Stop Marketing Your Business on Facebook (Do This Instead)

You post about your business and it sits there with nothing, no likes, no comments, silence. Then you post a photo of yourself mountain biking on a random Tuesday and fifty people show up to comment on it. If you’ve run a business page or profile for any length of time, you’ve lived that exact whiplash, and it’s tempting to conclude that Facebook just doesn’t work for what you’re selling. It isn’t Facebook. It’s what you’re posting, and more specifically, how you’re posting it.

Why does a mountain-biking photo beat your business post every single time?

When this pattern first showed up, it looked like a fluke, three and a half months of business posts landing flat while a personal picture pulled in real engagement. But it isn’t random. People connect with people, not with pitches, and a Facebook profile that only ever talks about the opportunity starts to read less like a person and more like a billboard. The fix isn’t to stop posting about the business. It’s to stop treating your profile like a marketing center and start treating it like what it actually is.

the most effective way to market your business on Facebook is not to market your business on Facebook

That reversal is the whole foundation everything else gets built on. Your profile is your own personal channel, your hobbies, your family, your opinions, your actual life, with the business woven through it rather than shouted over it. Cover images that are really just a banner for your company, no profile photo at all, groups full of link-dropping, these are the habits that quietly repel the exact people you’re trying to reach. Fix the basics first: a real photo where people can see your face, a completed profile that says where you’re from and what you do, a cover image that’s personal rather than promotional. None of that is glamorous. All of it is what determines whether a stranger accepts your friend request or scrolls past it.

What does it actually mean to bridge people into your content instead of just linking it?

Here’s where most people leave real engagement on the table without knowing it. The average way to share a blog post is to grab the URL, paste it into a status update, and hit enter. It works, technically, but it does almost nothing, because there’s no reason for anyone scrolling past to stop and care.

Creative bridge posting takes a completely different approach, and it doesn’t require writing new content at all. It means pulling a single idea, a photo, a quote, a personal moment, out of a piece of content you already created, and using it to connect your Facebook audience to that content in a way that feels personal instead of promotional. A wedding anniversary photo becomes the bridge into a story about the business built during that same stretch of years. A screenshot of a funny mistake somebody else made online becomes the bridge into a lesson about doing it differently. A single quote pulled from a book becomes the bridge into an idea the whole post is really about.

One version of this, testing a plain quote with a short personal comment attached, next to zero images or links, actually outperformed a standard link-share of the identical blog post by three times the engagement. Same content. Different bridge. That’s the entire idea, and it’s why one blog post can be shared five or six different ways across weeks without ever feeling repetitive to the people seeing it.

• Take one idea or image from a piece of content instead of just the raw link
• Build a short, personal frame around it that ties to something real in your life
• Let curiosity, not the link itself, pull people toward clicking through
• Repeat the same underlying content from a fresh angle instead of assuming one share is enough

Is there a mindset shift underneath all of this, or is it just tactics?

There is, and it’s the part worth carrying past the specific platform. It’s much easier to develop the skills to do things in a way that separate you from the masses than it is to continue struggling using the same average approach everyone else already tried and stalled out on. Most marketers post the same predictable way because it’s what they’ve seen everyone else do, and predictable is precisely what a crowded feed learns to ignore.

The compounding proof shows up in the numbers over time, not overnight, but steadily: a profile with a few hundred friends and no traction can turn into one with several times that, not because the person suddenly became a better copywriter, but because they stopped grinding out promotional posts and started sharing a real, specific life that happened to have a business inside it.

So what changes once you actually live this instead of just posting this way?

The mindset shift is simple to say and genuinely different to live: instead of trying to grow your business so that you can eventually have a life, you live your life and let the business grow out of sharing it. That’s not a soft platitude. It’s the mechanism itself. When your profile stops performing a business and starts documenting an actual life, the friend requests, the comments, and the eventual conversations about your opportunity all start showing up as a byproduct of being interesting, not as the result of another round of link drops nobody asked for.

