Misadventures Experimenting with Facebook Ads

Posted in Facebook on July 21st 2010
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I’ve got a lot of big things planned for Haunt Jaunts in addition to my Haunt Jaunts Monetizing Project. Well, I should say related to that. One of them was ramping up my ads…the ones I put out there, not the ones I publish to try and earn money.

Yesterday I got to messing around with Facebook ads. I’ve tinkered with them before, but I never actually placed one. Yesterday I did –but I sort of messed up.

As is usually how I operate, I got a little confused. I put in $30.00 for the amount I wanted to spend. I thought it meant the per month amount you wanted to spend.

Something gnawed at me after and told me to go back and double check what I’d just done. To my horror I discovered I’d specified I wanted to spend $30 per day on an ad campaign!

Gulp! It’s not that much money for a business with a dedicated ad revenue, but for me? Whoops! That’s a little too much.

I quickly deleted the ad.

But that’s when I’d discovered my whoops had an unexpected and unintended immediate side effect: in the three minutes (if it was even that) that it took me to realize my mistake, I’d increased my Facebook page fans by 50%!

If I’ve done my math correctly, which, as this post proves, I’m prone to mistakes. Also, math is not my strong point. But I went from 76 fans to 115 just like that. (Well, just like that and $30.)

So do Facebook ads work? Apparently. And they are WAY more effective than I ever expected.

I placed another ad, this time one my budget can handle. Oh, and I did per impression ads instead of per click. That was another mistake I’d made first time around. I chose the latter instead of specifying the former. (Under Advanced Options, which I failed to click the first go around.)

So now we’ll see what kind of effect this has. How many more fans will the cheaper ads bring to HJ’s FB page? Any? How many of those fans will click through to my blog’s links? What effect will that have on my revenue streams?

Time will tell…and so will I when I have more data.

PUT IT IN PRACTICE

Have you ever posted an ad on Facebook for your business? What were the results?

If you answered no to the above: Have you ever thought about posting experimental ads just to see what might happen? What’s stopped you?

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Week 1 Results of Haunt Jaunts Monetizing Project

Posted in Blogging on July 20th 2010
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How’s week one of my Haunt Jaunts Monetizing Project (HJMP) going?

Step 1 was to focus on Bounce Rate Redux. Part of that was doing a blog redesign. Done. There are some aspects I can still improve, but overall I have the groundwork laid.

Did it have any effect on my bounce rate? Slightly. It’s down 1% from last week.

Gotta start somewhere, right? We’ll see if I can implement a few more things to lower that even further.

One thing I’m going to try and do is focus on Step 2. (Which I’ll write about in another blog.)

However, I did see some amazing results in ad revenue. Not that I made any big money. Still in the pennies category, but I haven’t seen this kind of increase in my blog’s history before.

The ads I saw the big bump on were my Project Wonderful ads. They’ve been traveling at about $0.03 for the past week/week and a half. Which I was happy about because that was up from $0.02 for the 2 weeks prior.

However, there was a point in time when they’d been at $0.00 for almost a month. That got me very worried. For the past few months they’ve been about $0.02. A few times they’ve spiked to $0.04, even $0.05. The most they’d ever been was $0.07.

Anyway, to see it hanging in there steady at $0.03 was a-okay. It’s not much, but it’s better than $0.00!

But yesterday I about fell over when I saw $0.40 in the ad box. Say what?

I blinked several times thinking I’d misread it. Nope. 40 cents.

But today it skyrocketed to $1.10 at one point! A whole dollar! Okay, it may be nuts to get excited over $1, but if you’ve read all the way to this point I’m willing to bet you’re trying to figure out how to get your blog to do that, too.

With PW ads I can tell you hits most definitely matter. I’ve seen Haunt Jaunts’ spike this past week. (In part due to my increased SEO efforts, but also I got some help in the form of two other blogs featuring mine last week. Very nice surprise!)

As I’m writing this the ad bids have dropped to $0.70. Still, that really beats $0.03!

So now I’m going to ramp up Steps 2 and 3 of the HJMP and see what kinds of hits I can bring in and what impacts it has on my revenue streams.

