Section 1
Allow Us to Introduce Ourselves!
April 18 @ 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
with the Miracle Twins (Sugar Cookie Marketing)
Hey - we're the Miracle twins (actual last name, not a self-proclamation - but consider yourself blessed). We come from the sugar cookie side of the kitchen, and today we want to build a social media strategy that will help your posts perform better in local newsfeeds.
🗝️ The key to making social media feel less like pointless repetition, smashing the "post" button, and 😭 crying into your mixing bowl (because nothing is working) is a strategy.
Today, we're going to build a Facebook-focused strategy from the ground up. 🧱 Take what you want, leave what you don't, and tweak it to make it your own.
We'd Like To Introduce You To
She's Our Cake-Study (case study)
Who taught the session on AI? Give them a raise. 🤖 We had Gemini generate a Cake Pop ready to take on the marketing world. This is Cake Pop Kelly. She is selling hyper-locally, she doesn't ship, and she doesn't sell any digital goods.
🟣🟣🟣 She's a busy cake-pop mom of 3 baby cake pops. Cake popping is her primary income, so running the business her way is important.
She posts consistently to the major Social players, but she feels like she's spinning her wheels (sticks?) and doesn't feel like her social strategy is producing meaningful results = which is selling more cake pops to local customers in her area.
GOOOOOAAAALLLLL
Every Plan Needs a Map
Are You Guilty of
Marketing Measured by Feeling
If you're tracking your marketing's effectiveness by how it feels (🤗 insert jazz hands here), grab a seat and introduce yourself to the recovery group of vibes marketers - you're among jazzy friends frustrated by a lack of meaningful results. "Vibes marketing" (made-up phrase based on vibe coding) is likely why your marketing feels like it's going up everywhere and moving your numbers nowhere.
The "spray and pray" method of posting can eat up all your time and still not put bread on your table.
Goals = Guides
Otherwise We Fly Blind
"Post to Social Media" does not a strategy make, my dear popper. We need a goal to build from. The goal becomes our foundation, our guide, and our final grade. If you've heard the acronym S-M-A-R-T goals, that applies here.
👉 S = Specific
👉 M = Measurable
👉 A = Attainable
👉 R = Relevant
👉 T = Time-Based
"Post to social media more" now becomes "Post 3 times a week to my local Facebook community group."
🎯 "Get more comments" now looks like "focusing on increasing comments per post to 5."
🎯 "I want a lot of likes" rebrands to "this group has 500 members, so getting 30 likes is a 6% engagement rate. Can I get that to 8%?"
🎯 "Go viral" switches to "I want to earn the top-contributor badge."
🎯 And finally, "this year" becomes "over the next 3 months."
The defined goal is integral to the next part of our strategy = choosing the right metrics to track. Not all metrics are created equal, and not all metrics mean they matter (for now).
Track Track Track
Every Map needs a Unit of Measure
Confusion Sets In
My goal is to sell more - isn't that enough?
The goal for most of us here is to generate more income - yes. But that income varies wildly across just the people in this room. We have influencers here, UGC (user-generated content) creators, bakers who ship, bakers who can't ship, bakers who work part-time, bakers who don't even sell (but we appreciate you sitting through this).
While the goal is to always generate more income through sales, how each of us goes about that will depend on many factors you don't share with the person sitting next to you. And your strategy today may be different from your Q3 and Q4 strategies.
❌ That's why our strategy won't mirror Amy's strategy, ❌ that won't mirror Nicole's strategy, etc.
Gotta have a Map
Each Campaign Strategy Needs Metrics
When your social media presence feels directionless, it's because it's not focused on a metric that can tell you whether or not your strategy is working. Metrics (our social strategy goals) aren't all made equally, and their results are dependent on what the metric focuses on. Your strategy will likely depend on multiple metrics.
🔎 Let's preview some of Facebook's Dashboard Insight metrics.
This metric counts reach from the organic or paid distribution of your post, including if it was boosted. Reach is only counted once if it occurs from both organic and paid distribution.
The total number of followers of your Facebook Page or profile. This is calculated as the number of follows minus the number of unfollows over the lifetime of your Facebook Page or profile.
The average time a video was played, including any time spent replaying the video for a single impression.
The number of times accounts followed you in the selected time period.
The number of times your content was played or displayed. Content includes videos, posts, stories and ads.
The number of times your Page or profile was visited.
The number of likes or reactions, saves, comments, shares and replies on your content, including ads. Content can include formats such as posts, stories, reels and more.
The number of times your reels were played for at least 3 seconds, or for nearly their total length if they're shorter than 3 seconds. During a single instance of a reel playing, we'll exclude any time spent replaying it.
The amount of money you may have earned from content monetization. The final amount may differ, depending on content reviews, reporting data and copyright claims.
The number of clicks, taps or swipes on links within your content, including ads. Content may include formats such as posts, stories and reels that led to destinations or experiences, on or off Facebook.
