HOW FROM ZERO € TO 300 THOUSAND LIKES
If I start this post with a cute sentence popular on Twitter: “It’s a little known fact that…” I don’t think I’ll be far wrong. Namely, it is a little known fact that a few years ago I started two Facebook pages, which are the largest on the whole Facebook. That is, the largest in the search that comes up when we type in the tags of the pages themselves.
Is it possible to create a facebook page, which at one point had 300K+ fans, without investing a euro?
Yes, it is possible, but you need 2 years! Some would say that 2 years is a long time, but since in 2008 I decided to create pages for my soul, I didn’t even know the advantages of a large number of characters, comments, shares, etc., so it wasn’t even important to take care of those things . What’s more, I think that in 2008, in March, there was no option to pay for Ads on Facebook. My memory serves me poorly, but if someone remembers, please deny me. 🙂 So my idea was to create pages for those things that interested me. So the decision was made to make a page dedicated to the main characters from the famous series Only Fools And Horses, more precisely Del Boy & Rodney, and the other page is dedicated to the fight against the vicious disease Stop AIDS, in order to gather people who exchange information, present the scientific works I found on the net and which people would comment on, discuss, etc. Actually that was the basic idea of this side.
Today, I am well aware that in those moments I still chose “public” and well-known names for the pages, so that, in those moments when there were not many pages, may have been a key moment. Today I’m going to write about the Del Boy & Rodney page, which I’m much more active on and which is somehow my favorite Facebook page.
When she started her “work” in March 2008, people were instinctively interested in the characters from Mućka. Back then, I knew much less about e-marketing than today, I didn’t use Twitter, and we didn’t even have it, so I subordinated all my strength, ideas, and creativity to that side. The page grew very healthy, the number of characters increased day by day, but it was important to be very interactive on the page, to answer people’s questions, comment on comments, post pictures, videos, etc. In less than 2 years, which, believe me, flew by, the page grew to over 300,000 people, from almost the entire world where the series was popular. In the very beginning, there were no problems regarding any violations of the Facebook rules, because I studied them well at the time. So, the page does not represent the brand, the series – it is not the official page of the series because there is one, but it is a page dedicated to the characters from the series, just like if they now made a page dedicated to, for example: Žiki from Žika’s dynasty. So you are not presenting and representing the official name of the series “Žika’s Dynasty” but the character role of that series “Žika”. With that logic, I also started everything related to Del Boy & Rodney.
The people who were very active on the side were mostly from the area ex yu, then the English, Albanians, Greeks, Bulgarians, a few Romanians, Russians and Turks… a truly international community that merged on my side. When I say Mine, that’s how I see it, because even on Facebook itself it’s nicely written that I’m the admin of the page, that is. the one who created. However, I am aware that nothing on Facebook is “yours”, and that everything is owned by Facebook. The sooner we come to terms with that fact, the less headaches we will have. The interesting thing is that in parallel with the page about the heroes of the series, the page dedicated to the fight against Aids also grew. So I caught myself coordinating with half a million people on facebook at one point! Sounds pompous!? And it is… Del Boy & Rodney counted over 300K and Stop AIDS over 200K people… If I had known what kind of agony awaited me after just a few months, even then I would have made a screenshot of the page as proof. BUT, I slowly restore the old shine to the sides… and here’s what happened.
