K atie c ouric

What Kind of Content?
When I built my followers I used a lot of pictures with quotes because it’s a
fast and effective way to create content. It’s easy to find and create quotes
that match your brand or message. Videos are much harder to create at a
high quality, but if you can create high-quality videos, they do perform
better.
To figure out which images and quotes work best, you need to go in and
test every imaginable variable. Take an image and test five different quotes
against it. You can also take a single quote and test five different images
against the quote.
You have to find the best way to express your message so it’s not a
passive experience for your audience. Create content that people look at and
say, “I like that. I’m going to share it,” or “I’m going to click this Follow
button because I like what this brand represents.” There will be more on
mastering content creation in 
chapter five
.
The Power of Targeting and Dark Posts
Before we cover targeting in more depth in the next chapter, you’re going to
need to understand an important aspect of the Facebook ad platform. When
you run an ad on Facebook, it’s considered a “dark post”—a news feed–
style ad that doesn’t publish to your Timeline or your follower’s feeds
organically.
A dark post is seen by the audience you select in the ad platform, which
is based on the gender, interests, age, and other attributes that you select.
This is good because it allows you to test content without bombarding your
audience. That way you get to learn what works without annoying your
fans. You wouldn’t want to push fifty different variations of the same
creative to your main feed because it would look like you’re spamming the
system.

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However, dark posts don’t automatically exclude all your followers.
Here’s an example that demonstrates what I mean. I recently completed a
test for Under Armour’s (a company that manufactures footwear as well as
sports and casual apparel) UCLA sponsorship. We tested social creative for
this sponsorship by targeting fans of “SportsCenter,” “Fox Sports,”
“UCLA,” and “UCLA football.” If someone followed Under Armour and
also followed SportsCenter, they may see the dark post ads. If you don’t
want this to happen, you have the option of excluding followers of Under
Amour or whatever brand account you’re running the ad from.
Facebook gives you the control, and that’s the power of the platform.
Many people just boost posts to their own followers. But doing this doesn’t
teach you anything. Use Facebook as a market research tool. That’s where
you can gain a lot of value and learn what it takes to get people to follow
you and engage with you.
I also recommend targeting the broadest age and country range possible
so that you can allow the Facebook platform to guide you. You can look at
the metrics and see which audience is yielding the best results. Then, in
subsequent tests, you can hone in more specifically on what you see
working. Start broad and then get narrower.