Arne Giske
By: Steve D Sims
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Technology, Startup, Business

Arne Giske is a 26-year-old with a Facebook community that, at the time of his interview with Steve Sims on the Art of Making Things Happen podcast, was just shy of 80,000 users. The Facebook group, A Millennial Community, is one of the largest in the entrepreneurial space.

Giske reverse-engineers the Facebook algorithm and pays attention to what Facebook wants so he can reap the rewards of organic traffic. Entrepreneurs who want to get more traction on social networks and move their followers into other platforms like emails would be wise to tap into Giske’s ideas and experiences.

How Arne Giske got started

Speaking with Sims on The Making Things Happen podcast, Giske explains that he started wanting to “build a big dynamic group” in college. He devoured articles on Entrepreneur.com and Business Insider, and he was so impressed with one Entrepreneur article on community that he reached out to the author. The author invited Giske to stop by his FB entrepreneur group — which, of course, he did.

Through the connections he made and information he gleaned from that group, Giske eventually got into online business. He started four of his own Facebook groups that, he candidly admits, “completely bombed.” For Giske, the fifth time was the charm, because that’s the megagroup that’s up to almost 80,000 members.

Although the group’s name is A Millennial Entrepreneur Community, membership is open to everyone. Of course, millennials are a main demographic, but the group even includes a 14-year-old. Other members are in their thirties, forties, or fifties. They’re there, Giske speculates, “because they want to understand the millennial mindset.”

What Giske learned about Facebook

Giske finds that “when you please the Facebook algorithm gods, they send you all the traffic you could ever wish for.” And what do those algorithm gods want? They want engagement, but that’s driven by content.

Explains Giske: “[Facebook wants] the engagement so they can have super-active users, sell more ads, and increase their valuation to investors. So [how] do we reverse-engineer that and . . . get a highly engaged user? We put out good content that [users] care about, that they want to show up on and, revisit again, watch all your videos, [and] comment on all your posts. . .”

Branching Out from Facebook to Email Marketing

When Giske first started out, he had “Twitter, Instagram, Quora, Pinterest, Facebook, all this other stuff, podcasts, [and] YouTube,” but he was burning out and barely making any money. He cut out all social media but Facebook and the group, and that’s when he really started to gain traction. He’s tried to go back to other social media channels, but his main focus is still Facebook. “I’m definitely a less-is-more type of guy when it comes to social [media],” he explains. He advises entrepreneurs to “[figure] out where your voice in your content resonates the most and stick to it. Go big [and] be consistent.”

Still, Giske recognizes that what Facebook gives, it can also take away, so he builds up his email list and markets to that list. At first he didn’t bother with email, though. He asked people three basic questions to join the FB group, and in the process he got their email addresses. It was such a gigantic pain to enter that information, though, that he threw that information away.

Giske’s cofounder, had a similar problem with his own group, so he wrote software to automate the process. The two joined forces and now teach other entrepreneurs how to efficiently capture group members’ email addresses.

At the ripe old age of 26, Arne Giske has a huge, super-active, super-engaged Facebook community that focuses on entrepreneurial millennials. He’s perfecting the art of growing an FB group using organic traffic, and he’s becoming an email guru, too. This is one mover and shaker you’ll want to keep an eye on.

To learn more about Arne:

Website: Group Funnels

Listen to this podcast: The Art of Making Things Happen