Pros and cons of some of the most popular blogging platforms

In one of our previous posts  we’ve already covered the topic of choosing the best blogging platform by comparing well-known software by comparing WordPress, Bosinglogger and SquareSpace. Let’s check out some other, different blogging platforms. They’re the most popular of the so called “micro-blogging platforms”. The micro-blog typically has smaller content than the regular one – it can be just one sentence, an image or a video link.

Tumblr

The well-known platform for micro-blogging – Tumblr, is focused on short and frequent posts. It’s somewhere in between writing in a blog and posting to Twitter. Using Tumblr you can expand the content that you share on social networks and drive some extra traffic to your website.

Pros

• Easy-to-use. Tumblr is really simple – with a few clicks you can upload photos, text, images, and audio and video in short, quick posts or lengthier ones. Setting up and customizing is easy too and you can start blogging a few minutes after you sign in.
• Option for audio blogging. Tumblr comes with many outstanding and interesting features like free custom domains.
• Community. Tumblr’s community shares a lot of content and the users interact with each other – the reason that some people call it a social network, not a blogging platform. If your business is relevant to Tumblr’s users, you can create content that they will share and it may well spread to a lot more people than you intended at the beginning.
• You can use content, created by others. Just because Tumblr has some characteristics of a social network, you don’t have to constantly create your own content. You can share items related to your business content that others will enjoy. This way you’re indirectly informing potential customers of your business and you stay in touch with them.

• Links with social networks and third-party apps. You can sync your Tumblr account with Facebook and/or Twitter so that you can update your social media feeds in a single location. Tumblr also offers support for many third-party apps such as Google Analytics.

Cons

• Not so customizable. The point is that bloggers focus more on the content itself. Compared to other platforms the list of themes is quite short. You can upload your own picture and set it up as a theme though. There is a list of premium themes, but they’re paid.
• Sacrificing some freedom. You don’t have so much control over formatting of your posts, themes and other options – freedom that the more advanced platforms offer.
• Not so good mobile applications. There are a lot of mobile apps for Tumblr which you can use on your device. But it seems that every one of them is missing something. The official Tumblr app is not so well developed – some of the other apps offer more functionality than it does. So posting on-the-go is not as easy as it should be.

Posterous Spaces

Posterous Spaces is another popular micro-blogging platform that is a social network as well. It’s really similar to Tumblr and in spite of some differences between them you can achieve the same goals and results for your business with either platform. Which one you choose is really a matter of your own personal taste and feelings about the platforms. Posterous can also be integrated with your business Twitter profile and Facebook page.

Pros

• There’s nothing short about your posts. Despite the fact that it’s a micro-blogging platform, you can write posts that are as long as you wish, with attached images and video.
• Advanced email-based blogging. It’s not an option that everyone uses or likes, but you can do almost the same thing as posting, by yourself, with a single e-mail – attaching images, videos etc.
• Excellent control over privacy. You can create “spaces” for people to follow. You set up permissions for every space, so that you can choose who can read your posts. For example you can have a space for public posts, for your private blog, or for a group of your loyal customers.
• Free mobile apps for iOS and Android. You can post easily on-the-go and your blog has a mobile-friendly version, so when a user goes through your posts on a mobile device, the site automatically renders for it.

Cons

• Paid custom domains. When you log into Posterous it creates a YourName.Posterous.com blog for you. If you want a custom domain name, you have to pay for it.
• Not so many themes to choose from. The only good thing about themes is that you have a lot of customizing options after choosing one – you can change the colours, pictures etc.

Jux

Jux lets you create your own micro-blogging site for sharing your content. The platform is similar to Tumblr and Posterous, but looks more professional and is more marketable. A lot of micro and small businesses have chosen this platform for their blogs. It’s an excellent choice when you’re willing to share more visual content and artwork on your blog.

Pros

• You have the options that are needed to create a unique site.
• You can add your Google analytics.

Cons

• No mobile posting ability. Not even with an e-mail. And it looks like it won’t have a mobile app soon either.
• It’s more concentrated on sharing visual content. So if your business is not in a sphere that is related to a lot of visual content, this is definitely not your platform.

Now you’re wondering, “which one should I choose?” or “should I choose a typical blogging platform like WordPress or Blogger?”. In fact, the question is really how much time and effort are you willing to invest in your blog. If you want something simple, attractive and time-saving, something that you can run during your coffee break, micro-blogging is for you. If your business is dealing with a lot of pictures, you can attract more attention to it with micro-blogs. But if you want something more sophisticated and complex, don’t go with micro-blogging.

We have previously covered the about choosing the right online advertising platform and talked about how to set-up and run Facebook ads.In this post, we will be concentrating on the world’s most popular online advertising tool: Google Adwords: it’s best practices and nuances and also the ways to achieve the best results with it.

