How I grew a Pokemon Go Meme page to 50,000 Likes in four days
Day 6–7/100 days of writing
Everyone is loving Pokemon Go. It’s the biggest trend at the moment and it showcases how cool augmented reality is. It’s also very interesting to see how the world is reacting to it.
The game launched in Australia on the 6th of July. That night my Facebook feed was going crazy with Pokemon news from Buzzfeed, 9GAG and every other news outlet. So the next night I decided to test if everyone was still invested in the trend by posting an image that I may or may not have photoshopped.
I only needed 20–30 likes to validate the idea but I ended up with 67 likes which was pretty cool.
The next day I started a Facebook Page called “PokemonGo Memes”. I have never created a FB page nor have I ever used FB ads so I didn’t know what to expect.
So here is how I grew the page and the lessons I learned about FB ads, consumer behaviour and data.
The road to 50K
Searching for content
First off I started looking on Facebook and Twitter using hashtags such as #PokemonGo. One search was enough for me to find some content. The hard part was picking the images/videos that would be entertaining for people my age. I decided to go with content that would make people ‘lol’ and result in a tag or share.
Time to bring some traffic
After picking 5 images, I boosted my posts with the following ad sets:
1. Demographic: 18–40
2. Location: All major Australian and New Zealand cities
3. Interests: Pokemon, Pikachu, Digimon, Game of Thrones, House of Cards, 9Gag, Buzzfeed
These keywords were based on my assumption that people who enjoy Game of Thrones etc. are in the 18–40 demographic and would also be playing PokemonGo.
Sitting, Waiting, Wishing
So as my ads went live, I sat back and waited. It took me close to 6 hours to get 100 likes. 6 hours. I had no idea what I was doing.
I then started adding more content and boosting every post, which was a big mistake but a blessing in disguise. Eventually one piece of content started getting a lot of organic engagement. I turned off all my ad sets and focused my budget into the one meme.
After three hours, 100 turned to into 1,000 and then eventually that turned to 10,000. My goal was to hit 10,000 in a week but I accomplished that in 2 days so I was really happy with the result.
10K to 24K — Growth
Things then started to pick up and my organic growth > paid growth so I started to focus more on my content. I experimented with different interests, demographics and locations and formats such as GIFS and videos. This was possible by looking at competitors but most importantly by interpreting my own data and readjusting accordingly.
25K to 49K — Stepping back and analysing
Suddenly my growth started to drop from 50 mins/1K like to around 80 mins so I had to take a step back and assess the data. What I figured out was that:
- I wasn’t engaging/caring about my audience, so I started to comment more and talk to my followers.
- I was juggling too many tasks, so I decided to delegate and invited two admins so focus on content while I examined data.
- I wasn’t A/B Testing. I had been creating individual ad sets and wasting time going back and forth understanding each one. So I started to A/B test and slowly tweaked things like location and interests.
As you can see, growth started to pick up until I got to 50K likes…
50K
On the fourth day I hit 50K and I was proud of what I’ve achieved, but then shit hits the fan and my browser logs me out and I receive this message.
I couldn’t login into my FB account. My Macbook started to become really slow and when I tried it on PC laptop, it literally broke. I cleaned,erased and reset both my PC and Mac which eventually brought them back to life. I talked to a technical person and his predications were that:
- My account was vulnerable to hacking since there was so much activity on my page OR;
- Considering the amount of messages and links I was opening, I may have downloaded some malware.
This set me back 2 days so here I am writing this article. I got my account back but my growth had completely disappeared. Currently I’m around 63K likes however it takes close to 5 hours to get 1K likes. I even turned on some ads during the night to target the US audience but it had no effect.
My assumption is that Facebook is ranking me lower than other pages because I had signs of a malware infection which is completely reasonable. However I’m quite proud of what I have achieved and below are the key lessons I have learned.
Key Lessons
Data is King
Having always enjoyed mathematics (insert meme), the project became so much more interesting once I understood what the numbers meant. At the start of the page I assumed my ads should target 18–40 year olds. However the data proved me wrong. It was 18–24 and sometimes the younger audience that engaged with my content. A few other things included targeting mobile devices and mainly men.
Context matters
We all love a bit of Gary Vaynerchuk and he always says ‘Content is King’ which is very true but context and understanding consumer behaviour helped me pick things up. (He probably said that as well… But let’s pretend he didn’t.)
It was a Friday night and I know Aussie’s love a good drink so I made a meme and tested whether or not Pokemon and alcohol would go well.
It went pretty well.
Engagement wise, I did pay for some likes but it helped me realise that I have to put myself in the ‘consumers’ shoes and assess the five W’s (Who, What, When, Where and Why).
Think Globally
I was targeting Australia and New Zealand because that was the ‘market’ I understood the most but after midnight my engagement was dropping because people were getting ready to sleep. So I turned to the global market.
I opened up a tab for the world time zones and checked to see where in the world I could target. Then I pulled up the list of cities within those countries and started running different ad sets. I also looked at Google Trends to see which countries were talking the most about Pokemon Go.
Target locations included:
- UK — Not released on either Android or iOS
- India — Not released on iOS
- Thailand — Only an X amount of users had access to the Beta app
- USA and Mexico
- Italy, Spain, Germany, Turkey, Indonesia and Philippines
Don’t take things so seriously
I was really determined to hit my milestones and after the virus, I was extremely pissed off. The project had become my ‘baby’ and some asshole was taking it away from me. What did I do to deserve this?
But then I realised it was a meme page…
I didn’t feel the need to burn myself out and neglect my health by complaining and worrying about a Facebook page. So I took a walk and somehow ended up talking to a homeless person about his life and how he needed $16 to sleep in a bed tonight. I gave him $20 and parted ways after our chat.
I came back to realisation that there are more important things in life and that we should be more grateful for the opportunity at hand. I was complaining about a computer virus whilst there are people out with greater struggles.
Final thoughts
Although it was a meme page and based on a trend, it was very interesting to see how this project played a huge role in my personal learning and development. I think a lot of the lessons are also relevant to the business world and lean start up methodology.
In the end I spent close to $500 on FB ads but due to my inexperience, this experiment could have been done for way less. I didn’t know I could A/B test till halfway through nor did I know I was spending too much Per Post Engagement.
Nevertheless, my goal was to get 10,000 likes in one week but I surpassed that goal by 5x. It was an amazing learning curve and I’m definitely looking to apply this knowledge to other projects.
Going forward I’m going to try maintain the page whilst leveraging it to build a Snapchat audience specifically for PokemonGo memes. I’m a big fan of Snapchat so I think it would be a good to experiment with considering the large reach I have.
Happy memes and go catch ’em all!
I appreciate the time you took to read this, thank you :)
I’m Tom and I want to make social media more ‘social’. Currently helping businesses get started and grow their Snapchat. I also blog about everything to do with the platform at theyellowghost.com .
