AP 0062: How Do You Get People from Facebook into Your Email List?

AskPat 62 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, everybody? This is Pat Flynn, and welcome to Episode 62 of AskPat. I'm here to help you always by answering your online business questions five days a week.

We have a great question today from Jason, but before that, I want to mention our amazing sponsors for this episode, and that is FreshBooks. FreshBooks is amazing. I've used it myself several times when I got started. I started keeping track of all my finances with spreadsheets. I know a lot of us do that, and it wasn't until I found FreshBooks that I understood exactly how easy it could be to keep track of my books, to create invoices and all those good things. So, make sure you get your hands on FreshBooks to help you organize your life financially in your business so you can start focusing on your business. So, go on and get over to GetFreshBooks.com and enter “AskPat” in the “How'd you hear about us?” section. You'll get 30 days for free.

Now, let's get on to today's question from Jason, which is about Facebook and emails.

Jason: Hey, Pat. This is Jason from HeavyHaulInfo.com. I got a quick question for you about Facebook. I have a Facebook page that's been doing just really well. I've gotten about 1,100 likes in the past two months, which has just totally blown me away. I'm having trouble getting them to my website, however. Do you have any suggestions on how to monetize your Facebook list? Or at least get them over to your website or on your email list? That's all. Thanks so much.

Pat Flynn: Jason, thank you so much for your question today. You know, Facebook is a very big topic on everybody's minds. Especially everybody who has a Facebook page, of course, because Facebook has been implementing new algorithms, which has been making it harder to reach all of our fans. You have 1,100 likes in two months; that's fantastic! That's actually incredible growth, but the truth is, when you put a status update or any sort of message out to your Facebook, like, or anybody who likes your page, not everybody's going to see it. And it's unfortunate, because Facebook has investors to please, and they're making us pay to reach everybody. That's where you see the ability to boost your posts or to run ads and things like that. We'll talk about that in a second. But, the truth is, there's a number of different things you could do to increase the likelihood that a), people are going to find your posts when you publish them because of what they call their edge rank score. So, I'm going to share some tips to help you increase your edge rank score, which will show more of your posts to more of your audience, which will then get them on your website or your email list. And there are specific strategies to get people who do see your status updates and your messages back to your website so you can monetize them or to get them on your email list. I think, whatever the case may be, getting them on your email list is the best thing you could do. Do whatever you can to get people on Facebook to your email list. Because you have control over your email list. And who knows if Facebook is going to be around, and you want to make sure you capture those people's information in case something were to happen to Facebook. Doesn't sound like anything might happen, but that's what they said about MySpace. And MySpace is gone. Although it is coming back, but it's more music heavy. But that's neither here nor there.

Now, in regards to Facebook and increasing your edge rank score, there's a few things you want to do. You want to get people to like as many posts as you can, you want to get people to comment as many posts as you can, or comment on as many posts as you can, and you also want people to share as many posts as you can. And I heard a great tip from Amy Porterfield over at AmyPorterfield.com, who is a renowned Facebook expert. She said that when you publish something on your Facebook page, the first thing you want to do is you want to make sure you don't always publish something that you want people to click over to your website. That's the first thing. You can do that, but you want to do it in between a bunch of other things where you're actually having a conversation and being social with your audience. Asking questions, those are all great ways to get people involved. But here's the tip. Whenever you post something on Facebook, have a very clear goal of what you want people to do when they see that post. You either want to create something that is shareable that you want most people to just share, and you can even mention in that post: “Hey, can you share this?” And, of course, some things are more shareable than others. You also want people to like your post. So, making a post or status update that you just want people to like and only like it. And another, that you want people to comment on. A combination of all these things, and if you want to try and do those three things and have somebody like, share, and comment on one of your updates, it's going to be less likely that they're going to do anything.

So, you want to be very clear with what people do, or what you want people to do when they see your status update or your message on Facebook in their news feed. For example, if you want people to leave comments, which is a great way to increase your edge rank score, it's more likely that your future status updates are going to be shown to those people, because that person has left a comment on your post, which signals Facebook that your posts are important—so important that somebody was able to leave a comment on it. Well, if you were to ask questions, for example, that's a great way to get people to comment. You're not necessarily asking people to like it. You don't necessarily want people to share it. Some people will. They will do that in addition to commenting, but your primary goal is to get people to comment.

So, asking questions is good. I like to ask questions. Not only questions where I can get somebody's individual answer, but I also like, and I've shared this tip on another AskPat episode with Briggs, a 10-year-old in episode number 3, one thing I like to do is I like to ask for the answer. So, actually, almost quiz people in your audience. We as human beings like to know that we know the right answer to things. So, when you can facilitate those discussions and create a question where there is a right answer, people are more likely to comment. And the comment doesn't have to be very long; it can be even just a letter. For example, if you were to show, and this is sort of a different kind of post, but this also increases engagement and people commenting. If you're designing something like maybe a cover for an e-book and you want to get your audience involved, you can say, “Hey, do you like cover A or do you like cover B?” You show an image with two different ones, you're going to get a ton of comments. A higher percentage than you would normally get if you just said, “What kind of cover would you like?” You're not going to get very many people to answer, it's not a very specific question. But, “Hey, do you like A or B?” Very quick, easy, and people are more than happy to leave your their opinion because they also know that they're having an effect on your brand as well. And again, the more people who see your status updates, the more people then who will eventually go onto your website and into your email.