Since Adwords has started, a lot of people have tried it out but many still question if it is worth it. The answer to that question is as simple as the question itself, and yes! Google Adwords has been responsible for revolutionizing the face of many companies, often times just overnight. That question that many have when beginning and Adwords campaign is the cost that should be incurred to get a great amount of traffic but the golden rule is the more you are ready to invest, the better results you will receive.

In the beginning, there is a one-time activation fee for new accounts with Google. After the payment of the initial activation fees, the rest depends on the number of clicks that your targeted number of keywords gets. This is the time to keep a control on the number of clicks and the amount you are ready to pay per click. In this way, a daily budget is set for each advertiser and he or she can keep track of the costs incurred in the process.

Expert advice would be to have approximate cost estimates for the amount that you are willing to pay. This may vary from person to person including the initial signup process. You have the option of either raising the cost per click or optimizing the keywords or ad texts to improve the quality of the content. If the initial work clicks, you always have the option of expanding and growing your advertisement volumes. The actual cost per click is usually less than the maximum cost per click and starts decreasing once the ads start performing better. This takes time but as the quality starts improving, the cost per click starts declining. The content big feature allows you to set a particular price when the ads run on Google. However, a different price is set when the same ads run on related Google network sites depending on the content bids. To start, you can use a small list of keywords and certain targeted words. Cost per click also depends on what the competitors are willing to pay in the prevailing market. The language and the location target settings can lead to effective targeting of keywords and text. In short, the benefits are manifold, which are waiting to be reaped. So go ahead and avail of the benefit. The cost of Google Adwords reduces with time and quality of your ads and the situation get better with time. Google Adwords is a tool that is probably the best way to promote your product on the Internet. The reason is because there is no doubt about the fact that Google is the most popular search engine in the world. Now, Google Adwords itself makes it quite clear that it is a product of the Internets conglomerate and is a better way to promote your product through its product.  So let’s learn how to use it in an order that we can get the best value for our money.

How Exactly Does It Work?

If you avail this paid advertising product by Google, your product will be displayed to the customers searching for your products as a ‘Sponsored Link’ on the site and its partner sites as well (such as YouTube.) This might not necessarily make an influence on the Google search results but what is to be noted is the fact that you get to choose keywords related to your product / business and also specify your targeted customers. Specifying the regions and languages in which your product appears can do this. It makes use of the PPC, i.e. you pay Google only when potential customers click on your ads.

Get the Most Out of Google AdWords Marketing

Marketing basically deals with the process of identifying who are your potential customers. When you make the ad profile for your ads, they provide you a number of options to create your target customers.

• Set the ball rolling by selecting a language and region you want to target.
• Create the ad consisting of a headline and two lines of ad text.
• Next, choose the keywords that will show the ad to all of whom type these words.
• Select your currency of payment and set your daily budget. You can even select the preferable cost per clicks for your ads. There is a tool called “Traffic Estimator” that will look into the positioning and cost for each keyword.
• Enter your Google email and password and sign up. You are done with it.

Remarketing

It is the most important aspect of selling your product. The conversion rate of a general site has been found to be 10%. Although the number may seem a bit too low, a site achieving such a figure must be considered a highly successful one. Follow the tips as given below to re-market your product through Google AdWords.

• First, try to set up an image ad instead of a text ad. A poster/picture does a work of a thousand words. Need I say more? Moreover, the ad set-up procedure of Adwords is such that it allows you to get better results out of an image ad.
• Use the customizable option of where the ads will be visible to set places where your ad will be visible. Strategically select the sites and try to make them unpredictable so that the customer is surprised.
• Also give some amazing offers on your products.

If you were to Google “trip to San Diego,” you would undoubtedly receive a whole host of results, ranging from trip advisory websites to food reviews to hotel and flight aggregators. You have probably noticed that the first few results of any Google search are highlighted advertisements, taking precedence over other search results. You may also be familiar with the column of results on the right hand side that displays the same types of results but catches your eye in a different way. What gives these search results this kind of priority? Google Adwords.

Steps to Successfully Use Google Adwords

Google’s product “AdWords Beginner’s Guide” takes you through a step-by-step process to create your ad campaign.

Provence Wellness Center in New York City chose to embrace AdWords and is more satisfied with the results thus far. Beginning in 2009, the center relied mainly on traditional Google search results to spread the words about its services. About a month ago, manage Mirille McCarthy upgraded AdWords, McCarthy said in a phone interview. She talked about the benefits of keyword targeting, “That’s where our clients come from. They just go on Google and type ‘detoxifying holistic center’ [or] ‘facial massages’ or ‘honey wax hair removal’.” She said thanks to Adwords, clients could stumble on their ad faster and locate her business immediately.

