Gary Vee: Facebook 101

Foreword

I’ve done a heavy dose of Facebook advertising over the years.  When I launched my first YouTube video back in 2015, I sponsored the hell out of the video on my Facebook, which then turned into a few hundred likes and maybe a dozen views on the YouTube video.  To this day, that has to be the most successful paid ad I’ve ever done.

Since then it’s been just downhill.  You can have a reach of 10,000, but no link clicks.  You can also run the ad on Instagram, and of course, that fails miserably (because Instagram generates scrollers who double tap).  I was just having a conversation with my content writer about Facebook and how there’s an enormous amount of fake profiles.

In the first days of my FB, I would run ads in surrounding countries.  Some people would like my page and I would get excited.  So, I would click on their page and there would be just a lot of — scamming mess — on it.

Facebook does nothing to flag some of these profiles, but it remains a problem.  Even those who actually promote a post (especially in America) can get dozens of trolls, trolling the hell out of his post for whatever reason.

Tai Lopez, who has run online ads everyone is so accustomed to seeing, would run ads on Instagram, handing out free Macbooks.  These posts would generate a million likes. LITERALLY! How much did he pay for the ad? Not the slightest idea, but it worked.

So, I wanted to write a foreword and see if Gary Vee gives some good instructions in terms of how to run FB ads.

Ok, first, FB does have it’s advantages.  It gives you pictures and written form, which YouTube doesn’t do.

“There’s no way long written content is getting traction on Snapchat, but on Facebook a thirteen-paragraph blog post will work. You can post pictures, and they’ll work. You can embed a SoundCloud audio play, and it will work. A thirteen-second video will work. So will a thirty-one-minute video. Facebook offers complete and utter creative flexibility and has the greatest ad-targeting product ever created. No one is too cool for Facebook. If you haven’t already done so, go to Facebook right now and register your fan page, because even if it’s not the place where you create the pillar content for your personal brand, it is where everything you do on every other platform will come to live for the remainder of your personal brand’s existence.”

Excerpt From: Gary Vaynerchuk. “Crushing It!.” iBooks.

I registered my fan/business page back in 2015, luckily.  I recently just did a FB live video and got dozens of views, which is pretty good compared to the past.  Facebook does have an array of advantages, but I do think the ad-targeting is the worst of them all — maybe.

I can say this that I’ve connected with people on FB that landed me a content writer who I’m working on big projects with at the moment.  That’s pretty sensational.  The first was two guys.  We had brief conversations, but that was all. Then, I had a few others message me who I’m still friends with today.  However, the big one was a guy named Luke Burrows, a mentor and coach in England.  I did a podcast with him and another entrepreneur from Colorado.  From those two, Jiun, who’s my content writer, found out about me.  That was the deal breaker and now it continues to grow.  There are some accounts that are shady as hell and sketchy that add me, but for the most part, I know how to handle those types of accounts.

It’s all about building awareness of your brand in a native, organic way.  I can get lots of “paid reach,” but the organic side of the equation was always lacking.

“Mark Zuckerberg called video a “mega trend” of the same nature as mobile3 and has made it clear that video is Facebook’s future. In 2016, he told BuzzFeed, “I wouldn’t be surprised if you fast-forward five years and most of the content that people see on Facebook and are sharing on a day-to-day basis is video.”

Excerpt From: Gary Vaynerchuk. “Crushing It!.” iBooks.

“You might be thinking, I already make YouTube videos. I’ll just put them on Facebook. Two birds, one stone, done. Not so fast. Facebook’s algorithm will always give preferential treatment to native Facebook content. You’ll get far greater reach by creating an original video for Facebook than by recycling something from another platform. Does the video have great copy alongside it? Are the first three seconds captivating? Does it show an understanding of the mind-set of the Facebook demographic that would love to share it with a family member or friend? Does it compel an action right there and then? Video is still something of a novelty on Facebook, which means it has the potential to be noticed faster and get greater engagement than whatever you might post on YouTube.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t post on YouTube or anywhere else, of course, but do not underestimate the power that doubling down on Facebook could have on your brand. Facebook is the first platform that has combined the ability to do marketing, sales, and branding all in one place, and it is still vastly underpriced for the amount of attention you can get there from its nearly two billion monthly users.” – Gary Vee

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