Social Media Archives - BlitzMetrics

How To Use Facebook Audience Insights To Discover New Targets

In our last blog post about how to use Facebook Audience Insights, we blew the lid off how to understand the treasure trove of data available.

Today, we are building upon that to show you HOW to actually use the tool 🙂

How To Set Audiences in Facebook Audience Insights

In the navigation, go to Audience Insights

Select ‘Everyone On Facebook’
Set the audience Age, Gender, and Location

Set any interest targeting

3 Audience Insight Pro Tips

#1 – Under the Advanced audience settings, you have access to eight other types of audience filters. Use this to get into people’s lives. Leverage information such as their relationship status, parental status, or even political leaning for deeper targeting.

You can pick out and analyze very precise targets

#2 – Get insights into your own Pages by adding in the Page connection filter. Please note you won’t be able to get data if the page doesn’t have enough Likes. Use this to find natural affinities between your business and other brands.

#3 – If you find an audience you want to run some ads at, use the Save button to create an official Audience asset.

Now, you not only know how to read the data, but also how to create your own audiences that can be used in your ad campaigns. Remember, this isn’t limited to the targeting either. Take what you have learned and use it in the content of your ads as well!

How To Use Facebook Audience Insights To Understand Targeting

By Paul S Leave a Comment

If data is the future, Facebook is sitting on a whole mountain of it. Smart business owners can actually mine for insights all they want, for free. The only cost is your time and brain power.

There is a tool called Audience Insights, and not many people know HOW to use it.

My goal for this article is to share how you can leverage this robust data sifting tool to find new and exciting targeting opportunities. One can also use this tool to validate customer avatars as well, if they are so inclined.

In over-simple terms, Audience Insights gives you a looking glass into the corpus of user data available. Not all the user data, but certainly enough to do the job.

On the left of the tool are your audience settings (which we will dig into in another blog post). On the right of the tool, are all the tasty data available in different slices. Should you find an audience slice you really like, you can create a formal Audience to run ads at the top of the tool.

Facebook Audience Insights gives you access into four distinct views of the Facebook users you’ve chosen in the audience settings. Later we will dive much deeper into how these views work. The four views you can see are:

Demographic information such as age, gender, relationship status, education level, and job title.
Page Like information such as top categories and relevant pages.
Location information available by city, country, and language.
Activity information such as how often the selected audience comments or likes a page; also see device usage in this view.

For some of these views, you can also see how your chosen audience compares to the average Facebook user.

As an example, when you look at people who like Coca-Cola in America, they are 27% less likely to be married than the average Facebook user. A simple insight such as this can help you refine your ad targeting. A competitor soda might exclude married people from their ad targeting to try and take some of Coke’s market share.

I believe that most people get confused about Audience Insights because they aren’t sure WHY they are using the tool. The various ways you can tune and select audiences leads to nearly limitless possibility, which can add to the confusion.

To demystify things, let’s look at how to read each view once you have selected an audience (which we show how to do later in the article).

#1 of 4 – How to Understand Demographic View of Audience Insights

The Demographic view shows your audience, the blue bar, and how it stacks up against the average Facebook user. You can hover over the bars for more information. You can even click the bar to add those audience filters to your existing selection.

For those who like Coca-Cola, they are generally younger and not married.

Scrolling further down shows the Job Title and industry information. The bars work the same except they are horizontal. The compare column shows how much more likely your selected audience is to be in that industry. Running ads that are segmented by industry is a great test to see who is really responding to your content.

Food and restaurants employment are 52% more likely than the average Facebook user for people who like Coca-Cola.

# 2 of 4 – How to Understand Page Likes View of Audience Insights

The Page Likes view shows two main chunks of data. First, you can see the top page categories liked by your selected audience. The tool will show 10 categories by default, and you can show more than 30 if you click ‘See All’. Second, you can see related pages and their audience affinities.