A note to local business owners—like Provence Wellness Center—may arrange to have your ad appear to people searching within a certain mile radius of your business location.

It makes sense because most people rely on search engines. We ask every client how he or she found us, and they say, “Google.” And with Google, you have a choice of seeing a review,” McCarthy said. Google allows you to create a setting that allows others to post reviews about your business. Finally, McCarthy talked about the ad reports she receives from AdWords. “Every month, they send me a report stating how many people clicked, how many people view our website, we pay per click, and you tell Google your budget and then you know how many clicks you can receive per month for your ad.” To begin your journey, visit the AdWords Small Business Center for beginner’s guides, instructions, tips on creating your most effective ad and more. Once you’ve gotten settled in the AdWords world, refer to the AdWords Checklist to check whether you’re 100 percent on track for seeing the results.

Using the Keyword Tool to Get Keyword and Ad Group Ideas

Need help thinking of keywords or ad groups to add you’re your campaigns? Let the Keyword Tool do the work for you! When you enter words or phrase that are related to your product or service in the Keyword Tool, you’ll see keyword ideas and ad group ideas that are related to your terms. Then, you can get more keyword and ad group ideas that are similar to the results you like. You can also see the performance statistics for your keyword and ad group ideas, download your ideas, or add them to an existing campaign.

Why Use the Keyword Tool

The Keyword Tool can help you find keyword and ad group ideas that you might not think of while creating your campaigns. Here are some other ways the Keyword Tool can help you build effective keyword lists for your Search Network campaigns:

• Create New Ad Groups: Get themed ad group ideas that are related to your product or service. For example, if you search on dark chocolate you might see an idea for a dark chocolate bar ad group that includes such keywords as dark chocolate candy bars and organic dark chocolate bars.
• Start Broad and Then Get Specific: Use the Keyword Tool to experiment with broad keywords, and then you can try more specific keywords. For example, you might want to starts searching on the keyword chocolate and then more specific keywords such as dark chocolate or sugar-free chocolate. The more you experiment, the more keyword and ad group ideas you’ll have for improving your campaigns.
• Identify Negative Keywords: When you search for keyword ideas, you might see keywords that don’t really apply to your business. You can add these terms to your ad as a negative keyword to prevent your ad from showing when people search for them. For example, if you sell dark chocolate candy and search on the keyword ‘dark chocolate’, you might see the related term dark chocolate cake recipe. You’ll want to add that term as a negative keyword to prevent your ad from showing to people who are searching for dark chocolate cake recipes.
• Find Keywords and Ad Groups Based On Your Site Content: You can enter the URL of your business website, or any site related to your business. Then, the system will change your pages and give you relevant keywords and ad group ideas.
• Specify a Language and Location. You can refine your keyword and ad group results to a particular location and language. If you happen to be targeting French speakers who live in Switzerland, you can set the Keyword Tool to that language and location.

How to Use the Keyword Tool

To start with the Keyword Tool, enter a word or phrase that’s related to your products or services. You’ll then be able to see your individual keyword ideas as a list or group into themed ad groups.

Here’s how to use the Keyword Tool:

1. Sign in to your AdWords account as https://adwords.google.com
2. Click the Tools and Analysis group-down menu and select Keyword Tool.
3. Enter a word or phrase, or a website’s address in the different sections of the box. To get more specific ideas, select a relevant category and the menu will appear. If you don’t select a category, you’ll search across all categories. To filter large sets of ideas, enter both words and phrases and a website URL.
4. Click Search. Your results will appear in the table.

Tips

• To search for ideas using the targeting setting from an existing campaign and ad group, select the campaign and ad group from the Campaign and Ad Group boxes at the top of your browser. For example, if you choose your chocolate campaign and dark chocolate ad group, you’ll see ideas for English speakers in the United States since those are the language and location targets for that campaign. It’ll also take the negative keywords in your campaign or ad group into account, which means they won’t show your ideas for any of those negative keywords.

When & Where

JavaScript Performance

JavaScript Security

Cost

Today’s Best Approach

Caching

Conclusion

1^st step: Landing page

Creating a great Facebook ad campaign will be a waste of time and money if your landing page is bad. Don’t forget the main rules of online advertising – they’re the same in Facebook too. You need to grab the attention of the user, make him click, lead him to a catching landing page, and have a “call-to-action button”. This “call-to-action” may be clicking the “Like” button of the page – if you want to make the user your fan, so that you can interact with him after that as many times as you wish. Or maybe you want to make him use your application, or you may want to make the user a lead, who will then buy your product or service. It depends on the goals of your campaign. The point is: without a good landing page for your adverts it is not reasonable to spend money on Facebook advertising.

