FAQs
What is Catapult?
Catapult (beta) is a FREE, invite-only social media engagement group for overachieving business owners, consultants, coaches, authors, subject matter experts, who are looking to grow their social media through effective engagement.
Users of Catapult band together for the purpose of promoting your content on four (4) social media channels: Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
There are three (3) simple rules:
No Lurkers - Everyone’s participation is important to succeed.
No Spammers - You post only when we need to rally the troops.
No Flakers - You show up for others, so others can show up for you.
What are engagement groups?
How do they work?
An engagement group is usually a group of social media users who band together to help each other grow their respective online exposure by exchanging comments and likes on each member’s social media posts.
The idea behind engagement groups is simple. It’s a give and take. The people in the group believe in the mantra: I scratch your back; you scratch mine. Everyone in the engagement group is excited to help each other out — a like for like, a comment for comment, a follow for follow, and a share for a share.
This works well because the algorithms of many social media channels no longer display posts in chronological order. Instead, posts are displayed based on relevancy (which is why you may find that your social media posts don’t get a lot of traction). And, relevancy is often determined by the amount of engagement a post receives WITHIN THE FIRST 30 mins. of posting. TIMING IS EVERYTHING!
Therefore, in order for an engagement group to have a great impact on your strategy, engagement activities MUST happen within the first 30 minutes of your post. The more active people are within the engagement group, the higher the probability of your post going viral.
Why do they work?
Engagement activity is essential to your social media strategy for the following reasons:
1) it increases your post’s relevancy score, which ensures that it stays in the feed longer, allowing more people to see it;
2) it expands the reach of your message to new audiences;
3) it adds validity to your posts and increases the likelihood of receiving additional likes, comments, and shares from people whom you might not know; and
4) it could potentially cause your content to go viral
This all adds up to increase brand awareness. The ultimate goal of an engagement group is to help you gain followers by driving more traffic to your social media channels.
What are the types of engagement?
There are five main types of social media engagement that can be used to grow your audience:
Like
Comment
Tag
Share
Follow
At the time of posting, you must indicate which type of engagement you need for the post.
Who is Catapult for?
Catapult is designed specifically for business owners, consultants, coaches, authors, and subject matter experts looking to use social media to grow their brands. It works bests for individuals and entities seeking to increase the number of likes, comments, and followers on their accounts in order to expand their audience, and possibly increase their online sales. More specifically, Catapult is essential for entrepreneurs and businesses wishing to build on awareness campaigns, extend reach, drive traffic, develop new leads, or convert an action into a sale.
The Catapult Difference
While other engagement groups are focused on influencers, we are specifically geared towards business owners who need to use social media to grow their brand awareness.
The beauty of Catapult is that it’s for people who can’t afford to spend much time on social media (or don’t like using it), but need social media in order to build awareness or promote a product, service or an event that generates revenue.
Catapult is multi-channel. We believe engagement groups have value on all platforms. Catapult can be used to promote content on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.
You don’t have to have an account on a specific platform to join. All you need is at least three (3) social media accounts. If you’re only on Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter, then ask for engagement activity only on the platform in which you participate.
Unlike other engagement groups, Catapult does not require a minimum number of followers in order to join.
What is a social media campaign?
A social media campaign is an organized and systematic use of social media platforms to achieve a specific (business) goal through mass promotion. This is different from everyday regular social media activity because it is targeted, specific, and measurable. A campaign is geared towards promoting a specific offering in order to drive traffic towards a specific action.
There are seven (7) steps to creating a social media campaign:
Set a Goal
Make a Plan
Create Content
Provide Value
Create Space
Get the Word Out
Analyze Results
Will Catapult make me go viral?
Engagement is ONLY one (1) component to “going viral”. There’s a recipe for “going viral,” and it is simple:
Great Content + Large Audience + High Engagement = Viralbility
It means different things to different people. However, there are three things that must be present in order to have a chance of going viral. Unfortunately, you cannot have one without the other. The most important ingredient in the recipe is great content. When there is great content in your marketing promotion, Catapult can help you grow your audience by increasing engagement activities.
How often can I post?
We believe that less is more. The goal isn’t to promote every single social media post on Catapult. Instead, our mission is to help you create meaningful engagement around specific posts that are part of a campaign that has a clear objective.
At this time, we do not have limits on how many times you can post.
We recommend only posting when you need to rally the troops to get the word out about a post that is used to drive a specific result.
Limiting the number posts on Catapult cuts down the information noise and allows our members to be responsive to your engagement requests.
It’s free? What’s the catch?
Yes! You read that right. Catapult (beta) is FREE! We are capping our members to the first 500 that log into the platform. This will allow us to gather as much information about our engagement group experience as possible so we can craft a custom app experience for our members. In future versions, we may entertain a payment model. But as for now, we’re focused on providing value for our members.
We only ask that you invite at least one like-minded entrepreneur who is interested in growing his/her brand and improving his/her social media through higher engagement. Every member is encouraged to actively participate. Periodically, we will send out polls to gather information about your engagement experience.
Why must I invite people to join?
The old adage that people like doing business with friends (or people they know) is true. This is why Catapult is invite-only. It means that each person within Catapult is just a few degrees of separation from the next, which we hope will encourage camaraderie and a desire to help one another succeed.