I Spent $20,000 Testing Social Media Strategies, Here's What I Learned

I Spent $20,000 Testing Social Media Strategies, Here... about:reader?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2...
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I Spent $20,000 Testing

Social Media Strategies,
Here’s What I Learned…
Justin Brooke
14-18 minutes
Thanks Adam Ay for the photo

Do you want your social media to do more
than just get “likes?”
If you’re wishing your social media was a 24/7
1 of 21 05/04/2022, 00:48
marketing director that attracts, prospects,

and closes deals for you, then keep reading
because this is going to be a masterclass
in social selling.
I don’t use social media for fun. If I want to
have fun, I play video games. If I want to get
visitors, leads, and sales, I use social media.
However, you’ll be surprised to hear I’ve
never had more than 100,000 followers. Yet
my business(es) have generated millions of
dollars. In fact, the first year I crossed the
million dollar line (2013) I only had about
5,000ish followers.
Which leads me into my first lesson of this
article…
Small Profiles, Big Paychecks?
Tim Ferriss interviewed a man named Kevin

Kelly who is best known for his article “1,000
True Fans.”
Kevin famously opens his essay with these
2 of 21 05/04/2022, 00:48
words…
“To be a successful creator you don’t need
millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or
millions of customers, millions of clients or
millions of fans. To make a living as a
craftsperson, photographer, musician,
designer, author, animator, app maker,
entrepreneur, or inventor you need only
thousands of true fans.”
The number of your followers doesn’t change
your ability to get more leads or sales. What
does matter is whether those followers a.)
trust you and b.) have the means as well as
the desire to buy what you’re selling.
It’s that simple.
Read it again.
What matters is that your followers trust you
and have the means to purchase from you.
For example, let’s pretend we have a magic
wand that gets us whatever followers we
want. On one profile I wave the magic wand
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and I get 1,000,000 followers that all love

motivational quotes and have no clue who
you are personally.
Then on the next profile, I wave the magic
wand again and it’s 1,000 of the top investors
in the world who have all been personally
referred to your profile.
Now, if I’m trying to raise money for a new
tech start up which of those profiles am I
more likely to be successful with? Obviously,
the 1,000 investors who were referred.
This is, in a nutshell, what I’ve done to make
my own profile so lucrative. I didn’t try to
collect a mass of followers like Gary Vee, all
respect to that game, he’s done amazing
things. I’m not him though and frankly, I do
not want that life. He himself even says his
lifestyle isn’t for everyone.
What I did is collect a very specific following,
that trusts me, has the money to buy from
me, and desires to buy from me. Which is
what I ultimately want to show you how to do
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by the end of the article.

But first, let’s look at what I’ve tried.
What worked and didn’t work.
I Tried Follow For Follow & Feed

Bombing
Surely, if you’ve read any blog posts or watch

any Youtube’s about growing a social media
following you’ve heard of these tactics.
The first one you follow tons of other profiles
hoping they’ll follow you back. You can even
increase your likelihood of a follow back by
looking for profiles that follow back. I’m not
going to go into how because this strategy
just sucks.
Don’t do it.
It’s a great way to look like you have a ton of
followers, but they don’t give a crap about
you. They follow you for the follow, a blip is
added to your follower count, and then it
ends. They don’t like your posts, they don’t
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comment, they don’t share, and they

definitely definitely don’t buy.
Follow for follow is fake followers.
The number on the profile page goes up, but
the numbers in the bank account do not.
Feed bombing kind of works, but it’s a
MASSIVE grind. Feed bombing is when
someone finds your page, goes and likes
your last 9 posts, and then follows you. Which
creates this giant wall of notifications from
them and sometimes makes you wonder who
they are. So you visit their profile and maybe
follow them back.
I’ve gotten legit followers from this. I kind of
hate telling you this works, because I know
10% of you are going to stop there and I
really wish you wouldn’t. You’re missing the
way way better strategy.
The problem with feed bombing is a.) do it too
much and you can get your account banned
b.) it takes a ton of time, only sort of works,
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and still doesn’t guarantee any more sales.