The full session covers the complete engage-and-expand system, including exactly how to cross-post this content for maximum reach. Watch it in full, free, when you Create your free account.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

Watch me Nae Nae, now watch me whip, whip, watch me Nae Nae, can you watch me, ooh, watch me, watch me, ooh, watch me, watch me, ooh, watch me, ooh 1, 2, 3, 5, alright, let's get rolling Everybody enjoy the party last night? That was some fun all right hope you saved hope you got a little bit of sleep to be able to stay awake today for this that's right it's it's the time we're packing a lot in today so let me tell you what we have for you today this morning is what i like to call our social media shotgun and we've got lightning rounds where we've reached out and worked with all the trainers to make sure that this is the most actionable fastest most efficient way to get on each platform that they teach and show you how to literally go right on there and start generating leads and so that's your morning you have about seven trainers or so so it's going to be a lot make sure you take notes okay and , then when we come back from lunch you're going to have the Masters themselves Alex Z and Michael Martin literally walking you through the back office I pass funnel and showing you exactly what to do and how to sell that thing and it's literally the pre frame and the set up an intro to what will be well it just is the inaugural six figure builder club webinar but we're doing it live here for you and then a few special surprises from Dave and Chris after that so that's what we've got for you today so make sure you're in the room do what you can bathroom breaks whatever as soon as you can be back right away because you will miss something.

So with that I'm not going to waste any more time hope you guys are ready get your notes out we're already running a little behind so I'm going to get off stage here and get on a first presenter which. For all of you we decided to start first with the biggest platform that a lot of you have a lot of questions about we want to address that first get your mind right on that because of it works on. on Facebook, it just about works anywhere else. So on that, we're going to bring up Mr.

John Oaks. All right. Look at all these bright, wide awake faces. How many of you guys were at the iPass party last night?

All right. Fun, huh? Awesome. All right.

So let me ask you guys a question. How many of you feel like you're just getting average results with your Facebook posting? Go ahead. Be honest.

Average results. Okay. Good. And the rest of you, some of you guys are lying.

I know for a fact that most of you in the room are getting average results on Facebook. So how would you like to change that starting today? All right. And we're talking about free Facebook, okay?

Not Facebook paid ads. We're talking about using your Facebook profile, but stepping up your game so that you start getting the engagement. That you're looking for. So see if you guys can relate to this.

When I first got started, I had, you know, about 600 friends on Facebook, which is probably more than what the average person has when they get started. But I had friends from high school, friends from the military, people that I'd met through college, and I would start posting things about my business. And it was crickets. No likes, no comments.

But then I would post a picture of myself, you know, in some cool place up mountain biking, and I'd get like 50 likes and a bunch of comments. You guys relate to that? Right. Personal stuff.

People like it. You post stuff about your business. Nobody cares. Right?

So I did that for about three and a half months when I first got started, and I just couldn't figure out what was going on. I was doing average stuff. You guys all agree that average results, suck? Okay.

So we're going to fix that today. Get my slides up here. There we go. I'm going to show you guys how to separate yourself from the herd on Facebook.

You got to stop doing what most marketers do, step it up a little bit, and add some creativity. So here's what we're going to talk about in this training. I'm going to provide you with a solid foundation to expand your social presence on Facebook. Now, originally, when I was going to do this training, we were going to skip right to sort of the meat of this and dig right into it.

But let me tell you what happened here just in the last three days. From being at this event, from speaking on stage on Friday, I've gotten over 200 friend requests. The majority of those are from people in Empower Network that are here at this event. And what I saw when I went through those, I started kind of combing through them.

I saw some things that are seriously preventing your success on Facebook. So I had to add in some of the things that we're going to cover and go through very quickly at the beginning of this training because none of the more advanced stuff that we're going to talk about here in a minute is going to help you or be effective if you don't get some of these basic things right, some of these established foundation items. So we're going to talk about that. The other thing is we're then going to spark your creativity to create a more unique and effective way of posting with an emphasis on sharing blog content, right?

Now, we're a blogging community. We all have blog posts. But if you're posting your blog posts and sharing that on social media and this, you know, we're talking about Facebook, but it applies across the board to other social networks as well. If you're doing it in the traditional or the average way, again, you're not going to get the results you want.

So we're going to set the stage with this quote. It's much easier to develop the skills to do things in a way that separate you from the masses than it is to continue struggling. Using average thinking. OK, so keep that in the front of your mind as we go through this, because a lot of times when I use the word creative, it scares people when you hear, oh, hey, you got to get creative.

You need to be more creative. A lot of times in your mind, you start thinking, well, that sounds hard. That sounds really hard. I don't know if I can do that.

Right. But you need to be able to do that if you're going to be different than the average people out there. So that's what we're going to really focus on. So the first thing we're going to cover is dialing in your profile and the basics.

And then we're going to talk about creative bridge posting, which is just sort of a name that I came up with to describe this methodology of sharing content on Facebook. And then we're going to briefly talk about engaging and expanding, because once we get those other two things dialed in, then you can really grow. Now, for me personally, like I said, when I got started here three years ago, I had about 600 friends and I wasn't getting results. After about three and a half months of doing things average, I changed the way I did things.

