Is the book great? No, but I’m not reading a book by a social media influencer for much more than insights about exactly that. Sprinkled throughout the book, Kane drops links for readers to go learn more at his website. A bit annoying, but ignorable. Some of the chapters can be outright skipped. If in a hurry, skip everything after chapter 5. The book is light on details on how exactly to do some of the things he describes like creating and testing ad sets, but Kane does cover generally how to do things fairly well. For exact, do this, go to an online analytics tool FAQ or something.
4/5 for annoying references to his website. Otherwise relatively high quality.
Kane generally emphasizes
* testing many things and iteration
* principle of failing hard and fast
* don’t pay for customers
* That Facebook is a great place to cheaply test content against broad, but targetable audiences
## Ch1 How
* Hypothesize, Test, Measure
* Hypothesize a format, story, or theme around a message
* Produce a low cost proof of concept to be tested and learned from
* Pivot if the measure does not do well
* Images and quotes are good for clicks
* Number one key: Get people to share
* Facebook is king of shares
* ROI is fundamental and inescapable: how much was invested should be a target.
* Never spend more than a fb suggested amount, and don’t re-up in the middle of a fb campaign. Examine CPLead / CPAquisition values, 50 cents per share is good
* Create ad sets for different interests to allow the creation of new variations among ad targets
* Test combinations of text, like quotes, and images
* term: dark post: based on population attributes to test content without bombarding audience
* Facebook is market research
* Target broadest age and country range possible so trends can guide you
* *launch at midnight*, or at least at consistent times to get consistent data
## Ch2 Target
* Consumers are more than ever, specific in their interests
* Questions to ask in targeting:
* What gender
* age range
* desired marketing goal?
* what action? awareness, email list registration, post engagement, drive traffic to a website
* Location
* Interests
* what sort of x do they like, music, stores, brands, routines, hobbies, tv, celebrities, etc.
* Lifestyle
* reln.status, occupation, income, needs, wants, etc.
* Competitors - who are they, what can I learn?
* What tests can we assemble combining specific combinations of those?
* Test targeting people who are most likely to perform target action, AND share content
* *Sharable content is a function of quality and good targeting*
* Sometimes the target audience is not the most sharing audience, but the sharing audience can be targeted to get to the target audience
* Use tools like *Facebook Pixel and Google Analytics to analyze*
* Targeting the exact demographic is good for CTA
* Targeting sharable content is good for growth
## Ch3 Choose a Message
* Find a *unique hook point* to grab attention
* Imagine a potential customer walking, what would stop them and get them to look at your product
* Several good case studies for headlines that are attention grabbers, and some not: target certain strong emotional responses
* Headline test variations on Facebook (A/B)
* *Content you share isn’t as important as context you wrap it in*
* *Process Communication Model* - Use different styles of appeal in language
* In PCM there are six personality types: *Thinkers, Persisters, Harmonizers, Imaginers, Rebels, and Promoters*.
* Thinkers perceive the world through thoughts, and logic is their currency.
* Persisters perceive the world through opinions, and value is their currency.
* Harmonizers perceive the world through emotions, and compassion is their currency.
* Imaginers perceive the world through inactions, and imagination is their currency. (that’s dumb)
* Rebels perceive the world through reactions, and humor is their currency.
* since they are often very powerful people, Promoters perceive the world through actions, and charm is their currency.
* Think of a car. This car model gets fifty miles per gallon. The car’s miles per gallon are at the highest rate compared to other models in its class. We believe that this car provides more value to our customer in regard to what you’re going to pay for. Bottom line—it’s the best car on the market. It feels good, it looks nice, and you’re going to be so comfortable driving this car. All your friends are finally going to want to hang with you because this car’s awesome.
* This sentence uses LOGIC and speaks to Thinkers: “Think of a car. This car model gets fifty miles per gallon. The car’s miles per gallon are at the highest rate compared to other models in its class.”
* This sentence uses VALUE and speaks to Persisters: “We believe that this car provides more value to our customer in regard to what you’re going to pay for.”