It’s like trading dollars for dimes. Sure it
works, but how much do really want to do
that?
Great strategy for a brand new profile and the
person has zero budget, and tons of time.
Great for getting your first 1,000ish followers
and getting off the ground. You’ll want to get
off this hamster wheel quickly before you get
arthritis from clicking your mouse so many
times per day lol.
I Hired a Guy Who Uses Follow

Bots
This. Was. Stupid.

Do not do this! If anyone from IG ever reads
this, I’m sorry, I’ll never do this again, I’m
telling others not to do it either. It’s definitely
definitely against terms of service.
But I tried it anyway because… well…
because it’s not illegal and if it did work the
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ROI would have been HUGE. The risk o

reward ratio was there, but ultimately there
was no reward.
I quickly got 1,000 followers, then told the guy
to pause while I “tested” them. Sure enough,
when I posted I got very few comments, a
couple dozen likes, and no leads or sales. I
tried for a solid week, they were mildly more
engaged than follow for follow, but that’s not
saying much.
I Gave Up On Quick Fixes & Hired a

Coach
At this point I realized the gimmicks were

clearly never going to work. I needed a real
strategy for getting true followers that wanted
to follow me. Not bribed or lured or tricked,
but actually gave a crap about what I had to
say.
So I did what many of you have probably
done, I subscribed to a ton of YouTube
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channels and paid a few grand for a “coach.”

I hired , who is well known in the online
marketing space. She runs KBJOnline.com
and is the head instructor for years over at
SocialMediaPro.com.
She definitely pointed me in the right
direction. Kate taught me about “hashtag
ladder strategy” and good profile design.
These I’ll say became the bedrock of the
strategy I use today.
Shout out to Vanessa Lau and HeyDominick
also. They are the only two YT channels I
stayed subbed too because all the other ones
just weren’t delivering tactics that work.
Robert Benjamin was dope, but it felt like his
strategies changed weekly. Vanessa &
Dominick resonated and I had huge success
with their strategies.
I built @FaithFunnels on their strategies
which now has over 20,000 followers. I don’t
sell on that profile as it’s just a personal
passion project, but their strategies work
9 of 21 05/04/2022, 00:48
great. Very real followers, tons of

engagement, rank well for hashtags, and
have great convo’s in the DM’s. Even made a
few new friends that I bible study with.
I’ve met people from all over the world on that
profile and plan to do big things with it this
year as I figure out what kind of ministry I feel
called too.
What Is Hashtag Ladder Strategy?
Here’s an excerpt from my fave Instagram

research tool Flick.tech… (they call it the
staircase method)
“The ‘staircase’ method is an effective way to
research Instagram hashtags to increase
your reach, engagement and following on
Instagram, it’s also the number one
Instagram hashtag strategy for both
beginners and experts.
We see a lot of users use this strategy as a
base, and tweak it for what works best for
10 of 21 05/04/2022, 00:48
their Instagram accounts.

The name of the technique is a fairly accurate
representation of how it works. Let’s look at
the basic ‘rules’:
Use 10 hashtags that are 30% below your
Average Likes (Set 1)
Use 10 hashtags that are similar to your
Average Likes (Set 2)
Use 10 hashtags that are 30% and above
your Average Likes (Set 3)
You simply use clusters of hashtags as a step
to boost yourself onto the next cluster of
hashtags.”
I Paid $5,000+ On Social Media Ads
I tried boosted posts, I tried promoting my

page, I tried meme ads.
They all kinda sorta worked, but didn’t really
take off.
What worked like gangbusters though, and I
11 of 21 05/04/2022, 00:48
do this every single week now, is promoting

