how do we get more facebook likes for paul's page?

I see similar pages with 200,000 likes - how did that happen? What should I do to get that?

https://www.facebook.com/PaulWheatonFans

I check Permies almost daily (some days, many times). I've got apples. I've been around a couple of years. I'm on the daily-ish email. I've listened to some podcasts. I've visited scubbly and richsoil. But I was not aware that Paul used or cared about Facebook.


So. If Paul's Facebook marketing efforts have escaped the notice of someone like me, who's actively paying attention, I think it's reasonable to conclude that those marketing efforts have not been as vigorous as the marketing efforts for the other things (podcasts, daily-ish, scubbly, and richsoil).
If he wants to bring as much attention to Facebook as those other four, then he'd start by doing the same thing for Facebook, whatever kind of promotion that might be.

Ok, I've been mulling this over since whenever was the datestamp on my first post there.

I'm not clicking "Like" on the Facebook page, and I'm struggling to articulate why.

But I want to articulate it, because if feedback can help you out, then I don't want to withold that on account of laziness.



So. The Facebook page, do you have a clear sense of what it's for?

Contrast that with the Permies forums, and with the daily-ish email, and with Scubbly. You know what those are for.

Permies is the online hub of Paul's presence. This is where the valuable content (information, photos, stories) is generated. This is where you can ask a question and Paul himself answers you.

The Daily-ish email serves two purposes: it's for people who aren't habitualized to checking Permies every day. That way they still get the announcements about events and discounts and books, etc. And it pushes people to the podcasts.

And Scubbly is easy and obvious: it's the delivery tool for transactions, whether with or without money.

So what's Facebook for? For a lot of similar niche celebrities (for example, I follow some high-end knifemakers), it's a way to feel close to them. They share photos there of their work-in-progress, photos of themselves having a beer after a long day, photos that feel less polished than their "public" persona. Facebook is no less public than their website, but because their photos are showing up between your cousin's wedding and your sister's inspirational quote, it's appropriate to treat them as though they were more private, behind-the-scenes, or priveleged. And then when you comment on their stuff, you can hope for at least a token response ("Thanks man!") at least most of the time. That's what makes Facebook different from a celebrity's web page. The celebrity himself is there on Facebook, and you can reach him.
If Paul decided to transition toward using it that way, I think it could be effective. I DON'T think that suits his personality, so I'd be surprised if he did. And your role as his "voice", Cassie, would be complicated.

For other interests, Facebook serves as a community platform. For example, I belong to a fairly small group called "Orthodox Christian Agrarian Communities." That's too specific to warrant an entire forum, so Facebook is an adequate venue for that discussion.
You don't want to use Facebook that way, because that's what the Permies forums are, and they're fantastic as they are. Don't replace them.

Yet another application for Facebook is where major brands use it for promotion. They maintain some kind of ratio of helpful/entertaining content to advertising. That keeps people conditioned to being pleased when they see a Walmart post in their feed. Nine out of ten times it's something nice, and then the tenth time, it doesn't bother you that it's an ad.
That seems to be what y'all are attempting right now. Problem is, you've got the ratio inverted. You've got nine promotions (check out Rick Austin on the Permies forum, check out the Botany In A Day review on the Permies forum, read my blog post at Make It Missoula) for every one post that feels like helpful/entertaining content (Top 20 Tips Every Gardener Should Know). So on the one hand, for someone like me, who's already deep in the marketing funnel, it's redundant. Every thread promoted there, I've read. I don't need that; it's just clutter to me.
But on the other, for somebody who's not already involved, it's way too ad-heavy.

Forgive me for putting such a fine point on it, but consider May 8's post.
"My new blog is up at Make it Missoula!"
You can see the problem by now, right?
If I do care about this, then I already know about it from Permies or the daily-ish email.
If I DON'T care about this, that doesn't give me one ounce of reason to start caring. There's nothing there.
So the current arrangement feels like it's confused with respect to whether it's aimed at current permies or at potential permies, the uneducated broader permies. You've got to treat the two groups differently.

I'm going to wrap this up now because I'm supposed to be working. I hope that's helpful. I've come across a couple of really insightful articles on the subject from Scott Adams and Seth Godin that I'll see if I can track down later on. It bears repeating, that I wish y'all great success!

Mike

Hi Cassie and Mike -

So, Mike, your post finally got the wheels turning for me on this topic!

