How to promote blog posts in Facebook groups [CASE STUDY]

So -you've written kick-ass content offering *tons* of value, and now you're clueless how to promote your blog post in Facebook groups without sounding self-promotional and getting kicked out of the group for it?Well, there's a way to promote (we shouldn't actually call it 'promote'! We should call it 'share love' ;) ) your posts in Facebook groups that is not salesy at all and that will bring you tons of happy leads / new followers / new members / new subscribers or whatever you are trying to achieve!

So - here's a quick  guide how to promote blog posts in Facebook groups:

I can almost promise your post will be accepted, and that both the readers and you will be happy if you follow it ;)A word of warning: this is a method rather for *special occasions* and you can't overuse it, because providing real value will be rather time-consuming for a few hours after the post went live (unless you are a bot :O)

How to promote your blog post in Facebook groups?

1. Think about the value - what pain point of the Facebook group's target audience is your blog post solving?

Well, if you didn't think about the value of your blog post to your target audience in the particular Facebook group, it's already too late - go back to the drawing board and rewrite your blog post ;pAssuming you did though, you should know the answer to the following question:

2. Who is the target audience of my post? What problem of the members of this Facebook group am I solving with my blog post?

The blog post I wrote yesterday is intended for people who are/want to be entrepreneurs but:

• do not have (but need!) a website/blog / online store yet OR have one they are unhappy with
• are not very techie and good with traditional tutorials
• cannot afford to outsource it
• need to add *tools* such as email marketing opt-in forms and pop-ups, SEO tools
• want to sell downloadable products through their online store

3. Where can I find these people?

• Find Facebook groups that are relevant to the target audience of your post and join them.
• Make sure you network a little in the Facebook groups (for about a week) to establish your presence (nobody likes a spammer who’s in the group just to promote!):

1. post a general introductory post about yourself with a nice headshot
2. do not include any links/details of your products/services in this post!
3. Post a few questions to get help for your business (again, without any links!)
4. Respond to other people’s questions with helpful advice

4. What are these Facebook groups like? 

• Create a spreadsheet with your Facebook group names and links (so you can have them at hand and keep track of the ones you’ve already posted to).
• Write a short description of the group – what kind of content it includes, what kind of audience, what is *NOT* allowed 
• who  the admins are - get to know them and what they like
• what kind of posts are usually published there and hence will resonate most with the audience (see my example below – not every group I belong to that *is relevant* is the same – some are for home-based entrepreneurs, some are for women / female entrepreneurs (and therefore *PINK* - like, 9 times out of 10 ;p ), some are for people in sales and marketing, some are centered on a particular business personality…
• Let me say it again: Make sure you get an idea of what the general tenor of the group is – what posts are published there most often?

5. Define your goal for the post

It cannot be too general (‘I want to promote my business’ is too general;) - ‘I want to make people join my Facebook group so that I can convert them into my warm leads’ / ‘I want to make people download my freebie so I can collect their email addresses for my newsletter…and again, convert them into the warm leads I can hopefully monetize in the future’

6. Create killer post(s) with *NO* links that actually offer to help

This is probably the most tricky part!So we know your blog post is offering tons of value to the target audience...But the target audience is *not* interested in your blog post, they are interested in solving their problem!They don't want to see your links!Focus on the problem and say how you can help the audience + add some secret sauce, that is...

7. Tell a story

In order to effectively promote blog posts in Facebook groups, you need to wrap them up in an engaging story. Everybody has a story. If you feel slightly short-of-stories, ask yourself:

• What inspired you to write this blog post?
• What inspired you to start your business?
• How did you (your friend / relative/ role model) struggle with the pain point / problem your post is addressing
• How did they overcome it

8. Add a photo

For attention - preferably of yourself, humans love photos of other humans ;) So topromote blog posts in Facebook groups, add photos of people illustrating what you're talking about.

9. Add a call to action

This is actually the key part to getting what you want out of this post = converting your audience into your leads/ subscribers/ followers/ group members and what not :)There is a magic formula for that that you've probably seen in many groups:If you think X (your tutorial/ methodology/ solution/ freebie / beta etc.) could help you, drop a comment below and I will DM you the link! :) ...or something like that ;)

1. Take advantage of posts that are *designed* to promote the group members’ businesses in the comments (I will be collecting a list of groups and days when you can do that soon so stay tuned ?) - these posts may be very crowded though, so it will be hard to get much meaningful attention…BUT, still, worth a try – it’s super-easy to do if you have a calendar!
2. Take advantage of posts that are *not* designed to promote the group members’ businesses in the comments per se, but that can be stretched / massaged a little to smuggle a little bit of promo ? – see the example below:

Case study

Now, here is the example of the post I posted recently, which has so far (I had to stop it so I could actually keep up with sending the links!) generated a lot of traction for my website and a lot of lovely new members for my group:

 I am wondering – how many ladies here are holding back from starting their business just because they are not *techie* and it seems too daunting/ expensive to build a proper website/ blog/ online store? I have friend who is an amazing artist (I’m attaching Heather’s artwork for reference ? ) and she’s never even tried to sell her art because she couldn’t build her own website, and has been struggling financially for the last few years so she couldn’t afford to spend $ 1000 to hire someone to do it for her. I have recently built a new website for myself based on WordPress, so I decided to build one for Heather as well. And then, when I was doing it, I had an AHA moment: there must be more people like Heather out there! So – instead of just building the website in 2 hours and moving on, I decided to write a tutorial and record each step it took me to build the website. The website is integrated with an online store via Woocommerce, which allows to sell downloadable products such as high-res photos of her artwork for print (but can work perfectly if any of you ladies are selling ebooks / PDFs!), email marketing tool (I use Mailchimp so I set up a Mailchimp account for her as well) with opt-in forms and pop-ups, and Yoast SEO plugin so she can optimise her blog posts for SEO. It cost me $ 8.99 per year to host the website and $ 10 for the domain, and it should take 2-3 hours to set up the website if you follow the instructions.Although I need to test if people other than me can actually follow them ;DSo: I will help the first 10 folks here who DM me with the set-up their website for free (in exchange for feedback ? )

It got approved in *all* the groups I posted it to, and then generated a lot of positive responses very quickly.So, hope this answers you 'frequently asked question' as to how to promote your blog posts in Facebook groups ;)