In the eyes of Facebook, it has done you a favor. This favor also rakes in more green for Facebook. And, in the famous words of Puff Daddy, “it’s all about the Benjamins.”
Facebook’s “favor” to you is that it has enabled a new feature that allows Facebook ads to be shown to people outside the age range you specifically set for your campaigns.
Facebook writes:
You can now get more clicks and impressions outside your target age range, and we’ll make sure you get a good deal! Previously, if you chose to target people aged 24 – 35, your ad would only be shown to people aged precisely 24 – 35. But isn’t someone who’s 36 and is interested in your ad just as valuable as someone who is 35? After extensive testing, we found that by allowing the system to increase delivery of your ads slightly outside your target age range, you can receive additional discounted impressions and clicks that are nearly as valuable as the impressions and clicks within your target age. As a result, you see more value from your ads on Facebook and a better return on your investment…
Shall we compare exact age vs. broad age? We shall! This morning I logged into the Facebook ads dashboard to see how many more people I could target if I turned off “exact age match.”
Exact Age Match:
Broad Age Match:
If I choose broad age match, I’ll have 31,540 more Facebook users to target. Sounds appealing, right?
Before you jump to any conclusions, it’s imperative to do A:B testing with this new feature. If you manage your own Facebook ads, or an agency or in-house employee does it for you, suggest that they conduct an A:B test to see if you really do “see more value from your ads on Facebook and a better return on your investment.”
Interested in Facebook advertising? Give Oneupweb a call—we’d be happy to conduct those A:B tests for you.
Remember when you got your first car? Mine was a white Chevy Corsica with over two hundred thousand miles on it. It wasn’t much, but I loved that car. I customized it with a special steering wheel cover, race car seats and LED lights on the inside. Nice!
But eventually I needed something that wouldn’t shake violently when travelling faster than 45 mph. Something that would indicate how much gas I had left in the tank. Something that was more dependable. So I said goodbye to the Corsica—but it will always have a special place in my heart. And much the same way, MySpace, too, will always have a special place in my heart.
Most of us have moved on from MySpace to Facebook. Even though MySpace allowed us to customize our profiles, we found out that not everyone should be given that ability. Let’s just say not everyone is a graphic designer…
MySpace may be down, but don’t count it out yet. It still has a strong groups of musicians (and their fans) that use the service. And just yesterday, MySpace introduced a new feature called Sync with Facebook.
MySpace said in its blog:
“Today we’re introducing Sync with Facebook, www.myspace.com/guide/sync, which allows MySpace users, musicians, and celebrities around the world to sync their status updates with their Facebook profile or Page, while also offering them the ability to share content such as game activity, music, videos, links and photos with their friends on Facebook.
Sync with Facebook allows users to keep their friends on Facebook up to date on everything, including: sharing songs, latest photos, fun game apps, and more.”
This will be a nice feature for those who still use MySpace and want to keep their friends on Facebook updated. What do you think? Is this new feature enough to bring MySpace back into focus? Let us know in the comments below.
I recently wrote a post about Facebook places, the new check-in option available to iPhone users. At that time this new feature was not available in my area. I’m pleased to say that is no longer the case, as you can see below. Three minutes prior to posting this blog, I checked into Oneupweb.
My first impression of Facebook Places is that it is actually pretty handy. Say you think you have a roller derby meeting, but you get to the assigned meeting spot a little early and decide to quickly check your Facebook. Then, you notice one of your teammates checks-in to another building all the way across town. Odds are that you don’t have a meeting, even if you didn’t get the phone call from the assigned phone tree (or bothered to sign up for the new forum where all announcements are made, but that’s another story…). As you can probably guess, this happened to me last night. By seeing my teammate check-in elsewhere, it prompted me to call her to see if we did have a meeting (we did not). In the end, it saved me time.
But what do Facebook Places mean for business? Currently, if you are an official representative of a business, you can apply to “take ownership” of the Place where your business is located. To do so, you first have to locate your Place (here’s Oneupweb’s Place). Once you’ve done that, you just follow the link that says “Is this your business?” Facebook asks for serious documentation, meaning you must provide them with Articles of Certificate of Incorporation, Certificate of Formation, Local Business License, or Better Business Bureau Accreditation.
Once you claim your Place, you can advertise it using Facebook PPC ads. You can also manage your company’s address, contact info., hours of business, profile pic, admins and more.
What do you think of Facebook Places? Will you be claiming your company’s Place? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
I have a hard time remembering things. And because of that, I regularly go to Google.com to search for the things I can’t recall. Things like, “What’s the shortcut for the trademark symbol?”
From my Google search, ironically, Yahoo! Answers will be the first or second search result for my specific query. Et voilà, my answer is ALT+0153 ™.
Yahoo! Answers has been around since December 2005, and with such an extensive history, its results rank high in search engines.
Enter Facebook Questions.
Officially introduced last July, Facebook Questions “helps you tap into the collective knowledge of the more than 500 million people on Facebook. For example, if you’re vacationing in Costa Rica and want to know the best places to surf, you can use Facebook Questions to get answers from nearby surfing enthusiasts. Because questions will also appear to your friends and their friends, you’ll receive answers that are more personalized to you,” as stated in a recent Facebook blog post.
In other words, the social media giant is leveraging the success of user-generated information like Yahoo! Answers and Wikipedia, but with a twist—answers will be more personalized because of your social network.
Below is a list of features that allow you to have more personalized answers in Facebook Questions:
* Add photos or polls. Curious to learn the breed of your beloved mutt? Add a photo of the pooch along with your question. Unsure what hybrid car to buy? Include a poll for users to submit their opinions.
* Tag themes related to your query. If you are interested in playing roller derby but you’re not sure which skates to buy, simply tag @roller derby in your question so more targeted Facebook users see your query.
*Ask questions to your friends or a specific group of people. Simply ask your question as a status update targeted to the specific group of people you’d like to ask. Please note: all questions and answers posted using the Facebook Questions application are public to everyone on the Internet, not just people on Facebook.
* Follow Topics. If you are interested in a certain Facebook Questions topic, you can follow the question so you are notified when users post new answers.
Is Facebook Questions available for your profile yet? If so, what do you think of it?
I was speaking on social media at the 2010 Michigan Grape and Wine Conference back in February. During the Q&A, one gentleman expressed concern that he simply couldn’t keep up with all the new social media networks out there. He’d started a Facebook page, but no sooner had he done that than someone came in, pulled out their iPhone and checked into Foursquare. He wanted to know, as a small businessman with little time and resources to devote to social media, what should he do?
Being absolutely honest with him, I told him that at the time I thought the best place for him to focus his extremely limited resources was on Facebook (that’s not to say you shouldn’t use Foursquare or Gowalla. It just wasn’t the best option for him at the time). I made an off-hand comment (more like a joke) that if Foursquare and Gowalla got big enough, I was sure Facebook would find a way to add check-ins as well.
Welcome to Facebook Places. With your trusty iPhone in hand, you can check-in to places you visit, sharing your whereabouts with your Facebook friends. Currently when I try to use the feature, I’m greeted by a friendly note letting me know that the feature will be available in my region soon. Until then, I’ll have to settle for videos of other people using Facebook Places. And with that, here’s a video from the AP about the new feature:
So what do you think of Facebook places? Are you concerned about privacy? How do you think this bodes for Foursquare?