I stopped looking at what most people were doing. And I started focusing on what I saw the successful people doing. And I started modeling after very successful individuals within the social media community and seeing that they're doing things differently and then picking it apart and figuring out how is it they're doing it and then sort of copying those kind of things, not copying, but modeling. So that's what we're going to share.

So first, before we dig into this, let's talk about some do's and don'ts on Facebook. Okay, really important. Some of this stuff's basic. A lot of you guys know it, but some of you are still doing these things.

So first, we're going to cover the do's, which is be you, right? Super important. Don't try to model or copy somebody else's persona on Facebook or any social media. You want to be your own unique self because that's what makes you different.

Be vulnerable. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to share things that are going on in your life, feelings that you have, opinions that you have, but just be careful and not share tragedy or adversity without the victory that follows, right? And let me explain what I mean by that.

If you're on Facebook, and we've all seen people do this, right, the complaining and whining kind of thing, and they talk about, oh, my life is going down the toilet, my car got wrecked, and I don't have the money to repair it, and I've got this big hospital. Bill and the and the creditors are calling me, you know, I don't know what to do about it. Nobody really wants to hear that on Facebook. It's not an attractive thing.

It certainly isn't going to attract the right kind of prospects to you. But if you then share the story after that and say, that's where I was. But now I'm here. Now I've overcome those things because of these things that I've done, this commitment I've made to building a business.

And in the last six months, I've been able to dig out of that hole. Now it's inspiration. So don't share adversity without victory. Share cool stuff.

Cool stuff that you and your potential prospects will enjoy, right? Things that you like yourself, and we tend to attract other people like ourselves. So that's a great place to start. If you like it, then the people that you're attracting are going to like it as well.

So when I say cool stuff, that doesn't mean just business, right? It means all kinds of things that you like. It doesn't mean you have to stay so far. You have to stay so focused on one particular thing.

I see sometimes that people will get so focused on building their business that that's all they ever talk about on Facebook is their business. And if you don't also work in some of your own personal stuff, you know, your hobbies, your passions, other things that you like to do, family stuff, vacations, cool trips, you know, those kind of things as well, then you're not really coming across as a real person. You look more like a robot on Facebook. So think of it this way.

Your Facebook profile is your own personal reality show. So quickly, we're going to go through the don'ts. Most of you guys know this stuff already. Spamming, you know, just the repeated throwing crap on your own wall over and over and over again.

Join my business, you know, make money, click here. It's the best product, you know, that kind of stuff. It's not attractive. It doesn't work.

So don't waste your time. Also, spamming Facebook groups. It's completely ineffective. Right?

Now, again, this is my personal opinion. Some of you guys may be using groups and maybe you're getting some traffic from it. My personal opinion is your time will be way better spent focusing on your own personal profile where you can actually get real engagement and attract real prospects than wasting your time in Facebook groups where you're just, you know, spamming and contributing to a spam farm, essentially. Whining and complaining.

We kind of talked about that a little bit. Stealing. Don't copy exactly somebody else's post on Facebook because you think it's a cool post and then put it on your own wall and pass it off as your own creative material. Not only does it annoy people, sometimes makes them downright angry, but it's really not effective because you didn't write it.

It didn't come from you. But you can model other people's content. You see somebody posted something that's very creative and it was very interesting. You can either share it and give them the credit for it, of course.

Or you can model that same concept and come up with your own content that's very similar. Hiding. We don't have to talk too much about that, but essentially if you have your profile locked down with your privacy settings so tight that only your friends and family are seeing anything you post, you're going to have a hard time expanding your network and finding prospects. So open it up.

The good way to deal with that as far as privacy settings go is just have that understanding. Anything that you put on the internet. You expect people to see. Everybody to see.

So if you have something that's private and you don't really want everybody to see it, just don't put it on the internet. Really easy. Inappropriate tagging. How many people have been annoyed by tagging?

See all the hands? Look around, guys. Keep your hands up. Keep your hands up.

How many of you have been tagged recently in something that has nothing to do with you and you're just angry about it? All right. Okay. So let that be a clue.

Tagging is fine if it's appropriate. You know, if you have something you're posting and there's some individuals that you're connected with that are specifically related to that topic or that item, tag them. That's cool. Nobody's going to care.

But tagging people because you want them to see an ad, not a good idea. All right. And then, of course, just the blanket statement. Just don't do what average people do.

Don't do what other marketers or the majority of marketers are doing because, as we all know, the majority of people doing anything are unsuccessful at it. And so you guys are here. We're rising up to the very top. You want to be in that top 1% to 3% of marketers online.

