Old Facebook Profile Ads

Old Facebook Profile Layout

New Slimmer Facebook Profile Ads

New Timeline Layout

 Compare the Same Facebook Ad Side by Side

239 x 117

128 x 168

Differences in Facebook Ads

While the ad sizes are not exact, the widths are fairly accurate. The new ad is slimmer, at about 128 pixels. The image sizes remain the same at 110 x 80 pixels. The background color has changed from white to the light blue. The number of ads on a traditional page range from 1 to 6. The number of ads on the new facebook timeline layout is 2 or 3 depending on your screen size. Yes, the ads display in conjunction with your screen size, pretty high tech programing there. One of the biggest differences between the two sets is that the new layout keeps the ads on page as you scroll down the page. The old set up will actually scroll the ads off the screen. Very subtle differences, but I am sure someone somewhere at Facebook is monitoring revenues based on the layouts. Curious internet marketers would like to know what that difference is. Facebook marketers want to know how this could effect their ads.

Related articles

• Timeline vs Old – How Our Eyes Look at Them (sociableblog)
• How to sign out of the new Facebook layout update. (haiteq.com)
• 8 Great Facebook Changes (dreamsystemsmedia.com)
• How Big is Facebook? (dreamsystemsmedia.com)

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Just your friendly neighborhood pest control guy reporting… I also Report on Scorpions. =)

-Thomas Ballantyne
Director of Marketing for Bulwark Exterminating
Follow me on Twitter —> @Thos003

Just how big is Facebook?

Infographic & Viral Marketing from Dream Systems Media

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Facebook recently announced it’s facial recognition software and so shouts of “Privacy Issues” are screaming across the blogosphere. But how much of a privacy issue is it?  The statement used by Facebook, “We’ve automatically grouped similar pictures”. Background, lighting, and other elements of the image can be used to group similar pictures.  In fact, Techcrunch reported that “Google researchers published a paper describing progress they are making in teaching computers how to identify famous landmarks” in a post dated June 22, 2009. Granted this isn’t facial recognition software they are developing, but the momentous task of identifying faces is equivalent if not greater than identifying landmarks.

Facebook’s spokes person is being anything but clear as to what level they are taking this. This statement given, “It’s pretty standard technology that is already out there,” would suggest it’s not an ID system. Identifying people is not a standard technology.  Face.com has been working on developing this technology for some time.  However, face recognition is a common technology.  Many digital cameras quickly and easily identify a face within the frame.  Two eyes, a nose and mouth grouped closely together are pretty easy to find.

Having said that, Facebook could be a learning system with potential to breach facial identification.  Apple has provided a face recognition software that allows tagging with their iPhoto since 2009. Apple’s software does begin to identify faces that you tag regularly. The more you tag an individual the easier it is for the computer to identify and auto suggest an individual, not just a face. When tagging with iPhoto, the program can also find/sort images on your computer for that individual’s face. They also allow places tagging. The cool part is that you can search your photos by places or faces. So to say that Facebook can’t do it would not be an accurate statement either. And even if they cannot do it now, who is to say that they won’t go back and do it later once the technology is perfected?

And for those that want to believe it’s a violation of their privacy and the Big Brother Skynet is just around the corner, Justin Mitchele does state “…to match your new photos to other photos you’re tagged in. We group similar photos together and, whenever possible, suggest the name of the friend in the photos.” So is Facebook creating identification software? The common link in the facebook suggest is you. It connects you to your friends. Connecting you to a random photo of you on the internet taken by a stranger is still a long way off. Without significant input from human users that can teach the facial recognition software with whom to link the image, facial recognition software used to identify individuals is still a light-year away.

Testing the Facebook Identification Software

So far the software is not available for all users. I did get a quick sneak peek and this is screen shot of them grouping Arnie’s photo together.

Photos from AZIMA meet up. | "Who is this?"

The fact that it grouped Arnie’s images together at the top is not too alarming as it could be attributed to the lighting, background, and sequence. But Arnie’s profile image was also in sequence and the lighting background is similar. Further David Mihm’s profile image following Arnie’s was not grouped in. With these as indicators, the software is certainly more sophisticated than a simple face recognition program. The software very well could be a photo identification/privacy nightmare.

Although I must admit that I did appreciate the auto rotation Facebook threw in with their new program. Yes, they now have auto horizontal/vertical image rotation. Man I love time saving inventions.  Just wish I knew how to bank that time saved.

