Tag archives for Facebook
Targeting Online Traffic with Facebook Ads
Woman using a laptop (Photo by Kaboompics .com from Pexels) If you’re a marketer, you might already know that Facebook Ads are a very useful tool. By providing you access to approximately billion active monthly users, the platform gives you an opportunity to reach many potential customers. That’s not to say you’re taking full advantage of this marketing resource. Facebook offers an extremely wide range of marketing features. Odds are good you’re not leveraging all of them. For example, this guide will teach you how to target referral traffic with your Facebook ads. This helps you develop marketing content that aligns with your audience’s needs, tastes, and behaviors. How to Monitor Referrals on Facebook You’ll need to use the Facebook Pixel to track how guests are being referred to your site. This line of code can be inserted into various…
Farewell Facebook
Just a short note for the record that I've now deleted my Facebook account. I've not logged in regularly for a couple of years. My blog has been auto-linked to it, and many of the blog posts shared via Facebook when I've published them. Facebook's Usefulness I've missed some bits of Facebook. It's a great communications medium with my family, especially as I don't live near any of them. I've also missed some of the social groups, although my wife still uses Facebook, so I get some of the highlights second hand. Facebook's Failure That said the reason I stopped logging in regularly was because there was a lot more noise than signal. It was also clear that I didn't share values or understanding of the political situation with many of those that appeared on my timeline. Mostly they were…
Facebook – Annoying Distraction or Sinister Manipulation?
A linux laptop running wireshark to illustrate cyber defence in action (photo credit: James Kemp) If you are reading this on Facebook, my apologies. I've not logged in since November 2017 and I've recently deleted the app from my phone. I'd like to keep in touch with people, but Facebook doesn't make that easy any more. Given the recent news about their changes I guess it isn't just me. Facebook's problem If you still have a Facebook account that you actively use then I'm sure you'll know this. Step back for a moment and scroll through the top dozen or so items. Don't engage with them, just take a long hard look. Count how many are original posts from close friends or family, people you actually know and enjoy spending time with. Not shares, comments or adverts. It's a small…
A Call To Action for Everyone in the UK
Yesterday was a victory for democracy, lets use that to make the UK genuinely better. Regardless of what result you wanted, the primary outcome of yesterday's referendum is showing that people can be engaged to vote. It had the highest turnout ever recorded for a democratic election in the UK. That needs to be kept up. People voted despite the politicians and their tired rhetoric. The politicals need to wake up and be scared for next May. If the rest of the UK puts half the effort into getting proper representatives for themselves that the Scots put into the referendum then there could be a lot of new faces in Westminster in 2015. That can only be a good thing for both democracy and the people of all of the United Kingdom. People don't vote because they don't think it…
Scottish Independence – 5 Steps to Avoid Bias
Bias is everywhere. Spotting it is a key skill for voters in Scotland (and people everywhere all the time). We all have biases, even me. This is a normal part of being human. We like being part of a group and generally moderate our behaviour to conform to group norms. There is loads of material on experiments about this, notably Milgram on obedience and also the Stanford prison experiment. The Scottish Independence campaign is possibly the largest social experiment I've seen on this. Both sides and their supporters have been egregious in their attempts to scare the electorate into voting for them. The campaign has also shown that people can be engaged in politics. Low turnouts aren't because people don't care. It is because they don't feel they have a genuine choice. This engagement has a down side though. And…