I’ve been asked the question recently in connection to business blogs: Should I blog on the company’s official site/domain name, or should I blog on on a fresh domain name? Each approach has its advantages, but with current search engine algorithms, my advice is to have the blog on (more…)

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A girl I was close with in high school wanted to get her nipples pierced. I’d heard some horror stories about nipple piercings and decided that I’d do some research on the topic to try and dissuade her, assuming she’d learn from others’ mistakes. (more…)

I’ve decided to start a semi-regular link love thing sharing items I’ve recently come across that I’d like to share with you folks as being valuable resources. This “Linking Oot N Aboot” column name comes from David, who remarked to me upon seeing a picture of me in a suit with a poppy: “You’re a canuck too?!” Yep, sure am! And though I don’t have the maritime/Atlantic Canada pronunciation that we seem to be famous for, I’ll shamelessly use my country’s national slang for the hell of it. (more…)

I ran a poll on Facebook targeting Facebook users 18-24 to find out whether they were aware of the existence of the Facebook Blog. 83% of them were not. This was following up on what Jane wrote at SEOmoz, regarding how she would make the Facebook blog more visible and certain other changes she’d make. After the jump, the precise details of the poll data. (more…)

I really dislike Google. Bill Gates, on the other hand, is a very charitable guy and MSN hasn’t done any deals with the devil nor helped terrorists, like Google has (hat tips Sunshine and Atlas). So I’m squarely in Bill’s corner. Here are the 5 things MSN/Live Must do to win search share from Google and Yahoo. (more…)

Here is the final campaign data of my two Facebook flyer campaigns, both of which were terminated December 3rd. All things told, spending under $2 for about 30,000 impressions seems like a sweet deal to me! Plus, I got some clicks and awareness, and it helped me make a good industry connection that has since translated into a few links. So while Aaron paid $500 for links through AdWords, my results seem to have been similar (OK, so you can’t compare newspaper links to industry links, but still) for much lower cost :).

I tried copy-pasting the table from my Facebook report, but it ended up only showing one line of data. So I’ve changed the copy-paste to attempt to show you both campaigns. The column headers that have consequently been ommitted read:

Campaign Name | Date Range | # Clicks | # Impressions | CTR (%) | Max CPC | Avg. CPC | Dly. Budget | Total Spent.

So on the first campaign, Want to Make Extra Money?, running from Oct 30 to Dec 2nd (i.e. they were no longer running the 3rd), I got 16 clicks on 22,113 impressions. The CTR in % is thus 0.072. I was topping my bids at 8 cents and ended up paying an average 7 cents. My daily budget of $5 was never reached obviously, as my total spent on the campaign was just $1.13.

Want to Make Extra Money? Completed

Oct 30 to Dec 02

16

22,113

0.072

0.08

0.07

5.00

1.13

The other campaign, which was a bit of a trial grounds, got 6 clicks on 7,492 impressions, for a total cost under a quarter. Because I was bidding less per click, this one ran more sporadically (though erratic impression volume seems to be inherent with the system, from what I’ve seen) getting 1000+ impressions some days and none others.

Date	Clicks	Impressions	CTR (%)	Avg CPC	Total Budget Used
Dec 01, 2007	0	452	0.000	0.00	0.00
Nov 30, 2007	0	277	0.000	0.00	0.00
Nov 29, 2007	0	50	0.000	0.00	0.00
Nov 28, 2007	0	143	0.000	0.00	0.00
Nov 27, 2007	1	343	0.292	0.08	0.08
Nov 26, 2007	0	162	0.000	0.00	0.00

Date Clicks Impressions CTR (%) Avg CPC Total Budget Used Nov 24, 2007 0 633 0.000 0.00 0.00 Nov 23, 2007 0 366 0.000 0.00 0.00 Nov 22, 2007 0 230 0.000 0.00 0.00 Nov 21, 2007 0 265 0.000 0.00 0.00 Nov 20, 2007 0 418 0.000 0.00 0.00

