What's the best way to practice writing fake news articles?

Krass

Krass

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I'm tryin to get better at FB ads. I notice some folks here do fake stories, or at least have the truth stretched considerably.

I created a post and tested it with FB ads, here are the results:
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Some details:
- It's PPE so it's easier to get lower costs per action
- I have the link to the article in the FB post so hopefully some people click through
- If nothing else, if this post goes viral and gets me FB fans, I'm happy enough

How do I get good at creating content people want to share? Any sites you would recommend me to study?
Thanks.
 
Keys to virality as I have found them:
  • Good headline (Buzzsumo did a good breakdown: http://buzzsumo.com/blog/5-ways-create-amazing-viral-headlines/)
  • Content that is polarizing. People who like it should LOVE it. People who dislike it should HATE it. No in-between. Be like Floyd Mayweather or Conor McGregor.
  • Content that is useful. If it's both polarizing AND useful this will compound the viral effect
  • Ads/posts targeted at the people who are most likely to love/hate it.
There are two aspects to making Facebook posts go viral:
  1. The first is the general user base. They share an article based on just the post/ad alone (without even reading the article) the VAST majority of the time. So get that post/ad headline, image, etc down TIGHT.
  2. The second part is getting the article posted to an influential site. If you have the first part, then your odds of getting the second part multiply. But the influencers will share the article based on the content (the opposite of the users).
As for site to study, look at any of the well-known viral sites. Upworthy, ViralNova, Mashable, etc.
 
Hey,

I'm kind of in that exact same niche except I am not having much success promoting my stories with FB ads (Are these from T1 countries, in your screenshot?)

What I could recommend is checking out sites like viralnova, ladbible, unilad, etc. These sites get a ton of traffic from facebook. If you're really looking for some clickbait-ish headlines, viral nova is definitely the place to look for as it's basically their only 'selling point'
 
Study the demographic you're aiming at influencing and no other. Yes, general marketing principals apply across them all, but it's the minor peculiar things that really makes it hook in and take off.

For instance, I crafted a post for Reddit where it's all about the title. Completely about the title actually in this case. I spent around 20 minutes working on the title, ended up front paging /r/all. So I thought I'd put it on Facebook and boost it. About $20 later I had around 2000 likes/shares/comments. Whack.

However, I had another post I never intended to take to Facebook or anywhere else. It was just filler content. However, the title used catastrophic power language that fed on the irrational hatred of the negative-pole segment. I also had cracked open Facebook and made a hilarious image that fit the bill and set it as my image to show up when the post was shared.

Zero promotion by myself, it went to 20,000+ likes/shares/comments. Almost entirely off the title and the image, and the content only reinforced it. The entire story was already spilled in the title. It was designed to enrage people, and I guess in this case the best they could do to take action was to share it in protest and to feel like they did something to make progress occur.

The point being, a post that literally topped Reddit did nothing on Facebook even with cash behind it. Even among Reddit, every sub-reddit is going to require a completely different type of post. Same with demographics on Facebook.

BuzzSumo definitely could show you some posts that performed well with your keywords that you could re-write if it's been a while since they made the rounds.
 
Thanks for all the reply guys. What I did was go to buzzsumo, and find proven posts that have been shared thousands of times. I'm trying to get an audience of moms to sell them baby-related stuff so I went the most obvious route and searched for baby related content. Then I made a post and boosted it.

The ad does well on most metrics except for the ones that really matter: clickthroughs, comments, and shares.

So I know what to work on now: the headlines and the images. Will get to it right away.
 
For mom/baby stuff, off the top of my head...

- Talk about/imply their babies are in danger
- The moms are bad parents if...
- The moms are goods parents only if...

Tons of sensitive stuff that parents care about deeply. Push their buttons and you'll get action.
 
Trankuility said:
For mom/baby stuff, off the top of my head...

- Talk about/imply their babies are in danger
- The moms are bad parents if...
- The moms are goods parents only if...

Tons of sensitive stuff that parents care about deeply. Push their buttons and you'll get action.
Click to expand...

Ok, so I've revamped the title post and tried boosting it again. I'm using religion for this one, headline being "6 times babies remind us of the power of [insert deity]". The lead-in in the post says "Only [insert religion] mothers will understand this".

Just uploaded the ads and had it approved. Will keep updating
 
Good stuff. You're headed in the right direction.
 
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