that there are no traditional programs which will adequately prepare you for it, and companies who are hiring social media experts know this. If you are convinced that you want to attend a four-year institution and convinced that you want to work in social media, you are better off majoring in something else entirely and then simply looking for a social media job after graduation.

It’s also less obvious that you need a job (in the traditional sense) at all. More and more social media experts are choosing to work for themselves, by becoming independent contractors. Getting a few different small business to pay you a few hundred or a few thousand dollars a month each is not terribly difficult, and allows you to create your own well-paid, location-independent job with greater job security than offered by traditional employeeship.

The author of this article can attest to the fact that, when working as a marketing contractor, he has never had a client ask him about his university degree when considering working with him. Further, when running businesses, he has never cared about the degrees held by job applications. Which, brings us to our last point…

Attention Hirers: Stop Requiring a College Degree!

The real lesson here is for those who are posting the job ads and participating in the hiring and recruiting process: Stop requiring a college degree. Open your mind to the millions of qualified candidates who don’t have a college degree, and your company will benefit from being able to poach talent undervalued by your competition.

Having a Facebook Page for your business is as important as having a website.

Not because it’s the “in-thing” to do but because Facebook offers some unbeatable benefits and opportunities to small or local businesses.

To begin with, you will get the chance to connect with your target customers.

There’s no better or bigger platform than Facebook with more than 1 billion daily active users.

Facebook is adding lots of new features for businesses like the shop section, Live video, Instant Articles, and Professional Services.

Not to forget that FB Ads offer great ROI for small businesses and you will need a business page to set up campaigns.

Setting up a page is free and doesn’t take much time, especially when you have a simple and straightforward guide like the one given below.

Let’s do it.

Log in to your Facebook account and go to this page.

Page Types:

Facebook offers six different types of pages, each catering to different types of businesses and audience, and each coming with slightly different features.

Local Business or Place: If you are creating a page for a brick and mortar shop or a service-based business that targets a specific place, town, or city (e.g. event management, home movers, etc) then choose this type. Local business pages allow you to add a map, physical address, business hours, reviews, and ratings.

Company, Organisation or Institution: If you don’t want to target a specific location, then opt for a “Company, Organisation, or Institution” page. For example, online stores or e-commerce businesses can choose to set up a “Company” page. The only way it differs from Local Business Page is that there’s no map and the business doesn’t appear in Facebook Professional Services page for local businesses and organizations.

Brand or Product: This one is for brands, products, books, or magazine. You will only get a detailed about/description section and an option to link to your website.

Artist, Band or Public Figure: This one is for artists, music bands, sports people, and celebrities.

Entertainment: All the movies, TV series, talk shows, etc. goes to this category.

Cause or Community: If you want to run a page to garner support and raise voice for some cause or community, you can choose this category.

As you can see, “Company” and “Local Business” pages come with the biggest set of features and should be your first choice as a small business.

Complete Setup

Next you need to enter your business name and click on Get Started.

You will have to enter a short description, upload a profile picture, and choose your preferred Audience.

Bonus Tip: Instead of creating a page with your business name, you can also consider creating a page on a topic that will be of interest to your target customers.

For example, an online store selling ladies apparel can create a page like Daily Fashion Tips or something like that.

Click on “Save Info” and your page is ready.

However, you still have some work to do.

About Section:

About Section contains all details about your page and business.

You can submit or change the information like Business Category, Address, Description, Products, Business Mission, etc.

You can also choose or change your Username that appears under your Page name on Cover Photo and also becomes a part of your page URL.

Use Short & Long Description and Products section to describe your business in detail. This information will help you appear in search results when someone searches on Facebook.

Don’t ignore the details like “Founding Date”, “Awards” or “Business Mission”. It will make your page more trustworthy and help you stand out of the crowd.

Page Tabs:

Facebook Pages come with basic tabs like About, Photos, Videos, Event, and Shop by default.

You can also add custom tabs depending on your needs and requirement.

For example, here’s a custom tab for “Open Jobs” on Starbucks page.

You can use custom add to capture leads, showcase projects, portfolio, or testimonials.

However, you will need to hire a developer to create the tab (much like a web page) and add it to your Facebook page using iFrame.

You will also need an SSL certificate because Facebook doesn’t allow custom tabs from a website that doesn’t support https.

Profile Picture & Cover

For most businesses, it’s best to use your business logo in the profile picture.