You need to start doing things a little bit differently. All right. So let's go through dialing in your profile. Now, this is the funny part, right?

Of all those Facebook friend requests that I got from a lot of Empower Network people, I was going through all of those. And the biggest thing that I noticed is that out of… Just over 200 friend requests, there were almost 60 of them that had no profile image. None whatsoever.

Just, you know, the missing man image. Okay. So this is why I felt like I needed to cover some of this stuff because you've got to dial that stuff in. So important thing to remember, you don't get a second chance to make a first impression, right?

You're going to send a friend request to somebody, and they're probably going to deny it if you have no image or if you have a funky image we're going to talk about here in a sec. So, who would you be more likely to connect and interact with? Where's Tracy? Is she in here?

So, here's the funny thing. The first two are actual friend requests that I have sitting in my friend requests right now. The third one is my sister. Now, she's not a marketer, so I don't give her a hard time about it.

Now, what's wrong with the second one over from the right? Right. There's really nothing wrong with it except that it's too far away and you can't see their faces. Exactly.

So, keep that in mind. And, you know, most of the time when you're seeing these profile images, it's set, you know, in the tiny, tiny little picture on the side of a post. And so, when you have a picture of you doing something way in the background with landscape and all that, it just doesn't show up. So, Tracy's a great example right there.

Cover image. Lots and lots of friend requests. And I'm sure you guys do, too, where there's just no cover image at all. And then the other thing that we see a lot of people do is that they'll put, like, a banner for their company as their cover image.

Or the picture of their products as a cover image, right? And, you know, when we're new, we do stuff like that because we're proud of the company. We're proud of the products that we represent. But what you're doing by putting that kind of thing as your cover image is you're really alienating yourself from a lot of potential connections.

Because they're going to look at it and go, Oh, they're one of those marketers. Right? So, don't do that. Make it something personal.

Make it a statement. Let your cover image extend your profile. That picture that was the second one from the right on the previous slide would have made a great cover image, but not a profile image. Right?

So, it can be positive quote, family fun pictures, uplifting imagery, something inspirational, a quote, perhaps motivational, but not a banner for your MLM. Okay? Because that's you're a real person on Facebook. It's not a marketing center, even though we're going to be able to be very effective with that.

You guys understand that the most effective way to market your business on Facebook is not to market your business on Facebook. Okay? Complete profile information. Where are you from?

What do you do? What do you like? Right? So, fill everything out.

Be as complete as you possibly can when you're putting in the information. Fill out all the details. So, this slide, it's a little bit hard to see. Oh, I guess that's not too bad.

So, the one on the left is mine. And you can see I filled out all the information. So, somebody could instantly see what I do, where I went to school, where I live, and that I'm married to Natasha. Right?

The one on the right is another friend request I have sitting in my inbox. And all you can tell is that they're from Honolulu, Hawaii, and they have one family member. So, if that's you, if you're in the room, we're just making an example. But you can fix that.

Right? Just go and complete. That information out. And then I'll accept your friend request.

Okay. So, a couple of basics. What kind of stuff do you post on Facebook? I get this question all the time.

You're like, well, I have Facebook, but I don't really put anything on it. I just play some games, and I don't know what to post. Right? So, do we have that issue?

Did some of you guys have a challenge of just not really knowing what you should put on Facebook? Okay. Good. Fair enough.

So, share your life. Right? It's Facebook. It's a social network.

It's about you. Your profile is your personal, like, channel. So, you can put information on there. You can put family pictures on there.

You can talk about what you're doing, cool things that you're involved in, projects. You know, make, and I highly encourage you to use pictures. Right? Imagery is the most powerful thing.

People want to see pictures of your life. That's what really gets interaction. So, lifestyle pictures, cool stuff, interests, passions. Now, when it comes to business, how do you work your business stuff into that?

You share results. You share solutions to problems. You share challenges that you've overcome with regards to business. And we're going to get more specific on this.

So, this is a little bit obscure at the moment. So, step away from just sharing links. Be real and let people into your life. That's really the mode of operation that you want to have.

So, let's get on to the fun stuff. Who's ready for the fun stuff? All right. So, creative bridge posting.

Now, you guys kind of understand what bridge marketing is, right? Bridge marketing is when you take somebody from one state and you bridge them to something else. You're changing their mindset. You're changing what they're thinking about.

You can take somebody from maybe in a blog post, reading a blog post about yoga and bridge them to blogging or a business opportunity with just using some words and being creative about how you do that. So, that's how we talk about bridge marketing all the time. We bridge market all the time in conversation. Where you might be talking about something and then you transition to talking about something else that's maybe even completely unrelated.