The number of accounts that have viewed your content at least once. Content includes reels, posts, stories, live videos and ads.
The number of saves of your post minus the number of unsaves.
The number of accounts that viewed at least 1 minute of one of your reels in the previous week and returned to view at least 1 minute of one of your reels the following week. This metric is estimated.
The number of individual pieces of content shared or posted on this Facebook Page or profile. Content may include formats such as posts, stories, ads and more.
The total amount of time your reels were played, including any time spent replaying them.
The number of likes and reactions on your post minus the number of removed reactions.
The number of shares of your post.
The number of comments on your post minus the number of deleted comments.
😭😭😭
There are simply too many metrics.
✋✋✋ Yes, Kelly has three hands. It's an AI cake-pop person; anything is possible.
If gaining leads on social media requires understanding what each of these metrics means to your content while increasing each of these metrics, you (and Kelly) will burn out. And nothing's worse than a burnt cake pop.
Pick and Choose
Not All Metrics Support All Strategic Goals
Attempting to apply every metric to your content strategy will bog your flow down with unnecessary feedback from your Insights Dashboard. You're going to need to focus on the metrics that matter to the time-bound, focused strategy.
Metrics = Measure
Post... Thrice
There are way too many metrics to track. And not all metrics are created equally. So we pick the few that support the strategy's goal.
We're not going to pick just one metric. ✈️ That's like a plane flying at the right altitude but a few degrees to the left. You look up, and you're in an entirely different continent just because one of your measurements was slightly off. We need more than one metric to provide an accurate measurement.
If I'm a Daisy Makes affiliate, Link Clicks and Average Video Views are going to be important to me, but if I'm selling cake pops locally, and I hate being on video, I'm going to focus on Published Content and maybe Facebook Followers.
Expand to See Metric Groupings
🔎 If your strategy has you focused on video content, Watch Time, 3-Second Views, and Video Average Views are going to be your focused metrics.
🔎 If you're trying to monetize, you'll want to focus on Content Monetization, Qualified Views, Stars Received, and Earnings Rate metrics. You'll also need to focus on the content metrics that you're trying to monetize.
🔎 If customer service is your goal, the customer service metrics are going to focus on FB Messenger metrics like Conversations Started, Response Time, and Response Rate.
Now We Have a Goal + Metrics
Here's The Plan
🎯 Kelly's SMART Goal: This May (31 days), Kelly's goal is to gross $500 more than she did in May 2025 using Facebook as her lead generator. She's also adding a vendor market to assist her strategy.
She needs to move either 100 individual cake pops (priced at $5/pop) or sell 7.5 dozen cake pops (priced at $66/dzn). She can create a strategy to target both the single sales at the vendor market and a strategy to find the custom orders. Her hybrid goal could look like this: acquire 5 custom order clients and sell 34 additional cake pops at the vendor market. A lot more digestible, huh?
🎯 Kelly's SMART Metrics: Kelly will be tracking her Event Responses, her Video Views, Content Interactions, Viewers, and Published Content.
The Meat + Potatoes
Now We Gotta Fill Our Buckets... Er, Mixing Bowls?
Bring the Buckets
The Strategy Goes Postal
When we talk about content buckets (or content pillars), we're talking about a categorical collection of content.
Content buckets accomplish four things:
🪣 They help our strategy stay consistent and on target.
🪣 They diversify our posting strategy to keep our content interesting.
🪣 They help streamline the creation process, keeping it efficient.
🪣 Buckets keep us focused on the strategy.
The best goal in the world, tracking the most focused metrics, does nothing without content. So to meet our goal, we need content, and that content has to follow the strategy, which is tracked by the appropriate metrics to indicate whether our content is working for or against our goal.
🧐 Seeing how this all has to work together now?
Your Posts Exists at The Intersection of
And The Topic Supports the Goal
My Content Bucket may be "Vendor Event" with a sub-topic of "Behind the Scenes." My Content Type may be a Video.
❌ The intersection of Type and Topic dictates the content.
So my posts could be recording a Facebook Story setting up for the Vendor Event, or it'll be a Story prepping my print materials for the Vendor Event.
We're Shooting for About
Per Strategy
Keep these broad. Too drilled down, and you'll find yourself limited in ideas. Buckets = BIG idea generators. Our posted content will drill down on specific concepts we want to convey to our client base.
🔎 Here's 6 Content Bucket Ideas:
Tips, tutorials, and industry insights that show you're an expert (and teach your clients).
Showing the people, process, how you do it, where you do it, etc.
Sharing customer reviews, testimonials, and photos.
This is your sales pitch mixed with why it's worth buying.
Personal stories, testimonials, something about you, your family, your life.
Polls, questions, and Q&As to drive conversation.
We're Shooting for About
Per Strategy
You already know what content types are - video (Reels, YouTube Shorts, Stories), photography (photos, carousel posts), email (newsletter, CRMs, follow-ups), social groups (community groups, business groups, networking events). Your content types will be unique to you.
