Week 14 Assignment, Part 1

Creating ads. I started pondering this topic after about 6 months of writing my hobby blog. Early on I wanted to grow my audience. I understood that getting a larger audience would help make turning the corner from hobby to actual business easier. So far in the lifespan of my budding motorbike entertainment business, I have spent a grand total of $28 on Facebook advertising. That money was to boost a post and in the end I didn't see any kind of uptick in my readership. I realized that for me, I need to focus on good quality content in order to grow my audience. Once I have a handle on a format that appeals to my readers, I can take it and slowly begin to add revenue to the equation.

An objective for an ad campaign is what you want to accomplish by running your ads. In my previous example I wanted to grow my audience. I didn't want to make more sales or expand my market. I wanted to get more people to visit my blog and see if what I produced fits in their motorcycling lives. Since I still don't have any products to sell other than my writing, my objectives for these example ad campaigns would again to get more people to visit my blog for the first time. Since this is my specific goal, I would then look to see what kind of conversion rate (number of first time views that become repeat visits) my ads produced. Keep that in mind as you take a look at the ads I may, or may not run.

Facebook: I designed the Facebook ad to try to boost my page to a wide variety of people. The only thing I want from my audience is the desire to know about all things motorcycle. I don't care what country, religion or language a person speaks. As long as they can converse in the tongue of two wheels they are my type of audience. I set up my FB ad campaign to go for any gender from ages 18 to 65. My thoughts are that once I can gather a good group of followers through Facebook, I'd be able to spark more organic reach through suggestions from the paid audience. The first ads are just to get the word out. The next set of ads would be some type of promotion for that audience to go out and get another reader and in the process give them a prize like a sticker or shout out on the website. My approach is two pronged and part of a bigger plan to get readers to my blog.

Instagram: Since Facebook and Instagram are now part of the same mega social corporation, I programmed my Instagram ad to be very similar to the Facebook ad in terms of getting reach. While the goals are similar, I know through my current use of Instagram that reach is faster to grow through that platform than the Facebook platform. The problem is that since Instagram doesn't allow users to put links in their posts, it is much harder for my blog analytics to show any kind of up swing in Instagram post to blog view conversion. I would also employ a two part strategy by first growing my Instagram audience, then start adding in tactical posts that try and get people to the blog. There I can track where my views are coming from and gather info on if my ad plan was ultimately successful.

Twitter: The Twitter ad I planned was a bit different. Again my goal was to expand my reach in the sea of other similar posts and grow my Twitter audience. With Twitter I wanted to take an existing post and boost it so that people could get a feel for my product (my writing). Since I can get direct feedback from my blog analytics about the source of my blog entries, I think this is a good way to analyze the ad's effectiveness. When setting up the Twitter ad, there were a ton a choices. Facebook and Instagram also had a plethora of settings to choose from. Next time I try this I will do one at a time and go a bit more slowly to really investigate the best way to reach my advertising goals. I do like that all three of the ad types asked about my objectives. I was easily able to match my objective to the choices available.

Since my current ad budget is a whopping $0 I won't be running any ads soon. It was a good exercise to explore some of the tools available to my as a budding motorcycle entrepreneur. I look forward to any feedback the other students might have on this assignment.