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Personal Blog Promotion Insight:Pay It Or Earn It?





I started my Chinese food blog Weekend foodie on WordPress six months ago. It is written in Chinese. The blog shows my homemade dishes with attractive photos and detail cooking instructions. In every post, it has related photos to show the whole cooking process visually. I post two articles per week in the weekend. I primary promote my blog on Wechat Moment. 


Besides that, I also create a Facebook page named Cook for Someone to promote my food blog. I schedule two posts daily. There is no engagement at all. It seems really hard to earn "like". 

 According to "The Top 20 Valuable Facebook Statistics-Updated July 2016", "there are 4.75 billion pieces of content shared daily as of May 2013 which is a 94% increase from August 2012." As the content post competition gets super high on Facebook, it becomes more difficult to promote Facebook page than before.

I heard from many social media experts say that we should create interactive content to earn our audience. Right now, our posts may not appear on our followers' news feed because Facebook will show the posts which have a lot of engagement or super super cool.  My question is: if my posts won't have good chance to appear on my audience news feed, how can I earn my audience?

Should I pay for "earn"?

 I ran a Facebook ad test to see whether my post can reach more audience if I choose to pay for it. My budget was $2.00 for a 24-hour ad running period. I selected one of my favorite post, seafood pancake, and then chose my target audience who are 15 to 40, food lovers, both men and women in New York. 


After 24 hours, I checked my Facebook post and page analysis. I was shocked! That post reached 309 people and received 6 likes.


My posts were never reached over 5 people, and there was no "like" at all. When I paid to boost my post, it "earned" the highest reach and "likes" among all of my posts.


Image if I spend $2 a day and run my ads for a week, I could reach probably 1000 people. What if I spend $5 a day to promote my Facebook page for a month? I guess I can "earn" a lot of followers, right? It seems that the more money you pay for your Facebook Ads promotion, the more happy result you will "earn".

After this "boost my post" test, I stopped the promotion immediately. Two Reasons:
  • No Budget.
  • I really want to earn it by creating good and interesting content to build long term relationship with my audience.
For many companies, they may have a large budget to spend on Facebook ads promotion to achieve their business goals. Even some big brands have millions of followers, there are less than 5% followers in average really engage their posts. And less than 1% of followers will become their customers.



For example, Banana Republic is one of the top fashion brands in U.S. Its Facebook page has over 2 million followers. Its post only gets 123 likes, which means less than 0.1% followers really take action with the post.

No matter how large of your follower size, if your post is not interesting at all, people are not going to "like" it. Remember, your posts may not appear on all of your followers' news feed. Many followers are missing your post, so they may have no chance to "like" it. 

 What kinds of content can make Facebook prefer to show?

 My answer is Interesting, Life-related, Positive, Useful content can motivate people to "save" and "share". Thus, they are more likely to be selected by Facebook than others are. Showing good content can improve Facebook brand image & reputation, too.

 I follow Amazing Things in the World and love to share its posts. Its Facebook page has over 4.2 Million followers over the world. Their mission is :
"To remind people about the positive side of the life, to inspire them to go out and Live more, to do more with life, to travel, have fun and enjoy each and every moment of it. We want to make you smile! :-)"

They meet their mission perfectly! Their posts make people happy. People start to enjoy their lives. Of course, we would love to share and pass fun content to our friends! Why can they get such high engagement? They understand people's common desires--life & fun!

 Back to my story, I realized that Facebook is not the only way to promote my food. I also try Instagram. I post my food pictures and write simple words to describe the picture. Then, I add some related hot hashtags. Done! After all, I receive over 20 likes! Yeah! Many "likes" comes from new audiences. My followers have increased from 40 to 69. I can see people start following me.

I realized that if your post is very interesting, people will automatically interact with your post. You don't need to pay for it, your content helps you to earn it! If you have business purposes or want to reach some big numbers, you can choose to spend some budget to promote your post or page effectively. If you want people to LOVE your content, money doesn't work. You should try hard to earn it!

 Learning Insights:
  • Find the right platform to promote your post can help you to reach the right audience effectively
  • Create interesting content helps you to beat the competition and earn your audience in long term
  • Use good pictures to make your post more attractive and get more clicks
  • Write thoughtful and simple words
  • Add Hot Hashtag to explore potential audiences
  • Update on social media more frequently
  • Set your goal appropriately. Don't be over-expected. Keep calm!
The last and most important thing is to be patient! I will continue to create interesting and useful content on my food blog every week. It is my life treasure!


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