Cover photos need to be unique and creative.

It’s usually the first thing a customer see when he lands on your page and you need to make the most of this space.

Highlight your business, products, services, and the unique features.

We are offering five premium templates for Facebook business pages. If you don’t have a professionally designed cover for your business page, I’ll highly recommend downloading and using one of these.

Settings

Your Facebook setup is now complete.

You can control pretty much everything on your Page through Settings.

Use General settings to allow or disallow visitors from adding posts and reviews to your page. You can also enable or disable private messaging or restrict people from a certain location or age group to access your page.

If you’re just starting, make sure that you have checked the “Similar Page Suggestions”. It will show your page in “Page Suggestions” when people are visiting a similar page. In return, you will have to allow similar suggestions on your page as well.

Other options include the settings for Messaging, Notifications, Page Roles, and the likes.

Conclusion:

So there you have it.

You have an FB page for your business and you can start posting and reaching out to your target customers. It’s as simple as setting up the page but that’s for another post.

So go ahead and set up a page for your business. If there’s something that’s not clear, just leave a comment and we’ll come back to you.

Not saying that you should create a group and forget about the business page but you can consider having both because of the following benefits.

• Members are more likely to interact in groups, which means your group posts have a much better chance to appear in their feed
• Members will get notifications on their mobile or desktop when someone comments in a discussion that they have participated in
• Groups can send more traffic to your website as compared to pages (up to 15 times more visitors).
• You will build a lot of credibility and trust
• You will get to know your target customers. Knowing their pain points can help you create a new product or improve the existing one to suit their needs
• You will get a lot of ideas or inspirations to use in your content marketing

You will have to commit some time and effort to make it work but the benefits are worth all the sweat.

So how do you build and grow a Facebook group fast?

The best person to answer this question would be the one who’s running a successful Facebook group for some time.

We invited not one but 11 experts and asked the following questions.

1. How did you get your first 1000 members? In other words, what’s the best way to build and grow an FB group from the ground up?
2. Share some techniques to increase the activity and keep your group active?
3. Should you be looking to monetize your Facebook group? If yes, what’s the best way to do it?
4. Any tips for admins or moderators on how to deal with spam and trolls?
5. Anything else you would like to add?

Let’s hear what these experts have to tell us.

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Joan Gaya of Digital Nomads Around The World

Group Description: This is a place for digital nomads to share advice and tips related to living the digital nomad lifestyle. Sharing our experiences and knowledge can only be a good thing.

Website: http://www.joangaya.com

Building a group from the ground up:

When I first created this group I started by inviting people in my world (friends, travel buddies, etc) who I thought could benefit from being a part of a community like this. At the same time, I invited them to then share the community with anyone in their world who they thought would be interested in the group. The first 1000 members did take some time, but once the numbers increased the rate at which people found the group and asked to be part of it really picked up.

Keeping it active:

One of the key things I have done is to keep the group content as clean as possible from spam, adverts, and content that didn’t relate to the topic of being a digital nomad. In the beginning, so many people were posting their general travel blogs but I got quite strict about the parameters. This wasn’t a general travel group, it was a place to share useful resources between and for digital nomads. I wanted the group to really support digital nomads and so any content that wasn’t specific enough to this topic was deleted and repeat offenders were banned.

Dealing with the Spam:

The biggest tip I can give here is not to be scared to delete posts or ban members. In the beginning, when the group was smaller, I used to write to individuals explaining why I was removing their post so that they knew if they continued posting similar content they would be banned, but as the group grew larger this became unmanageable. Then I got more specific and clear in the group guidelines so that people could read easily what would and would not be allowed in the group. People really appreciated this. They didn’t want the spam or the irrelevant content so seeing me take an active stand against it got a lot of support.

When the group got really large and I realized I was unable to moderate the number of posts and membership requests alone, I set about creating a team to support me. This started with a post in the group, inviting people to become moderators, I got a great response and the next step I took was to get on calls with individuals (and later on a group call.) I did this to establish a connection and to really explain the ethos behind the group and the methods I had been using to keep the group free from spammers and irrelevant content. This has worked really well.

Monetizing:

Monetizing the group was never my intention so I can’t give advice on the best ways to do so. However, because of the size and reach of the group I do occasionally get approached by companies who want to reach my audience with their product or service. In exchange, they usually offer me personally the opportunity to become an affiliate. As I’m not using this group to make money, when that happens I always ask the company to give whatever benefit they were offering to me instead to the members of the group.