2^nd step: Design your ad

Go to the Ads creating page. You have a couple of options there that are listed in the order in which you need to define them. Under your account on the top right you have the “Select existing creative” button – there you can choose a design from your previously created ads.

First thing you need to do is choose the Destination of the ad – when a user clicks on your advertisement, where will he be led to? You have a couple of options: External URL or Facebook Pages and Applications which you are the administrator for.

• Pages and Applications – for the purposes of this post I’m going to give examples with Pages, but it’s the same procedure for Applications.

-   Destination. Here you have to choose the Page that you want to advertise. NB. If you are administrator of more than one Page, make sure you’ve chosen the right one!

-   Type & Story Type. Here you’re choosing Facebook Ads or Sponsored Story. If you choose Sponsored Story, there is not so much to design, or indeed no design at all. This is because of the nature of these types of ads. By Ad from a Page post you have the option of Page Post Selection – here you look through posts form your Page and decide which one you want to advertise.

 -   New ad message. Selecting this option means you’re going to create your own design for the ad. You can choose the Destination Tab of your Page (the “landing page”). The Title of the ad is set as the name of your Page (if the selection is grey), but sometimes there is the option to give your ad an alternative title. You then have 90 characters to create the Body of the ad. You can also upload a different picture – by default the picture of your ad is your Page profile image.

How to choose your ad picture and what to write in the body? We’ll see in the next example of advertising an external URL.

• External URL – if you choose to lead the users, who click on your ad, to an external URL, you are free to create your design: the Title, the Body and the Image. You’ll see that here you don’t have the option to select between Facebook ad and Sponsored story. That’s because when your advert leads to a page outside of Facebook there can be no social element, so there is no Sponsored story option at all.

Let’s create an ad of Monitor.us as an example. The main principles that I’m going to point out next are the same for new ad messages for Facebook Pages and Applications.

-   We choose Destination: External URL.

-   We paste the path of the desired URL. If this URL is related to a Facebook Page, you have the option to choose if you want to show stories about users who interact with you page in the ad.

-   We write Title and Body. You need to create a catching copy – there are only 90 characters for the body, and 25 characters for the title in which to do this. The picture, the title and the body are each equally important, so take your time to construct them. Your title can be short ,because you still have the body and image to explain the ad. Make the users read the copy. Be sure you include a call-to-action phrase, because you want the users to click and engage with your ad. This is your opportunity to sell your product in 115 characters – so be sure to include your business name and at least one key benefit.

-   We upload the image. If your external URL refers to a Facebook page (e.g. our example), Facebook will suggest you  use the Page profile picture by default – but you can change it if you want to. Try to select an eye-catching picture that will make the users read the copy. Think about the size of the image – it’s small, so don’t upload a picture with lots of details in it. The images should be 110 x 80 pixels and less than 5 megabytes. If the image is larger or smaller than 110 x 80, Facebook will resize it automatically. Note that you can’t upload animated or flash images.

What have I done in our example? Well, I have a clear image, which is the logo of monitor.us, so that the ad can create brand awareness. I have the name of the business in the image, so I don’t need to include it in the copy. I’ve written a short catchy title, which is obviously not very clear. Its aim is to make the users want to read the body. In the body I have a call-to-action phrase (“Get”), I’ve pointed out what monitor.us is (“all-in-one web applications monitoring as a service”) and I have mentioned 2 key benefits – “free” and “set up for only 3 minutes”. That’s enough to make the user click on the ad.

3^rd step: Targeting

Facebook ads are very targeted. You can be really specific with who will see your ads – this is the great thing about Facebook advertising. You’ll see that the more specific you get with your targeting, the smaller your “Estimated reach” will get – a smaller number of users, who are likely to see your ad. You can choose as many options as you want, there is no obligatory targeting. You can be really specific or very general – everything depends on your campaign purpose. We’ll go through the targeting options with an example – advertising a new clothing store in Sofia (Bulgaria), offering trendy clothes to young business women.

-   Location. Here you have the option to choose users by their country and city. You can include cities at a distance from these, which you’ve pointed out. I choose users from Bulgaria, and more specifically from Sofia and cities within a 10 mile range.

-   Demographics. You choose the age and sex of users – in our example women from 25 to 35 years.

-   Interests. You can advertise to users with specific interests so that you get an audience which is likely to be interested in what you do. I’ve written Fashion.

-   Connections on Facebook. This is a really great option. You can advertise to your fans; to everyone of your target group except your fans; to users who are connected to a specific event, page or app (you can target fans of your competitors); friends of your fans. An approach that really works: targeting people who are friends of those connected to your brand. Many reports on social marketing show that people are more likely to trust an ad that’s connected to someone they already know.