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Step 1 in HJMP: Bounce Rate Redux

Posted in Making Money on July 14th 2010
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My first project in the Haunt Jaunts Monetizing Project (HJMP) is improving my stats. Javier Ortega stresses that a lot in his book Paranormal Gold. Along with “Content is king,” which is probably the thing he stressed most.

I have decent content. (Don’t get me wrong. That can always stand improving.) But my hits have steadily increased. Not into the thousands like Javier’s numbers, but they’ve climbed.

I know better content and maybe more focus on SEO will help that. That’s something I’ll implement in Step 2. But for now I’m concerned with my bounce rate. Which, until Javier explained it in his book, I didn’t understand the importance of.

I check my Google Analytic stats regularly. Javier’s book explains why this is not only a good thing, but crucial to a blog’s success. However, understanding the numbers and working with them is even better. And while you mostly want high stats (i.e. for hits and such) there’s one that you want as low as possible: your bounce rate.

My bounce rate on Haunt Jaunts is a rather high 75%. So I’ve taken a couple of key steps to reduce it:

  1. Blog Redesigned -  My friend Nathan from A State of Mind has had me thinking about this one for a while now. He suggested I remove some widgets from my sidebars and make things less cluttered. Trouble is, I’m a bit of a pack rat. I had a hard time parting with some things. (Even though I knew he was right.) However, both he and Javier’s blog, GhostTheory, get great hits.  I analyzed their blogs. In addition to minimal widgets, they’re also both set up in a magazine-style. I’ve been eyeing that option for a while now. After reading Paranormal Gold I finally decided to implement it. Why? Because I don’t “give it up” all on the first page. If you want to read an article, you have to click through.
  2. Lead Them to the Blog, Not Away – This also kind of goes with #1. I think it’s why Nathan suggested I take down some of my widgets. So many of them lead people away. Nathan, as do I, subscribes to the “give out information” rule of blogging. I thought by being a place with links to ghost tours, other paranormal sites, etc I was providing useful info. I was, but now I understand why Nathan suggested if I want to keep those things to create a separate page for them. It’s all about the Bounce Rate. Unwittingly I was encouraging readers to go elsewhere instead of checking out my site more. So I took down some of the widgets and replaced them with ones that will direct people to other stories within my blog.

We’ll see how this works. If my Bounce Rate stays high, then I have to go back to Square 1 (which comes even before Step 1) and focus on Javier’s suggestion for the best foundation of any blog: content. Because at the end of the day it appears the bounce rate is the best indicator of how good a blog’s content is.

PUT IT IN PRACTICE

Do you know your bounce rate?

What steps do you take to keep it low?

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Haunt Jaunts’ Monetizing Project Using “Paranormal Gold”

Posted in Making Money on July 12th 2010
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As anyone can tell from my AdSense and Amazon ads on my blogs, I’m interested in my monetizing my blogs. I know people who make money from their blogs, and better money than the pennies I tend to average. Trouble is, I don’t know how they do it. And when I ask them, they’re usually pretty tight lipped.

But one paranormal blogger I admire very much was amazingly generous with his knowledge. His name is Javier Ortega and he runs GhostTheory.

But I have to back up. When I first started asking Javier questions, it was more to know how he got the kind of traffic and hits he did on a daily basis and how he got his blog listed in the News portion of Google Alerts. Because that’s where I’d often see his articles popping up in my Google Alerts: news not blogs.

He said, “You know, I had started a rough draft of an ebook that tells how I not only did that, but also earned money from my blog.”

It took me a while to get around to reading it, but last night I finally did. (He sent me this golden info back in February.)

But I’m actually glad I read it now. What he had to say made more sense to me now than it would have back then.

His knowledge was so priceless I wanted to pay him for it. I went to his blog to see if he had a donate button. I’ve used such buttons to pay people for Wordpress themes, tips, fonts or graphics or what not before. It only seemed fair I should do that for Javier.

Instead I found out he’d finally published his book and called it Paranormal Gold. He’s selling it for only $10.

