Don't Be a Slave to the Goddam Algorithm

(I posted this on Facebook, but seeing as I got a good response there, I thought it would be apt to also post it here on LinkedIn.)

Facebook has achieved its objective. It's turned us into Zuck Drones. In its eternal quest to keep us on their wretched site for longer, it has taken control of a portion of our brain. Game over - they won.

For marketers, it's worse. We're told to stop the scroll, post every day but not too often, reply to all comments, make our comments meaningful, manipulate our content (so only the first sentence appears above the fold), and prime our newsfeed.

If you're a novice, you may be scratching your head. What is priming the newsfeed? Here is what you do: before you post something, scroll your newsfeed and make meaningful comments. It influences The Beast to display your content to more people. There, I've just given you a hot tip. Pay me later.

There are all sorts of rules to maximise your chances of getting more reach. See what I mean about becoming a Zuck Slave? The things we do to make a buck, eh?

Does it always work? Nah. It's a myth.

Does the preceding mean you shouldn't do these things? No. If FB is your primary business platform, you'll need to do some of it. But don't think it's the main game.

Here is the main game:

Meaningful, purposeful conversations. Do them daily with prospects; yesterday I had five of them.

I'll never forget the words one of my early mentors told me: "Kim, if you have three quality conversations every day, you'll make $100k this year as a newbie."

Being a keen student, I took him at his word and focused on that one metric - 3 good convos a day.

Nine months later, I passed the $100k threshold as a part-time affiliate marketer. That was back in 2007, and since then, I've had thousands of good conversations with people. Not all of them bought from me. But many did, which catapulted me to the top 2 percent of producers globally.

So focus on the main game - everything else is secondary.

Need help? Reach out and ask for my new video: Explode Your Sales By Helping People (the conversational approach to making sales).