-Thomas Ballantyne
“Don’t mind me, I am just the pest control guy.”
Find me on twitter @Thos003

Some Burros

As I was searching online for some information to one of my favorite Mexican food joints here in Arizona I ran across several problems with their website and wanted to share them here.  I also came across several areas where I thought they could capitalize on social marketing, increase traffic to their website and interact better (online) with the people who love them.

The Argument:

You walk into one of their locations and they are already packed.  True, but tell me of a business (you know of) that does not want to reach MORE customers, or expand to MORE locations?  If they are speaking the truth, every business wants to grow and expand – and of course, make more money.  So, I feel with a few improvements to their website and nickles worth of free social marketing advice here, I think they could be making vast improvements to their overall bottom line.

Their Website Problems:

The entire thing, besides one html page and some PDFs is built in flash, that means – the entire website is a single flash file, which is NO GOOD for search engine optimization, because even if the flash is crawlable, only be a single page indexed.  They have four valley locations and could be doing a better job with their local marketing and creating pages that target those areas.  When they do this, people searching for them, and those locations get a better experience when they are taken right to the exact information they are looking for.  People hate having to search through an unfriendly website trying to find the information they want.  There are many other things having a site like this will not allow you to capitalize on SEO wise, but for the sake of keeping this post simple – I am not going to go there.

For example:

They have 4 locations here in the valley, so they should at least have four crawlable pages to target the specific locations like so:

• http://www.someburros.com/gilbert-arizona-location
• http://www.someburros.com/tempe-arizona-location
• http://www.someburros.com/san-tan-arizona-location
• http://www.someburros.com/chandler-arizona-location

We will get into how they can capitalize on social marketing with those specific location pages here in a minute, but first lets talk about why doing the above thing is good.  When I go to Google to look for information on “Some Burros San Tan Location” (because they do catering so it’s not out of the question to think that people will be looking information for them online) the result that needs to come up is the http://www.someburros.com/san-tan-arizona-location page because then I do not have to navigate several clicks on their website “trying to find” the information I was looking for.

They also have the opportunity to include a link to their Google Maps listing on that page (for that specific location) and maybe link to their Yelp listing with a link that says: “see what people are saying about us”.  By doing this, you are sealing the deal with being found for not only your specific name searches locally, (when you get crawled) but almost anything GEO targeted in your industry (ie: a search on Google for “Mexican Food restaurant in San Tan Arizona”).  This really is just the beginning of how they can capitalize, but I think that gives them a good start. (if they just so happen to be reading this)

Social opportunities missed (and solutions offered):

You see they have a page on their website talking about coupons and promotions (so you know, they know people are looking for this info online – or they would not have included it).  People do not want to go through the process of clicking on, and sending you an email just to get your offers – they want the easy way of getting your offers and deals: In comes social marketing. 

Here is my suggestion to them:  Why not have a place to connect with customers via Twitter and Facebook?  You can tell them to follow you on Twitter, and friend you on Facebook for special deals that only they get by being your friend or by being a follower.  This gives customers a reason to follow your business on Twitter, or friend you on Facebook because they are getting (and know about) deals of the day that are going on. Put the “Follow Us On Twitter” or Facebook “Friend Me” logos/buttons on the specific location pages (as talked about above) where someone (that worsk for that location) can give specific updates and offers (again, for THAT LOCATION), and offer a little insight or blurb on the page why following or friending would be a good thing etc.

This will bring a whole new following of people to your business, and you can connect with them in a way you never thought was possible – the human way.  There are so many other things that this will do for your business that you do not realize, like filling the SERPs up with the content that you want out there – so its great for reputation management.

Being social just helps your business connect with more people too (then the regulars), you will gain new attention, attract new customers and will be keeping up with the marketing techniques of this generation.  I am going to give local businesses a warning – if you are not making your sites more friendly, and doing everything you can to connect with your customers on a social level, you will be left in the dust by a competitor that is doing this, and “gets it”.

I hope other businesses can learn and get some ideas from this post, and that Some Burros can take it as (like I said) a nickles worth of free advice to improving things.  Its funny, I suffer from a problem that most don’t … when I am online doing searches, or looking for something I can’t just “look” and get the info I wanted.  I have to look at everything as if I were doing marketing for them (always a marketer) – it’s a curse I know, but I hope these guys benefit from it this time, and that everyone can learn something!  LOL

I get confused on the social media sites like, Facebook, Twitter, even Skidoo etc. Should I be setting up a profile under my name to follow me specifically or setting up something that tells people to follow my website?

Here are my thoughts:  My answer depends on the specific network, as well as what you are trying to accomplish, but let me first touch on the specific networks you mentioned in this question.