That way they’re not just selling to my audience but actually providing some real value. Obviously, I ensure that any products or services offered in this way relate specifically to the needs of digital nomads.

Anything else you’d like to add:

Just that in the building of this community I have always tried to empower the members of the community to play an active role in the management of it. I want them to feel like it’s their community, not mine. In that way they become the moderators, they filter the content, they ban the spammers, they organize the resources, they write the group guidelines and they support every new member to follow them.

One of the moderators, Danish Soomro, even created a separate website to have all of the resources shared organised for the digital nomads, http://dnlinks.info/  It’s my belief that empowering the members of Digital Nomads Around The World to see the group as their group has been, without a doubt, a huge factor in making this group as big, active and as successful as it is.

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Dan Norris of The 7 Day Startup:

Group Description: 7 Day Startup Pro is an online membership which gives you access to world-class marketers, training videos, expert interviews and frameworks for getting shit done quickly, for a low yearly fee.

Website: http://7daystartup.com

Building a group from the ground up:

I launched a book called The 7 Day Startup and I set up an ambassador group to help with the launch. I got about 200 members for the book launch and the members wanted to keep it going after we launched.

Keeping it active:

I have a paid group that I specifically maintain and make an effort to make active. Some of the things I do are having weekly topic ideas, introducing new members, having a power threads list which my VA adds to each week etc. I don’t do any of that for the free group. I do challenges from time to time for the free group with Facebook live calls which gets people active but generally is manages itself.

Dealing with Spam:

I just accept all people who request access and then if anyone spams or is negative in any way we boot them from the group. It’s not a huge problem it happens occasionally. I have zero tolerance for negativity in my group and so trolls and generally negative people don’t last long.

Monetizing:

It’s a tough one. I have a Pro version of my group with a few hundred members and I do weekly promos in the free group to get more paid members. But free to paid is always extremely difficult to make work. My general approach to monetization is I don’t worry too much about it, I just keep creating things that I hope people will like and if I have an audience, I’m more likely to sell things. A Facebook group is one of the best things I’ve done to build and engage my audience.

Anything else you’d like to add:

You have to be careful putting your eggs in the Facebook basket but I just think do what works and Facebook groups, at least for now, are working really well.

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Kimra Luna of Freedom Hackers Mastermind:

Group Description: I created this group so like-minded entrepreneurs can help and support each other, ask questions, build relationships and celebrate each other’s win in business. Let’s help each other reach freedom.

Website: http://freedomhackers.com/

Building from the ground up:

First few came from personally asking people to join my community. Friends. Then the rest came from hosting webinars which I promoted with Facebook ads. I would ask people to join my group in my confirmation emails and on my ‘thank you for signing up’ page.

Keeping it active:

Whenever a really great thread would happen in the group I would email my list asking them to jump into the conversation. I grew my email list and group simultaneously. I kept mentioning my group consistently in my email newsletters.

Dealing with Spam:

Have clear rules and ban anyone who breaks them. Post the rules often. Once your group gets big you’ll need to post reminders of the rules daily.

Monetizing:

Yes. Promoting free offers inside your group to attract group members to your email list is always smart. Your members will go into your sales funnel and ta-da, monetized group.

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Haley Lynn Gray of Women’s Entrepreneur Network:

Group Description: This group is your group to network, and get access to the resources you need to grow your business. This is a group run by women entrepreneurs, for women entrepreneurs.

Website: http://leadershipgirl.com

Building from the ground up:

I promoted the group in other Facebook Groups, and also on Twitter, and to my email list.

Keeping it active:

Post 3-5 times per day, at a minimum.  Do regular FB Live sessions, and stay for at least 15-20 minutes, preferably more.  Limit the amount of promotion that people can do.

Dealing with Spam:

Delete, and remove them from the group.

Monetizing:

I think that done properly a Facebook group will allow you to significantly build your business. You have to put out content, but also put out offers regularly.  Make sure that you show up regularly, and talk to your group members, and build relationships and trust with them.

Anything else you’d like to add:

A group can be tremendous for building your business.  Just make sure that you’re posting valuable content in the group regularly, and that you are interacting regularly with your group members.

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Jonathan Kennedy of Shopify Entrepreneurs:

Group Description: Shopify Entrepreneurs is a group of Shopify store owners, store managers and expert service providers including developers, designers, and marketers.