The problem is people don't do this on Facebook. Why? Why? And it's, again, I think because people follow the herd.

They see that, oh, well, what you do when you create a blog post is you grab the URL to the blog post and you paste it in your Facebook thing and hit enter and now you've shared your blog post. And then you go to another social site and share it over there. And you're good, right? And I did it like that for months.

And then I would feel at the end of the day like, well, I'm good for the day. And then tomorrow would come and I'm like, crap, I've got to write another blog post so I have something to share on Facebook, right? So, creative bridge posting is when you take a single idea or concept or an angle from a blog post. Now, we're talking specifically with sharing blog content.

You guys are going to see here that this applies to anything. You create a mini post around that that ties into you personally and it bridges your Facebook audience to the content. Sounds pretty logical, right? So, we're going to show some examples.

Okay. So, you guys know what it looks like when you take the URL to a blog post and you stick it into your Facebook status and you hit enter. This is how it should come up, right? Whatever you chose for a featured image is going to be displayed there.

And then you have the title and the excerpt, the way that you customized it in your Kalatu blog, and that's how it shows up. How many of you post stuff like this all the time on Facebook? Right. That's the average way of doing a blog post.

If that's all you're doing, you're going to have a hard time getting traction because you're not bridging people to that content. You're just sticking it on Facebook. And I did this over and over and over again and it didn't get a lot of results. But what I'm going to show you now is how I went from that 600 friends on Facebook to over 2,000 friends just two and a half months later just from changing the way that I shared content.

So, here's the next example. This is a post sharing the exact same blog post, but it's different. What I did was I took the same image, but I created a mini story sort of introducing that post and then added a link to the post. So, what it does is it attracts people in with the image and then they read the content and it starts off a little bit as a story and then they're curious and if they want to read the rest of the story, they have to click the link to get to the blog post.

But you can see it's very personal to me because it's a real incident that happened back in 2009 and it ties in. So, a lot of you guys, you're blogging and you're blogging about stuff that's personal, which is fantastic. But then when you post it on Facebook, the people on Facebook are looking at just a traditional blog post and they don't understand how that's personal to you. There's no bridge.

Does that make sense? Okay. So, here's another example sharing the exact same post. And, you know, how many of you guys see, we see this all the time on Facebook, but how many of you understand or can relate to this where a friend of yours on Facebook has an anniversary or, you know, somebody that has a lot of friends has a birthday and you just say, I see lots and lots of likes, lots of comments, lots of congratulations.

Or how about having a baby? You know, having a child. How many likes and comments does it get when you post that you just had your baby? Tons, right?

So, what if you could leverage those kind of events, tie it right into your content and send them into your blog post into business? And that's exactly what I did here. This was our 16-year wedding anniversary and I just put an old picture in there. It was actually, I think it was on a Thursday, so it tied right in also with Throwback Thursday.

And just, you know, created a little intro to the story, but you can see it says, you know, there were so many crazy and things that have happened in the span of time between then and now. We shared some of our story live on stage at the event in Nashville and you can see the video here and it links right to a blog post where I talked about that experience and shared that video. So, instead of just grabbing the URL and sharing that one time, you can have an unlimited number of ways and angles and posts to share the exact same blog content over and over and over again and different people will see it and interact with it because different people are going to react to different things.

Does that make sense? You guys starting to see the potential with this? So, now think on top of that, think about how this can tie in with the epic post concept that the company is now developing. Right?

So, now imagine that you don't even have to write the content. You just get to have access to these epic blog posts that are full of images, great concepts, great training, you know, whatever they might be about that you can pull from and create an unlimited number of ways to share that content through social media that's going to be unique to you and is going to actually get interaction, a lot more interaction than just grabbing the URL. Grabbing that blog post and sharing it one time on your Facebook. So, let's look at another example.

Again, a regular blog post share. And I'm not saying don't do this, right? You could do this. Yeah, the goofy picture, right?

I swear I don't have any serious pictures of him. All right. So, you can do it this way once, right? Share it this way once, but then you get to go back and be more creative and start sharing that same content over and over and over again.

You guys starting to understand, you don't have to have hundreds of blog posts to be able to never run out of content to share on social media. So, this is actually a share of that exact same blog post. Now, in this one, I didn't use an image at all. I just found a quote.

You guys know where to find quotes, right? They're everywhere. You can go to quote websites. You can, you know, look at just Facebook.