-   Advanced demographics. You can choose users, interested in men or women. You can target people according to their relationship status and languages they speak. I’ve chosen users, interested in men and who are in a relationship.

-   Education and work. Here you can target users by their education and workplace.

-   Estimated reach. At the right of the targeting window you can look at the number of people who your ad will reach according to the targeting options that you’ve set. This number changes every time that you include or exclude an option – under the number you see a list of your targeting criteria. In my example I’ve targeted only 2540 users – a really specific group.

The next step of creating an ad is the pricing and scheduling for the campaign. The Facebook ads pricing is a really interesting topic that you should really be aware of before even starting you campaign. Learn how you can determine your CPM or CPC in our next article:  Practical guide for Facebook ads, Part 4: Pricing of Facebook ads.

Earlier this month we ran a webinar, explaining what’s new in the brand new Monitor.Us. Here is the full screencast of the webinar.

Find out what’s new in the upgraded version and tell us what you think about the new Monitor.Us.

Thank you.

Lessons Learned #1: We cannot accept published performance metrics as gospel truth because the results on our own production server may be different. And where the rubber meets the road, our production server is the one that matters. That’s the server we need to use for tip testing.

Is the Variable Initialized?

Option #1:
   isset($abc);

Option #2:
   $abc === NULL;

Option #3:
   is_null($abc);

Option 1   Option 2   Option 3   Winner
--------   --------   --------   ------
   0.0        0.7        0.8        1
   0.1        0.7        1.0        1
   0.1        0.7        0.9        1
   0.0        0.7        0.8        1
   0.1        0.6        0.8        1
   0.1        0.8        1.0        1
   0.1        0.6        0.8        1
   0.1        0.7        0.8        1
   0.1        0.6        0.9        1
   0.1        0.7        0.8        1
   0.1        0.6        0.8        1
   0.0        0.7        0.8        1
   0.1        0.8        0.9        1
   0.1        0.7        1.1        1
   0.1        0.6        0.9        1
   0.1        0.7        0.9        1
   0.1        0.7        0.9        1
   0.1        0.7        0.9        1
   0.1        0.6        0.8        1
   0.1        0.6        0.9        1

Option 1   Option 2   Option 3   Winner
--------   --------   --------   ------
   0.1        0.3        0.6        1
   0.0        0.4        0.6        1
   0.1        0.3        0.6        1
   0.1        0.3        0.6        1
   0.0        0.4        0.5        1
   0.1        0.3        0.7        1
   0.0        0.3        0.6        1
   0.1        0.3        0.6        1
   0.0        0.4        0.5        1
   0.1        0.3        0.6        1
   0.0        0.4        0.6        1
   0.0        0.4        0.6        1
   0.0        0.4        0.6        1
   0.0        0.4        0.6        1
   0.0        0.4        0.5        1
   0.0        0.4        0.6        1
   0.0        0.4        0.5        1
   0.1        0.3        0.6        1
   0.1        0.3        0.5        1
   0.0        0.4        0.6        1

But What If $abc Is Initialized?

Option 1   Option 2   Option 3   Winner
--------   --------   --------   ------
   0.2        0.0        0.3        2
   0.1        0.1        0.2       1/2
   0.2        0.0        0.3        2
   0.1        0.0        0.3        2
   0.1        0.0        0.3        2
   0.1        0.1        0.2       1/2
   0.1        0.1        0.2       1/2
   0.2        0.0        0.2        2
   0.1        0.1        0.2       1/2
   0.2        0.0        0.2        2
   0.2        0.1        0.2        2
   0.1        0.1        0.2       1/2
   0.1        0.1        0.2       1/2
   0.1        0.1        0.2       1/2
   0.2        0.0        0.2        2
   0.2        0.0        0.3        2
   0.2        0.1        0.2        2
   0.1        0.1        0.2       1/2
   0.1        0.1        0.2       1/2
   0.1        0.1        0.2       1/2

Option 1   Option 2   Option 3   Winner
--------   --------   --------   ------
   0.1        0.0        0.2        2
   0.1        0.0        0.3        2
   0.1        0.0        0.2        2
   0.1        0.0        0.3        2
   0.1        0.0        0.3        2
   0.0        0.1        0.2        1
   0.1        0.0        0.2        2
   0.0        0.1        0.2        1
   0.1        0.0        0.2        2
   0.0        0.1        0.2        1
   0.0        0.1        0.2        1
   0.1        0.0        0.3        2
   0.0        0.1        0.2        1
   0.0        0.1        0.2        1
   0.0        0.1        0.2        1
   0.0        0.1        0.2        1
   0.0        0.1        0.2        1
   0.0        0.1        0.2        1
   0.1        0.0        0.2        2
   0.1        0.0        0.3        2

Lessons Learned #2: Test all use cases, not just one or some. [When drawing conclusions, it's good to consider which use cases your webapp uses most often.]