Website: www.heycarson.com

Building from the ground up:

To create it around a topic that people are emotionally invested in, to invite the first 20 people manually, seed it with excellent curated content even when you know few people are reading, highlight members often, share influence content from LinkedIn and Twitter and notify and invite the influencer, use group tags wisely to appear in Facebook’s ”Suggested Groups” feature.

Keeping it active:

Moderate very tightly. Make sure everything posted is valuable for most members. Frequently tag and highlight members. Resurface old evergreen content, welcome new members – make them feel comfortable. Share the stage with other influencers.

Dealing with Spam:

Pre-moderate and only approve requests and posts from members with real names, profile pics and legitimate profile info.

Monetizing:

No. Use to highlight what you offer, but I’d avoid selling sponsorship, it dilutes the experience. Monetize it through relationships and partnerships made.

Anything else you’d like to add:

Facebook groups as a product was a better experience for us when the membership was under 3000. As the group grew, the engagement didn’t follow the growth. If I had to do it over, I would moderate new member requests even more and maybe even make it invite-only.

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Ryan Stewman of Sales Talk With Sales Pros

Group Description: This group is for serious Sales Pros. We are dedicated to sales talk. We are always looking for new methods and people to bounce ideas off of.

Website: www.HardcoreCloser.com

Building from the ground up:

I ran a competition for members to invite other people To join. I offered $100 to one person who invited at least 20 people and I picked a winner when we hit 1000.

Keeping it active:

We keep spam out and encourage folks to post videos in there.

Dealing with Spam:

Delete and block. We give no second chances. Our reputation now keeps spam and trolls low.

Monetizing:

Sell digital products to members.

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Luke Benjamin Thomas of The Dude’s Brood

Group Description: The place for all awesome digital nomads to hang out, discuss what’s going on in their business, help each other take their business to the next level and talk about sweet places to travel to!

Website: http://thatmarketingdude.com

Building from the ground up:

Build relationships with people in other groups… Not self-promotion. Be helpful and provide value and the right people that fit well with your message will join your group.

Also, promote it everywhere! Your personal profile, fan page, Twitter, Instagram, podcasts (your own or as a guest on another), blog posts, YouTube videos… EVERYWHERE

Keeping it active:

Provide a mixture of crazy posts, thought provoking, an inside into your personal life/showing off your personality and giving members a chance to talk about themselves and what they’re doing. Keep self-promotion in check (limit it to only be allowed in a certain area) as this will devalue your group is EVERYONE is peddling their own stuff.

Doing daily themed posts seem to do well too… You can limit the self-promotion to a specific day of the week and only within the themed post so to not clutter up the wall.

Dealing with Spam:

Have strict rules/guidelines and have a 2 strike policy. After the first, remind them to check out the rules or risk being banned from the group. If they do it again, ban them from the group.

Monetizing:

Entirely up to you… Unless you’re talking about ads or “sponsored posts” in which case it’s a no.

Groups are a great way to build a relationship with people to eventually get them into your sales funnel… Or to learn more about what your audience wants (potential products/services you can offer)

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Terri Levine of Business Owners Marketing & Sales

Group Description: This group is meant for all business owners (or people who want to start a business) – coaches, consultants, speakers, trainers, authors, network marketers – to ask questions, network and share relevant industry content.

Website: www.heartrepreneur.com

Building from the ground up:

Invited people. Gave value in like-minded groups. Asked members to invite people. Recommended clients join. Shared valuable posts.

Keeping it active:

My posting tips that keep the group active.

Dealing with Spam:

Don’t allow people to post without approval. Have a strong pinned video on spam policy. Remove and block offenders.

Monetizing:

Live stream teachings . If they comment or react DM them and offer to help them.

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Amanda Goldman-Petri of The Balanced Entrepreneur

Group Description: This nerdtastic group is dedicated to helping you grow your biz in a smart, balanced way so that you can make money without having to work too hard, hustle, or sacrifice. I believe you CAN have it all!

Website: http://marketlikeanerd.com

Building from the ground up:

The first two strategies I leveraged were:

1. Direct Messaging people (some who I know, some who I did not know) on Facebook with a very carefully-crafted copy to invite them to the group. I say carefully-crafted because people will see this as spammy if you do it the wrong way.