So, now let's talk about how to get people from your Facebook page onto your website or your email list. Well, if you're going to post a link, and it's okay to do that every once in a while—I do this quite often when I come out with a new podcast episode, for example. The best thing that has been working for me is to share an image along with that link to my website. Sometimes it's a square image, so you want to upload a file that's 1,200 by 1,200. That's the optimal dimension for a square post, and then in that square post it might be a graphic that has your logo on it and it's reflective of that episode or that post that you want to drive traffic to. And it has some text on it too, or maybe a quote from that particular post. Those are the things that get shared and liked and commented on without you even trying. Because people love to see those things, and they're more likely to see it also in their news feed as well, and then click over and go over to your website. Then there's another type of post that you can share which will link to somewhere on your website, which is called the shared link. This one is not square; it's more rectangular in size. More wider than it is taller. And the recommended upload size for this is 1200 by 627. 1200 by 627. And what this does is, actually, when you actually just paste your link onto your website, a couple things might happen on Facebook. You might see a little rectangular box with some little arrows where that you can choose the image that you want from your post; it takes images from your post and puts them onto Facebook. And what it does it shows a highlighted link and also a description probably based on the first couple paragraphs of that post or any sort of meta-data-ed description that you have about that post. And that works, and you can do that. And oftentimes when you press post, it'll post a little square image next to those descriptions. But a shared link, when you upload a photo that's 1200 by 627, you might start with a rectangle, but it also says “Upload Photo” on that little icon or little image. Upload a photo that's 1200 by 627 and you'll notice that the post will change into one that has your message at the top and then a very large image, a rectangular image, like I said before, and then a bolded link to wherever it is that your webpage is going to. And you can even delete the link that you initially pasted to sort of impromptu all of this. And then a descripntion. Much bigger, much more noticeable in people's news feeds.

And speaking of the algorithm for Facebook, these shared link posts are … I mean it's been said that they get shown to a bigger percentage of your audience just because of the type of post it is. So that's, again, another way to get people to your website. I think the best thing to do right now, something that's been working really well, it's a little bit more I don't want to say high level, but it takes a lot more work than just sharing a post and uploading an image: that is doing webinars. John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur On Fire is doing really well with this right now. Also AmyPorterfield.com. John and Amy and I were all in the Philippines a couple months ago at Tropical Think Tank, which is an event, and both of them spoke on stage about how well webinars are working. And they're using Facebook to drive traffic to their websites to then sign up to their lists for a webinar. So, not only are they driving more traffic to their website from Facebook, and they are using paid ads for this, because they're able to target people who aren't already on their list. Or they're able to spend just a little bit of money to target more people on their list than would see their posts normally if they weren't paying and boosting their posts. So, this is really cool because not only, because people click on those links that they see through those ads, either people in your audience already or people that you're targeting who aren't in your audience. And when people register for a webinar, that's a high-value item. If you give them something to look forward to, they're going to sign up. And at the same time they sign up for your webinar, they could also sign up for your email list. So, they're kind of doing both at the same time. And then there you go. Even if they don't attend that webinar for whatever reason, you have them on your email list and you can massage them and get them back onto your website at any point in time. Give them more offers or reintroduce another webinar down the road if they didn't actually view that. So, probably the best way to monetize would be to get people to watch a webinar where you then provide a ton of value and then pitch something or recommend something with an affiliate link. If you'd like to learn more about how these webinars are done, I recommend checking out AskPat.com/webinaronfire. It's a new product that is coming out by John Lee Dumas. It's a paid product, but it's going to teach you everything he does as far as getting people from Facebook to a webinar and again onto your email list at the same time and then delivering value on that webinar, and how those systems work to get the most bang for your buck in that case.

So, that is how I would do it. Jason, I hope that answers your question. Thank you so much for it. This is actually going to be very valuable for a lot of people out there, because Facebook is huge. A lot of people are on Facebook, but they're not utilizing it to the best of their availability right now. So, Jason, an AskPat t-shirt is headed your way. Again, thank you for your question.

Thank you to the sponsors of today's episode, which is FreshBooks. Again, that link that I mentioned at the top of the show is GetFreshBooks.com, and if you put “AskPat” in the “How'd you hear about us?” section, you can go there and you get 30 days for free. You can try it out and you can see how easy it is to use. It's also mobile friendly on any device, and you'll be able to easily organize your finances and create beautiful invoices and be able to do everything you need to do for tax season, which is right around the corner as well, or actually just happened yesterday. Which is crazy. Especially in the world of online business, and I have multiple businesses.

But anyway, thank you so much, and I want to end with a quote from Amy Porterfield, who I actually mentioned on the show here. And this is really important. She says, “The energy of your business is directly tied to the strength of your email list. And using Facebook to build your email list with your ideal audience is a very smart strategy.” And Amy is a very smart and beautiful woman and you should listen to her. So build your list. You can do it using Facebook like we just talked about. Do it, and I'll see you in the next episode. Thanks so much. Bye.