Did the Optimizer Mess Up My Tests?

Lessons Learned #3: Don’t simplify the options so much that the optimizer eliminates them.

Option #1:
   if (isset($abc)) {$x=0;} else {$x=1;}

Option #2:
   if ($abc === NULL) {$x=0;} else {$x=1;}

Option #3:
   if (is_null($abc)) {$x=0;} else {$x=1;}

Option 1   Option 2   Option 3   Winner
--------   --------   --------   ------
   0.1        0.8        1.2        1
   0.2        0.9        1.0        1
   0.1        0.7        1.0        1
   0.2        0.6        0.9        1
   0.2        0.8        0.9        1
   0.2        0.7        1.0        1
   0.1        0.7        0.9        1
   0.2        0.7        0.9        1
   0.1        0.8        0.9        1
   0.1        0.8        1.1        1

Option 1   Option 2   Option 3   Winner
--------   --------   --------   ------
   0.1        0.4        0.6        1
   0.1        0.4        0.7        1
   0.0        0.4        0.8        1
   0.1        0.4        0.6        1
   0.0        0.4        0.8        1
   0.0        0.4        0.7        1
   0.0        0.4        0.7        1
   0.0        0.4        0.7        1
   0.1        0.4        0.6        1
   0.1        0.4        0.7        1

Option 1   Option 2   Option 3   Winner
--------   --------   --------   ------
   0.2        0.1        0.3        2
   0.2        0.1        0.3        2
   0.2        0.1        0.3        2
   0.2        0.1        0.4        2
   0.3        0.1        0.3        2
   0.2        0.2        0.3       1/2
   0.2        0.1        0.4        2
   0.2        0.1        0.4        2
   0.2        0.1        0.3        2
   0.2        0.1        0.3        2

Option 1   Option 2   Option 3   Winner
--------   --------   --------   ------
   0.1        0.0        0.3        2
   0.1        0.1        0.2       1/2
   0.1        0.1        0.2       1/2
   0.1        0.1        0.2       1/2
   0.1        0.1        0.2       1/2
   0.1        0.1        0.2       1/2
   0.1        0.0        0.3        2
   0.1        0.1        0.2       1/2
   0.1        0.1        0.3       1/2
   0.1        0.0        0.3        2

What About Option #3?

Lessons Learned #4: Look at the data in different ways. Don’t get so wrapped up in one viewpoint that you miss the other information that is waiting to be discovered.

Conclusions

This is the second part of the “Practical guide for Facebook ads”. Read the first part of the series on how to create and manage a facebook ads account.

The choice depends on the fan base you have on your page and the aim of the ad campaign

Facebook gives you a great opportunity to spread your message beyond the fan base on your page, or to attract new fans so that you can interact with them later on. And you can do all this for a relatively low price. It’s done via the small ads that are shown on the left sidebar of your Facebook profile. Actually making a Facebook ad isn’t hard to do, but you do need to invest some time in deciding which way is best for you to ensure you spend your advertising budget effectively. The ad campaign you will create depends on your goals, your specific business and your target group. Let’s see what kind of ad options Facebook offers.

After you’ve set up your Facebook Ads account it’s time to choose your Facebook ads type. Facebook offers two types of advertisements: Facebook ads and Sponsored stories. In this post I’m going to explain, in depth, these two types of ads, as related to Facebook Pages.

Facebook ads

A Facebook ad is a classic branded ad – with picture and copy. It links to an external page, Facebook page or Facebook App. With this kind of ad you can provide a customized message to your target group. There are two types of classic Facebook ads – Ad from a page post and New ad message.

The Ad from a page post shows one of your posts to the target group. The content of your page post is the content of the ad; you do of course have an option to choose which post will be in your ad. This is a great way to inform your current fans about something important – so that you’re sure all of them have seen your message. It can also raise your brand awareness and attract new fans by showing them some of your important posts, or highlighting a post they might be interested in.

The New ad message is a classic branded ad. With this type of ad you have the option to choose the title of the ad, the body and the picture. You can customize them at any stage of your ad campaign if you see your ads are not having the desired effect. This type of ad is the only one that can link to an external page – every other type goes to your page in Facebook. Linking a Facebook ad to an external page is an option that you should really think twice about as when people are on Facebook they don’t really like to be led outside of it.

Sponsored stories

The Sponsored story is also a branded ad, but it’s utilising the power of Facebook as a social network. This ad type is unique to Facebook. Sponsored Story ads publish the status updates, uploaded pictures and posts from the news feed of your page, as ads. The user then sees the social interactions his friends have with your brand or app (i.e. their friend’s Likes, Comments or Shares). Sponsored stories are a great way to raise your brand awareness and to keep people updated about your activities.