2. Creating an invitation page for the group and using that as the thank you page for my free gifts. Then I promoted my free gift in other people’s groups. As people opted in for the free gift, they’d see the thank you page invitation and click to join my group.

Keeping it active:

“High Engagement Activities” such as Q+As and Challenges are great ways to get a huge influx of engagement all at once, which sets the tone for natural engagement later on.

Dealing with Spam:

1) Set your group up so that people come for YOU and GENUINELY want to add to the community, which reduces the issue in the first place.

(2) When it does happen, protect your group members and your group vibes and don’t be afraid to block people.

Monetizing:

Yes, this is the business after all. I typically nurture my members for 30-90 days and by then, once I put an offer in front of them, they are dying to buy it so the sale feels very effortless.

Anything else you’d like to add:

I have a webinar on this exact topic, about how I booked $113K from Facebook groups in 90 days and the 3 step system you can leverage to monetize a group too. Right here: http://marketlikeanerd.com/fbgroupswebinar

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Mike Long of The OMG Way

Group Description: If you’ve tried the guru’s way, your boss’ way, your teacher’s way, and everybody else’s way…and you’re not getting the RESULTS you’re looking for, then why not try The OMG Way.

Website: http://omgmachines.com

Building from the ground up:

We got to several thousand members immediately because we added The OMG Way Facebook group by piggybacking off a powerful 25,000 or so email list with a number of established powerhouse Facebook groups.

Keeping it active:

We don’t allow negativity or review threads. I think this is such a hack.

Dealing with Spam:

We really try to be inclusive. But our terms or service are clear. The key is no negativity or review threads.

Monetizing:

We use it as yet another powerful channel to spread our message.

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Aliya Levinson of Authentic Entrepreneurs

Group Description: As female entrepreneurs it is our obligation to support each other, build each others’ confidence, and lend a helping hand. Not only is this simply the right and genuine thing to do, but forming relationships is the KEY to running a thriving and successful business.

Website: www.aliyalevinson.com

Building from the ground up:

Building relationships in other FB groups and giving prospects incentive to join! I hosted several challenges in my group that brought on hundreds of amazing women (which was AWESOME to see)! You can run a low-converting Facebook ad, put links to your group on all social media networks, and let the word spread like wildfire =)

Keeping it active:

The biggest key to increase engagement is to always build relationships. It’s like you’re hosting a (virtual) party. Welcome new members into the group, ask thought-provoking questions, respond to member’s questions and comments and make people feel as comfortable and special as possible. People want to hang out where they feel loved–bottom-line. Show love and get love in return.

Dealing with the Spam:

I used to give a warning or send a private message instructing them to please check the group rules before posting anything overly promotional. But as the group grows and your client-base grows, there is less time to consult each and every individual. Make a point of putting “do’s and don’ts” in the group rules, and if the rules keep getting broken, write a post about it. It’s your group, so if someone is bringing down the vibe or simply being SUPER promotional, then you can give them a warning or simply send them on their merry way (out of your group).

Monetizing:

Your FB group can be an incredible way to form a community for like-minded people (and yourself) to hang out in, get support, and grow a fan-base. If you’re looking to monetize your Facebook group the BEST way to start is by building your “know, like, and trust” factor with the group member. Let them get to know YOU, not just your products and services. Who are you? What do you like? What are you all about? People like experiencing YOU and why you do what you do. Of course, providing value, sharing free information, tips, tricks etc is amazing and super important for people. But at the end of the day for service-providers, people are investing in YOU as a person…so let them in! Build those relationships, and your coaching practice (or whatever business you run) will build as well.

Anything else you’d like to add:

Growing a Facebook group can be TONS of fun, but it requires making sure your group and the people in it are in alignment with YOU. Set your intentions for the group before growing it. What kind of environment would you like it to be? Warm? Informative? Fun? Bold? Think about your values and what’s most important to you, and make sure to infuse your core desires into the group while growing it. Put out content that’s really reflective of you and who you are. Connect with people like you’d connect with a friend. You CAN be an expert and a friend at the same time. At the end of the day, you want your group to be a place that feels exciting and simply AWESOME to be a part of, not overwhelming, or like a drag to run or take care of. Have FUN with it!

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So there you go.

Some tried and tested methods and absolutely brilliant advice to make Facebook groups work for your business.

We’d love to hear from you guys.

Are you running an FB group? How’s it going so far? Is there a tip that you’d like to add?

Let us know through comments.