How We Got More Facebook Likes – From 15,000 to 300,000 in 7 months

 

 

How We Got More Facebook Likes – From 15,000 to 300,000 in 7 months

So I know this is totally off topic of but we have a lot of people who have asked us how we grew our Facebook page so fast so I am going to share it here. 

When I first started changing how I post on my Facebook page, it went from 15,000 to 100,000 facebook likes in just 35 days and I never paid for any advertising or asked for Comments, Facebook Likes or Shares.)

We spent four years getting 15,000 likes on our Facebook page, but it didn’t seem to be helping our business at all. To say I was frustrated was an understatement. I was even more frustrated to see that Facebook said only a handful of the people actually even saw anything I ever posted because they didn’t show my posts to everyone who liked our page. It finally got to the point where I just quit messing with my Facebook page because I figured if I had 10,000 people on there and only 4 people saw a post, what was the point in even posting anything? So for many months of that four years, I just didn’t do anything at all with our Living On A Dime Facebook page.

Then I decided to try again to figure out how to make Facebook work and was posting 1-2 times a day but still not making any headway. Then, one day, my husband sent me another person’s Facebook page because he thought it looked nice and I said, “That’s exactly what we should do!” I loved it and I knew if I liked it, then our readers would like it, too.

Of course, I messed around thinking about it and it was almost 2 months before I did anything with it. Once I did, all I could say was Wow! We went from 15,000 Facebook likes to 100,000 Facebook likes in just 39 days!!! Then we started getting 2,000-3,000 organic likes per DAY! I was just floored!!!

I NEVER Paid a Dime!

The best part was that I have never paid for any advertising.

I did not do Giveaways

I did not do Videos

I did not do Free e-books in exchange for click Like on our page

I did not add a LIKE US button

I did not ask questions

I did not advertise in our website newsletter

I did not put a link in my email

I did not do incentives

I did not do any specials or discounts on our products

Nothing– No gimmicks at all! I didn’t even ask any of my friends or acquaintances to Like it.

So I know what you’re thinking. That’s great, but did all the new Facebook likes bring any more income to your website? Yes, it did bring more traffic, ad revenue and book sales to our site.

Honestly I had no idea what we were doing was anything that special until I started getting a lot of people asking me how we did it.  I was on a frugal bloggers group and was severely flogged for saying that changing the way I posted grew my Facebook page. They said it was just a fluke, that Facebook decided to just like us and sent our stuff virally. I have to say that at first that may have been what happened but 7 months later we are still growing by hundreds of Likes or more per day.

 

 

We went from 15,000 likes to 100,000 in 35 days,

After consulting with several people, it appears that a couple of our recipes went viral and then Facebook really liked that so they started sharing our page when someone would Like or Share our posts.  Then one day it just stopped. I mean literally we went from 2K-3K Likes per day to around 100 per day. Is that bad? Well yes and no. Yes, it was great while we were riding the roller coaster but it’s still not bad because even though we aren’t getting as many Likes per day we still have people talking about our posts every day.

So what’s “the trick”, if you can call it that? Post content your readers want to see. Even though our site talks about saving money, we aren’t a deal site. I do think that it helps that our posts aren’t getting bogged down by a lot of deal posts. So our readers only see pure content, along with 3-5 posts about our books or sales per week. Those posts don’t do well at all so I don’t put them on frequently. Mostly, the Facebook traffic drives more traffic to our site.

 

How I Grew My Facebook Page

So I’m going to share what we did. Honestly, it’s so simple you’re going to ask, “Is that it?” Yes, I just did these few simple steps.

1) Post content. Post things your readers will actually use or like. Our readers love recipes so that’s what I mostly post.

2) Post all the content– Actual content, not just a link. When I post a recipe, I post the entire recipe. If the recipe is from our cookbook, I include a link to our cookbook below the title and then at the end of the post, I include the link to that recipe on our website. (See example Fry Bread Recipe below.)

You can see in this 90 Minute Roll recipe that we had over 4 million views and 141,000 shares! 

Here’s  another example of one of our recipe posts.