Which, okay, granted it’s just a short book. Maybe 55 pages. It’s a super fast read. But it’s also loaded with information packed into those 55 pages about how to make money with a blog. And it’s not just the standard tips: SEO, affiliate marketing, blah, blah, blah. He gives details like I’ve never seen before on specifically how to put all those pieces together to maximize earnings.

So now I’m going to revamp Haunt Jaunts and see if I can start upping my earnings. And hopefully I’ll be disciplined about sharing what works and what doesn’t here.

Do you have any neat tips you’ve found useful for monetizing your blog?

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Keeping an Eye on Tontine Massacre’s Social Media Strategy

Posted in Examples on June 28th 2010
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Today I stumbled across a neat example of an upcoming movie, Tontine Massacre, using social media to drive hype. (Think Paranormal Activity.)

Well, I actually found it via an old school method: an ad. But it was via an ad on my Haunt Jaunts blog. One that cost them, literally, all of three cents to post.

So they combined the old with the new there, but they’ve also been making the Twitter and Facebook rounds.

Tontine Massacre on Facebook

Tontine Massacre on Twitter

It’s their Facebook method I’m most excited and impressed about though.

The ad on Haunt Jaunts led me to their “Watch Trailer” Tontine Massacre Facebook page tab. Because I like both Reality TV shows and horror movies, it automatically appealed to me.

The trailer evoked flashbacks to Paranormal Activity’s trailer a là showing audience reactions during a screening. They might be copycating that technique a smidge there, but hey. If it’s effective, why not? (And I do believe that was a very effective component of Paranormal Activity’s hype machine. It was provocative. You wanted to know what they were watching that made them jump out of their seats.)

However, something fresh that’s entirely their own spin (or at least this is the first time I’m seeing it; I have to admit I don’t follow all that many movies on Facebook): they’re offering a free sneak peek on July 1.

To be granted “exclusive access” all a person has to do is “like” their page. The viewing will be online. If there’s enough demand from that, guess what happens next? Yep, it’ll hit theaters nationwide.

I love an underdog, but ultimately the proof is always in the pudding. Let’s hope they whipped up a tantalizing batch that has people demanding more.

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The Downsides of Being a Blogger-for-Hire

Posted in "Net"working, Blogging on April 12th 2010
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“For a social media consultant, you sure don’t write much on your own blog.”

It’s true. That’s one of the downsides of being a blogger-for-hire. There’s not been much time for my own blog because I’ve been super busy the last couple of weeks…

  • talking with potential new clients,
  • developing analysis & evaluation reports,
  • handling my blogging duties for both Haunt Jaunts and Maggie’s Station.

But that’s also a good thing. I’ve had a chance to hone my business mission and philosophy. I’ve also had a chance to figrue out how I’ll answer some tough questions, such as:

  1. How do you measure ROI?
  2. How much do you charge?
  3. What kind of specific services can you provide to me and my company?

To #1 my answer is: It’s a little trickier measuring ROI than you would with traditional advertising, but we can definitely figure out ways to gauge it. If you sell something and we run an Internet discount campaign separate from your regular advertising, we can measure how much response we got to that from the amount of time put in promoting it and compare how it stacked up against your traditional advertising efforts. Also, we can judge it via the parameters of how many fans/followers you’ve added in X amount of time, if interaction is increasing (more comments, likes, RTs and such), what people respond to most, etc. Basically, we have to identify what goals you want to accomplish and then we can gauge the ROI.

To #2 my answer is: I charge $30 per hour and design custom packages based on how many hours a month I estimate a social media campaign will require. For instance, I just quoted Max Muscles Cool Springs two social media campaign packages: a client’s choice two network combo pack at 20 hours a month and “The Works” 40 hour a month package. So that’s either $600 or $1,200 a month depending which choice, if any, works best for them.

To #3 my answer is: Anything. I can set up a blog, handle social networking accounts (be they big ones like Facebook and Twitter to niche or boutique ones like those found on Ning networks), identify topical influencers and interact with them, create not only a YouTube channel but also content, participate in forums, and much more. Basically, my job if you hire me to do it is to identify the top social media outlets and then cultivate them to grow your brand, message, presence, and personality.