Coca-Cola fans really love Hershey’s and Steak ‘n Shake. Targeting these brands might be good for top of funnel awareness if one were a soda competitor.

The relevant pages and affinity section can be sorted by relevance, audience size, and affinity. This can expose other potential targets for advertising.

People who like Coca-Cola are 1,097x more likely to also like Gold Peak Tea- another member of the Coca-Cola brand.

Sometimes, you can find unexpected targeting opportunities. For example, a soda competitor would probably have good luck targeting a specific brand given the data above. That might not be super obvious before one looks at the data.

#3 of 4 – How to Understand Location View of Audience Insights

The Location view allows you to view your selected audience by top cities, countries and languages. This one is pretty self explanatory.

Fun tip: use this to sleuth out popular local places because you can click on the bars. Again, another rich source of potential targeting opportunities.

Indiana, Tennessee, and Texas are the biggest states for Coca-Cola.

I clicked on the Indianapolis bar and went to the Page Likes. These are all popular local places that are enjoyed by people who like Coca-Cola. One might consider geo-targeting these locations for highly targeted ads.

#4 of 4 – How to Understand Activity View of Audience Insights

The Activity view allows you to view your selected audience’s behavior on Facebook as well as some device information. While you can’t click on any of the bars in this view, the behavior data is still highly valuable.

Compared to the average Facebook user, Coca-Cola fans are much more inclined to Like a page, like a post, leave a comment, share a post, or click on an ad.

The only thing notable about American Coca-Cola fans, are that they are 19% more likely to use an iPhone/iPod than the average Facebook user.

There is a setting to change to the Primary Device usage in the upper right of the pane. This means that you are looking at the most used device by a user, rather than the combination of devices (i.e. phone, computer, tablet).

However, if we are only looking at the primary device, a Coca-Cola fan is more likely to be an Android user.

Now that you understand how to read the data, hopefully you can see how this information would be valuable to your business.

Again, there is a LOT of information here. Don’t get overwhelmed. Pick an idea and go with it.

Want to split test Apple vs. Android users? Try it out. Want to only go for single people because the data says so? Give it a shot.

The best part about running social ads is that you can take many shots on goal. By gleaning insight from this tool, you should be able to take more educated and profitable shots at goal.

In a future article, we will show you the best part of this tool…setting audiences!

For now, play around and see what you can discover 🙂

How to create, edit, share, and boost a WHY video

By Kurtis Daems Leave a Comment

Do you have a WHY behind what you do? People are more likely to buy from someone who has a story or mission that they identify with. We believe that the best way to share your stories or mission in an engaging way is through the use of a WHY video. A WHY video defines your reason, or your passion, and it is important to utilize the power of video content and social media to effectively share this with your desired audience.

Video is the most powerful ingredient of your personal brand, starting with your story and amplified by the stories of your ambassadors. It starts with you. Whether you’ve been regularly creating content for 10 years or have never written an article in your life, you’ll be able to easily create a WHY video by following this step-by-step process.

Before filming your WHY video, it is important to consider what your strategy is. There are three main components that make up your strategy: your goals, content, and targeting. When you go to produce or distribute a piece of content, think about what your end goal is. What type of content do you need to produce to achieve this, and what demographics or audiences should see this content? This is the idea behind Goals, Content, and Targeting, or #GCT. By considering these components for your own strategy, you will be able to produce and distribute much more effective video content.

Once you have an idea of what content you’d like to create, it’s go time! There are 4 main components to filming your video. The first is to begin with a hook, or something to quickly capture your audience’s attention as they scroll through their feed. This could be done by movement or something you say. Once you have their attention, you must retain it by bringing them along a journey that will ignite pain or pleasure for them. Here you could tell a story, show a success or failure, or clarify a benefit. At this point, the audience is ready to be presented with a solution or resolution to the story, and you can show that what you offer is that solution. Now the audience is ready to be given a call to action. What should they do as a result of hearing your message? Although these 4 components are more general to any one-minute video you make, they can be applied to producing a WHY video and should be considered when making your own.

