Posts Tagged “Facebook”

Everybody loves advertising, so I figured I’d share some tips about advertising on Facebook that have accumulated on my plate after a few different jobs and consulting projects using them.

o. You can get started with Facebook ads on the cheap. Anybody can run ads on Facebook on a CPC or CPM basis (and I’ll wager that they’ll roll out CPA after a while) with a few dollars and half a clue.  Results improve with additional dollars and clue.

1. Facebook ads are not behavioral, and they’re not search ads either. In the main, you can target Facebook ads at facebookers based on what’s in their profiles – location, age, relationship status, gender, employment, stuff they like, etc. This info is self-reported and subject to the categories that Facebook has created. This is not the same as search ads that target people based on what they just an instant ago typed into a search engine.  Adjust your expectations accordingly.

2. There’s some serious freshness bias. I’m willing to bet that the first (full) day you run an ad, you’ll get more impressions and more clicks than any other day after that.   I don’t know for sure why that is (or even if it’s universally so) but I suspect that the ad serving system is biased towards newer ads.  It’s also possible that the Facebook community gets immune to your ad very quickly.  In any case, I find that making small modifications to you ads on a weekly or even daily basis can help mitigate this effect.

3. It’s got nothing to do with advertising, but you can use the Facebook ads interface – for free – to do some quick and dirty market sizing. Just go in as if you were creating an ad, and play with the targeting options to get exciting factoids like the number of people on Facebook who are single, in your geographic area, and like dogs.  You can get all that info without even writing any creative or paying for any ads.  But be careful about generalizing this info as Facebook adoption isn’t uniform around the world or across demographics.

4. Help is available – for a price. Facebook has some ad service people who will talk to you if you’re buying at least $15k/month in ads. Furthermore, they will under some circumstances provide you with a “business account” – a separate login to the ad system that’s not linked to anybody’s individual profile, a definite plus for businesses.  On top of that, sometimes they can be convinced to provide a bulk ad upload capability.  This would seem to be in their interest as it lets customers run lots and lots of ads.  Note that in order to run ads promoting your fan page, you’ll have to make the business account a page admin, which you can do only by email address, since the business account doesn’t really have a profile.

So do I recommend Facebook ads? I’m not going near that question, I’m just sharing some things I’ve discovered.  Do your homework, test a little, double down if it’s working for you.  Advertising is key to Facebook’s world-domination revenue goals, and in the short time that I’ve been working with Facebook ads, I’ve seen them invest a lot in the capability.  While they still have some distance to go, they provide some opportunities that you can’t get with seemingly similar search ads on the more mature Google and Yahoo ad networks.  And, I might add, Facebook’s ad system is parsecs ahead of LinkedIn’s.

Your mileage will vary, but I hope you’ll share what you find too.

Tags: advertising, Facebook, market research, marketing

Not that long ago I laughed at comparisons of Facebook and LinkedIn because I didn’t see much point in using Facebook.  Now I laugh because the tools are so different, most comparisons seem silly.  Facebook is still the place where people live their online lives, and LinkedIn is still the place where people seek business advice, business partners, jobs and employees.  I was poking around LinkedIn the other day, and I saw another sign that they almost get it.  Almost.

Back in October, LinkedIn launched applications that you can add to your profile.  Sounds a bit like Facebook, doesn’t it?  Or like the iPhone or Firefox, to name a couple of common products that let people write plugins or applications for their platforms.  It seemed not so much a misguided attempt to be more like Facebook but rather, a sensible way to serve customers better while engaging the developer community to innovate in ways yet unknown.

A quick look at the LinkedIn featured applications page today shows a dozen apps from some well-known sites and services that seem reasonably useful to the LinkedIn population: WordPress and Six Apart blog apps, Huddle Workspaces,Box.net files, Amazon reading list, LinkedIn polls, Google and SlideShare presentations, TripIt and LinkedIn Company Buzz.  And there’s a link to “browse more applications” that shows the same 12 apps.  Is that all?  I guess for now, it is.

Sure, it’s perfectly reasonable to prime the pump with some sure-thing apps from major sites, but what about the vaunted long tail of odd little niche things that might or might not catch fire?  I clicked around to find out how apps are created and added to the site, and was disappointed to see this:

Get Started with the Platform

LinkedIn allows developers to build applications that run on LinkedIn user’s home and profile pages. Applications currently available can be seen and installed from the Application Directory. LinkedIn applications are developed using the OpenSocial development model.

How to develop for the Platform

The LinkedIn application platform is not publicly available for all developers. We evaluate requests to develop for the LinkedIn platform from partners who have clearly compelling value to our users and who can rigorously follow our privacy policies. We are looking for applications that provide clear business utility to LinkedIn users. LinkedIn is not a place for sheep throwing. There is equal opportunity to build applications that apply to all LinkedIn users as there is to develop applications that apply to just a targeted portion of the user base. If you think you qualify and have a compelling user value proposition, let us know using the form below.

