An Eclectic Mind

A more targeted approach to advertising?

The other day I discovered Facebook ads.

Let me take a few steps back before I move forward.

I have a Facebook account. I even have 50+ friends on that account. But I don’t use Facebook. Frankly, I feel that I have far better ways to spend my time than “writing on walls” of my friends, playing online games, and browsing a social networking site for social interaction.

The only reason I ever go to Facebook is to respond to friend requests. If I personally know the requesters or interact with them on Twitter, I accept the request. Otherwise, I ignore it. I also ignore invitations to most groups. After all, if I’m not there, why join a group?

Every once in a while, I come really close to killing my Facebook account. Then I figure, what the heck? It doesn’t cost anything and I have most of the notifications turned off so it doesn’t even bother me much.

But the other day, when I was on Facebook responding to a request from someone I don’t know who happened to go to the same high school as me (I can’t make this stuff up), I noticed the ad column on the right side of the page. At the very top was an “Advertise” link. Since I’m always looking for new, affordable ways to advertise my helicopter tour and charter business, I clicked the link.

I won’t bore you with the details. Simply said, the advertising feature makes it very easy to create targeted text/image ads that link to a site or page. You can pay per impression or per click. You can set per click and per day maximum budgets, so you don’t have to worry about going broke. And, since the only place these ads appear is on Facebook, you don’t have to worry about some Webmaster clicking up a link to squeeze a few more pennies (or dollars) out of you.

I set up two ads. One (left) is for my multi-day excursions. It’s displayed to male college graduates throughout the US, aged 25-50 who like helicopters, adventure, etc. My logic is that this is the kind of trip that would appeal to men and since it’s not exactly cheap, the college graduate and age requirements may limit the impressions to folks who have more money to spend. (Although who has any money to spend these days?) The other (right) is for Christmas gift giving. I targeted that geographically to the Phoenix area, with no other limitations. Clicking either link takes you to Flying M Air’s Web site where the clicker can find more information and pricing.

Facebook has some good management tools to help you see how many times each ad has appeared and has been clicked. For example, on the first two days my ads were online — and that’s not even 2 full days — they appeared a total of 60,000 times and were clicked 16 times. While you might not think that’s very good, I’m thrilled. I don’t want people to click if they’re not interested, since I have to pay for each click. The campaign is under its daily budget (so far) and I can remove or suspend either (or both) ads any time I like.

So I’ve set up two ads to run for a full month. Let’s see where it takes me.

Comments? Want to share your experiences with Facebook advertising or some other pay-per-click system? Use the comments link or form for this post. Please limit your responses to experiences as an advertiser, though. I’m not interested in reading about the success or failure of someone’s get-rich-quick on Web advertising scheme.

Social Networking advertising, Facebook, social neworking, Twitter

Why can’t they look at least a little like the person they represent?

Like so many techno-geeks these days, I’m involved in a bunch of social networking sites: Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook, RedBubble, Flickr, MyBlogLog, etc. And all of these sites give each member the ability to include an avatar — an image to represent that user.

Maybe I’m not very creative, but my avatar is a photo of me. It was taken by photographer Jon Davison during one of our flights last September. It shows me in one of my favorite places: at the controls of my helicopter, flying over the Arizona desert. (I think I’m over the Little Colorado River Gorge in this shot.)

The way I see it, my avatar is supposed to represent me. What could represent me better than a photo of me doing something I like to do?

Evidently, not everyone has the same idea. While many of the avatars I see in Twitterrific are photos or drawings of the people they represent, quite a few are not. And in other social networking sites — MyBlogLog comes to mind — the majority of avatars don’t bear any resemblance to the people they’re supposed to represent.

I find this bothersome, especially among my Twitter friends. Why? Well, in most cases, an avatar is the only visual representation I have for a person. If the avatar features purple hair or a goofy cartoon face — you know who you are, folks! — that’s the image I have of that person. And it’s a lot tougher for me to take these unrealistic avatars seriously.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I find it easier to communicate with people I can take seriously.

A few more notes on avatars:

• Some people seem to like using their Second Life avatars as their social networking avatar. While I could write a dissertation covering my thoughts about Second Life — starting with, is your first life so bad that you need a second one? — I’ll just say that Second Life avatars are generally a highly stylized version of how people want to look. While few of us are supermodels, surely there’s a decent photo of these people somewhere that they can use online.
• Some people use glamour photos for avatars. I have a colleague who does this. When I met her in real life, I didn’t recognize her. Let’s face it, we only look like our glamour photos in our glamour photos — after they’ve done the photo shoot and brought our faces into Photoshop for some digital plastic surgery. Every time I see this avatar, I have to remind myself that she doesn’t really look like the photo. (Of course, it’s also made me want to get a glamour photo.)
• Some people use photos of their pets as avatars. Talk about going to the dogs! Do the dogs really look better? Or do they just identify with their dogs? Ditto for cats, birds, and miscellaneous wild animals.

Of course, none of this has to do with special-purpose avatars used to promote an idea or cause. An example is the Frozen Pea avatars that many of us wore on Twitter for a few Fridays to raise awareness and funds for Breast Cancer Research through the Frozen Pea Fund. I was a single pea for the day. My favorite avatar was one Twitter friend who created an image of his head sticking out of a pea car.

But I’d like to start a movement among serious social networkers. Be proud of your face and show it off as your avatar! It doesn’t have to be a full-face shot; it can be creative. (Some of the best avatars I’ve seen show only part of a person’s face.) But it should show you, as you really are.

I’d just like to see who I’m tweeting to.

Call Me a Geek, Social Networking Facebook, Internet, LinkedIn, photography, Social Networking, Twitter