In making any video, the key is not to overcomplicate it. No need for fancy equipment– have a friend film you on a cell phone camera, or if you’re by yourself, you can take a selfie video. We have found that vertical or square videos with captioning often perform best due to the fact that they fill most of the screen on mobile devices, which is where the majority of social media users will be. This style of video also comes across as more feed-like and personal, and something people will be much more inclined to stick around and watch as opposed to a professionally-made advertisement.

The biggest issue we see people run into in making their videos is camera shyness and overthinking what they’re going to say. These can both be overcome with repetition and practice, but our biggest piece of advice is to allow yourself to speak from the heart. We believe that sharing your authentic self is much more natural and powerful, because people trust people. As our CEO Dennis Yu says, “Being real is more important than being perfect.”

If necessary, you can edit your video with a headline, captioning, lower-thirds, etc. These help to optimize your videos for views even when people don’t have their sound on.

Once you have the final version of your WHY video, you’re ready to share it. You can upload your video to multiple places, including your Facebook public figure page, LinkedIn page, Twitter, etc. We call this process of sharing a piece of content to multiple platforms “cross-posting”, and by doing this, it will help you to reach more people. Write compelling copy, add automatic subtitles if you don’t already have captioning, and click “Share”.

After publishing your post, the final step we recommend is to boost your post on your Facebook public figure page using the Dollar a Day strategy. (If you have not already created a Facebook public figure page for your business or personal brand, we highly recommend doing so). Boosting is when you put some spend behind a post to help it reach more people who you’d like to see your content. By spending as little as one dollar per day, you’ll be able to gain enough information after several days to help you determine if the post will be a likely winner, based on how it compares to the Standards of Excellence. This low-spend strategy also allows you to test multiple posts and audiences at the same time without breaking the bank, so you can then determine which is receiving the best engagement and should continue to have spend put behind it.

Congratulations! You’ve just successfully created, edited, shared, and boosted your WHY video. This same step-by-step process can be applied to creating any one-minute video, and we highly recommend following this process of determining your goals, content, and targeting and amplifying your video using the Dollar a Day strategy in order to effectively produce, publish, and distribute content going forward.

(P.S.– To see examples of WHY videos, be sure to check out the many videos we have on the “Why” section of our website)

How To Write For Facebook Dynamic Creative Ads

By Paul S Leave a Comment

How To Write Facebook Dynamic Creative Ads

If writing is a challenge for you, the prospect of having to write multiple headlines and texts for a Dynamic Creative ad may stress you out. Fortunately, the more you write, the better (and faster) you’ll get.

To help out, here are 13 angles you can try in your Dynamic Creative campaigns:

The “New” Angle – Brand New Burger Truck Open Now! Vegetarian-friendly too.
The “SHOUT” Angle – RED OWL BURGERS AND BREW NOW OPEN! FRIES! BEER! VEGANS LOVE THE IMPOSSIBLE BURGER!
The “How to Yay w/o Boo” Angle – How to satisfy that burger and beer craving without messing up your kitchen: Red Owl Burgers and Brew ??
The “Inclusion” Angle – Join your people and feed yourself burgers and beer amongst friends.
The “Exclusion” Angle – Burgers! Beers! Red Owl! No wimpy drive-thru burgers allowed!
The “Benefit” Angle – Red Owl Burger and Brews. Enjoy the mouth-watering smell of our craft burgers.
The “Logic” Angle – Don’t you love a high-quality burger AND beer. So do we. That’s all we sell. Why not come by tonight? Have you eaten yet?
The “Man on a Mission” Angle – Paul Benson was on a mission to deliver world-class burgers out of a food truck. Not only did he nail it, but he also nailed it for vegetarians. Mission accomplished!
The “Newsjack” Angle – This angle is about taking any of these angles and hooking into a topical event. Right now, as I write this in early May 2019 as an American, I could talk about the Mueller report and somehow connect it to food and burgers. Or beer, for a fun spin on things (i.e. ‘Sorry for the Mueller Report everyone, they got hammered at Red Owl Burgers & Brews first…’).
The “Gain” Angle – You know that satisfying feeling when there is a burger and some beer in your belly? You can have that. Right now.
The “Dog Whistle” Angle – Burger and Beer Lovers! Come to Red Owl Burger & Brews ??
The “Touchstone” Angle – If you were in the kitchen with Paul Benson in 2018, you witnessed the evolution of today’s notoriously good burgers. While that part is history, you can benefit from all that hard work and testing now.
The “Fear of Missing Out” Angle – The smell of cooking burgers..the crisp, refreshing beers…you wish you were here.