There are three types of Sponsored stories – Page Like Story, Page Post Story and Page Post Like Story.

The Page Like Story is an ad that is shown to the friends of your pages fans. These users see who among their friends has liked your page. The statistic shows that a user is more willing to like a page, when he sees that his friends have already liked it. He believes that he has similar interests to them, so if a friend likes a particular page, this page is “worth liking”. So, if you want to raise the fan base of your page, this ad is the perfect way.

The Page Post story is an ad which shows one of your posts. This ad is larger than other formats and has more social and engaging elements in it than the other Facebook ads. This ad shows the number of people who liked your specific post and those who’ve commented on it. It appears above the other ads. You can use this kind of ad to help your posts reach more users, not only your fans. When you have a particular piece of news or pictures from an event and you want them to reach a broader audience, then a Page Post Story ad is a great way to achieve that.

The Page Post Like Story is a mix of the other two types of Sponsored Stories. It shows to a Facebook user that one of his friends has liked a particular post or activity by a page. This mixed type of ad is a really successful tool. It has the same benefits as the other two types of Sponsored stories – it shows a particular activity from your page with the social element of a friend who liked it – but on the other hand the target group of this ad is very limited. It will be seen only by users with friends who are fans of your page AND have liked some of your posts.

Which one should I choose?

For smaller businesses the standard Facebook ad is the better choice in the beginning. This way you can build up a larger audience for your Facebook page. After that, you can use Sponsored stories – they’re really effective when you have more fans so that they can reach more people. Remember, Sponsored stories are shown only to the friends of your fans. So the more fans your page has, the merrier the audience these ads can reach. With them you can use the power of the social network. The likelihood of your message going viral also increases. The ads will appear on your Fan’s Friend’s walls – the more fans, the more Facebook users it’ll reach.

You need to find out which style of Facebook advertising is the most suitable for you, and which is the most cost-effective, of course. After that, you can enjoy profitable results and all the benefits of advertising in The Social Network. You can’t immediately understand which type of ad will work for your business and your audience, unless you experiment. There is no such thing as a universally great and effective ad – no one can tell you the best way to advertise for your type of business and to your specific target group. If you read, or hear, “Create exactly this ad and you’ll benefit from it 100%”, don’t believe it. Always test and experiment! This is how you’re going to learn to understand your audience and discover what works for them.

How can you create these great Facebook ads and target exactly the audience that you’re interested in? Well don’t miss our next installment – Practical guide for Facebook ads, Part 3: Facebook Ads – design & targeting

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What do I need to start a Facebook ads campaign?

You’ve decided to invest in a Facebook ads campaign, but you’re not really sure about the effectiveness of it. In fact, it depends on the way that you’ve created the ad, the ad type and the way that you manage the ads during the campaign. At first sight it sounds really complicated, but it’s not. Just take your time to understand the logic behind the Facebook ads and how to manage them – it’s not so different compared to any other way of online advertising.

So, let’s begin with some practical advice. What do you need and how do you start advertising on Facebook? In this, and a couple of following posts, you can learn the basics of Facebook advertising and start doing it yourself. In fact, hands-on experience is the best way to learn!

The first thing that you need to start a Facebook ads campaign is to have a Facebook ads account – it’s connected to your credit card, so that you can pay for your ads. Login into your Facebook account and let’s find your Ads Manager.

Step 1: Accounts in Facebook Ads Manager

Every personal profile has a Facebook ads account by default – the account is on your own name. You can create another account if you want to. You can see your ad accounts, their status, currency and spent money in your Ads Manager -> Account tab.

Facebook Ads Manager is the place where you have access to all the information related to your ads and accounts. From there you can manage your past and current campaigns, see their status, get reports on their effectiveness etc.

Step 2: Manage you Facebook Ads account settings

When you choose your account in your Ads manager, you have a Settings tab in which you can fill in the information about your business.

You have a couple of options how you can pay – with credit card, direct debit, PayPal, Invoiced credit or Facebook coupon. The information about your payments you can see in the Billing tab. There by month and payment method you can track your billings, the amounts that you owe, how many you’ve spent etc.

You can see the information about your payment method in the Billing tab ->Funding sources. There you can see all the credit cards linked to your account – or other payment methods. If you want to add a Funding source, click on the button in the right upper corner (“Add new Funding Source”), than choose your funding source and fill in the requested information.

There is a list of accepted currencies from Facebook. Be careful – when an account is linked to a particular currency, you can’t change it. You can set the preferred currency of your profile from your Account settings, on the Payment tab.