A few thoughts spun out:
- How about a promotion that is facebook-specific? People do something on facebook, and get candy. Something that people are eager to share with their friends.
- The daily-ish comes to me, rather than me going to facebook, so I often don't bother going there, even though I go to facebook every day. (observation of a current disincentive to engage with the facebook part of the empire, thus I'm not looking there / helping to get more facebook Likes.).
- The new pics from the Lab projects (one of which is up on the Paul Wheaton facebook page right now) are awesome! How about putting them all up there in a facebook album? That will result in notification that an album is posted, in the timelines of those who like Paul's page already, and they may decide to share. It would be cool if the description of each pic in the album told something about what it was, and left a little to the imagination. Something like: At Wheaton Labs, Montana: the heated tipi project. At Wheaton Labs, Montana: the wofati experiment: using thermal inertia to heat and cool.

Mariamne

O.K. A couple of thoughts on "Our Facebook'', - it really seems as though Paul has a presence on Facebook to Drive more people and hits to Permies.com -

My suggestion is to ether move all daily pictures and videos ( other than podcasts ) to F.B. or at least duplicate the Picture posting at F.B. this is also a great
way to stash Photos as collections that can be quickly located via F.B.s filing system .

I was under the impression that part of the 'Big Push' to create the Super P Icon was to create links from outer sites like FB to Permies
and their would be a reciprocity with us having access to those sites by clicking on THEIR ICON -

There Is a Facebook Icon link from the home page at Richsoil.com, but not at Permies, is this perhaps some unfinished business ? Obviously if there
is a direct link from Permies toFB that will speed up getting over there to 'do our duty ' and hit like a few times .

Just my 2 cents of confusion ! Big AL

For us, facebook's main function is to get people TO permies.com.

He has a personal page and a community page? Confusing. I'm friends with him on Facebook, the personal him, or so I thought.


Heavily agree on all your posts being ads. WAY too many. I wouldn't like it because I'm not interested in being ad spammed.

If there were pictures, I'd like it. Like if Evan had a page, I'd totally follow him.

(1) Put a "Find us on Facebook" graphic with a link to the Facebook Page in the header of the forum so that it appears on every page, plus one on the homepage (not just a share-on-FB button as is there now, which is fine, but you need another link to YOUR page).
(2) Put a link to the Facebook Page in the footer of all your dailyish emails.

Those are the first two basic things to do that I see are missing. (I'm a web designer.)

Then make posts similar to the dailyish email - one topic at a time.

It is really hard to get people to leave Facebook to go somewhere else (like another website), so I would rethink the goal for Facebook.

one way to get value out of Facebook for world domination is to get valuable content into Facebook, so it is findable through Facebook search, or more shareable within Facebook. If I had programmers at my disposal, I would build something that automatically posts content from permies.com to Facebook. If there is more manpower than programmer power, start posting the good stuff to Facebook.

another key with Facebook is to find the existing communities and hubs related to permaculture, and jump into the conversations and groups and start building relationships. It takes time and effort, but Facebook is more like a family reunion than a yard sale, so you need to encourage engagement, otherwise known as two-way communication, to build a sustainable Facebook community.

It helps to find some folks who eat/breathe/sleep Facebook to really get great results, but I don't really fit that bill.

You can ask permies to share the Facebook page. I just did but no one on my page cares about what I have to say. Maybe you will get one or two people from my Facebook. I talk about Paul all the time and have turned people on to his YouTube.

Facebook can be a powerful tool, but it can also be a royal pain to manage. Just because someone "likes" your page does not mean they get to see all of your content. The more they interact with the page with likes, shares and comments, the more posts they see. I am an administrator for a page that just passed 2000 likes. When I post something, Facebook shows it to a few hundred people. When those people start liking and commenting, Facebook shows it to more people (their friends, plus presumably more of the page followers). Still, some posts never pass 1000 views even though we have 2000 followers. My most popular post got over 20,000 views.

Anyway, my point is that you can't count of Facebook to be a reliable way to spread information for the average user who isn't going to interact with your page.

If you want to see all of a business/organization's posts, you have to use interest lists. For example, if I wanted to follow Paul's Facebook page, I would click "like", which gets me another menu, where I click "add to interest lists". Then I would add it to my gardening list, click "go back" and "unlike". That gets the posts off my personal wall, so they aren't mixed up with family stuff, and when I view the gardening interest list I get to see every post, not just the ones Facebook decides to show me. The negative from your point of view is it doesn't show up as a "like" (as far as I know). Your average user is not going to bother with interest lists.

Now, to actually answer the subject question, I can tell you that I follow pages if they post useful content or links (a catchy photo helps) every day or so. More than that is overkill. Some bloggers put a post on Facebook every time they do a blog post to get me to click the link and go there, which is useful if they don't have some other way to let me know that. You have the daily-ish email that serves the same purpose. Some bloggers have contests that require that you like their Facebook page to be entered for the prize. Most that I know of use Rafflecopter to manage giveaways. If your goal is more likes, that can help. If the goal is to get people to sign up for the daily-ish email, which will remind them to check permies for items of interest, the number of likes should not matter as long as people are finding the page.

This is my first post!