Remember, you can also use these for headline ideas too.

Don’t overthink it. People are reasonably forgiving of bad writing. Over time, you’ll improve. And thanks to Dynamic Creative, you’ll be able to see which kinds of angles work for your audience (and, more importantly, which don’t). You can always write variations of the same aspects. The same goes for images when using Dynamic Creation: you can find similar or modified versions of working ones.

Dennis Yu’s Advice for Digital Marketing Rookies

By Jimmy Groce Leave a Comment

I am new to the digital marketing scene and know there are many hurdles to grasping the concepts, strategies, and tactics involved. Dennis Yu is the Co-Founder and CTO of BlitzMetrics and a leading expert in digital marketing. He was welcome enough to share with us his thoughts on changes in the fickle digital landscape.

Jimmy: Hey, Dennis. Again, thank you so much for doing this Interview with me. First, tell a little about yourself in your own words.

Dennis Yu: I’m just a data geek that builds tools to optimize campaigns. Another prime aspect of myself is in our mission at BlitzMetrics to create jobs for students, so they can help companies drive leads via Facebook. We partner with universities to provide training and the projects, while students get paid and certified.

Jimmy: What is your opinion about the digital marketing world today?

Dennis Yu: Marketers are confused by a growing number of channels and technologies. Their audiences are living in more places and they need to manage a fractured set of communities with no increase in budget or people, but an expected increase in performance.

The solution is not more software but helping digital marketers get trained up on how to manage multiple channels with less time. There is no single channel marketer anymore.

Jimmy: What are your thoughts on the digital consumer?

Dennis Yu: The idea of a “digital consumer” is not valid anymore. Consider that nearly everyone has one type of primary device and often multiple other devices they use for different things. The car and TV are now computers, so is that digital? Consumers expect their devices, apps, and brands to be smart enough to know what to say to them when. The personalization burden is on you!

Jimmy: Now let’s acknowledge some of the many tools available in digital marketing. What tools do you think digital marketers are missing out on?

Dennis Yu: There are standard tools from Google, Facebook, and other networks you should start with. We rarely recommend 3rd party tools, though we build such tools ourselves. Understand the basics before you increase complexity.

Jimmy: What tools do you think are being overused or abused?

Dennis Yu: There is a special place in the underworld for social media tools and anything in the realm of “analytics”. Generating charts is not the same thing as understanding what’s going on and taking action!

Jimmy: What is a favorite tool you use? And do you have a preferred social network?

Dennis Yu: I don’t have a preference since it depends on the client and where their customers are. In general, Facebook has the biggest audience in developed markets with the greatest targeting capabilities.

Jimmy: What inspires you when you build a campaign?

Dennis Yu: You can’t fake passion, so work only on campaigns for companies that you actually love yourself. Inspiration comes from that brand’s mission, not my love of various technologies.

Jimmy: Looking back, what for you is the best digital campaign of 2017?

Dennis Yu: Hard to narrow it down to just one. But off the top, I’d recommend Jack Daniel’s launching Tennessee Fire against Fireball. They leveraged the great strength of the Jack Daniel’s brand while being highly attuned to their market. Brown-Forman, their parent company, is in my opinion, the best storytelling company on the planet– more than Coke, Old Spice, or Nike.