I agree, LinkedIn is not where I go to join my friends’ Zombie Armies (although I bet we can all name some companies that might fit that description), but as with the iPhone fart machine, isn’t the fitness of the app really up to the community of users?  Those are extreme examples, to be sure.  You don’t have to feature these weird and edgy apps, but if you don’t let it out there, you’ll never know if it improves or degrades your product.

Do you think it bothers Facebook that somebody wrote a LinkedIn app for Facebook?  Maybe somebody should write a Facebook app for LinkedIn.  Facebook’s app directory has only 23 apps categorized as “business” which is just four more than are tagged “fart.”

So I have two seemingly conflicting bits of advice for LinkedIn: (1) don’t try to be like Facebook, and (2) don’t try too hard to be unlike Facebook when they do something right, such as opening up their API to all kinds of weirdness.  It might feel weird at first, but as long as you’ve written a good API that keeps everybody safe, the community will decide what’s good and what’s bad, and that will be a lot closer than almost getting it right.

Tags: API, Facebook, linkedin, networking, social media

I try to rethink on a daily basis, if not constantly, but like most people, I don’t do the Big Rethinking often enough, maybe mostly around milestone birthdays, new years, yom kippur, presidential turnovers, etc.  Now I’m preparing to move and going through all my stuff, evaluating what to keep and what to discard, donate, sell, gift, regift, recycle, shred, burn, bury, etc.

In December I made a joke about unfollowing all my twitter friends and starting over with the new year.  It was just a joke, but the idea of spring cleaning social networks has stuck with me.  Most people joining social networks don’t know quite what they’re getting into at first and I’m sure that many end up with some ill-chosen, finger-quote, “friends” on their lists but feel uncomfortable ditching them.

Burger King’s mildly controversial and thoroughly amusing (at least to me) whopper sacrifice program seems to have upped the ante on my gag.  Short form: they’ll give you a free whopper if you “sacrifice” (publicly unfriend) ten of your facebook buddies.  (That values a facebook friend at about 37 cents) I don’t know if it’s actually good for BK, but I think it’s great for social media. Heck, any PR that doesn’t link Burger King to e coli is probably good for BK.  It takes some of the hot air out of the social media thing, and gives people another way – and a lame excuse – to unburden themselves of unwanted finger-quote “friends.”  I presume there’s nothing stopping you re-friending people after lunch.

Remember a few years ago there was some chatter about email bankruptcy?  In short, email bankruptcy means that you’ve decided you’ll never be able to deal with the current contents of your inbox, so you delete it all and start again.  That idea seems to have faded out, but I wonder if we aren’t on the verge of a rash of social networking bankruptcy: twitter bankruptcy, linkedin bankruptcy, and most likely, facebook bankruptcy.  Fed up with superpoke requests?  Maybe it’s a nice day to just ditch everybody and start again!

Well, that’s probably not for everyone, maybe not for anyone, but I do have to wonder if the clean slate would allow us to make new and interesting connections that might not even have occurred to us since we’re so busy with the connections we already have.

Tags: bankruptcy, Facebook, social networks, twitter

I met up with some good folks I used to work with for our quasi-monthly “fest.” We chose Minado, an all-you-can-eat sushi and buffet joint in Natick across the street from the shiny new mall that’s too cool to call itself a mall, the Natick Collection. I’m told it’s breathtaking.

Clockwise from lower left: edamame and spicy seaweed salad, tuna tataki, spicy tuna roll, red rice veggie roll, salmon skin roll, tuna roll with scallions, octopus, stuffed mushroom, crab noodle cake. This was my first plate.

The sushi at Minado isn’t really all that grand, but it is reliably ok and individual types can be really good. And there’s a full hot buffet as well. For $40 each, we enjoyed all we could eat plus a drink, tax and tip. I suppose for the same money, you could have a single truffle hamachi maki with a drink, tax and tip at Oishii Boston, but you’d still be pretty hungry. But anyway, I was there for the company.

The conversation turned, as it often does, to social media stuff, as the assembled crowd had for a brief moment in history all worked together in the same marketing team. We compared Facebook notes (L is pretty into it for work, R finds old summer camp buddies there, H and J seem to be staying on the sidelines) and then everybody turned to (on?) me and asked, what’s the deal with Twitter?

