We let go of a contractor last week who made reports instead of delivering measurable results. He delivered an impressive number of reports and lists of reports, but couldn’t show business impact– revenue or leads. Agencies and corporate marketers are most guilty of this behavior. They have a functional requirement to produce a document each week, dutifully delivered to …
Credit unions banned from advertising on Twitter
Did you know? I can understand banning get rich quick schemes and loan sharks, but the local credit union? Notice that Twitter is banning the small business financial institutions, so the major banks can still advertise. Well, at least they can organically post pictures of their print ads: Meredith Olmstead from Social Stairway manages social for credit unions, …
Determine the right audience size by using friend-of-fan targeting
We previously talked about using exclusion targeting to refine your campaigns, now let’s delve into how to find the right size for your audience. This technique is not exactly a negative filter, but one of my favorite tactics when choosing audiences is to use friend of fan targeting. Let’s say that this audience of 68,000 is too big …
Have you tried exclusion targeting?
In Power Editor, you can exclude folks you DON’T want to hit. For Google PPC veterans, this is the equivalent of negative keywords. For example, if you ran a personals site, you’d bid on “dating”, but have “carbon” as a negative to not match on “carbon dating”. With Facebook, we can choose targets and exclude audiences within them. For …
Research alert: Blackberry’s Facebook performance tracks with their actual performance
Over the last few years, the US has shifted heavily towards Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android models, leaving BlackBerry struggling. However, BlackBerry has been able to become a highly popular device in Latin American and some Asian countries. Fan growth month / month is only 1%, while PTAT month / month is 2%. These slow numbers show that Blackberry has …
How Will Facebook Graph Search Change Sponsored Results?
With Facebook’s announcement of Graph Search, marketers anxiously awaited to see how they could take advantage of the new real estate. Look at all that space! Last fall, “Sponsored Results” started appearing in the search bar. Even though there isn’t much traffic, these ad units are surprisingly powerful. We’ve seen CTR in the 5-10% range, and CPCs of $0.05 – …
What is a Social Media Professor?
With social media becoming the main channel of interaction, establishments such as the University of Louisville now offer courses in it. Also jumping on this trend, University of Florida offers a Masters in Social Media. Hofstra University has worked with us to create a social media curriculum, using our ContentFactory University partnership program where we assist teaching social media and analytics …
10 bad ass MoFu’s
Most branding and reach is targeting the top of the funnel– TOFU. And the PPC experts focus on the conversions at the bottom of the funnel. But connecting brand power to conversion requires a strong Middle of Funnel– MOFU. B2B is the hardest area to drive meaningful engagement on Facebook– often a mix of silly cat photos and heavy whitepaper …
Thoughts on Facebook’s new promotional guidelines
On August 27th, Facebook changed their contest rules. You no longer have to administer a contest solely through an app. Fans can like you as a condition of entry and you can both mention and notify users of who has won. But we don’t expect a rash of “like” contests, nor does this open up a major opportunity for you to …
LinkedIn Newsfeed Ads vs Facebook Newsfeed Ads
On August 7th, LinkedIn released Sponsored Updates, allowing us to hit the newsfeed. THE MAIN POINT You’ll end up paying $6-10 a click, even if you have a killer CTR, since the average CPMs are north of $200. But if you have a high-end B2B target, it could be worth it. Facebook still has more volume by job title and …
The cheapest and most ridiculous way to get people’s attention
I like to input text into sign generators. Then post these on Facebook to get the attention of friends and clients. Put your message on a church sign, “For Dummies” book cover, stadium megatron, supermarket register, pawn shop, post-it note, or even construction signal. Be memorable. Be humorous. Especially if you’re too cheap to buy a real card or …
Two ads, one pageview
The benefit of having multiple campaigns is that you can take more than one of the 7 RHS (Right-Hand Side) ads. In Google, you can serve your ad in only one of the 10 spots. One ad per domain. But apparently Facebook doesn’t enforce this rule. In outdoor advertising (such as on subway trains), a company will buy all the …