Jimmy: We have seen a lot of scary headlines about the recent Facebook data controversy. Could you shed some light for us on the issue?

Dennis Yu: Cambridge Analytica bought data from 80 plus million Facebook profiles from a quiz app. While that sounds scary, the reality is there’s little they could have done with that data. A few years ago, Facebook prevented advertisers from loading up user data from apps that aren’t yours.

Jimmy: How do you think the digital marketing will evolve in 2018?

Dennis Yu: Marketing automation and social media will merge– the intersection is mobile.

And while a lot of people are saying “mobile first” and cloud out of fashion, or even building mobile apps for no good purpose, what underlies this is having a single view of the customer across all channels, devices, and experiences. No company does this, so expect the merging of analytics, app, and advertising companies. Expect that most companies will fire their agency to take this in-house since agencies can’t produce content that enthralls the top customers. Only actual customers and zealous employees can do that.

Jimmy: Who do you follow and why?

Dennis: You should check out Logan Young! He is a visionary in digital creating jobs for young adults while selling and training Facebook Ad packages. His work on “The Standards of Excellence” is something to look out for.

J: What is your best advice for marketers?

Dennis: Stop marketing and start getting customers to do your marketing for you. This is another way to say word of mouth marketing is now measurable. Customers can do the work for you, gladly.

You just need to find them and reward them in a non-incentivized way.

J: Thank you for the advice and for your time.

Engaging with Dennis brought us some perspective that has led to my educating others about the basics of the digital marketing field. You too can reach out to the experts in your field of interest. You never know! It may bring you bits of wisdom like this!

Now we have covered some great advice from Dennis Yu:

Ground floor marketing tools to dive into!
The future in analyzing audiences across all platforms at once.
The reality of the most recent data controversy is that consumer data collection is designed for the safety of the consumer.
The value of crafting campaigns with passion! As well predictions for the future of campaigns.
Knowing when to Delegate tasks, Communicate, and teach others!

Now I ask you, the reader: What do you think will come next for social media marketing? Think about the user experience and the strategies of the digital marketer in the ever-changing digital realm. Follow along with the BlitzMetrics blog and social media pages for more!

How Isaac Irvine got 70 million views on his Facebook video, step-by-step

By Dennis Yu Leave a Comment

Meet Isaac and his son, Bodi. Their video drew over 70 million views on CBS, BuzzFeed, and Ellen Nation. Want to know the exact steps they took to go viral?

Have a purpose with the content.

Bodi was bullied at school for his long hair, grown to donate to kids with cancer. Isaac pulled out his phone and made a 2 minute video in the shower, posting it on Facebook and boosting the post.

Use social proof as testimonials to target larger audiences

The local news picked up the story. We boosted that post to people who work in the media– BuzzFeed, Ellen, CBS News, ABC, and so forth. Over 100 targets.

Amplify to media outlet audiences

Other media outlets picked up the story over the next few days. We shared their posts and boosted to a combo audience (their audience and the media workplace target).

Engage the top influencers on the posts

Millions of people watched, commented, and shared the videos from these outlets. We replied to the top influencers, which included other media wanting to run the story, often in another language.

Create follow up content. Keep the viral energy alive.

Outlets worldwide asked him about bullying, how Bodi’s doing, and whether they could share his story. Isaac made follow-on content, so that he wouldn’t be a “one hit wonder”. Using the same style of video, he made more videos on related topics in the same shower location.

Here are some of mentions and shares on Facebook:

Living Tree: 111,000 views
Love What Matters: 522,000 views
China Times: 22,000 views
Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament – Myrtle Beach: 10,000 views
BuzzFeed: 8,669,176 views
Ellen: 2,300 views
The LAD Bible: 5,425,593, views
Café Mom: 100,000 views
Parents: Shared video from Isaac’s page
Mic: 25,724,728 views
Shauna Zeck’s video response with David: 4,300 views
CBS: shared video from Isaac’s page

The feature from Mic drew the most views– over 25 million!

