One Million Followers

We also built a system where fans could turn their Facebook profiles into Taylor Swift fan sites in less than sixty seconds. It automatically extracted fans’ names and photos along with Taylor’s photos and album covers so they could have their very own fan sites. The fan sites were built on the same technology platform we used in creating Taylor’s website, so fans were able to customize and personalize all the elements of a fan site. Fans felt connected to Taylor, as if they were a part of her team—they could use the same platform that she was using and take any aspect of it and recreate it themselves. In a few months, more than thirty-five thousand fan sites were created using this platform. I don’t have exact figures, but I’m sure this was a record for the most fan sites ever created for a specific artist at the time.

My pitch was that with the technology platform my team developed, we could build an entirely new site on spec for her in six hours. In a meeting, I showed her how we could dynamically change any element of the website in real time. She could change the background, move the navigation, change out the navigation, and control every element of that website, which gave her the power and creativity to constantly evolve how she wanted to express herself to fans. For example, every time she launched a new album, she could quickly redesign the entire website within minutes to match the aesthetic of the new album.

The fascinating thing about Taylor is that she built her brand, music, and stardom herself. She started with a simple Myspace page, where she built a platform that fostered a one-to-one connection with fans because she intuitively understood that this would accelerate her brand reach.

You need to know what makes people want to share your message.

I usually launch my ads at midnight because that gives the content a fresh twenty-four hours to be tested.

also recommend targeting the broadest age and country range possible so that you can allow the Facebook platform to guide you. You can look at the metrics and see which audience is yielding the best results. Then, in subsequent tests, you can hone in more specifically on what you see working. Start broad and then get narrower.

To figure out which images and quotes work best, you need to go in and test every imaginable variable. Take an image and test five different quotes against it. You can also take a single quote and test five different images against the quote.

Separate Each Interest Level

It’s really important to separate each “interest” when creating the ad. Don’t create one ad lumping all interests together. For example, if you’re a motivational speaker, don’t put “happiness,” “depression,” “self-help,” “motivation,” “inspiring,” and the like in the same ad set. Create a separate ad for each of those interests. You should do this for two reasons: First, lumping all the interests together doesn’t allow you to learn. If all the interests are listed in the same ad, you won’t know which specific interest is driving the performance. Second, separating interests allows you to maximize the reach of the creative. If you have ten interests and they’re all lumped into one, you can’t create multiple duplicates of the ad. However, if you take the same piece of creative and build a separate ad for each of those ten interests, you’ll have ten ads that are running at $25, for a total of $250. Doing this allows you to further scale your ads.

Here’s what I recommend: When an ad set is working really well, duplicate it and create a new one. Create an additional ad at the original twenty-five dollar amount and find a new piece of creative or another interest level to help the ad reach more people. Changing these variables allows you to create new variations

Facebook’s ad platform suggests the amount you should spend on your ads. Depending on the ad unit, it’s usually anywhere from eleven to twenty-five dollars. I