Later, when I went off on my own, I sold social media as a skill but was I really delivering top notch results? I kept up on the social changes but honestly, I didn’t have a clue of how to get better. I posted on Facebook daily but my impressions sucked - even when I linked the social content across multiple platforms. I would have 500 followers on a page and get 30 impressions - blah.
Two weeks ago, I tried a social experiment. I attempted to brand myself as a Fitness Mom. I’m 40 years old (maybe 41 but who’s counting), I can’t run worth anything and I would not be considered athletic by any stretch of the imagination. Regardless, I wanted to try my hand at building a brand and using only organic ways to do it.
Thankfully I had a friend who spent countless hours with me showing me the importance of linking, building unique content, introducing me to new platforms and convincing me to lose all inhibition and go “all out” - (which later included some pretty public risque endeavors that can only be found on my social platforms - take a peak).
I set up a tumblr blog on edanjoygelt.com and began visiting studios and writing opinions on each visit. Because the content was unique, it was already a win. But once it was posted on tumblr - then what? It was going nowhere unless someone knew it existed.
I then curated the content through Scoop.it to social platforms I had set up, which gave me a little more power but still, nothing to write home about.
The biggest key was Facebook - I started a Joy of Fitness page https://www.facebook.com/edanjoyfitness/, then I tagged everything with my name #fitnessmom #joyoffitness and then also with my name Edan Gelt and Edan Joy Gelt (so it would share across my personal content as well).
I invited everyone I knew, I added friends and asked them to do the same. This exercise landed me 150+ followers in only 2-days. Pressure was on!
I started a twitter page, a google+ page and more and began curating my original content on tumblr, sweeping it up through scoop.it and sharing it across the platforms.
The fitness locations I would write about would also share my Facebook page posts and class attendees began following my page. The result? Page likes increased by over 100 and Facebook fitness posts and blogs would sometimes get up to a 17,000 reach (thanks Jazzercise)! But wait - I only had 250 followers, how could this be?
This is how organic social works. The content was unique, the sharing told Facebook it was interesting and the engagement confirmed this with some sort of top secret Facebook algorithm. This allowed content to organically show in people’s feed without paying for ads.
I’m still learning and at the time of this article I was only on my 11th post but I thought I would share my first ever social experiment. Stay tuned for more!
By: Edan Gelt CMD MBA
Originally published at http://Edangelt.com