The nearly 400,000 shares on that post is far more impressive than the 26 million views.

Isaac’s video was translated into Chinese for the China Times.

The video even got a response from Medieval Times!

Leverage the viral attention.

Next, Isaac used the momentum from the video to build his personal brand and share his story on what it was like to go viral.

Some videos go viral passively, but you can see here that you can do so intentionally as well. As you get picked up on different outlets, share, and re-boost to their audiences to piggyback off their authority. More outlets pick up your story, and you continue to boost. Isaac’s viral adventure is proof that going viral is an outcome that can be driven by a step-by-step process.

Automotive Social Media Charlatans Exposed

By Marlena Solomon Leave a Comment

I have been a part of the automotive aftermarket for over seven years now. Companies and brands of all shapes and sizes are realizing the relevance and power of social media. While their efforts are admirable, many are not capturing the characteristics of the aftermarket that make it unique from all others. That being said, there is a stark contrast within the measurable, mechanical world of the automotive aftermarket with the fluffy, mysterious world of social.

Bobby Likis host of the Bobby Likis Car Clinic radio show.

So I was wondering…
Does the mechanic ask you what type of wrench to use in fixing your car?

Would you trust a Ferrari mechanic who has never seen a Ferrari before?

Pros fix your problems, have legitimate certifications, and can provide a well-defined outcome with reasonable certainty.

But in social media, we have no such thing yet.
So to avoid being a self-proclaimed social media expert, focus on being a driver (no pun intended) of business value in your area.

There is an assumption that if you know how to post to a social media account is sufficient.
This ability alone does not make you an expert.

The automotive aftermarket segment is like no other, with companies that operate as B2B, B2C and hybrids of both.
Knowing the tone and personality of the brand, and having an understanding of the customer base and audience will allow for good content and even better targeting.

If you don’t know about antifreeze, you’re not going to be able to credibly write content for Prestone.

If you don’t know about how to modify Corvettes for maximum performance, you’ll fail responding to die-hard Lingenfelter fans.

The social media expert dies

Sure, there still will be colleges offering degrees in social media.

And the need for strong measurement in social isn’t going to go away either.

But the one-dimensional social media expert will be extinct.

If you don’t have deep vertical expertise for a particular client, you can’t help them in their social media.

Sorry. Just won’t work.

Your knowledge of how to pin and tweet won’t make up for lack of vertical knowledge.
Same is true for whatever set of tools you employ.

Here’s Rob Schermerhorn, who is a Ferrari mechanic.

Because he’s able to post content that Ferrari owners relate to and because he knows where Ferrari owners hang out (Ferrari Chat), when he runs ads, he gets leads.
This is the GCTA viral cycle:

Goals: Drive leads for his Ferrari tuning service
Content: Lots and lots of examples of him tuning Ferraris over the last 20 years– going faster for cheaper. You’d be surprised at what penny pinchers these guys are, but that’s another story.
Targeting: Ferrari owners, not the 18 year olds who are fans of the Ferrari page. Choose the right interests and demographics. Income works, too.
Amplification: This is where we run ads, but we call it “amplification” instead– the combinations of content and targeting to drive relevant traffic.

These are the mechanics of social media amplification.

Miss any part of this cycle and the wheel collapses.
If you don’t have awesome content, all the analytics and targeting in the world won’t save you.
If you don’t have proper targeting, no amount of measurement or content will win.
If you have clear goals, solid content, and strong targeting, but no amplification– well, you still might win, but you’ll be running on a donut tire.

How are you doing against these factors?

They’re not magical.
It’s just that not many people get this owner’s manual when they get their Facebook page, twitter account, or whatever network profile.

Why are there SO MANY ad networks? How to start YOURS!

By Dennis Yu Leave a Comment

Here’s an article that was in the works from July of 2009 that never saw publication.