 

3) Upload the picture for the recipe to the Facebook post. Don’t just use the picture that automatically fills in when you paste the link. The actual uploaded picture looks much better. Another tip. Don’t use a generic gross picture like we did on the Texas Roadhouse Butter above. I had no idea this recipe would go viral. After it did we changed the picture to this. MUCH BETTER!!!

 

4) Post Recipes for desserts and breads. People love them and they really like to share those kinds of recipes.

5) Post jokes and funny pictures related to your niche. Life is hard and tiring. People want to laugh and, if they find funny things on your site, they will remember you and want to come back. I only post pictures or jokes that have the credit on them or if they don’t have the credit on them I put a link to the place I found them in the post.

How Often To Post?

Here is our posting schedule now for each day. I use the Facebook scheduling feature, which allows you to set up posts to be published later and schedule several days to a weeks worth of posts all at once.

• Two recipes from our Dining On A Dime Cookbook
• One or two recipes from our website that are not in the book or recipes from another source
• Two jokes- one morning, one night
• One or two articles on other money saving ideas from our website.
• One or two tips or comments about our life or things we do to save money.

 

I generally post at these times (US Mountain Time):

9:00 a.m. – Recipe – usually breakfast or lunch type from our website www.LivingOnADime.com) or books.

10:30 a.m. – Joke

11:00 a.m. – Tip or short recipe

12:00 p.m. – Main Dish Recipe (from Dining On A Dime)

1:00 p.m. – Side Dish

2:00 p.m. – Tip or article from our website or some comment on our daily life.

3:00 p.m. – Product ad or other item to sell.

4:00 p.m. – Dessert recipe- (From Dining On A Dime )

6:00 p.m. – Another recipe from our www.LivingOnADime.com site or another source

7:00 p.m. – Joke to send everyone off to bed with a good laugh

 

I try to take something out of our books as much as possible with a link to our product.

I post our “best” recipes or the ones I think that will do the best between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m., which is our peak traffic time, when people check our page the most. If you have a Facebook Page, Facebook shows you statistics about how many people view your page and how much traffic you get at various times throughout the day. 

Right now I am trying to post a week’s worth of content at a time. It takes me about 2 hours to get around 50 posts loaded. That time also includes time I spend looking for stock photos for some recipes that don’t have pictures.

I also post some things as I go if something comes up that seems relevant to my group.

Interacting With Fans

I don’t comment in response to every comment people make. If someone has a question, I try to answer if I can. On some posts that have a lot of comments, I just can’t keep up with all the questions so I will repost the link to the recipe on our website and have a Q & A where I answer the most frequently asked questions.

I deal with negative comments and trolls with the delete button. I try to catch as many as I can each day. I have no problem with people disagreeing nicely but if they are rude, just trying to argue or are being just downright mean and/or nasty, I hit delete. I don’t usually argue with people who are just trying to be difficult. Some people just like to argue for the sake of arguing. My motto is “the delete button is our friend.” 

 

That’s it. Really, that’s pretty much all we did. We have been in business for 15 years so we have a LOT of recipes and tips to choose from so that’s not really an issue for us.

 

Want to make some money using our recipes?

 

 

Would you be interested in making some money using our recipes? We have a lot of recipes on our website and they make great content for Facebook Pages. People just love to share and try out our recipes.

The best part?? You can use an affiliate link from us and we will pay 50% commission on all our e-book and print book sales! In case you’re wondering, a few people have enjoyed our book over the years. We’ve sold over 300,000 copies of Dining On A Dime and with our 100% love it or send it back guarantee we’ve only had about 10 people take us up on that in all those years, so we know your readers will love it!

How can you do that? Sign up here to get your affiliate link.

Use a recipe from our site with a link and credit to our site. Then all you have to do is put From Dining On A Dime Cookbook (if the recipe is from there) in your post with your affiliate link.

 

 

 

For recipes that aren’t in one of our books, you can put at the bottom: For more recipes like this be sure to check out the Dining On A Dime Cookbook linked with your affiliate link. If you have questions or trouble with the affiliate links, contact us using the contact link at the top of any page and we will be happy to help!

That’s it!