Hi, I agree with Elle. If Evan were the focus of the facebook, it would attract lots of people. I own a small business and use social media and FB all the time. it takes time and everyone loves the graphics and pictures that I post. They get the most likes and shares. You want people to like what is on the FB page and then share it. You can also join other FB groups and share the graphics and pictures with those groups. It is easy and hard at the same time. Just got to make it part of the daily to do list.

Cassie Langstraat wrote:For us, facebook's main function is to get people TO permies.com.

Total noob to the permie way of life, but...

If the goal is to drive traffic to permies then shouldn't the FB community page be called PERMIES? Or some variation thereof that would give the impression that the page is for the site/forum/community of permaculture and world domination rather than Paul personally since he has a personal page.

Agree with purdy much everyone here. Especially like the photo posting idea with short descriptions of "Paul at the Permies compound/lab, etc. doing ________." And of course links back to permies for the freebies like the recent cheat sheet is the bait to ensnare attract a whole new group of folks who might join the permies army. I'd share the page with both of my FB friends for that alone.

To answer the how'd they get 200k Likes? Q, a lot of them are bought (or more accurately BOT) likes. A quick giggle search will unearth multiple sites that will register a big pile of Likes on your page, for a fee. Its my understanding its NOT kosher with the FB beasties tho, so well, you know, maybe don't go that route.

Just my 0.02 kopeks

I loathe facebook, only have a profile for occasional petition-signing purposes, and don't friend/like anyone on there, so I'm not exactly the target market.

That said, I clicked through after seeing this thread and have to agree with what Tim says. The naming is not consistent. Is this Paul's page, run by Paul? Or is it a fanpage, run by some fan of Paul? Or is this a page which is really about permies.com?

Personally, I would think tumblr would be really well suited to a variety of picture-heavy Lab-based blogs. A nice picture can travel a long way on tumblr.

Could be alot of us are not part of the facebook boondoogle a good email news letter & web site is more too my liking

I visit Faceook daily, and “Like” Paul’s page on Facebook, and I have to agree with what others are saying here: There is a disconnect between having a page called “Paul Wheaton” and having the content being impersonal.

I think you have two options:

(1) Make it personal. Have it written in Paul’s voice, about his musings, activities, projects. Include lots of pictures and updates on what’s happening up there. Pretty much, make it like Evan’s thread, but on facebook about Paul and by Paul. (Speaking of Even, his thread is awesome! There are many days when I don’t really have time to check permies, but I always stop by Evan’s thread to see what developments are occurring. )

Or,

(2) Rename the facebook page to “Permies” and have it full of links to cool articles, memes of Paul’s sayings (I recall those were a big hit, and got shared a lot), as well as links to awesome threads. But, when you link to a thread, make sure to put in a good summary so that people actually learn something by reading it, and might want to learn more. That way, they might actually share the post on facebook, thereby getting it more view. For Example (but written less-cheesy than this): “Want to keep deer off of your fruit trees for life? Try bone salve! With just some wood, a fire pit, two pots and some old bones, you can make a concoction that—once painted on a tree’s bark—will keep deer off of it for life! Interested? Have questions? Read more here: https://permies.com/t/38116/goats/Sepp-Holzer-bone-salve” For me, it’s really important that posts on facebook actually teach me something. I love Northwest Edible, because Erica always posts fascinating, informative articles, as well as funny stories and good questions that get people thinking and learning from each other.


Really, the point of facebook is to get people to share and comment on your posts. When people do that, it spreads it around and gets more non-permaculture people seeing it on their feeds. Whether you take the personal “Paul Wheaton” route, or the “Permies” route, you can get more views/comments by asking questions to get people commenting or posting give-a-ways and links to “candy.” The more stuff shows up on people’s feeds, the more likely it is they will like Paul’s page…whatever it may be called! And, the more people that like the page, the more people will see his posts, and the more likely they will follow some of them to the threads at permies.

The first idea that jumped out at me on this topic is The Bricks!!! In the same way that Paul used his permaculture bricks to help fill out a deck of cards, the bricks can be used to inject content onto Facebook in a series of memes. The meme caters to the ADD mindset of the Facebook News Feed scroller (I'm not knocking ADD folk, but yall gotta admit the News Feed does foster a short attention span. Scroll, scroll, scroll) A simple picture with a short caption that conveys a bigger idea without dishing out a lot of information, just enough to get a click.

For example: A lovely picture of a pile of rocks in tall grass. The short caption can be something like "You see rocks, but we see natural garden slug control. Because permaculture"
or another: The illustration of the hugelkultur bed from Paul's article in all its lovely colors with the caption being "Grow all your vegetables without even turning on your hose. Because permaculture"

Why do I keep using, "because permaculture". Probably because it's become trendy to say because science! around the web. but anyways...these bricks won't be ads in the strictest sense, while they would advertise permaculture and what the page is about. If memes or similarly structured posts are catchy or funny or controversial they'll get shared quite often. This can drive new people to Paul's Facebook page.