I mean, look at your Facebook feed. You're going to find quotes all the time. Yeah. Grab a really unique, cool quote that you relate with and then add a little bit of commentary to it and then link it to your blog post.

So, really easy. Now, of course, it relates to the post that I'm linking it to, but it doesn't have to. But if it relates to it, then it's a better bridge. It's a closer tie-in.

This right here actually got, and I kind of ran a split test on this, but this post right here with no image and nothing got three times the interaction of when I shared that same blog post, whoops, right there. Three times the interaction. So, you can do it the regular way, the average way that most people do it, or you can get just a little bit creative and get three times the interaction. Not hard, right?

You guys can do this. Okay? All right. So, here's another one, another example that shares the exact same blog post again.

And what I did with this one was I grabbed an image. I didn't create that, right? There's thousands and thousands of images like that. People love those kind of things.

When you post stuff like that on Facebook, people tend to share them, like them. It gets spread around. So, why not tie that into your business by adding a little bit of your own commentary and somehow bridging it directly into a piece of content on a blog post or a video or a capture page? It gets a lot more interaction than just, you know, trying to share straight off a link to it.

So, a capture page on Facebook. How many have tried that? Yeah, it gets no interaction, right? People don't want to see that stuff on Facebook.

All right. Again, another example of sharing the exact same blog post. And all I did with this one is grabbed a quote image and then added just, you know, a couple of sentences to that and a link back to that same blog post. Again, this stuff gets crazy good engagement, likes, shares, all of that stuff.

And it gets more click-throughs to the blog post than sharing the blog post directly. Here's another example, again, sharing the same one. So, you can see this is like five examples coming at it from different angles, sharing the exact same blog post. Every one of them is unique and took me maybe ten minutes to write it.

And I didn't create the images. Okay. So, we'll go through a couple more examples here. This is a blog post that I did on Twitter marketing case study.

And this is what it would look like. It would look like if you shared the blog post directly on Facebook or other social sites. Here's a share of the same blog post but done in a completely different way. So, what I did here was I took a screenshot of a funny Twitter fail, right?

How many of you guys use Twitter? Okay. So, some of you will understand what this is. But this guy here had an auto direct message service set up that just auto messages people when they become connections or followers on Twitter.

And you can see that this guy here had an auto direct message service set up. And you can see his example. It said, example. Hey, what do you do?

I make music. Check them out. Your link. So, I took the screenshot.

I responded back to him and said, pretty funny. You're using the default DM text. And then, you know, created this little LOL. Might be a good idea to change the default example.

This got amazing interaction because people relate to that, right? It's funny. People share it. This kind of stuff is everywhere, guys.

Everywhere all day long. You just go through your social media accounts. You can find really funny stuff. Humorous stuff, educational stuff, prime examples, things that you can grab screenshots of and share and do it in a unique way and get more interaction for yourself which ends up more leads, more traffic, more click throughs, more business for you.

One more example here and then we'll kind of move forward on this. This is again a regular blog post share. You know, now you guys are starting to see when we go to these regular ones, they look kind of boring, don't they? And here's a share of the same blog post.

You've got the fake video thing going, right? The fake video works really, really well. People just can't help but click on that play button. So all I did was I just said, you know, when I asked my subscribers to share their biggest challenges, this was number four.

Video four is now live on the blog post and put the blog post. I actually created one like this. This particular blog post had multiple videos on it. So I was able to create a completely unique angle and way to share that same blog post over and over again on Facebook and others.

Social networks with each one of those videos. So you can create these kind of things or again, you can use the epic posts that are going to be created for you that will have this kind of content in them that you don't have to create at all. Who's excited about that? Right on.

Okay. So you can use images. You can use quotes. You can use excerpts from the content.

You can use examples from a blog post or you can get more creative and you can source it from outside. The blog post, so you could grab inspiration from something else entirely and tie that into your post that then links to a blog post. Just get creative, right? You really want to tap into the creative side on this and don't be scared by the word creative.

It's really not that hard. You guys all agree you can do this, right? Okay. Good.

So like I said, it drives a lot more click throughs than average posting. It creates a lot more value and what it does is it builds influence and authority for you. This is what gets you friend requests. Okay.

Not going into Facebook groups and spamming and putting your link everywhere. Posting value content and doing it in a unique way that bridges people into your personal life and your personal feelings and opinions of things and how you're creating value and helping your community, that's what gets you the big long list of friend requests every morning in your Facebook account. And it doesn't work just with blog posts. I think we were clear about that, but just to reiterate, we're talking about sharing blog content here as examples, but you can do this with your videos.