I’ve tried to explain Twitter before and I generally fall back on “you just have to try it.” Like the matrix, no one can be told what it is. But I think I’m getting better at my answer now that after many moons of twitter-skepticism, I’m a heavy user and mildly bullish on the whole twitterverse. Here’s my new take:

If you just join Twitter and just start tweeting what’s on your mind, you’ll get bored quick unless you’re extremely self-absorbed. But if you find a micro-community of like-minded, or at least interesting and interested, micro-bloggers, and follow them and get followed — you’ll find yourself in a conversation of sorts. People tweet what they’re doing right now, but that’s not as interesting as when somebody tweets a question or breaks some news or reports on an event in progress, and people comment, reply, opine, and commiserate. And that can be interesting.

It could still be a giant load of hooey, of course. Constant partial attention, too many channels for too little information, tweetspam, the works. So far one of my dining companions has tweeted up and followed me. I hope I haven’t led her too far astray. At least I didn’t try to turn her on to Plurk.

One more social media note before we get back to the food. During the discussion I reeled off a list of social networking, social bookmarking, and other random web 2.0 type sites that I’ve joined recently. The overwhelming response was, good grief, why? Why indeed would I sign up for Gather, for example, when I already have LinkedIn and Facebook? For me, the answer is simple – invest a little energy in signing up and exploring because you don’t know what’s going to get big next, and you don’t want your favorite handle poached. A small investment of time for future brand security. (Speaking of personal branding, let me tell you – and google – that DougH means Doug Haslam – get a hundred more like that and you’re golden)

Now, dessert!

Green tea ice cream, chocolate cake, green jell-o. Why jell-o? It makes me laugh. That ice-cube-sized portion is about all the jell-o I’ll eat in a sitting. I boycotted the crepe station for its lack of nutella, but I’m told it was quite nice.

We’d been talking good trash about how many kappa maki we could eat (I think L’s record at a prior outing was 42) but the downside of such great company and conversation is that we talked more than we ate and were more or less thrown out of the place at closing time.

This reminded me of a great lesson via the excellent Presentation Zen blog. (really, it’s excellent, I even bought the book) Hara Hachi Bu means “eat until 80% full” and is a maxim that keeps Okinawans trim and long-lived. Garr links this idea to presentations, and by extension to business meetings and conferences, which are as chronically overstuffed as typical Americans at buffets and in front of televisions. Maybe this restraint will eventually save us from the flood of wannabe social media sites all doing the same thing or the deluge of pointless Facebook apps. We can dream, right?

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Update: as of this writing, I’m in a game of Facebook Scrabulous with three of my four dining companions. It’s R’s turn, what’s taking him so long??

Tags: Facebook, Minado, Natick, nutella, social media, sushi, twitter

Perhaps you’ve been following Tangyslice’s series on Selecting a Web 2.0 PR Agency. Part one is here. [update: part III just published!] Upon return from a recent trip to London, Tangy brought me a gag gift, a 147-page, glossy, perfect bound guide to Facebook. The absurdity of a paper book printed to teach you about Facebook* reminded me of something that happened during the Web 2.0 PR search.

The ultimate success of PR firms in our search was inversely proportional to the amount of paper they brought to the pitch. Those with plastic comb-bound presentations were at an immediate disadvantage. I felt bad waiting until they left the office to zip out the plastic combs and recycle the presentations. I wonder if the plastic covers are recyclable too?

Similarly, I mocked Tangy for putting on dress slacks for the pitch meetings while I made sure I was wearing jeans and a black shirt, and shined up my web 2.0 haircut**. None of the candidate agencies matched my ‘do, but one did match my outfit. It’s easy (and fun) to make fun of these things, but when your RFP says more or less, “we want to rule the world via social media” you are looking for a certain measure of out-of-the-boxiness, aren’t you?

Thirdly, and at least for now, finally, I have to point out that given the opportunity, only a couple of our pitching firms seized the marker and went to the whiteboard to illustrate their ideas. Visual thinking, especially on the fly, is a definite turn-on to firms seeking innovative PR.

Tune in next time when I reveal at least one thing that really annoys PR firms when you invite them in to pitch.

Oh, and in case you’re out there googling yourselves, the consideration set was:

• PerkettPR
• KEL and Partners
• Topaz
• Version 2 Communications
• Waggener Edstrom

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* I don’t mean to say, by the way, that Facebook is so dead simple that it needs no documentation. I mean that if you aren’t ready to jump in and learn from the online help and by experimenting, you’re not going to do well with Facebook. That said, the book does at least attempt to answer some important questions about Facebook, notably, “Why Facebook?” (page 6) and “Why did the UK fall in love with Facebook?” (page 11, by “internet psychologist Graham Jones.”)

** I hereby claim to be the originator of the term, “web 2.0 haircut” to mean a shaved head and a goatee or vandyke (soul patch does not qualify), usually in company of heavy-framed glasses. In the event that it should catch on, you read it here first. If not, somebody else thought of it.

Tags: Facebook, PR, social media, web 2.0, whiteboard