Date	Clicks	Impressions	CTR (%)	Avg CPC	Total Budget Used
Nov 17, 2007	0	763	0.000	0.00	0.00
Nov 16, 2007	0	665	0.000	0.00	0.00
Nov 15, 2007	0	605	0.000	0.00	0.00
Nov 14, 2007	0	214	0.000	0.00	0.00
Nov 13, 2007	0	652	0.000	0.00	0.00
Nov 12, 2007	1	920	0.109	0.08	0.08

On a related note, you might not have noticed, but there’s new Facebook advertising fare to be had: Facebook profile page ads by Weblo (story tip from Marty & aimClear).

From the NYT (yes, that link is a nofollow and no, it’s not by accident) comes news that Montreal company (I love our city!) Weblo is helping users sell advertising on their Facebook profile pages. That’s not all though. Weblo is also empowering users to sell ads on their Youtube, Blogger, Myspace, Orkut and other web profiles.

Facebook, naturally, is none too pleased. For one, they’ve got competition to sell ads on their own site now. For another, these ads directly integrated into users’ profiles are likely to feel very spammy. Or to use a Facebook rep’s words, “cluttered.”

Will they stay or will they go? Well, Facebook could easily boot Weblo off their site. But chances are you’d just see other people come up with similar apps and it would get very laborious to ban all of them. Besides, how do you tell your users that some content isn’t allowed on your site? Unfair as it may be to Facebook, people will bitch about censorship and all that jazz. So Facebook needs to come up with a plausible answer to the problem of profile advertising, asap.

Ironically, they could probably solve the problem by collaborating with their big advertisers on it. Have them spend some dough to test it out, offer a rebate on Facebook advertising in exchange, and see if it works. I’m betting it won’t. And this being the web, advertisers will eventually stop using the platform as word spreads that the ROI sucks. Theoretically, at least.

If the ads do work out and Facebook directed its big advertisers to it, then there could be some competition between Facebook and Weblo. But Facebook could ultimately win that fight by booting Weblo and encouraging users to add an official copycat app to their profiles. The best part of it, for Facebook, is that they get an unknown company to take the heat if the idea doesn’t work out. After the stiff reception Beacon got, the last thing Facebook wants is more negative publicity for their ads. So they can see with advertisers whether this is finally the solution and then boot Weblo (or just buy them out entirely?).

Perhaps that’s what Facebook planned all along…

Since Facebook announced their new ad platform, they were allowing advertisers with existing Flyers campaigns to continue running the campaigns until said campaigns were paused or deleted. Now, those campaigns will be automatically shut off by Facebook on December 3rd. (Edit: This is gaining traction at Sphinn. Please Sphinn it to help it go hot!) (more…)

I presented “Facebook Advertising and Reputation Management - Publicité Facebook et Gestion de Réputation” at FacebookCamp Montreal yesterday. It was my first time presenting at a conference (or “unconference,” rather, to use the words of the generous Sylvain Carle of Praized and Frog in the Valley) and I was pretty nervous just before starting. It didn’t help that I had to revamp my presentation because of Facebook changing its ad platform radically (see the new Facebook Ads) just the day before and me finding out 4 hours ahead of gametime! Read on to see what I did right (nothing), wrong (everything) and the slides from my presentation! (more…)

A Further 26% Shop Online and Make Their Purchases Offline

Montreal, Quebec, Canada - September 11, 2007 � SEO ROI - Facebook Polling has discovered that 55% of Facebook users aged 35-49 have shopped and bought at least a couple of things online this year. Those who said that they shop and buy online regularly comprised the largest group of poll respondents, at 31%. This new data reveals a trend away from the scepticism about ecommerce that was more prevalent in past years.

The poll, conducted through Facebook by search engine optimization and internet marketing firm SEO ROI, reveals growing comfort with ecommerce amongst consumers. (more…)