You can do this same thing with any piece of content out there online that you want to share, including your capture pages and your sales videos. So let me show some examples of that. So what I did here with this one is I took a screenshot of a 73% open rate in my Get Response account and I think that's going to grab some attention, don't you guys think? Right?

So I post that on Facebook and say, here's an example of how big a difference one simple change can make in your marketing. So what I'm doing here is I'm sharing value, right? I did something that created a positive change in my marketing and I turn around and share that with the community on Facebook. And what happens over time as you're putting value out there constantly is that you start to accumulate a lot more friends that are like-minded, that are looking for solutions and answers and are more custom tailored to the kind of content that you put out there.

So as you build from a hundred friends, 200 friends, 300 friends to over a thousand friends, over 3,000 friends and then maxing out at 5,000 friends on Facebook, you tend to have a big group of people that are actually interested in the stuff that you're sharing because you did it organically. You didn't go out and just start wildly friending everybody under the sun in Facebook groups that you could find in all kinds of countries that you've never heard of, right? You've got people that are actually attracted to you and your content who are sending you friend requests because they like the stuff you're sharing on Facebook.

So this right here, this particular one linked right to the main page of my blog, but I could have easily linked that right to a capture page and in fact I should have because it got tons of clicks. Here's another example, okay? We talk about sharing results. Here's a great example.

You guys have seen this kind of stuff posted on Facebook a lot. It works, right? But you can't do just results. You can't be.

Having it be that the only thing you ever post on Facebook is just the money shot because people do get tired of that. But if you're mixing it in with other value, it actually will get a lot more interaction, a lot more people will see it and be tempted to click on that. This one goes right to a capture page and got tremendous interaction, you know, and this is a way that you can generate leads absolutely free using Facebook. Now is it going to happen overnight for you?

No. Nothing really happens overnight, right? But if you do this, you'll start to see results very, very quickly. Like I said, I went from 600 to over 2,000 friends in the course of a couple of months just from making this shift and sharing things in a more valuable and unique way.

Another example, now this one, let's see, this one had no link in it at all, okay? So sometimes I do that, right? And I recommend you do that as well. Put stuff out there with no intent to capture business, you know, occasionally.

It just, here's the thing. When you don't put a link in a post on Facebook, you're going to get more shares of that content because a lot of people won't share it if it has a link in it. We all agree on that? So the value in that is that it's getting your name out there, your brand out there.

It's getting a wider reach. And then what you'll end up with from that is you'll get friend requests because people like the stuff you're putting out there. Okay. So I just found this Confucius, I love Confucius quotes.

This is one of my favorites, actually. I found that on Google Images. I shared it, but instead of doing what average people do, which would just be share the image and call it good, I actually wrote some stuff around it and I could have very easily put a link to a capture page in that. This one I chose to not put a link at all.

That make sense? Okay. So where do you find inspiration? Where do you find ideas on how to do this?

The number one thing that inspires me is reading. And guess what? It's one of the eight core commitments. Right?

So you guys should all be reading 15 to 30 minutes every day. And if you're reading personal development books, you know, really good, positive influence books, you're never going to run out of ideas and content that you can share in posts like what I just showed you. You know, in fact, I pick up a book usually within 10 minutes of reading something. I have something that sparks that I'm like, I could share that.

I could share that on Facebook, whether you're using it as a quote or you're just taking a concept that you learned in that book and translating that to share it with people on Facebook. Either way, very, very easy way to do it. I usually find that when people come to me and say, well, I just, I just don't know where you get this stuff. I don't know.

How do you find this content? Usually they're not reading. They're not doing it every day. It only takes 15 to 30 minutes and it will change your life if you're reading those kinds of books every single day.

Personal experiences, family, travel, business, that's the second item. That's the second big one that you can pull from. Go do stuff. Go have fun.

You know, and sometimes when you're first getting started, you don't have a lot of money yet. You're thinking, well, I can't go on an extravagant vacation. I can't go and do some of these expensive things that I see people posting. You don't need to.

Everybody has beautiful things where they live, right? Waterfalls, parks, mountains. That's it. That's the beach.

Whatever it might be for you, grab your family up and go to those places. Take some pictures. Take some lifestyle pictures. If you can do it in the middle of the afternoon, that's even better, right?

Middle of the afternoon on a weekday, posting that you're playing with your kids at the beach or you're at the park or you're even just down at the neighborhood swing set, that gets interaction because people look at that and go, hmm, what is it they're doing that allows them to be at the park with their kids in the middle of the afternoon when I'm stuck in a cubicle? The other one we talked about, quote sites, Google Images, and Pinterest. You're going to be hearing more about Pinterest from Anna Z in a little bit.

