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Martina Lennon | Virtual Assistant grows Facebook presence, spearheads fan page and helps demystify the process for Sarah Knight.
As a fan of Sarah’s, and already having some authors as clients of mine, whom I love working with, I thought I’d reach out to Sarah to let her know that I was available if she needed me for similar support.
Sarah opted for my Facebook Starter Package which consisted of 5 posts per week, content creation and daily monitoring (Monday-Friday).
I developed a Social Media plan in line with Sarah’s objectives and applied this to the ‘No F*cks Given Guides’ Facebook page and group.
I kept Sarah updated with performance figures on a weekly and monthly basis using Facebook analytics for:
Views
Likes
Followers
Post Reach
Post Engagement
Monthly Follower Growth Rate
Along with weekly statistics of each post and how it was performing against others allowing us to see what worked best while I adjusted our strategy along the way in response to these results.
I worked with Sarah for just over a year and during that time we achieved massive growth in Sarah’s organic social media reach, engagement and following which resulted in driving more traffic to her website, an increase in book sales, and growth in subscriptions to her newsletter and YouTube channel.
I was also lucky enough to be involved in the promotion of her latest book ‘F*ck No’ during its release. Which was very exciting!
About Sarah Knight
Sarah Knight, ‘anti-guru’ and international bestselling author of the ‘No F*cks Given Guides’. In her hilariously profane guides, Sarah writes about mental health, setting goals, taking risks, getting motivated, getting organised, and all the usual self-help stuff - but with an underlying realism.
Her books tap into feelings that most readers have, but are afraid to act upon. Giving them permission to follow through whether it’s;
Casting off unwanted obligations (‘The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck’)
Making big life changes (‘Get Your Sh*t Together’)
Just being themselves, flaws and all (‘You Do You’)
Managing anxiety and problem-solving in the face of adversity (‘Calm The Fuck Down’)
Before her career as an ‘anti-guru’, Sarah was a book editor for fifteen years in one of New York City's biggest publishing houses. Quitting her corporate job inspired her to write a book of her own, and left her with the time and creative energy to make it happen. Today she lives in the Dominican Republic with her husband and two feral rescue cats.
Challenges and Objectives
Sarah’s main objective as an author is to make a living, make her readers laugh and to help them improve their mental health at the same time.
As Sarah’s brand grew, she found herself on strict writing deadlines year-over-year, as well as working to market and publicize her books by writing magazine articles, doing interviews, and growing her social media presence. Sarah didn't have enough time and mental energy to do it all well, and since the books HAD to get written, the rest was falling by the wayside.
Prior to working with me, Sarah had outsourced a few specific projects, with mixed results. In one case, she had broken her hand while on book deadline (!) so she was forced to get outside help for an auxiliary research/typing project, which turned out fine, although it still took a lot of her own time to review and revise the other person's work, which is the toughest part (for her) about outsourcing as a concept! In another case she paid a professional marketing consultant to conduct a promotion that she didn't have the time or resources to run herself, which went very badly and made her extremely suspicious of future collaborations of that nature.
How I Helped
Sarah really just wanted to feel like she was in good hands, and that outsourcing her work wasn't going to ADD to her stress level in other ways.
She needed someone intelligent, forward-thinking, self-motivated, careful, thorough, reliable, and a good communicator. Being friendly is a bonus!
It didn’t take long to get up and running. We went back and forth a couple of times while I created a proposal for the work Sarah had described, and then we entered into a month-to-month contract.
By taking over the running of the Facebook page and group it took a big task off of Sarah’s plate. I was able to dive into posting, researching what worked best in terms of outreach, engaging fans, etc. Sarah admits that she would have been stumbling in the dark trying to do it herself (and had been, for a year or so!). Sarah is excellent with other forms of social media, but Facebook has never been her strong suit, so being free of both dealing with it *and* worrying about it was exactly what she needed.
Results
Sarah couldn’t use Facebook ads due to the language used in the titles of her books. So we had to rely solely on organic results.
Facebook followers more than doubled from 657 to 1,389
Follower growth rate of 6.2% per month on average
Monthly organic post reach up by 338% from 753 to 3,299
Monthly engagement up by 287% from 387 to 1499
Sarah confirms that she also saw substantial growth across the board on book sales, website traffic, Youtube subscriptions and newsletter subscriptions.
Sarah feels that had she not availed of my service she would have gotten increasingly anxious about all of the things she *wasn't* doing, and her ability to write well and communicate clearly to media and fans would have suffered as a result. She also anticipated that her social media growth would have stagnated, reducing opportunities to gain new readers for the books, and directly impacting her goal of sustaining a career and liveable income as a writer.
Growing her Facebook audience has helped her to reach even more fans in her strongest demographic (women ages 25-45), and it's exponentially increased her visibility in a channel where she was barely exposed before.
Sarah found it easy to delegate and communicate with me.
Future Plans
Now that Sarah is out of deadline and publication-month craziness she has a lot more time on her hands to devote to continuing all the great work we did together on the Facebook page but she very much hopes and expects to work with me again down the line and I would be delighted to have her as a client.
If you would like to learn more about my services and how I can help you then check out my website at www.martinalennon.ie or drop me an email at info@martinalennon.ie
If you like the sound of Sarah’s no-nonsense self-help guides why not check out her website where you can get access to some really cool downloads, pick up lots of life tips from her blogs or get your hands on the ‘No F*cks Given Guides’ and start living your best life.