Twitter

Twitter: If you are trying to gain more business, and use Twitter as a platform to attract more customers and get more of the word out then you need to set up a more formal business account.  For example; If my name were John Doe and I had a business called ISellWidgets.com I would set my Twitter account up to be:  Twitter.com/ISellWidgets (or something similar depending on availability) and NOT Twitter.com/JohnDoe.  This way you could do a better job at attracting the right kind of followers, and get the word out to the correct industry.  Reason being – Lets just say you are into fishing, and that is fine, but that would do much better on a personal type account, where you can find, talk and connect with other people who love fishing, but do you see how that would do your business no good?  The business account would be better left to connect with same industry minded people.  Now you can also set up a personal Twitter account if you want to use it for those kind of reasons mentioned above, but hopefully this does a better job showing you the line between the two style of accounts.

Facebook

Facebook: Create a personal page so you can have access to all that Facebook, but once you have a personal page set up, you can also create a FAN page for your business.  Use the personal page for your personal matters, but the fan page to get the word out about your business matters.  If you don’t want to create a Facebook page to connect with people you may not even like from back in the day, that’s fine – just use the FAN page/business portion of it to connect with potential customers.

Squidoo

Squidoo: Wow, do I even touch this one with a 10 ft. pole, or make a joke after all the attention it’s got this week? Ha Ha -  My thoughts are to create a page for your brand/company on Squidoo, but don’t pay Seth 400$ a month for it.  I mean, Squidoo is free (as far as I’ve ever used it), and if you even have any (even) small ability as an SEO or Internet marketer, you can get the page you create to rank pretty easily for your brand.

I think there are other networks out there that you can use as personal accounts that would also serve your purpose as a business owner, but you have to get in and really understand what that specific network is about, and how to best use it.  If your main goal is to drum up business, and that is THE ONLY REASON you are using social networks, then the answer is simple – always create it for your business.  Create the domain/ID name/profile/brand whatever centered around your business.  I think this is what you are really asking with this question because it does not seem like you are the person that is wanting to set up these accounts to keep in contact with friends or find a long lost love?  Am I right?

Or, hire someone to do this for you (see the end for my recommendation).

25 Ways to Get a Web Site or Blog Indexed by Google or Search Engines

1. Get a link from an established blog. You could email and ask a related blog or hit up your blogging friends. Some pay for this (although it’s frowned upon). Another way to do this legally is to offer to guest post on someone’s blog and link back to your site or blog with a keyword phrase.
2. Tell Google about your blog.
3. Tell Google blog search too.
4. Add your site to Google Webmaster Central
5. Add your blog to Yahoo Site Explorer
6. Create a lens about your blog on Squidoo. You can create more than one lens, one for each major keyword phrase.
7. Create an account on this blog community: MyBlogLog
8. BlogCatalog
9. Blogged
10. NetworkedBlogs
11. Get listed on blog search engine Technorati.
12. Register with sites that give the “value” of your blog: WebsiteOutlook,
13. StatBrain,
14. CubeStat,
15. WebTrafficAgents,
16. BuiltWith,
17. WhoIs,
18. QuarkBase,
19. URLfan
20. AboutTheDomain
21. Create a profile for your blog on social sites like Twitter. Some let you establish a profile and a custom link – use keyword phrases.
22. Get on Facebook then go to www.facebook.com/usernames and create a custom username for your site or blog. You can feed your blog onto your Facebook page. Do this on LinkedIn too.
23. Delicious will not only let you bookmark and share sites but again you can create a profile and custom URL. Plus you can link to your blog.
24. Sign up ChangeDetectionthat logs when your site changes (and essentially creates new content about your site).
25. Sites like pingler ping search engines when you change your blog.

I just found out that if you’re an author and your book is on Amazon.com you can create an author profile page where you can blog or feed your blog in automatically. The link goes to my author page.

This outsourcing company in India charges $6/hour. I sent them this list to market my new blog. CDBaby’s CEO used them all the time and had nothing but good to say about them! They have quite a selection of services.

I’d love to do a case study with a new blog – one that I did nothing and one that I followed these 25 tips. Then compare the numbers. Any volunteers?

Please share your tips for getting a new site or blog indexed in search engines.

50$ In Free Facebook Ads

If you have been thinking about giving the Facebook Ads a try, now is your perfect opportunity because I am giving you a chance to win $50 bucks in free clicks – (I am gonna keep this simple too) all you gotta do is comment and let me know why you wanna try out the Facebook Ads program – and I’ll pick one of you to give it to.  I will just email, or DM the code to the winner on Monday March 30th, and you can have all $50 bucks of free clicks.  Keep in mind that this is only good for users that are new to the Facebook Advertising program.