I know what I can do and offer and I’m more confident than ever that I can deliver quality services. So I may not have had a chance to blow my own horn here much. That’s okay. I’ve always been taught to “show not tell.” That’s what I’ve been doing. Showing I know how to get a job done with the other sites I handle.

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Twitter Tuesdays: Great Follow Friday Advice

Posted in "Net"working, Tips & Tricks, Twitter on April 6th 2010
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The past couple of Follow Fridays I’ve noticed a trend: some Tweeters were getting more personal with their #FF shout outs.

I don’t mean “personal” as in they were getting mean and nasty or anything. Maybe “specialized” would be a better word choice. Instead of just lumping a bunch of names together, they had only a couple and said something specific about each.

I’m going to use my friends Nathan and Chad as examples.

@ASTATEOFMIND

Nathan maintains the blog A State of Mind and is a great Tweeter. He really gets how Twitter works.

He’s also been one of Haunt Jaunts biggest allies on Twitter pretty much from the day he first started following. (In fact, he was so good I bestowed an HJ Best of 2009 award on him.)

Here was the #FF shout out he sent last week.

AStateOfMind #ff @HauntJaunts for writing great paranormal & ghost tours blog @sethanikeem I have no idea why but she attract people :)

He’d done something similar the week before too. I thought it, “Wow. That was nice of him to specifically point me out like that two weeks in a row. Why am I so deserving?”

But he wasn’t the only one…

@CHATEAUGRRR

Chad, aka the Crypt Kicker, runs a website called Chateau Grrr. I met him after Nathan, but from the moment we met it was also a Twitter alliance at first site.

Chad also understands the power of Twitter and social networking. He definitely rivals, if not full on surpasses, Nathan for being my biggest RT proponent.

Here was the #FF shout out he bestowed on me last Friday:

chateaugrrr #FF love: @HauntJaunts for great supernatural get-aways! @MoonSpectre for a deeper blog; @WildClawTheatre for $5 Easter Legion tix!!

Again, I was totally flattered. He’d already clinched a spot on my Top Tweeters list. That only served to make it more solid.

THE TWITIP ARTICLE

I’m always behind on reading my RSS feeds. When I finally had a chance to catch up on my TwiTips feed this past weekend, this article jumped out at me: The #1 Secret to Follow Friday Success.

Guess what it suggested doing? Exactly what Nathan and Chad were.

“By taking an extra five minutes to break apart your #ff tweets and doing individual #ff tweets instead, you’re showing your followers that you value something specific about what they’re doing. It’s another level of respect you’re paying forward to the folks you value in your Twitter stream.” ~~ Dayne Shuda (@dayneshuda), “The #1 Secret to Follow Friday Success.”~~

Nathan and Chad have now raised the benchmark. I want to make sure they don’t get lost in my #FF shuffle anymore, and I want to do the same for a couple other Tweeters I prize.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL FRIDAY

A new, but proving to be another powerful Twitter ally, is Mommy D. (Her real name is Dinell, but Mommy D’s how I’ve come to know and think of her.)

Her para-blog is the Weekly Spectre. @MommyDsKitchen did a “just because she felt like it” #follow shout out Saturday. Between her, Chad and Nathan, the seed was planted.

This morning on Twitter I noticed one of the Trending Topics was “It’s Followback Time.” I took advantage of it to give some personalized #follow mentions to those who had taken the time to do the same for me.

Because did it play to my ego when they did it to me? You bet.

Have those Tweeters made themselves stand out in my mind? You better believe it.

Do I have a special fondness for them and will I go out of my way to RT their Tweets and such? Without a doubt.

PUT IT IN PRACTICE

Start participating in Follow Friday if you’re not already.

Keep the “pack” #FFs but give them a little extra attention by grouping similar Tweeters into like categories. (For instance, list your Fave Foodie Tweeps. Create a “#FF luv to my fave foodie Tweeps” list that you can copy and paste each week.)

