Guruprasad Nagarajan's Blog - Posts Tagged "facebook-ads"
Disliking the fb 'like' button
I’ve always, almost always, disliked the fb 'like'button and how casually people click that. It's like a bodily function. Liking some post is fine, but it seems a large bunch of people people sit around waiting to see how quickly they can hit the like button, regardless of the nature of the posts. You could post something bad about the like button, for instance, and they will click it anyway. Because it’s easy to do, costs nothing and makes you feel like you are doing the guy a favour.
There’s a reason for the rant. I just finished my second burst of ad campaigns on facebook to promote my ebook (a short story collection called Ten Twisted Tales, inspired by Dahl and O’Henry) and all I got was these stupid 'likes'. On my first foray into fb ads, I chose right hand column ad, ran for a week, and got a lot of traffic but no sale. That cost me around $39. The second time around, I chose both right hand column ad and the newsfeed ad. While I got ‘likes’ from total strangers, none of it resulted in a sale. This time, I ran it for 2 days and set the budget to $3 daily.
I ran another ad to promote my ebook on creating a website for beginners with a launch price of 99 cents, again, a lot of traffic but no sale. I stopped this after a day. I used the conversion metrics which measures the effectiveness of your campaign by asking you to copy/poste a script on to your web page’s header tag. Doesn't help much to know that a lot of people come to your and buy nothing.
I’m going to try Google Adwords. Let’s see how that goes. Right now Weebly is giving a promo, you spend $50 and they give $150 worth of voucher free. I’m told Adwords works when people are already searching for a product related to what you are selling.
On the flip side, you learn by trial and error, and that much more informed the next time around. Which means I’m not going to spend on fb ads. Am sure there will be ‘likes’ for that too
(I posted this at my site www.guruswriting.com)
There’s a reason for the rant. I just finished my second burst of ad campaigns on facebook to promote my ebook (a short story collection called Ten Twisted Tales, inspired by Dahl and O’Henry) and all I got was these stupid 'likes'. On my first foray into fb ads, I chose right hand column ad, ran for a week, and got a lot of traffic but no sale. That cost me around $39. The second time around, I chose both right hand column ad and the newsfeed ad. While I got ‘likes’ from total strangers, none of it resulted in a sale. This time, I ran it for 2 days and set the budget to $3 daily.
I ran another ad to promote my ebook on creating a website for beginners with a launch price of 99 cents, again, a lot of traffic but no sale. I stopped this after a day. I used the conversion metrics which measures the effectiveness of your campaign by asking you to copy/poste a script on to your web page’s header tag. Doesn't help much to know that a lot of people come to your and buy nothing.
I’m going to try Google Adwords. Let’s see how that goes. Right now Weebly is giving a promo, you spend $50 and they give $150 worth of voucher free. I’m told Adwords works when people are already searching for a product related to what you are selling.
On the flip side, you learn by trial and error, and that much more informed the next time around. Which means I’m not going to spend on fb ads. Am sure there will be ‘likes’ for that too
(I posted this at my site www.guruswriting.com)
How to solve the 'target audience not going beyond 20 problem' in facebook ads.
Ok, a quick post on a rather painful 20 plus hours trying to create a Facebook ad for this site. After being anti social for quite a while, mainly put off by people who 'liked' everything from status updates on food to posts on violence to animals (shouldn't there be a 'dislike' button for certain posts?), I decided to go back to facebook to let my friends know about my recent endeavours in the e-publishing area.
A week or so of researching and reading up on the subject and taking a course on Udemy which was very helpful, I decided to step into the unknown waters of social media ads with caution. Start with a small amount, they said, hence. This is what happened:
I went to the page I created for my ebooks on fb, and created an ad, went through the process fairly smoothly till I got to the payment page. I paid through Paypal, and the page went straight back to 'create an ad' page again, with no confirmation of any kind. And facebook is not known for reverting to customers is what I gathered when I entered my question in the search bar(also learnt that I wasn't the only one with this issue). Then someone in the forum suggested using Power Editor but that works only on Chrome, so did that. It must be one of the clunkiest pieces of software/tools that I've worked with in my life. After wrestling with it for a while (you have to hit the Campaign tab, create a campaign, and then create an ad, and hit upload button), I was puzzled by the audience reach which was 20. It just wouldn't go beyond that ridiculous number even if I included all the continents in the audience tab. I gave up and was toying with 'Pay with a tweet or a post' mode. Meanwhile I wrote in the fb forum, and again, I wasn't the only one with the issue. It was good to know in a safety in numbers sort of way, but it wasn't good when you realised fb wasn't answering anyone on the issue.
Then suddenly it occurred to me while I was fiddling with Power Editor why the number didn't go beyond the stubborn 20. Here's why. There's a field in the audience section where you decide who sees your message. In that there is a field that says : 'target people who are connected'. And if I entered my facebook page url in that field, the audience reach number immediately went to 20 and refused to budge. But it changed once I removed my facebook page I created for my books. And, oh, just received an email from facebook saying my ad was approved. Will let you know how that goes. Hope you found this useful.
A week or so of researching and reading up on the subject and taking a course on Udemy which was very helpful, I decided to step into the unknown waters of social media ads with caution. Start with a small amount, they said, hence. This is what happened:
I went to the page I created for my ebooks on fb, and created an ad, went through the process fairly smoothly till I got to the payment page. I paid through Paypal, and the page went straight back to 'create an ad' page again, with no confirmation of any kind. And facebook is not known for reverting to customers is what I gathered when I entered my question in the search bar(also learnt that I wasn't the only one with this issue). Then someone in the forum suggested using Power Editor but that works only on Chrome, so did that. It must be one of the clunkiest pieces of software/tools that I've worked with in my life. After wrestling with it for a while (you have to hit the Campaign tab, create a campaign, and then create an ad, and hit upload button), I was puzzled by the audience reach which was 20. It just wouldn't go beyond that ridiculous number even if I included all the continents in the audience tab. I gave up and was toying with 'Pay with a tweet or a post' mode. Meanwhile I wrote in the fb forum, and again, I wasn't the only one with the issue. It was good to know in a safety in numbers sort of way, but it wasn't good when you realised fb wasn't answering anyone on the issue.
Then suddenly it occurred to me while I was fiddling with Power Editor why the number didn't go beyond the stubborn 20. Here's why. There's a field in the audience section where you decide who sees your message. In that there is a field that says : 'target people who are connected'. And if I entered my facebook page url in that field, the audience reach number immediately went to 20 and refused to budge. But it changed once I removed my facebook page I created for my books. And, oh, just received an email from facebook saying my ad was approved. Will let you know how that goes. Hope you found this useful.