All right. Engage and expand. And we're going to cover this quickly because I'm running close on my time. So here's how you take that content once you're putting it on Facebook and start really catapulting that into more engagement and getting more and more eyeballs on it and growing your sphere of influence over time.

And that is to make sure that you're commenting and liking on other people's posts. Okay. And don't just click the like. That's the easy way out.

Right? If you see something you like, click the like and leave a comment. Add a comment to it. Add some value to it.

If you have a way that you can say something that actually adds value to somebody else's post, that's fantastic. And that does get noticed. And people will click through when they see a good comment on somebody else's post and they'll go look at your profile. It happens all the time.

Also when people click like or comment on your posts. Acknowledge that. Comment back. Reply to their comments.

You know, sometimes that can be a little bit tedious depending on how many you're getting. But it doesn't take much time at all to just say, hey, thanks, I appreciate that. Right? And that what it does is it adds more comments to your post.

Keep that in mind. Right? And Facebook will show your stuff more if it knows it's getting engagement. So if you're posting stuff and you're not getting any likes and no comments and pretty soon you notice that nobody's even seeing your stuff.

That's because you're not getting any likes or comments. So that drives more interaction. So encourage, be positive and be helpful with other people on their posts. So you know, like I said, if you have a way to add some value to it, certainly do that.

And position yourself as a leader. Because that's what leaders do, right? They're positive. They're encouraging to other people.

They post things that add value to other people's posts, not tear them down. And the magic sauce. Cross post your Facebook post to other social networks. Let me explain what I mean by that.

So when you post something on Facebook, well, let me back up, let me just say the average thing that most people do, right? They post stuff on Facebook. Then they take maybe that same thing and they post it on Google Plus and then they take it and post it over on LinkedIn. And then they're done.

So instead of doing it that way, why not post it on Facebook, then take the link to the post on Facebook. And share that on Google Plus. And share that on LinkedIn. So you're actually linking content directly to your Facebook posts.

And that brings more people to Facebook. More people to see it, to click the like button, to add comments to your posts. And send you friend requests. Okay?

So that will catapult your friends list by doing it that way. The other thing is, send your subscribers directly to your Facebook posts. Okay? Now, the traditional way that most of us have been taught is that you write a blog post and then you grab the link to the blog post and you send an email out to your list and say, hey, check this out, I got a new blog post.

Why not create a creative post like this that bridges them to the content on Facebook and then send them to the Facebook post? And say, hey, by the way, while you're there, be sure and click the like button, leave me a comment, send me a friend request. That's how you move your subscribers to being friends. That's how you move your subscribers to being friends.

That's how you move your subscribers to being friends. That's how you move your subscribers to being friends with you on Facebook. Now think about it this way. Every time you send out an email message, and every time you put something on Facebook, every time you put something on Google Plus or Twitter, you have this core group of people that are also your subscribers that are seeing that stuff.

How much more likely are they to be sure they see the things that you post? Right? They're getting it from all sides. Some people hang out on one or more social sites more than others.

And so if you're tied the link to the blog post, they're getting it from all sides. Okay? But if you… So if you just pick up some information via your YouTube or your Facebook, you'll have a big step forward in getting that person to believe you.

Okay? Some people thought that was good. If they saw it all together and they're all seeing it, it's going to quadruple your interaction. And that's what grows your friends list.

And that's how you really start to grow quickly, is when you're bringing subscribers as you're generating leads, connecting with them on Facebook. And then think about it this way, once they join your business they're already connected with you on Facebook, you can very easily tie them in with your team stuff, get them connected with other things you're doing. They know you personally. You guys all recognize that?

Wow, I guess. with you on Facebook who joins your business, they are way more qualified and already like three steps down the road from somebody who's just a cold lead, right? So, super, super important you can do that. So, the mindset shift.

Instead of trying to grow your business to have a life, live and share your life to grow your business. Just a different way of thinking about it. And when you think and you act this way, your business doesn't become work any longer. You're just living your life and getting paid to live your life.

That make sense? So, always remember that action is a foundational key to success. You guys are going to learn a ton of stuff here today from a lot of fantastic speakers, but if you don't put it into action, nothing will come of it. So, make sure if you're taking notes that you actually review those notes when you get home and you start taking action on them.

So, if you're taking notes, make sure that you actually take action on the things that you learn here today. So, that's all I have, guys. Appreciate your time. Give it up for John Oaks.

John Oaks, everyone. Thank you.