Plan B is to have Paul take some selfies with duck lips in front of a mirror. That always seems to work.
Plan C is to pay Facebook. I don't much like Plan C.

One thing I have noticed is that Paul's updates on often don't contain pictures. Pictures are all important to get likes on FaceBook - so are good headlines: You need to capture your audience in the seconds it takes to scroll past your post!

I think the best way to capture people is to link to articles with great pictures. It could be Evan's posts or your videos, it could be individual podcasts - but "Update from the lab" will not capture anyone who isn't already in here - esp. not if there are no pictures. Pauls YouTube videos could be posted (pref. embedded). The more views you have on individual posts, the more likely you are to get tragic here - but you need a lot of trafic on FB to get anyone from there to here. A number of different posts, from different people on their individual pages might be a solution, and collecting those posts under one "hat" like a Permies page - so people might follow you on FB and you post your own and Permies stuff, while the Permies page posts your stuff, Evans stuff and Pauls stuff, Evan, Paul, Jocelyn etc. then have their own pages where they post their stuff plus stuff they find cool on Permies. Using social media to promote your page takes a lot of time and consideration.

Hi! I'm new here. First received some daily-ish news, looked a few times and got a free permaculture e-magazine
Now I saw Paul Wheaton's community Facebook page needs more 'likes'. So I shared it in the Dutch 'Permacultuur' Facebook group. Maybe now you'll get some more followers from the Netherlands.

Mike Adams strikes again this not so much to do with facebook as it is with getting the info & the news out there ; http://www.goodgopher.com/

I don't know how to make it go viral, but I did like.

I would start doing some guest blogging with other personalities who specialize in various aspects of the perma-culture, especially ones with heavy Facebook presences. Trading posts for each other can reach pockets of community that haven't thought to look at permaculture yet. Find out what their communities are into and write about that.

Take the aquaponics community for example. An aquaponic grower is just a permaculturist waiting to happen (I should know; that's how I started). A lot of people who are attracted to aquaponics are either doomsday preppers or are interested in producing safe food they can trust for their families. Write an article about something that will be of interest to them, add a catchy title (titles that denote lists, such as "5 tricks that will double your food production", usually go crazy on the internet), and you're in business. I'm sure I could recommend a couple people in the aquaponics community that wouldn't mind trading some articles....

As you know FB is only good for certain things like making social connections, sharing articles, and growing your email list.

I'd look to Amy Porterfield (the expert in this area):

Possibly you could use an internet traffic generator? There are a few that are free or have reasonable fees, like traffic swarm.

This is a strategy that you probably already employ. When posting new content to Facebook, time it to post during the peak user traffic at permies.com. Many permies will catch it within a matter of minutes.

And thanks for my first apple on my previous post!

well you have 9.3k so to start with you're doing ok. Bill Mollison has 6k and Geoff Lawton has 28k. So you're doing alright comparatively.

the pages with 200k+ were pages without faces. It's easier to get behind and promote an idea/website than it is a single person.

There is a Permies.com page but that's more towards Wheaton labs. What you need is a page dedicated to this site.
An international, faceless, neither-here-nor-there page that people can promote. they need to be able to say "i like this thing"
show the link and not need to say any more on the subject

-Paul's page-
sue - i like this thing
joe - hmm sue likes a thing what is the thing?
joe - *goes to page and sees paul*
joe - hey sue who the hell is this guy?
sue - oh that's paul wheaton
joe - and?
sue - he does a thing i like
joe - .....annndd??
~joe and sue proceed to have awkward conversation

-permies page- (not the current one that is miss labelled and should be called wheaton labs)
sue - i like this thing
joe - hmm sue likes a thing, what is it?
joe - *looks at permies page*
joe - oh it's a permaculture website
joe - hey sue what's permaculture?
sue - *sue tailor makes joe a permaculture introduction*
joe - wow that's cool
joe - *joins the permaculture band wagon*


I mean sure it's a little simplified but that's how I think it'd go down.

Received this in my email ... haven't read it because it's not relevant to me, but thought it might be more relevant for Cassie / Paul. It basically talks about the benefits they got by using a FB group over a forum.

http://www.digitalmarketer.com/private-facebook-groups/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=private-facebook-groups&utm_campaign=Blog%20Featured%20Post%20Emails

I write this post semi-reluctantly because I *detest* FB since they rape our privacy - so my personal preference is to not use FB, but there may be more $$ in FB.

Searching for my very first post on Permies I found it here.
Then I followed the link Cassie gave, and I saw it is still active:
https://www.facebook.com/PaulWheatonFans