carousel posts. These kinds of posts allow
you to give a great experience to new
eyeballs. Think of an article like “10 Ways To
Grow Bigger Tomatoes” but broken down into
10 images that you can swipe through.
It’s like a listicle, but the social media version.
With the last image being a call to action to
basically like, subscribe, and comment.
I like to have a new one of these every week,
at least one a month, and put $5-$10/day
behind them. For awhile there I was putting
$50-$100/day behind them and they really
really work. I’ve slowed down now because I
have plenty of followers now.
If you’re following along, then by now you are
realizing my system is pretty much hashtag
ladder strategy on the daily and promoted
carousel posts on the weekly. That’s my
growth plan in a nutshell.
I Paid $13,000 To Buy a Profile
12 of 21 05/04/2022, 00:48
The profile had 26,000ish followers already.

That’s $0.50 per follower.
If you know how to get real followers for
cheaper than that, I’ll hire you for coaching.
The engagement has been great. However,
I’ve not yet sold them anything so I can’t tell
you it’s profitable yet or not.
Obviously, this is not a strategy for newbies,
but for a few of you big hitters reading this, it’s
very efficient. What I did was just look for a
profile that already had all the qualities I
wished for in a niche.
Had a great looking profile, had lots of
followers, had good engagement, quality
comments, and consistent posting schedule.
By all accounts this was a real bonafide
genuine audience that I got to takeover
without doing all of the leg work.
This is great for any e-commerce websites
that already have established products and
sales processes. You get to skip all the hard
13 of 21 05/04/2022, 00:48
work of massing followers and jump right to

selling. You can do this with Youtube
channels, Facebook pages, TikTok accounts,
IG profiles, and more.
Some networks are against it so don’t go
tooting the horn about it, but it’s not illegal. It’s
the modern day equivalent of buying real
estate. Except its digital real estate.
I Made Strategic Friend Request To

Known Buyers
This is where things became the most

lucrative, and this was free.
There were some paid strategies that worked
well at getting a volume of real followers.
However, I couldn’t know if they were “known
buyers” or not.
So I borrowed a tactic from my favorite
marketing book of all time, “The Ultimate
Sales Machine” by Chet Holmes.
The tactic I used comes from chapter 6, and
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teaches a concept called the Dream 100. To

summarize, what you do is find just 100
people you would love to have as
customers and market only to them.
Instead of marketing to thousands or
worse millions.
This is how I was able to strategically pick
who was in my social media audience.
Ensuring that the people I was
communicating with had the means and the
desire to buy what I was selling.
The way I chose “who” I added was looking
for people who were already buying high
priced consulting and marketing services.
Which is easy today with social media.
Everyone loves taking pictures of their
retreats, events, etc. For example, it wouldn’t
be hard to find people who paid $50,000 for a
day with Gary Vaynerchuck. They are always
sharing pictures of being in that group.
Usually they even tag themselves and
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everyone else that was there.

I looked for these event photo posts and
Facebook groups, then just started friend
requesting these known buyers.
The piece that made this work though, is prior
to adding them, I made sure my profile looked
the part. Meaning, I strategically engineered
my profile photo, cover photos, bios, and feed
to look like the person they would want to
follow.
This didn’t mean I lied!
I just made sure I had professional images, a
bio that appealed to this audience, and
content in my feed that they would want to
have in theirs by adding me back.
Amassing hundreds of these known buyers
as my “friends” on social media is what then
lead to me making millions from my relatively
small followings.
Making $100,000 From a Single
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Post
I know…
You don’t believe me.
I’m happy to provide proof if you ask me in a
DM. I’m not going to post the screenshot here
for it to be stolen and used on every pretend
guru’s sales page as their own proof.
You can check my FB profile for proof if you
do some searches on my wall. Search
“Rhonda Rousey” or “Honeypot” on my wall
and you’ll see for yourself. This was not a
fluke either as I’ve done it over and over
again. Maybe not $100k each time, but easily
$20k — $50k each time.
Once it worked so well I got my account
frozen for 24 hours, because I was getting too
many comments too fast. I didn’t even know
that was a thing you could get in trouble for
lol.
How did I do it?
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It’s a very simple 3 step process.