Step 3: Creating a group account

You have an option to create an Account Group from the tab Account Groups ->”Create a group” button in the right upper corner. With an account group you can give access to a particular Facebook ads account to a number of people. This allows, for example, your employees to manage the advertisements. Remember that every Facebook ad is linked to a particular user account, so this is one of the things you should really be careful of, especially if you are the administrator of a couple of accounts.

After you have named the group account, you need to link it to an Account ID, so that the payment information  can be taken from there. You have different user permissions (roles): Administrator, General user, Reports only. These allow you to assign different roles to different people – the Administrator can change the settings of the group and has full rights to everything that’s going on with the ads associated to this account. The General user can only manage the ads, he doesn’t have access to group settings. Reports only are users who can only see the reports from ad campaigns – they cannot manage the ad budget, period etc. Group accounts are the perfect instrument when more than one person needs to have access to your Facebook ads.

The payments and funding sources of group accounts are managed the same way as for an individual account (see Step 2 above).

So, once you’ve set up your Facebook Ads account, or created a group account if you needed to, you’re ready to start with your campaign.

The first step of a Facebook ads campaign is to choose which type of ad you’ll use – Facebook ad or Sponsored story.

What are the differences between them? We’ll find out in the following article Practical guide for Facebook ads, Part 2: Choosing Facebook Ads or Sponsored stories.

We take a look at ten of them that we think worth trying. Among them are sites like Constant-Content, Media Piston, Helium and others.

This list features the top 10 most popular destinations for people who are looking for website contents.

 Helium

Website: http://www.helium.com

Alexa Traffic Rank – 5,107

Helium is a content sharing platform where writers offer contents across different fields. It operates using its own revenue sharing model with content writers. Writers post their articles on the site and earn depending on how highly their articles are rated by other writers. Clients can download and buy articles outright from the site’s Content Source, which give the writers additional source of income.

Textbroker

Website: http://www.textbroker.com

Alexa Traffic Rank – 6,753

TextBroker offers almost every conceivable piece of written content that a website owner needs, from short product descriptions to lengthy academic papers. The site is popular for quick and high volume article needs that are often required by SEO operations.

ReviewMe

Website: http://www.reviewme.com

Alexa Traffic Rank – 8,622

Online merchants can immediately get their products noticed by ordering reviews from Reviewme’s network of bloggers. It is the top provider of quality reviews online that can push a product from being unknown to popular overnight.

Need an Article

Website: http://needanarticle.com

Alexa Traffic Rank – 15,883

Need an Article is a subscription only service that pits customers needs with highly vetted writers. The site has been offering writing and SEO services to thousands of clients. Article orders can be placed in the website’s ordering system once a client subscribes for a monthly fee.

Constant Content

Website: http://www.constant-content.com

Alexa Traffic Rank – 17,262

Constant Content boasts of more than 50,000 writing professionals on its listing. The site takes on all kind of writing jobs, from website contents to magazine articles, providing quality content for different niches.

The Content Authority

Website: http://thecontentauthority.com

Alexa Traffic Rank – 18,767

Content Authority’s writers for hire generate thousands of SEO articles monthly. The site offers different payment scales based on the quality of articles. It is a popular provider for contents used in link building operations, article directory submissions, and keyword optimized articles.

Writer Access

Website: www.writeraccess.com

Alexa Traffic Rank – 24,817

Writer Access offers high quality contents from its 500+ highly skilled writers. The site charges a higher per word rate than most of the other sites in this list though it offers its clients the flexibility of choosing the price that they are willing to pay.

JournalismJobs

Website: http://www.journalismjobs.com

Alexa Traffic Rank – 31,941

JournalismJobs connects clients with media professionals. The site boasts of up to 3 million page views per month, making it the most popular website of its kind. It lists among its clients such media organizations as NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, The Washington Post, and others.

MediaPiston

Website: http://www.mediapiston.com

Alexa Traffic Rank – 51,378

The up and coming content provider was bought by oDesk early this year, immediately putting its operation into full steam. The site is poised for a massive growth, both in the number of writers and jobs, as oDesk channels its massive copywriting manpower and customers into promoting Mediapiston services.

Online Writing Jobs

Website: http://www.online-writing-jobs.com/

Alexa Traffic Rank – 64,409

Online Writing Jobs aggregates the available writing jobs from the most popular copy and content writing crowd-sourcing websites. It is one of the most useful tools for freelance writers in finding the most recent jobs online.

This list only includes the most visited crowd-sourcing websites that are dedicated to copy and content writing, ignoring other crowd sourcing sites that offer different kinds of freelancing jobs as well as the number of registered writers or volume of orders placed and completed. For example, the writing jobs posted at oDesk daily dwarfs the jobs posted on most of these sites.