60 days
2.4 million views
187,810 engagements
15,000 followers
ON FACEBOOK!
From posting trial reels on IG and pushing them to my FB page.
I’ve talked about this before, but from my experience, when it comes to actually selling books, TikTok has been THE place. With Threads a close second. The problem is, the TT algorithm has been whacko. And Threads is very hit or miss. Instagram has always been great for building community and awareness, but not as great for actually moving units. (I track this the best way I know how which is by cross referencing posts with sales ranking on Amazon.)
When I started posting trial reels on IG and pushing them to FB, I realized I’ve been sleeping on a primed and ready to buy group of people!
As ever, I ALWAYS put a call to action in either the on screen text or in the caption (or both). So yes, because these reels have been doing so well, I’ve spent about forty-minutes a day total responding to comments. Copy paste, copy paste, copy paste.
This is one of the first reels that started taking off on FB and is currently sitting at 325k views and 939 comments. Hundreds of women commenting in support (because we know women always rise to the occasion)! This started bringing in thousands of followers in a single week.
Why I think it worked:
I am specifically asking for engagement. I’m speaking to a specific group of people (women, primarily ones who know what it’s like to deal with creepy men aka all of us). I say “follow me for…” in the caption to give them an incentive to stay.
This currently has 196k views with over 1,700 comments not only requesting the link, but also, again, WOMEN SHOWING UP. One kind person left the following comment:
“Longer comments are the best, just copy this comment and post it again, wherever you’d like! We can help push the video even more on the algorithm by commenting longer comments without emojis and with proper grammar. Also referencing popular things such as Taylor Swift, Chapell Roan, and McDonald’s recommends this video to more people that watch those. Lastly, liking and replying to comments boosts the video more! We must work together to push this to as much people as possible.”
I pinned this comment so it was the first thing people saw and hundreds of people copied and pasted it which pushed it further in the algorithm.
Why I think it worked:
Pinning the comment. Again, directly asking for engagement. Speaking to my ideal audience and using my hook IN ADDITION to announcing the dream of hitting the NYT list. People like to support you. And this really proves that I think! The copy here is doing a lot of heavy lifting in very few words. It’s emotionally resonant as well as direct and clear.
For this one, I was going for new followers instead of book sales and it’s currently sitting at 202k views and 539 comments.
Why I think it worked:
When your video shows what your text is talking about, I’ve heard it pushes it further in the algorithm to the right people. I’ve got my books behind me and I’m specifically asking for engagement from book girlies.
I’ve done some variations on this that are even more specific that have also done well i.e. “trying to find all the nature loving, coffee drinking, book reading, magic loving girlies I can”
You can really customize this to find your EXACT people.
Again, asking for engagement (there’s a theme) and talking about my dream of hitting the NYT list. This one is currently at 131k views and 723 comments.
Why I think it worked:
Key words, asking for engagement, the video has a lot of movement, and I’m genuinely so happy in it and studies show that people respond in kind when they see others happy!
SALES:
When a video starts to take off on FB and I respond to the comments with a link to my book, I can literally check my ranking an hour or two later and see that it’s jumped by anywhere from 10k to 30k places. This is a DIRECT CORRELATION and I love being able to see that what I’m doing is actually working (a miracle haha).
On Facebook you can join groups that align with your audience and choose three of them to push your reels to.
If you have an affiliate link for Amazon, you can also add that to the post itself so your book/item becomes instantly shoppable when they click on it.
You can take that “longer comments are the best” comment and copy and paste it to your own reel and pin it. I’ve said this before, but social media goes so fast that people often need to be told exactly what to do (interact, comment, follow, copy and paste, etc.)
If a trial reel does well, you have two options. You can keep it as a trial reel or once it starts picking up steam, you can also choose to share it to your main feed on IG. There are varying opinions on this and people have had mixed results. Some say it makes the views trail off and others report that it pushes it further. I recommend sharing to your main feed on one or two to see what works for you and then go from there.
As always, to make these work you really need to have your ideal audience and your hook nailed!
If you feel weird asking for engagement, well, this is not the post for you and I’m sorry haha. For me, I WANT people to engage and I don’t care about asking for it. I’ve seen several similar style posts on IG and every single time, I stop and comment and usually follow because I respect the hustle and I want to give my support wherever I can! And for the people who don’t like them, meh, if really affects me in no way.
One of the things I love about FB is that it gives you way better stags than IG (imo). It also tells you things you can do to make your reels better, and gives you checkpoints for what to accomplish, which keeps your page growing.
I’m going to be trying some new variations of copy and I’ll report back with more ideas, findings, and stats! In the meantime, let me know if you try any of these and how they do for you. (After you post for a week or two FB will tell you what time is best for posting, too, by the way!).
Sending lots of love and light your way today! It’s snowing here in Northern California and I’m on deadline for a secret romantasy project but I had to take a break and write all this out because I want people to succeed and if I can help that in any way, well, deadlines be damned ya know! (If my editor is reading this please disregard that last statement hahaha).
Below is my five year old who kept saying “this is my dream! this is my dream!” and me after guzzling what we call a “hotel mocha” which is just hot chocolate and coffee hahaha.
Oh and if you want to preorder my Dean Winchester book you can do that here!
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