Take a few moments to create a list of Tweeters you like most and who help you out most. Bestow custom #follow or #FF mentions on those Tweeters who make your list.

(This week I’m taking my own “Put it in practice” advice and making lists galore. Next Follow Friday I’ll be posting grouped and specialized #FFs. And since I should only have to copy & paste, it might even make it all go quicker! Which is another bonus: helping to make #FFs more manageable when you have a lot of followers you want to give #FF luv to!)

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Do You Have a Blogroll?

Posted in Blogging on March 31st 2010
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I’ve noticed, particularly with Wordpress blog bloggers, that not all include blogrolls. Which, particularly with Wordpress blogs, is understandable.

Wordpress allows users to give their blogs more of a website feel and less of a blog one. All those links on a blogroll can just add clutter and confusion to your sidebar(s).

However, it doesn’t have to be called a blogroll. It can be called:

  • Useful Sites
  • Blogs We Dig/Love/Like
  • Fresh Finds
  • Writers with Style
  • Funny Folks
  • Sassy Sirens

You catch my drift? Whatever the focus of your blog is, you can name your blogroll according to that. If it’s fitness, you can have Fit Freaks as your blogroll’s title.

In fact, the more clever you can be the better. It gives your blog more personality. (Which helps make your blog stand out.)

Also, when bloggers see their blog under your Blogs We Love listing, what do you think that does? Makes them pretty excited about your blog, and guess what? If you’re not already listed on theirs, blog world etiquette usually finds them reciprocating with a link. Sometimes they’ll even take the time to devote a post to you.

I do this a lot with Haunt Jaunts. If I find a blog, site,  podcast, personality, etc. that I’m really excited about, I take time to research them and do a write-up. Lately Haunt Jaunts has even had the good fortune to be the feature posts on some other blogs. (Ones I hadn’t featured first. Etiquette doesn’t dictate it, but I made sure to feature them in kind too. It’s just good policy.)

You want people to link to you. You want to make it on their blogroll. It has all sorts of benefits from increasing your search engine ranking to giving you free advertising and name recognizability.

But what about those “blogs” imitating websites who don’t want blogrolls? Should they still have them?

Yes.

Even if they set up a separate page for them and label them “Resources” so as not to clutter their sidebar, links are essential. It shows you know who’s who in your field or area of expertise.

Plus, no matter how you spin it, it’s just good politics. Because you always have to keep in mind that blogs are social media. (Some even would say they’re the hubs. And for many businesses this is true.)

You want to nurture and finesse your online relationships just as you would your face-to-face ones. Blogrolls provide an excellent, super easy way to do this.

PUT IT IN PRACTICE

Take a look at your blogroll (if you have one). Do you have the blogs (if applicable) of your key contacts listed? (This means any vendors, designers, webmasters, clients, etc.)

Who follows you and regularly leaves comments on your posts? Do they have blogs? Make sure to list them and acknowledge their “patronage.”

If you don’t have a blogroll, consider putting the above in place and adding one. (Even if it’s just listed as a resource.)

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Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint: Social Media Served Up Southern Style

Posted in Examples on March 29th 2010
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If you’ve ever been to Nolensville, a little town south of Nashville, Tennessee, you know it’s just that: little. There’s not much there. Some homes, a couple of churches, a few antique stores, and a handful of eateries, the biggest of which are perhaps the Sonic and Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint, affectionately known simply as Martin’s.

Martin’s recently moved from a smaller structure on the west side of Nolensville Pike to a brand-new building across the street (actually, right in Sonic’s backyard). The location might have changed, and the outside is now brick rather than wood, but the inside and the food is still the same: distinctive and yummy.

We only live a little over 10 minutes from Nolensville. My husband and I often go down to Martin’s. (It’s about the best BBQ in town really.) Last Saturday was our first experience in the new digs.

But in addition to taking in the new scenery, this time I noticed something I hadn’t before: a sign explaining to follow them on Twitter and Facebook for deals.

Brilliant!

I never would’ve suspected Martin’s (a) even had a website (which it seems like they might have had for a while and which I’m sure they’ll be updating soon because the image on front is of the old restaurant), and (b) that they’d use social media.

