Archive for the ‘Facebook’ Category

Dislike – 16 +17 December in Project Arts

Saturday, November 26th, 2011

Colm O’Regan is doing his standup show Dislike in Project Arts on December 16th and 17th. Colm did a mini-version at the Web Awards this year and it got a great reaction from the web savvy crowd. It’s worth a look if you’re a Facebook addict, someone that loves the web and/or someone that finds the bailout and financial crisis to be sad but also darkly funny. Or you will after. Tickets are the same as a packet of cigarettes after the next budget. (€12/€10)

Colm O'Regan Dislike

Social Media: Facebook and Weddings

Monday, September 20th, 2010

I’m loving how some businesses are using different aspects of Facebook to get business. I asked some companies that work in the Wedding Industry to explain how they use Facebook for business, two good examples here:

Allan Cavanagh from Caricatures Ireland

Allan Cavanagh Weddings

I’ve used Facebook to advertise my business, Caricatures Ireland, since 2008. In that time my combined ads have been viewed five and a half million times, and have received 5,000 clicks. The numbers are staggering for the relatively small spend I’ve invested in that time, and while I’m simply too busy to track exact conversions (enquiries converting to bookings) the fact that I am so busy is probably indicative of a decent percentage.

If you have a niche business like mine, the ability to tailor your ads to a specific demographic gives Facebook an enormous edge over Google Adwords. In short, my Facebook ad will only display for Facebook members who’ve indicated they’re engaged in their personal details. Compare that to Google Adwords, where your ad displays to anyone searching for keywords: a potential waste of money. A Facebook ad is reaching a motivated target market exclusively.

I’ve picked up a few tricks for maximising ROI on my ad too. For instance, there’s no need to have your campaign running indefinitely. I run my ad in bursts, spaced 4-6 months apart, and usually no longer than a week. Your ad will probably be seen by everyone that’s interested in that space of time, so you need to allow a few months go by for numbers of the newly engaged to build up again.

Allan Cavanagh Weddings

You’ll need to play around with your spend as well. FB will suggest a cost per click, but you should start lower than this and increase it until you notice an increase in enquiries. You can pay per impression or per click, but if you’re a small business you want to drive traffic instead of exposing a brand name, so pay per click. Your maximum spend is something you’ll need to play around with, but I think a trickle is better than a deluge: if your budget is €500, put a max spend of €10-€20 per day so your budget isn’t sucked up too quickly.

Good copy will get a potential customer to click through to your site. A good, illustrative image will draw a potential customer’s eye. Your landing page is your shop window, and all the info a customer needs should be present on that one page, including how to contact you. A separate landing page for your Facebook campaign
will help you keep track of how your ad is going. Facebook is rapidly outgrowing its role as a website: it is becoming more of a presence than a place, as the new “Like” button spreads throughout the web. Think about setting up a Fan Page, and incorporating the “Like” button on your blog.

If Google’s catchphrase is “Don’t Be Evil”, Facebook’s unwritten one is “Be Lucrative”, so get on it.

Allan Cavanagh is on Twitter here and Facebook here.

Claire from Mrs2Be.ie

Mrs2be.ie Facebook

The main reason we wanted to create a Facebook welcome page was to increase the number of fans (“Likes”) that our business page was achieving on a weekly basis. We wanted to create something reasonably eye-catching and that would have an obvious call to action feature – i.e. the big arrow that encourages users to like our page. At the same time, we also wanted to give a little bit of information about what mrs2be.ie is all about i.e. our friendly discussion forum, our supplier directory, our wedding checklists and wedding advice articles. We also included this message in text format underneath the graphic so that it would be indexed by Google.

Mrs2be.ie Facebook

After setting the welcome page to become the default landing page for new visitors, we could see very quickly that it was working for us. Within 10 days or so, our fans increased from 500 to 1,000. This has levelled off now, but we’re still attracting a decent number of new fans on a weekly basis.

Like the mrs2be Facebook Page or follow them on Twitter.

A physical sticker for a digital interaction – Like us

Friday, July 16th, 2010

Free Facebook stickers for your business.

Facebook Like sticker

Getting stickers printed for some clients/friends and decided that I might as well open it up to other companies in Ireland.

Want to avail? Sign up here.

Are you de face of Barry’s Tea, like?

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

Via Barry’s Tea Facebook – Want a picture of you to feature on Barry’s Tea Gold Blend packaging? You have until this evening to send in a pic of yourself which may get featured. You don’t have to be from Cork to enter. Email the pics to: barrystea@thinkhousepr.com Sooo much potential for poses using a tea cosy or two.

cosy tea
Photo owned by tristankenney (cc)

Facedown extreme in Ireland

Friday, May 7th, 2010

Edit: Shame someone sent a lot of people over here to vent abuse at me. Not one of you eejits seem to understand copyright or how to construct a sentence though.

