By: Sheryl Barlow, Owner, Barlow Business Services, LLC

I attended the 2017 Digital Summit in Minneapolis this month where there were industry experts and marketing gurus speaking on all the latest tips and tricks of marketing. Topics ranged from Artificial intelligence, Content Creation, Digital Reputation Management and Going Mobile. These speakers were top in their field and offered great insights. But my favorite speaker, who I couldn’t stop thinking about was:

The lady that made cupcakes.

She isn’t a marketer. She’s a baker. Her name is Amanda Rettke and her website is IAmBaker.net. She makes various cakes and cupcake videos, puts them up on her social media channels, and directs viewers to her website for the recipe. She then monetizes her website with an ad program in which she makes a nice income.

She spoke about a few changes she made from February 2017 to May 2017 that took her income from about $6,454 a month to $13,367 a month.

I liked her because she was so genuine. She looked like my neighbor or the other ladies I sit with at my son’s sporting events. She presented in jeans and had a conversation with us. She didn’t lecture.  She’s a success story and often times her advice was to go against what the marketing gurus advise.

Here are a few of her rapid fire tips from her talk on Facebook Power Tips:

1. Don’t just drop a link. Use your own graphic, write your own description, and get a bitly link back to a video. Facebook will reward you with more impressions and expose your post to more people.
2. Do post several times a day. 
3. Find content to repurpose. Even if you are cautious about posting “competing material.” You can find a way to do this without post a direct competitor’s information. Example: Dasani (bottled water) could post about Yeti (products to keep your water cold.) Yeti is a product that could enhance Dasani
4. Do write clickbait style headlines. (Goes against the marketing guru’s advice)Clickbait gets its name for a reason. The trick is; make sure it takes them to where they expect to be taken. Seems logical.
5. Do repost old posts. (Goes against the marketing guru’s advice) Go into insights and say, “create new post.” The views will go with the new post but not the comments.
6. Do post at weird hours. Posting at 1 am exposes your post to a totally different audience than what a 9 am post does.
7. Do block people and remove content. Marketers advise to be very cautious about this, but she says, “Hey if they aren’t supporting me or take the conversation off topic, I’m removing them. It’s my page after all.” (Goes against the marketing guru’s advice)
8. Experiment and don’t be afraid to do things wrong. She experimented with Facebook live and it has catapulted her followings. From this, she also learned that longer (over 30 minutes) is better. Facebook’s algorithm notices if you keep an audience longer than 29 or so minutes. It shows that people are interested in what you have to say and serve you up to more people.

This non-marketing guru says she watches her analytics like crazy so she can see how her audience reacts. She is always in there making adjustments.

Amanda’s final power tip is this:

“Make all the changes and moves for improvement at once. Forget playing it safe. Implementing them all made them work together more powerful and allowed her to double and triple her traffic on her social media and boosted her income accordingly.”

Follow her at IAmBaker.net. I know I will.

View her slide deck
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Sheryl Barlow is a marketer, author, and communications enthusiast. She owns Barlow Business Services and works with clients on marketing plan development & ongoing implementation.