WHY am I doing this?

I already have an account, and got this card while I was at SMX West 2009.  I actually just found it in the bag you get (almost tossed it) and am not going to use it, so I decided to give it away so it can be put to use.  It expires June 30th of this year, so if you win it – use it fast!

If I choose you, you will have to come back to this post (not a requirement) and let me know if the ads did anything for you and what you learned while using the $50 bucks!   You can even follow me on Twitter for good measure, but that’s not required either!  I look forward to the comments!

Good Luck!

PS – Let this be a reminder to those of you who got bags at SMX West 2009 that you got a free card with $50 bucks in free FB Ads – unless I was the only one???

PPS – You can even leave a comment as to why you wouldn’t want this too?  I would love to hear all reasons!

UPDATE: We have a winner!  Congrats to Missy for being the winner of the free ads!  I appreciate all who commented!

Kenny Hyder Hates Twitter on Facbook

With all that said; I am at a loss because I want those people (on Facbook that are not using Twitter) to see what I am up to, but I do not want to have to go and update two “status” places.  That could get annoying real quick (why I no longer Plurk).

I decided to do a poll on Facebook and see if my friends wanted me to remove my Twitter feed and it was split 50/50 (of course there was only two people that answered me back so I still feel I have no answer).  Here is what Nate Moller from @mollermarketing said:  Right now, I agree with Nate and I want to keep my feed going.

Nate Moller Likes Twitter on Facebook

I feel the poll was useful because I got an amazing response from my friend @garettstenson, who shares his idea of how to fix the problem – so maybe in the hopes of a Facebook App developer reading this – it will give you a good idea.  Here is what Garett said:

Matt-
It would be cool to custom-script a “Twitter-Facebook Translator” App – what I mean is, your Twitter content/links are great, but all the Twitter lingo you post (ie @ symbols, #symbols, tinyurl’s, etc) gets confusing in Facebook. Especially for those that don’t use Twitter. What if your translator app “scrubbed down” your Twitter feed and made it more personal and less mechanical? Just a thought… I also think you should integrate your Blog more… your Blog is so good it should be splashed everywhere! Especially your “How-to Facebook” posts.
G

I could not agree more and I have been wondering about a solution like this for a long time.  Maybe there is one and I just don’t know about it.  Even if there was a solution do you still think that having your Twitter status on Facebook is a good idea or not?  I would love this to be a good discussion and see what people rally think?  Thanks in advance, because you are going to help me decide if I pull my feed or not.

I woke up this morning to Skittles Twitter explosion buzz.  Skittles.com has changed its home page to nothing more then a Twitter search for “Skittles” and a little navigation graphic for the rest of their site.  They even have a friends page that redirects to their Facebook friends page.  Here is the screenshot I took of my Twitter comment showing up on the home page of Skittles – So technically I had a PR 5 link from Skittles … haha  – because its the Twitter search, and people are buzzing so much about this today – in about 10 min my tweet was more then 10 pages deep.  Still funny though.

Skittles and Twitter

I think Skittles is going to sell a ton more today because of all this, but still not sure if its the right move.  It has generated them some amazing buzz though.  I think there are smarter ways to use Twitter, and still be building up your own site and content.  I will be curious to see how Google treats their PR 5 home page with this duplicate content now and what it will do to their overall traffic.  I would be curious to know what your thoughts are about this move my Skittles?  Good social media move, or is it going to kill them?  I am going to agree with Graywolf and call this a win for Skittles – I am just glad to see major companies (like Skittles) doing whatever they can to embrace social media and realize where things are going, even if they are not executing with 100% perfection.

Is This Google Ad Relevant?

As I was in my Facebook the other day this ad was showing up, and it raised the question about relevance. (and several other questions)

Would an ad like this be allowed on Google?  I am still not aware of the quality scores on Facebook ads, but would you actually click on this ad? Do you really think that a girl with … two obvious features is going to help make you 10k a month?  I am thinking these are very poor ads that will have a low conversion rate.  Who cares if the CTR is high, its all about the conversion IMO.

I guess Facebook just wants to cash in because I think these ads are crap.  Look, I get it – sex sells, but why would you waste money on these kind of ads?  They would be better off, and probably make more money if they had a page to other “Google Girls” and had adsense on the page with links to a contest, or “Submit your Google Girl pictures here?”

THAT, would be more relevant and give users more of a reason to click – Don’t ya think?