This will warm up your Friday. Via Ivan. Extreme Facedown Ireland.

Official Facebook Group for Extreme Facedown Ireland.

Some great ones:
Facedown Ireland

Facedown Ireland

Facedown Ireland

Facedown Ireland

Facedown Ireland

Facedown Ireland

Facedown Ireland

Facedown Ireland

Facedown Ireland

If I dream it … will you come and build it?

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

There are a few apps I’d love to see built so I could go off and then use them. Two of these are Facebook related.

Facebook + Google Ad system application
Facebook have opened their ad system API and already two applications are being built so agencies and companies can manage multiple accounts and campaigns. Google’s Adplanner tool is a great way of finding out rough demographics on sites but a system that allows you to target inside and outside of Facebook will be much better. If an Irish company builds an app that allows me to plan an online ad campaign that uses both Google Ads and Facebook then I’ll use it and if I like it will recommend it to the greater world (and clients). Course just a Facebook Ad planning app would be handy too.

Facebook Pages Visual Editor
Facebook Pages are obviously big these days and one good potential for them is you can add customised tabs to your Page and make them the default landing page for them. See a tonne of examples here. I want a tool that I can use and clients too that allows visual editing and creating of these custom boxes instead of having to train people in FBML. This really feels like the days of Geocities and their basic web editor.

Emacs at Google Developer Day 2009
Photo owned by Sphinx The Geek (cc)

Arrr – There be Pirates

Sunday, August 2nd, 2009

Talk like a Pirate Day is on Saturday September 19th all around the world. Some stuff happens in Ireland every year but nothing hugely coordinated compared to the rest of the world. I’ve set up an Irish Talk Like a Pirate Fan page on Facebook. Amazingly over 2000 Irish people have chosen Pirate as their default language on Facebook so maybe we can do something as a group, big or small for that day.

photo
Photo owned by gamaral (cc)

Happy Birthday Boy – Facebook knows too much, dya think?

Friday, July 17th, 2009

So Facebook ads have been upgraded again. Now you can show ads to people who celebrate their birthday. Here’s what the control panel looks like:
Facebook Birthday advertising

You can be quite creative with this.
Target men who are celebrating their 21st, 30th or 40th.
Target men over 25 with an ad about “time to think about a pemsion”
Or target workers in Microsoft with an ad from google saying “We’d bake you a proper cake for you birthday cake if you worked for us”

You can see how many people will see the ad too:

Facebook Birthday Ads

As you can see in the Control Panel, you can filter ads based on if people are fans of your Business Page, have signed up to your event or use one of your applications.

Brainwashing the old guard in the cult of social media

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

There are many who see commercial companies and their PR reconnaissance staff as a bad thing for the web. Coming online and whoring various crappy products and services. Influencing bloggers by buying them a few drinks. Silencing critics by giving them a few freebies. I don’t agree. I see commercial companies joining the online space as a good thing but maybe not for them if they want to keep their comfortable status quo. The more the web is about everyone, the better. We need a realistic cross-section online like we have offline.

Blogs, Facebook, Twitter are a cult and we have the opportunity to brainwash so many companies into becoming truly open sourced in terms of IP and of attitude. Social media is infectious. Get close to it enough times and you’re a convert. A company will start blogging and Twittering and infecting itself despite all their internal rules. This social media cancer will come in and bit by bit will replace the rules based and rules drive old school attitudes with the idea that sharing is fun. All of a sudden the CEO is blogging and having conversations with other CEOs and all done in public. Customer support is done in public, metrics are shared in public. Look at the Conservatives’ website where they now share expense claims live on the web.You can even subscribe to them!

Kool-aid lunch box
Photo owned by chrisdlugosz (cc)

Look at how the best cults work. They are open to new members, they welcome them and nurture them while introducing their beliefs and livestyles and all of a sudden you have a convert. Then you get the convert to convert people.

So if you’re a company with bad customer service and you expect that to continue, that does not want to hear what people are saying about you and wants to dictate to the public, not have the public help run your organisation, then stay away from the web, it’ll kill you. Block Facebook, block blogs and especially block Twitter. All it takes is one person in your org to get converted and the illusionary walls you created for your fortress company will come tumbling down. Koolaid anyone?

Facebook changes ad structure

Monday, July 21st, 2008

Via Email from the ad team:

The most basic change that you’ll notice is that ads will now appear on the right side of Facebook pages instead of on the left. The new placement integrates the ads into the new site design in a meaningful way. As many as two ads may show at one time on any given page.

In addition to these changes, you will also see a new ad on the home page. This new ad is located just to the right of the News Feed, and will initially run a limited set of advertisers. As this space continues to evolve and improve, we’ll provide more details.

So at least three ads on a profile now? (Not including banners) General users can’t bid on the one next to the newsfeed. We’ll see more tomorrow I suppose when the new look goes live.