While people are no longer building ad networks (that game died 5 years ago), understanding how networks behave is critical if you want to make money via optimization (arbitrage between the supply and demand– the publisher and the advertiser).

Tactics like scrubbing don’t work anymore– but the basic principles never change, which is our reason for reviving this article. The game never changes- SEO Consultants become Social Media Gurus who become Content marketing wizards, and so on- like wolves who discard their worn out old sheep skin only to don another.

Why are there SO MANY ad networks? How to start YOURS!

Every day, another ad network launches. What’s the deal? Google “ad network” and you’ll see 137 million results and see thousands of companies. AdKnowledge, AdBrite, Adfish, Adsdaq, GetAds, E-ads. This evening I was driving down the road and saw a sign for “Be Ad“, before I realized it was just a bead store.

Too many ads!

With Facebook shutting down spammy offers, and even wholesale shutting down a couple ad networks, it will be interesting to see who is left that can monetize the inventory that is in free fall pricing, especially at networks such as RockYou, with over 8 billion impressions a month. It’s no secret that I ran one of the largest Facebook ad networks.

People– there’s cheap inventory on ad networks, if you can find offers that won’t piss off Facebook. Same is true whether you are buying inventory via self-serve PPC or running your own ad network by gathering up a bunch of Facebook publishers. You could cloak, but that’s a short-term solution.

Regardless, the ad networks are taking margins of 45-60%. If you’re a publisher, you’re likely also aware that you’re being ripped off blind.

Thus, if you want to start your own ad network, here’s what to do:

Put up a site: Call it AwesomeFacebookAds.com, SuperDopeAdNetwork.com, MyFirstNameMedia.com, or something like that. Make sure you have the word “ad” or “media” in the name. Have a wordpress front-end with images of hundred dollar bills, Ferrari’s, and hot models– that will attract attention. These Facebook pubs are kids and such advertising will appeal to them.
Set up your ad server: Use OpenAds (now called OpenX, used to be called phpadsnew), or Google Ad Manager (yeah, Google’s offering is pretty slick). If you have a few Gs, then license LinkTrust, which will allow you to scrub your affiliates– else do DirectTrack, where you can manually scrub (remove leads, for noobs that don’t know what scrubbing is).
Start recruiting pubs: You don’t have the money to front your network, nor do you actually have unique offers, so blather on about how you have the best payouts, treat pubs right, pay on time, and so forth. They won’t know any better, especially if you post pictures of yourself in front of cars and houses that you don’t own. So start hitting up the top Facebook pubs– you can install their app and friend them. Easy!
Run the traffic through your domain: Not a tracking domain, but the site you set up in step 1. That will pump up your Alexa rating and perhaps even your HitWise and Comscore rankings.
Set up a progressive scrub: Initially, you need to make publishers happy, so take only 5-10%. After a week or two, while they’re not paying attention, start dialing it up to 20%, 30%, and higher. You might even get to 70 or 80%– I was able to with a lot of folks. If they notice, then give them one of these convenient excuses:
- Your traffic just doesn’t back out
- We should try some fresh offers– your ads are burning out
- The Advertiser doesn’t like your traffic
- Maybe there’s something wrong with your tracking
- I’ll look into that and get back to you (and, of course, you don’t)
Use your excess money to promote the network: Even if you don’t have the cash, by paying your publishers slowly, you can effectively finance your operations through what is called a “reverse float”. In other words, you’re getting paid by your advertisers (or ad network) before you pay out your affiliates. Get a black card, which has double duty of earning you points and impressing the chicks. If you’re running at 60%+ margins like most networks, you’ll be ballin‘ in no time.

I was only partially kidding here, as the examples I’ve listed here are taken from real experience.

And I will admit that we had our own Facebook advertising network, for which there was no scrub. Honestly, the barriers to entry were so low that anyone could have started their own ad network.

But as the competition increased and both advertisers and publishers got smarter, you can be assured the profits were competed down to nothing.

By the way, if you want to learn more about Internet Marketing, I’d encourage you to sign up for MariMetrics.