The first step is you make a post announcing
a new program you are beta testing and
looking for 10–100 people who want to get in
on it. Make it sound sexy, but also don’t lie.
Then require that they leave a comment to
get access and you’ll DM the deets.
This works so well because the algorithm
shows my post to all the friends of whoever
comments. So as long as my announcement
offer is half way good, I’m going to get
50–100 comments which is going to expose
me to tens of thousands of others.
Because my post is getting lots of comments
it creates this social proof effect that makes
more people comment and shows to their
friends and more people comment etc etc etc.
Essentially I’m just looking for 100 comments
to get me started.
I’ve gotten well over 600 on a few of them.
Then when I DM them the details, I first ask
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them a few qualifying questions. These

questions are designed to first qualify them,
but also get them selling me on why they
should be in the beta group. They are selling
me, not me selling them.
Finally, to all of them that qualify I just explain
the deal to them but I don’t give them the
price. I just ask them to tell me I they are in or
out first. Which gets them to subconsciously
close themselves. In the sales world they call
this a “trial close.”
Then after they’ve told me they are in, I give
them a link to the order form. At this point
they have said they want in 3 times so they
are very very likely to finish the order. Usually
I sell a $2,000 — $5,000 service or training,
so 10–30 sales is all I really need. With 100
comments it’s not hard to get 20–30 of them
to buy.
If you want to learn more about this method,
look up a guy named Travis Sago. He’s on
my FB friends list. He’s where I learned it
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originally and he has a whole group of people

who do this method, all of them getting similar
results as to what I have gotten. He teaches
this method the best.
Circling back to the main lesson in the
beginning of this article…
Notice how I only need 100 comments for this
sales strategy to work. This proves that you
do not need a massive following to have a
profitable profile.
Small profiles, really can bring in big
paychecks.
If you need help, give us a holler at
support@adskills.com.
See you next week.
Justin Brooke,
Founder of AdSkills.com
P.S. I’d also love to tell you how I got 10,000
leads a day using short polls and Google ads.
It’s a masterclass I taught inside
AdSkills.com which is the training company I
20 of 21 05/04/2022, 00:48
founded. You can get 90% off right now if you

use the code MARJOIN90 (for March 2022).
21 of 21 05/04/2022, 00:48

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I Spent $20,000 Testing Social Media Strategies, Here... about:reader?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2...

I Spent $20,000 Testing

Thanks Adam Ay for the photo

marketing director that attracts, prospects,

Small Profiles, Big Paychecks?

Tim Ferriss interviewed a man named Kevin

and I get 1,000,000 followers that all love

by the end of the article.

I Tried Follow For Follow & Feed

Surely, if you’ve read any blog posts or watch

comment, they don’t share, and they

and still doesn’t guarantee any more sales.

I Hired a Guy Who Uses Follow

This. Was. Stupid.

ROI would have been HUGE. The risk o

I Gave Up On Quick Fixes & Hired a

At this point I realized the gimmicks were

channels and paid a few grand for a “coach.”

great. Very real followers, tons of

What Is Hashtag Ladder Strategy?

Here’s an excerpt from my fave Instagram

their Instagram accounts.

I Paid $5,000+ On Social Media Ads

I tried boosted posts, I tried promoting my

do this every single week now, is promoting

I Paid $13,000 To Buy a Profile

The profile had 26,000ish followers already.

work of massing followers and jump right to

I Made Strategic Friend Request To

This is where things became the most

teaches a concept called the Dream 100. To

everyone else that was there.

Making $100,000 From a Single

It’s a very simple 3 step process.

them a few qualifying questions. These

originally and he has a whole group of people

founded. You can get 90% off right now if you

You might also like