What I have noticed is that Facebook always leaves a hole somewhere after some big changes, and places many things totally illogically in some other category known only to them. Namely, from the moment we received the first redesign of the profile and TL layout, the pages began to be categorized… Anyone who works as a community manager or has been involved in social networks for a while must know that there were questions about how you want to classify your page. , or whether the page is properly sorted by the system. I did everything according to the protocol, chose non-profit organization, non-profit page, community page, etc… everything that would declare the page (and the Stop AIDS page) as something that does not have an official website, because many Facebook pages do not have a web presentation. As the possibility of paying for advertisements on Facebook started, I received more and more notifications that I had to pay for the promotion of some posts, that I had the possibility to create various campaigns on Facebook, etc. None of that interested me, and everything worked normally. And then one morning I woke up and realized that my pages were disabled, that some admin rights were taken away from me! I just thought about all these people I interact with a lot…
I tried in every way to reach a “live person” on Facebook, reported problems, gave feedback, etc., but to no avail. In Serbia, whoever I asked for advice, I received the same answers: “Well, you know more than me! On what forum did you manage to make such a side at the world level? How about you give me some advice?” etc…
So it was totally impossible to regain any admin rights. That’s how I got interested and every other day for 6 months I sent feedbacks to see if “maybe” someone would see it on Facebook, maybe have a good day, be in a good mood, have a child, etc. One day, “semi-admin rights” were returned to me, more precisely, I had the Status option, which previously did not even exist on the page! So not a single possibility for any kind of post. Thus, many were deprived of any interaction with the outside world, which led to a gradual decline in the number of characters, which is understandable. I was happy that morning, but I realized that I didn’t get anything again…
And it continues to this day. BUT… as I already mentioned, Facebook always makes a mistake with every change, especially the one announced on all bells, so I almost broke a “hole” in the system, and managed to post the picture from the text! Namely, with a few more steps and total illogic, it is possible to post a picture, add text as a status (and that is the most popular on Facebook) and my pages are “alive” again. This resulted in the team starting to share everything I respect in the first couple of days, but each picture is an album for itself, that is, there is no possibility to add new photos to one album, it just looks a bit messy. Although, who cares when I animate people again? 🙂 What was also another novelty is that as the shares started to go, the number of characters started to decrease… the more shares and characters per post, the more characters per page disappear. Total confusion for which I don’t have an explanation, but I figured it might be people who saw that the page was active again and were disappointed that we weren’t there for long (just Unlike from the riot) and that the system found those who might have deactivated their profiles . After those few days of decline, and then respect again, the number started to grow… and at the rate at which I got 5000 new characters in 10 days! 🙂 People praised the page again, sent messages to their inbox, shared, laughed, etc… here are some examples from the last few days…
Crisis situation for every community manager
At one point, the fans wanted to see who the site’s admin was, messages, requests, requests, etc. arrived. And I decided to do that, to present myself in the most normal way. It was a mistake. Namely, I caused a small international “incident”, because there was general hysteria and indignation on the part of the English, how is it possible that someone from, I quote: “Siberia or wherever” can be the owner of a Facebook page that belongs to the English? They were joined by the French, Albanians and the occasional German. I was “defended” mostly by Greeks, Serbs, an Albanian every now and then and that’s it! So I’m sorry I didn’t save that correspondence and those comments, because after 10 days of “spitting” I still decided to remove my picture and the link to my profile. The point is that the English are so proud of that series that they don’t understand how it is not “owned” by an Englishman, but by a Serbian from Siberia! So I thought, whose fault is it that they didn’t remember 🙂
Tips:
- If you are creating a fb page, check carefully whether there is another one, whether you are breaking the fb rules
- Always be there for the fans of your side, because they are still demanding, active and devote their time to you
- Treat all types of insults with culture, because culture conquers all. If you are vulgar and reciprocate in kind, you lower the party’s credibility in the eyes of those who are not negative
- Always praise the haters, for anything
- Never do what the minority asks of you
- Try to reply to all messages, comments in which you are tagged, and if someone fights in the comments, try to turn it into a joke and drop the ball
- Don’t overdo it with posts, because you will spam people
- Be measured in your answers, if someone presses you, you press them too because that way you create a feeling of professionalism, if they address you as TI, you also address them because that way you create a feeling of closeness
- Never publicly call someone names or make fun of them
- Enjoy talking to people, because if you don’t, trust that it will be felt in the comments
So many… Questions on @DonMarkoC
PS. About the offers for the sale of facebook pages that I get non-stop another time 🙂