Want to read more by Dennis Yu? For more content follow him here:

http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/author/dennis

https://www.facebook.com/dennisyu

https://twitter.com/dennisyu

How much should I charge for social media consulting?

By Dennis Yu Leave a Comment

If you’re a freelancer, charging by the hour is a good way to start. Time is an approximate measure of value and reduces risk to you on scope creep. Clients understand billable hours, as do project management systems.

Yet, tracking time can be painful. And time spent is not an approximation of value. A few quick tweaks to a $10,000 per month ad campaign can produce thousands of dollars of on-going monthly value.

Consider that some universities now offer social media courses that give certifications, like Pepperdine University, who offers a few programs: Social Media Professional Certification for $1500 and a Social Media Strategist for $2500. Takes about 30 course hours to complete- Not bad, since according to Glassdoor (a salary / employment data aggregate), the average social media pro makes around $50k / year.

And you know consultants who charge a lot less than you would, but they either take much longer or can’t even do what you do. The hourly model rewards people who take longer, punishing the good guys. So you certainly don’t want to compete on hourly rate, unless you are an offshoring company.

But wage slaves can sometimes get $997/hour (that’s my rate), but it requires you to do a lot of speaking and publishing to build up your reputation– a bigger investment well over 30 hours.

So how do you graduate from being an hourly wage slave to a business owner charging what you’re worth?

You need to charge percentage of spend or a flat monthly retainer. Percentage of spend usually means 5-15% of spend with a monthly minimum. 10% of $5,000 per month is $500, so decide how much effort a client is.

Could be great or could be a nightmare depending on the expectations and how much effort you need. By not doing hourly, you have to limit scope more carefully, of course– and that means you have to set strict package offerings like our Express Digital Plumbing Package.

You cannot graduate from hourly to retainer/spend pricing without this structure in place, lest you risk random outcomes and uneven client expectations.

Perhaps the biggest challenge of packaged offerings is getting the set-up bits done.

That means getting necessary access to the accounts, creating them (if necessary), and being super clear on GCT (goals, content, targeting).
The bigger players will have an on-boarding process handled by a separate team.

But if you’re small, then use a series of forms (Infusionsoft, Google Docs, others) to make sure the prerequisites are out of the way before starting.

If you’re really smart, you’ll put these online to qualify anyone who might be a client. Just make sure you have a process in place, as Mike Gingerich of Tabsite suggests:

“The shift to digital over the past few years has created a wave of opportunity for new entrepreneurs. The ‘online business’ model has exploded but, as many who jump in find out, it’s not simply a matter of posting your website on social media and watching clients roll in!

It’s important to have a plan and a process. Most people who take the entrepreneurial plunge have somewhat of a plan, but few have a process and this is the big gap! The onboarding and business processes you have help you qualify clients, give you a complete and clear plan to demonstrate your competence to prospective clients, and it gives you a clear checklist and scope from which you can evaluate your costs.

My advice… spend as much, if not more time, on the process than on the plan because the process ultimately guides the plan!”

Then no more free consulting calls, which wastes your time and reduces your effective rate. It’s not that all potential clients are freetards, but that you must set clear expectations of what you do and don’t do. Instead of having to repeat these bits endlessly, write it down, record a video, and you’ll never need to say it again.

If you’re a solo consultant, it’s easier to get away with no process. With just a few long-term clients, you’re not going to need to acquire new business or explain what you do.

But maybe you want to be a business, not freelancer/consultant. And if you believe in packages, driven by checklists, then you’d naturally take the next step to have others follow your checklists, buoyed by training you create. That means you have to package up what you know into checklists for repeatable excellence.

So do you want to keep working in your business or on your business? Continue to be tortured by the E-Myth with dreams of a 4 Hour Workweek or actually be a Checklist Manifesto disciple?

Invest 30 minutes to systematize your expertise and watch this: eventualmillionaire.com/dennisyu/

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