Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

64Writing for FacebookRallying Cries That Unite an Audience

Company posts on Facebook used to reach approximately 16 percent of their fans. As I'm writing this in the spring of 2014, that number is a puny 2.5 percent because of changes Facebook introduced in December 2013 to its News Feed algorithm.

That's been sobering for a lot of companies who previously built large followings and had decent engagement on Facebook, because it means that marketers now have to pay—that is, buy ads—for the same reach they used to get for free. To many companies, it feels a bit like a shakedown. But Facebook is, after all, a business run by Mark Zuckerberg—not an almshouse run by Mother Teresa.

So is it worth building a fan presence there? That's a question you can only answer in the context of your larger digital strategy—but in any case, it does mean that your Facebook content isn't getting any less important.

In April 2013, friends Corey O'Loughlin and Nina Vitalino launched Prep Obsessed, (facebook.com/prepobsessed), their store on Facebook. In June of 2014, they recorded $83,000 in retail sales, and they are on track to record $1 million in sales in the next year, with a healthy profit margin.

Part of their success is attributable to their content marketing and community-building efforts, so it's worth deconstructing their approach to their content and strategy to derive some broader lessons. Your own business might be very different from Prep Obsessed's retail site, of course. But almost ...