🔎 Here's 6 Content Types We Could Use:
Video content includes pre-recorded content like Reels, Facebook Reels, Instagram Reels, Stories, and Event Videos. Video pairs well with UGC content. Currently, video is the favored medium - whether or not we like it, get them pearly whites ready.
Great for the camera-shy, photos include photographed content we can post to feeds, Event discussions, as carousel posts, as collages, or as single images. Photos can also be shared to Stories (not as ideal, but it has its place).
Different from pre-recorded content, Live content has its own algo separate from pre-recorded content, so it gets its own content type. Lives can be on Facebook pages, in groups, in Stories, on Instagram, and even TikTok (if that's included in your strategy).
The final frontier of chronological, emailed content could be a weekly newsletter, using your CRM to follow up with May 2025 orders to see if they're interested in re-buying, or an email drip you set up for orders acquired last month.
Groups are such a strong lead generator (who remembers our session at What's Popping Con 2025?). Within groups, we can post all sorts of content types like polls, videos, photos, text posts - groups have their own algo, so we'll want to make content specific for them.
Hey - event have their own algo as well - they're a great way to have Meta send notifications through its events funnel (ever get pinged that [Person you know] is interested in an event nearby?)
Bust out that Camera, SAY CHEESE!
Now It's Time to Create
Now Kelly has her goal ($500 dollars) that is supported by her strategy (using Facebook and a Vendor Event) that she'll use to generate her content (her 6 buckets crossed with her 5 content types) that she'll track using her metrics.
🔥🔥🔥🔥 Kelly is cookin' with fire.
Let the Magic Happen
We've got how, where, and who - now we need the what.
Ask Yourself This
That Supports the Strategy that Supports the Goal?
If I want more video views, I need to post video content. If I want more link clicks, I need to post content with links in it. If I want more event responses, I need to post more about my event.
So, within our content topics (buckets) and our content types, we're going to create posts that support the metrics that support the goal. Your effort here will be rewarded by reach, and your laziness by lack of engagement. Effort matters.
🧱 Foundations are built up, brick by brick. We can't build a mansion if we're playing Jenga with our content strategy.
Let's Disscect the
Lab coats on - to the morgue! We're going to do a post-mortem... a post post-mortem. Let's see what Kelly posted and now what she'll post when she's armed with a focused strategy. For caption help, you can use copy frameworks like A-I-D-A (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action), P-A-S (Problem-Agitate-Solution), 4 Cs (Clear, Concise, Compelling, Credible) - there are many, and that's for a future What's Popping Con, but copy, aka the words you use to sell cake pops, should be a part of your strategy.
✨ You can use AI to write your rough draft, then take the copy and add your unique magic to it.
Our consumers are starting to be able to perceive when copy is written by AI, so adding your spin to it is becoming increasingly necessary to stand out from your competitors.
In this post, Kelly is selling - which is always the goal, right? But she's missing the strategy.
Remember, we're tracking the event responses, so our post needs to include a link to our event. Since events pull in a link preview, we should put effort into our event's cover image.
Kelly is pulling from her Promotional Bucket and her Group Contents Type to drive her Event Responses metric.
🩸 She's using an H1 header (and a hook)
🩸 She's linked her event
🩸 Her event cover is attention-getting
🩸She includes the necessary information
🩸 She's got a clear CTA
The odds of someone showing up to the vendor event from this post are higher than from her prior post.
In this post, Kelly doesn't even post a video. So there's no support for the metric she has chosen to track. Sure, she may get engagement, but it's unintentional. This is why her marketing feels like it's everywhere and going nowhere.
🎱🥢 In the terms of pool, "You have to call your shot, or it doesn't count." You have to have a posting focus, or it doesn't count towards the strategy.
Kelly wants video views, so she posted... a video! She's grabbed from her
🩸 She's using an H1 header
🩸 She's uploaded it natively (not a link share)
🩸 She posted a video
🩸 Her video is under 60 seconds
🩸It starts with a visual hook to capture 3-second views
🩸 She's got a clear CTA
If we want engagement, we must post engaging content. Here's where Kelly went left instead of right. She's got a nice image, she's added information, but she's not engaged with her audience. There's nothing for them to grab onto here, 👍 and if they like her post, they just did it outta posting pity. 👎
Now in this one, we've actually cut the image out of the post intentionally to draw eyes onto the text that asks the customer to take an action - comment if they plan to go.
🩸 She's
🩸 She's got a clear CTA
The odds of someone showing up to the vendor event from this post are higher than from her prior post.
Bust out that Camera, SAY CHEESE!
Now It's Time to Create
Now Kelly has her goal ($500 dollars) that is supported by her strategy (using Facebook and a Vendor Event) that she'll use to generate her content (her 6 buckets crossed with her 5 content types) that she'll track using her metrics.
🔥🔥🔥🔥 Kelly is cookin' with fire.