So it’s nearing the Christmas season and, as someone with something to sell, I am going to take advantage of that. I thought that some of you might be interested in seeing just what goes into promotions and ads — and that includes the stuff you see on Facebook and Instagram. I don’t know if you guys are interested in peek behind the curtain, but I thought a little transparency might be interesting.

I’m going to show you how the sausage is made, as they say. The biggest part of this reveal is something that you may not be aware of:

Every “sponsored” post is one that is paid for

Whenever you guys see a “Sponsored” post come across your IG/FB feed, that’s something that someone has paid for. When it’s something involving Gift of the Shaper, I can tell you exactly who is paying for that. Me.

The hard truth is that I’ve put up a lot of my own money to try and get exposure for my book — and those of you who have followed my journey closely will know that I’m working really hard to do just that. You’ll probably see the above ad (at least the portion on the right) soon; I just had it approved today (December 16th, 2018) and will be running it for a few days.

It’s really hard to reach people

You can kind of get a good idea of the “dollars per view” that facebook lets you get, and let me tell you this: it ain’t cheap.

For me, it hasn’t been a great return on investment, but I also have to consider things like overall reach and exposure. The more that people see my name or my book, the more that could potentially pick it up. And the more people pick it up, the more that might talk about it — etc., ad nauseam.

That is why this next part is arguably the most important.

Organic sharing is the most powerful tool

The more time a post gets comments or shares, the more YOUR friends are going to see it — and that’s the key: getting it to a new audience. Everyone I’m friends with knows that I’ve written a book — but how many of THEIR friends know that? How many of them have picked it up? You see where I’m going with this?

While “likes” help a post’s visibility, getting it to new eyes is done almost entirely by sharing. I’m sure you’ve seen posts that have like 10k+ shares — those are viral posts. They have the potential to reach hundreds of thousands — maybe even millions — of people. You can’t really pay people to share stuff for you, but you can definitely ask. I tend to be pretty bad about asking people to share stuff for me, but that’s because I WANT them to want to share things for me. I want to create the type of stuff — content, writing, etc. — that is good enough for people to want to share with other people.

I believe I’ve written a book in Gift of the Shaper that’s good enough to be shared far and wide, and most of you — especially close friends and family — have been amazing about that. You’ve done so without me having to ask, which is HUGE. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.

So that is almost all of what I know about Facebook/IG ads and their purpose (and cost). All of that to say: the next time you see a “sponsored” ad featuring me or Gift of the Shaper, MASH THAT SHARE BUTTON! And I promise this will be the (probably) last time I ask you to help.

If you have any other questions, feel free to leave a comment below! I hope you get a little better idea of what exactly goes on “behind the curtain.”

-D.L.