But they do, and they’re doing it right. Here’s some examples of how:

  • They’re letting people know where to find them. Inside the store I saw the sign advertising they were on Twitter and Facebook. Same on their website. Boom! Right there are the Twitter and Facebook icons. Perfect examples of “let ‘em know where to find you and they will come.”
  • I noticed on their Facebook page they let fans leave comments. Most fans leave high praise the food, but some also leave complaints. Martin’s has answered all of those with apologies and promises to fix the hiccups. (They just moved to the new location and have incorporated more tech there too. There’s now a drive-thru and a whole computerized register system I don’t recall them having at the old store. So, yes, there probably are a few kinks to work out.) But that’s the brilliance of Facebook and Twitter: it gives their patrons a way to give them immediate feedback, and it gives Martin a way to immediately respond and let their patrons know their opinions are valued.
  • Twitter lets their personality shine through. On Twitter they’re a little less formal than they come across on Facebook, and a bit more relaxed. They’re Tweets included talking about problems they’d had with getting the new place built and then up and running. But I noticed they also interact with customers there too. Which is fantastic, because that’s what people want.

All around, Martin’s seems to be demonstrating an effective way to use social media to keep their clients engaged and informed, all of which serves the greater purpose of endearing customers to them and ensuring repeat and loyal patronage.

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How Many Social Networking Sites Should You Be On?

Posted in "Net"working on March 26th 2010
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Ideally, as many as possible. Realistically, how much time you have to dedicate to social networking will determine which ones you can handle.

If you’re working a day job, have kids and a spouse, it’s not likely that you’ll have a ton of extra time to devote to maintaining a blog, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. You’ll want to maximize your time and efforts. If this situation fits you, I recommend:

  • Concentrating on your blog. Interact with readers who leave comments. Worry most about keeping your posts fresh and consistent.
  • If you have time for Twitter and/or a Facebook fan page (which should be separate from your personal Facebook page), great. Interact on them as much as possible, but only as time allows. Don’t get distratced with them.
  • Same goes for other blogs. If you have time to follow other blogs and foster relationships with other bloggers, great! It can only help you. If not, don’t sweat it.

If you’re a SAHM, work part time, or for whatever reason have more flexibility in your schedule and have a wee bit more time to spend on social networking, I recommend the following:

  • Be a regular reader and leave comments on other blogs. Especially the ones that  follow you. That’s your reader base after all. You want to develop a relationship with them. But we all have those blogs we enjoy, admire and aspire to be like. Make sure to be a regular commenter on those too.
  • Spend time familiarizing yourself with Twitter and Facebook. (Also YouTube if applicable for your topic/area of interest.) Get active on whichever one suits you most. They are truly awesome resources for connecting to others, be it an audience or consumer base, resources or contacts.

If you own you’re own small business, I recommend:

  • Hiring at least a part time person to be in charge of all of your company’s social media needs, or outsourcing the tasks to someone such as myself. Part of your traditional marketing budget could easily be reallocated to such a position. A good social media savvy person will be able to bring in PR, new customers and nurture existing business at not only a lower rate than your traditional marketing budget allows for, but they’ll also do it with more personal, and therefore targeted, results.

If you own a medium or larger sized business, I recommend:

  • Definitely creating a social media position (or department) in your company, or outsourcing it. The bigger you are, the more your clients are going to want to find, track, keep up, follow, and overall have a way to interact with you. Social networking can transform your company from a cold, unapproachable monolith to a warm, beckoning oasis. People want to be warm and beckoned. They like it. And if people like it, they want to give their business, attention, and loyalty to it.

MYSPACE

I didn’t mention it above when I listed Twitter or Facebook, but MySpace is still a viable social networking site too. It’s just not as popular or well utilized anymore as Twitter or Facebook.

Put it this way, it’s kind of like Target, Walmart and Kmart. Kmart’s still around, but Target and Walmart have really emerged as consumer favorites.

That’s what’s happened in the case of Twitter and Facebook. They’ve become the preferred choices for mass social networking.

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