Next Digital Marketing Test: Facebook Ads

Last week I wrote about Google AdWords after we started an ad campaign and began tracking the results. I took it upon myself to also start an ad campaign on Facebook, since I had heard that it’s easy to use and produces great results. As with Google, I used my own website Supraterranean.com for the test. After trying Facebook ads myself, I think it’s safe to say that those claims are correct. In just over a week’s time, my ad got 85,000 impressions and 25 clicks. You can specify your daily budget and CPC bid. I set both of mine pretty low, so I’ve only spent $4.55 so far. I was able to design the ad myself (preferably a 4×3 image) and target people by age, geography, and keyword.

After the ad goes live, Facebook provides easy-to-use diagnostic tools so I can evaluate ad performance. Their graphs are clear and attractive. Facebook also gives you the option for the ad to appear with social actions from certain groups or pages. I set my ad to appear with social actions from the Supraterranean.com group.

Now it’s necessary to compare with Google Adwords. My ad there was created about two weeks ago. In that time, it’s had 75,000 impressions and 13 clicks. That means that Adwords is performing at about half the productivity of Facebook ads! Granted, the success of Google Adwords might have more to do with how well I’ve completed search engine optimization for my site. Those 13 Adwords clicks have cost me $3.33, which means I’m also getting more of my money’s worth on Facebook. I plan to use both Adwords and Facebook for future digital marketing efforts. But as of now, more of my energy will go into Facebook.

Optimizing Social Harbor for Smooth Sailing

This week we’re working to optimize Social Harbor for search engines. I’m taking it on from the perspective of search engine optimization (SEO) as a service offered. Social Harbor (owned and operated by Ingenex Digital Marketing) provides professional profile management. In other words, if you work with Social Harbor, they will make it easy for people to find information about you that you want them to find. In plain terms, if they pop your name into a Google search box, they will find credible information instead of a photo of you winning last year’s pie eating contest.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is no easy process. Social Harbor will put in the time necessary, using competitive analysis to choose the best keywords to optimize your site. Part of the goal is to drive traffic to the client’s site, and that is achieved with active links in the search results. As I’ve realized (and written about) over the past few weeks, the Internet has become a cluttered place. It’s almost necessary to have Facebook and LinkedIn accounts…but it doesn’t end there. There are now dozens of social media sites, for networking, sharing, cooperation, and communicating. Social Harbor brings the professional ones to the foreground, so that your recreational and leisure online activities don’t dilute your professional image.

Through my own research to optimize Social Harbor, I chose some of the following keywords: SEO, SEO search, SEO engine optimization, Michigan SEO consultants, Michigan SEO webdesign. These will be implemented in the content of the Social Harbor site, to maximize the efficiency of those keywords.

Web 2.0 Overload

We got busy in our internship right away, and it looks like we’ll keep a steady pace throughout the fall “semester” (quotes included because I may be finished with school for good). During our first session, Derek Mehraban (of Ingenex Digital Marketing) helped us create a profile and content on many different social media/networking websites. Some I had already done myself, like Facebook, LinkedIn, and WordPress blogs. Some I had never even heard of before, like AboutUs.org (click here for my new AboutUs Ingenex profile), ZoomInfo.com, and Naymz.com. Others I had caught wind of, but hadn’t yet grasped the purpose: Twitter and Technorati.

You might be thinking what I’m thinking. With all those sites to maintain and coordinate, doesn’t it get a little confusing or overwhelming? Coincidentally, there was a New York Times article published this week addressing this very issue. The article posed the question, “How many is too many?”

One solution offered was FriendFeed, a site indented to manage different web tools and services. I had seen the widget on Derek’s Facebook page. I set up my own feed — which shows up on the FriendFeed website AND my Facebook page — that automatically lists my posts on two blogs, and updates from Digg.com, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I think that’s a pretty useful way to organize what I’m doing online, and a convenient way to share those activities with others.

Another concern expressed in the article is that, at the current pace of development, even Web 2.0-savvy individuals will have trouble adopting new technologies and web tools. In other words, we’re entering a very confusing time, bent on finding the best way to use the Internet to do…whatever it is we need to do. By this time, I’m pretty used to the confusion. I’m a huge music fan, and the world of music has been in a state of mass confusion since peer-to-peer networks emerged in the late ’90s. So I figure that this moment of web tool confusion will segue to a stable moment, and of course that moment will be defined by some other kind of confusion or transition.

For now, I’ll be using FriendFeed to coordinate the madness.