Does Like Or +1 Express What You Want To Say?

Recent Google’s move on Social Search –  announcing of +1 button – is being discussed all over the internet. Naturally, people speculate on how it will evolve and how it is compared with already established  Facebook like.

According to Google, the new “+1 is a digital shorthand for “this is pretty cool.” .
But what actually is “cool”?  Since you don’t necessarily want to share only “good” and  ”positive” things with your social circle, “cool”  can mean almost anything – from fun, cute, exciting, awesome, inspiring – to sad, shocking and even gross. Of course, when sharing you can always add a short comment of yours, describing your feelings about the shared material in a bit more depth. This also will give a personal touch to whatever you share –  and that’s exactly why some tweets get more retweets than others. It’s all about the message framing.

However, It feels like there is still a need for a bit more diversified interface element – just check how many groups and pages on Facebook that want  a “dislike button”.  Furthermore, there are extensions for Firefox and Chrome that allow you to add “dislike” button to Facebook!

What I wanted to share with you today – is how Danish newspaper Berlingske took the element of attitude expression by the audience for the articles one step further – they’ve implemented “reactions”.  You can still ‘like’, tweet or share the articles on all possible  social media sites – but you also can express your attitude by choosing one of the five reactions available.  The reactions are “jeg jubler” (I’m cheering), “Jeg smiler” (I’m smiling), “Jeg keder mig” (I’m bored), “Jeg er ked af det” (I’m upset) and “Jeg raser” (I’m in rage).

You can of course dispute over the choice of the reactions, it’s number and it’s formulations, as well as its applicability in the contexts other than newspapers articles. But anyway – how cool is that? Thumbs up, Berlingske!  I like it and +1 it  :)

Related articles

• Google Takes Social Search to the Next Level with +1 (hubspot.com)
• Google +1 Challenges the Cross-Web Presence of Facebook’s Like Button (insidefacebook.com)
• Google Takes On Facebook With Social Search (GOOG) (businessinsider.com)
• Meet +1: Google’s Answer To The Facebook Like Button (searchengineland.com)

Tips For Optimizing Your Facebook Ads

Facebook ads, unlike traditional PPC ads, might seem to be tricky to optimize. While PPC ads are in the domain of pull advertising, and banner ads are mainly pushing your message or brand, Facebook adverts are something like a mix between the two. Facebook pricing model resembles PPC, where you pay per click, and thus you’d need to make your ads interesting and engaging enough to entice the clicks. Quite similar to what you would do in PPC if your goal is to increase CTR of your ads. Targeting, however, is more like display campaigns targeting – you need to carefully select your audience to be successful. But on top of that, Facebook offers a very unique twist – a power of social sharing, peer exposure and possibility to use a “domino effect”.

Having in mind the similarities and differences of Facebook advertising to traditional search marketing and display advertising, you can start building a strategy for successful optimization of your Facebook ads.

• Find inspiration for your Facebook ad targeting in your search campaigns – i.e. you assumably would like to serve to the same core potential clients or customers, that you are trying to reach with your PPC campaigns

 

• Analyse your top converting PPC keywords – and use those as the basis for Likes and Interests targeting

 

• Consider the negative keywords you have in your PPC campaigns – sometimes the word X means Y in combination with the word Z – looking at the words meanings you will make sure that you increase the relevancy of your ads

 

• Find the right trade-off between going too broad and being too specific: with the former, you risk to incur unnecessary costs; with the latter, you will not reach all the potential clients you would like to reach. Use therefore a top-down approach – start with a broader terms when targeting interests and go deeper with more specific ones (for instance, “Yoga” and then “Yoga retreats” and  “Ashtanga”)

 

• Do not forget about demographic targeting

 

• Use your competitors brand names when targeting Likes and Interests

 

• Use images in your ads rather than text only – remember that a picture is worth a thousand words

 

• Separate the campaigns where you drive traffic to your website – and to your Facebook page. Your primary goal with the website is likely to get conversions or increase sales. The goal of driving the traffic to Facebook page, however, is likely to create brand awareness and form a community. Different goals require different optimization strategies.

 

• Test copy in your ads – try different “calls to action” and different wording

 

• Test images in your ads – don’t just assume something will work because you like it. Others might not

 

• Make sure you don’t promote again the same message to the users whom you already got a “Like” from

 

Related articles

• Here’s How To Make Your Facebook Ad Campaigns Work (businessinsider.com)
• How To Make a Profitable Facebook Ad Campaign (johnchow.com)