Facebook’s Advice to Viral Growth: Buy Our Ads
Posted by Nick O'Neill on April 22nd, 2008 11:17 AMYesterday Mike Arrington posted about a guide that was sent out to all Facebook pages users. According to the document (which is included below), there are 5 keys to harnessing the power of Facebook:
- Make business personal
- Update your Facebook Page frequently
- Harness the power of news feed
- Choose applications to display on your page, and
- Use Facbook Social Ads
I’m not so sure about a company’s control over their Facebook page showing up in user newsfeeds but apparently spending money on Social Ads is the primary way to attract users to your page. The primary benefit of leveraging Facebook Social Ads is their demographic targeting capability. Recently I’ve received a number of complaints from users saying that Facebook’s targeting doesn’t work to well. Some users have contacted me stating that they’ve been receiving ads in the wrong language.
Other people have reached out to say that the advertisements being displayed on Facebook are targeted at the opposite gender or that they are complete spam. If Facebook plans on generating a substantial amount of business from their Social Ads program they are going to need to improve the system’s targeting. Ultimately the guide distributed by Facebook is a self-promotional tool rather than an actual guide to viral marketing. If you are interested in reading it, I have included the document below.
(4.64 out of 5)
(4.17 out of 5)
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I do think the social ads aspect is pretty compelling in smaller urban and rural settings. Seeing that your friend has become a fan of the local zoo can both surprise you that the zoo is even on Facebook, as well as impress on you that it is likely a real, official page because your friend has already vetted it.
There's power, but the wrong ones are easy to detect.
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We've found that when you show a social ad that offers truly valuable information for the targeted user, there is a great click-through. It gives Sharendipity a terrific opportunity to stand out within the spam.
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Sadly, your fragment of code above is buggy as all hell. Your vocabulary choices and sentence construction scream "I AM A LYING MARKETROID WEASEL!" from the rooftops. It contains the following errors:
(1) Scare-quoting, not quote-quoting "bad" in "bad social ads". No, they're not "bad" *merely in my opinion*. They're *BAD*. They *suck*. The opinion of relevance is not exclusively mine, it is more general: I refer to a social ad that directly offends the user on whose page it is put. Whom it offends is a variable. And that, with no "" required, is just plain *BAD*.
(2) "Actually a great opportunity". Why would *bad* social ads be a "great opportunity" for anyone? Opportunities to do *what*? Be irritated? I've got more than enough of those, thanks.
(3) "We've found". No you haven't. You've been in business two weeks. That's puffery, intended to add authority to a statement. Because what you're saying you "found" ...
(4) "... when you show a social ad that offers truly valuable information for the targeted user, there is a great click-through" ... is, on one level, a pure tautology; on another, an exercise in putting the cart before the horse. If there is a great click-through, that *means* the information was truly valuable for the targeted user. Duh, ya think? Also, "truly" and "great" in this context make you come across like you're desperate to sell something.
(5) "It gives Sharendipity a terrific opportunity ..." Again, I don't think you're clear on what "opportunities" are. I think you just like the noise that word makes.
(6) "... to stand out within the spam." While it's great that you admit that you're within the spam, desiring to stand out within the spam is hardly a laudable goal.
Even after all that, I honestly have no idea what kind of point, if any, you were originally trying to make. Were you trying to justify something? Spam Sharendipity to me, maybe? Astroturf this blog for it? I don't think you even have a clue yourself.
Which is ironic and disappointing, because on actually looking at Sharendipity it seems that you, by sheer accident, may have stumbled into providing something that could, assuming you don't gum it up with weasel poo, be very good. Interactive gaming is, as Scrabulous shows, one of the major "opportunities" (ugh, I feel kind of dirty now) that Facebook offers to the enterprising programmer.
You must realize though that users are an unimaginative lot and the first thing they will do is badly recreate pre-existing games that they like. Super Mario Bros, etc. US IP law being what it is, this will get you into trouble, unless you distance yourself from the games themselves, ie take the same view of IP-infringing games that Microsoft would take of IP-infringing Word documents: not our problem.
Anyhow. Good luck with it, it is a neat idea. But try not to sound like such a weasel.
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