* This sentence uses CHARM and speaks to Promoters: “Bottom line—it’s the best car on the market.”
* This sentence uses FEELINGS/COMPASSION and speaks to Harmonizers: “It feels good, it looks nice, and you’re going to be so comfortable driving this car.”
* This sentence uses HUMOR and speaks to Rebels: “All your friends are finally going to want to hang with you because this car’s awesome.”
* King shares that to reach the majority of people in the population, it’s *best to focus on feelings/compassion, which speaks to Harmonizers, who make up 30 percent of the North American population; logic, which speaks to Thinkers, who make up 25 percent; and humor, which speaks to Rebels, who make up 20 percent*. King recommends focusing on those three personality types to create content that reaches a very broad audience.
* Relevancy: You must find a way to take what you have to offer and make it accessible by linking it to what is already working. Popular content that gets shared often can be grouped into five categories:
* 1.Inspirational, motivational, and aspirational 2.Political/news 3.Entertainment 4.Comedic 5.Pets
* Although the message *doesn’t need to be about any of those things*, we can use them as *context to wrap our message in to drive attention*
* Does sharing the content make the sharer look good? Then it’s *social currency.*
* Even difficult messages can be wrapped to become more shareable: eg. tie drug and alcohol abuse (heavy) to celebrities (consumable); tie messages about death and life extention research (heavy) to a metaphorical story about a village whose elders are eaten by a dragon, and the kingdom researches to find a dragonbane
## 4 Fine Tune through Social Testing
* Look at content the way engineers look at designing solutions: Build a prototype, then iterate.
* How many pieces to test? Pretty much as many as you can stand.
* Images and quotes are good places to start iterating.
* Test a dozen new things every day at midnight.
* Social is a psuh model, search is a pull model. Search tools give a good indication of how a message performs.
* Search gives insight into competitors: If competitors are buying certain words, a sign. If people search for you relatively more than competitors over time, that’s really good.
* Search shows how many people search for a specific term. Social networks are more difficult to disentangle.
* *Social listening* is the process of monitoring digital conversations for brand insights.
* Observe how people respond initially, and if response changes with time.
* Test fundamentally different messages—One may win out over the others.
* The brand should be community focused
## 5 Create Shareable content on Facebook
Content light, this chapter was.
* Shareable content is about serving others.
* Headlines are high importance when evaluating shareability.
* Call to actions are to be used sparingly, and generally never directly telling others to share
* Content related to subject is not necessarily bad. Especially if it can be shared on others’ platforms bringing attention to your own.
* Posing a question to the audience is a good strategy.
* Creating a “five second trailer”, ie a quick introduction with an emotional or otherwise engaging hook, is good practice
* Think about shareability from the start.
## 6 Strategic Alliances
The useful material from the book starts to dwindle after chapter 4.
* Alliances help go where the audience already is
* Start with people closer to one’s own level of influence
* Write featured articles
* Ask 2 questions: is anyone going to pay attention to the partnership, and Does the partnership elevate both brands
* Quality over quantity here
# 7 Global
* Acquiring followers in developing countries is often cheaper
* Acquiring a following whether overseas or local may not matter for a lot of things—all give credibility
Skipped the chapters on Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube.
## 11 LinkedIn
Not using all of these tips, the chapter reads a bit like a hybrid of a lot of different ways to use LinkedIn.
* Specifically target selling a certain product or service, ideally expensive or B2B.
* Contacting in the right way is important, but the sample message he provides is super cringe
* Connections to a lot of people is pretty irrelevant
* Having a large audience with no likes or comments on content is bad everywhere
* LinkedIn is much more expensive than other platforms to market on
* Ideal parameters for linkedIn advertising:
* big expensive products
* Exact, professional market type
* White collar products or recruiting
* Higher education products or recruiting
* LinkedIn works as an initial contact; provide value before asking for anything
* Test to see how different segments respond (as always), job titles now possible, then adjust content
* change the images in ad content fairly often