Author: Nancy McCord

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Facebook Advertising Options

Along with the new changes that Facebook announced to the timeline for business pages on February 29th, was an announcement that advertising options would change as well allowing more pages to use advertising options that had only been open to really big advertisers. So far I have only seen a few changes in my advertising control panel.

For most business page owners, you will see the same advertising options that I see for my own business page, and this is due to fan base size. I see the option to do Facebook pay per click advertising or sponsored story advertising. The additional new option that I see in my account is that I can actually select a specific update to promote as an ad. The new created ad then allows others to like my ad or to share the ad. Liking the ad will show the ad and information on all their Facebook friends profiles as will sharing the ad. This is an important new viral way to get your message out.

I have not yet seen advertising on my personal wall or timeline, but Facebook tells us that it IS coming. At this time it appears that you can still do regular pay per click advertising and use an external URL for the landing page which is good news. New options now also allow you to select a specific tab in your Facebook business profile such as your resume, links page, notes tab, etc. as the landing page for your ad as well.

Facebook advertising is still a good value at this point, but my feeling is that you may get more value by actually advertising in the Google Display network than from Facebook at this point.

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Facebook Business Page Timeline Tips

I have migrated my two Facebook business pages early to the timeline this past weekend and wanted to share some of my tips that I have figured out while I was using the new look. Remember as you read this blog post, all business pages will all be forced into the new timeline layout as of the end of March 2012.

Here’s what I have learned:

  • Don’t try to create a complex graphic or use a screen shot of our website banner. Use one large high definition image that tries to convey visually who and what you are. In my case we are located near Washington DC and so I am using a image I took recently of the Capital building. I did try my website banner and I did try a composite image, both looked too busy.
  • Clicking the star at the top right of an update will stretch either the image or text update across your whole page. Facebook will leave the bigger post up for 7 days. You can do this in several places on your page to break up your layout. Actually what I did was to design my layout look by using images and text to give a pleasing break to the typical two columns. This means that the new timeline is a much more visual statement than the old wall. Make sure to only load high definition images as when Facebook expands the image if you highlight it, low resolution images will look bad.
  • When you are logged in as a business page entity you cannot post to anyone fan or otherwise walls as a business entity. In fact when you are logged in as a business, you cannot even see a fans wall, you will only be able to see the timeline. That means that all interaction is back on your own timeline. Business pages in fact don’t have a wall anymore, just the timeline.

As a result, our services for Facebook have been changed. We may add additional services later, but for now we have streamlined our offerings to cover what we feel will work for business during this change. My personal feeling is that the action for Facebook for businesses will now be in the advertising arena. For many business owners the cost to keep a Facebook business page updated with photos, video, favorite posts, and other apps will simply be too costly and time consuming.

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Web Page Bounce Rate Explained and What to Do About a High Rate

Website page bounce rate is defined by Wikipedia as ” the percentage of visitors who enter the site and ‘bounce’ (leave the site) rather than continue viewing other pages within the same site.” You can view your own website bounce rate figures on the “Audience Overview” link in Google Analytics. As a point of reference, Google Analytics reported that last year the average global bounce rate was 46.9%.

If you look at your own website and see a bounce rate figure like mine (which is 84.95%) don’t get worked up. The most important next step is to go to the “Content”  link and select “Site Content” and then “Pages” in Google Analytics to see where the truth to your bounce rate lies.

In my own personal case, I have been writing for my website and adding white papers and instructional how-to’s since 2001. I have some interesting free content that I offer such as how to change your signature in Outlook, how to set up multiple email accounts in Outlook, how to create an address group in Outlook, and many other similar topics that are not focused on my own services. Many of these pages get several thousand unique visitors each month but are associated with high bounce rates. I have provided these special pages in my website as link bait and traffic multipliers, but as a result some of these high traffic pages have boosted my website’s aggregate average bounce rate.

In my case, important service pages in my website do have bounce rates that track closer to the global average of 46.9% or are lower.  What I feel is more important to mature websites, such as my own, is to evaluate the bounce rate on a per page basis. That being said, once you have identified high traffic pages in your own website, use those pages to drive social media traffic by encouraging Facebook likes, newsletter subscriptions or consider putting banners advertising your own services on them to try to take advantage of the high one time traffic. You may be able to convert some of these one-time visitors at least into newsletter subscribers.

Although I want to continue to offer some informational content for free, I have started to try to put these pages to work for me so that I get a benefit from the traffic while trying to move some of these visitors into helping to promote my name through social networking. You don’t necessarily want to remove these high bounce rate pages from your website, but instead need to identify what they are and then use them to your long term strategic advantage. Google likes authoritative, informational, high traffic websites and rewards them with organic search placement, but it is still important to keep a careful eye on your bounce rate just to make sure important pages aren’t slipping into irrelevancy.

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A Real World Guide to Twitter and Facebook Featured at SiteProNews

On Monday February 27th, SiteProNews featured Nancy McCord’s newest research paper called “A Real World Guide to Twitter and Facebook on their home page.” You can read the full article at SiteProNews. The SiteProNews newsletter is one of the preeminent publications to the webmaster professional community and reaches over 600,000 subscribers three times a week.

In addition to publishing Nancy’s research paper on their website and sending it out to their 600,000 subscribers, the SiteProNews Editorial Staff has asked Nancy to write more exclusive articles for their publication on a monthly basis.

We are excited that Nancy’s most recent research paper has gotten this exposure and will keep you posted when she publishes additional articles for SiteProNews.