I was very slow to hop on the Facebook page bandwagon, I have to admit. I thought there was something really strange about asking people to ‘like’ you. I still think that’s a bit odd, especially for my Nerdy Nomad personal site. But, these days, I’m well and truly and fully on board with the Facebook page thing and currently have three of the things.
Facebook Pages
My Nerdy Nomad page isn’t one I put too much effort into. I guess the idea behind this one was to have a place to keep my blog’s readers informed on what I’m up to… sort of acting like a regular Facebook page but for people I don’t know. I feel like I could turn this page into a pretty interesting place to be, but I haven’t put a lot of effort into it so far. Part of this might be because I’m not really travelling at the moment and have settled into a routine life of waking up, doing a bit of work, going to the gym, meeting friends for lunch, doing a bit of work, eating dinner, watching a movie or going out for drinks, and then going to sleep. Sure, I’m doing all of this in Rwanda, but when you break down my day-to-day life… it’s not much different from yours! But I still feel like people are interested in live abroad and also in the earning online stuff and I intend on pimping out my page a bit more in the near future.
My other two pages are for my living in Kigali and living in Kampala websites and these pages are lively and actually a lot of fun to work on. I manage the Kigali Facebook page since I live here, own and run the Kigali website and am truly interested in what’s going on around town and in helping people figure this place out. It’s been a great way to keep on to of what’s on in the city (I’ve followed every Kigali-related page I could find) and fun to make contact with people on Facebook who stumble onto the page. It’s very social and an excellent way to drive traffic back to my website, share events or to have questions answered. I really love posting to the page and getting feedback and it’s great to see the number of ‘likes’ slowly rising.
The Kampala Facebook page is run by my partner’s housemate in exchange for free rent. Ah, I love bartering! The guy running this page, James, is really into it and he loves Kampala and you can tell. He does a bit more day-to-day commenting on the page than I do. Stuff about weather, humour, where he’s eating, reports on random things happening in the city and it adds an interesting element to things. I’d like to follow his lead and start doing more of this sort of thing on the Kigali page but I always forget. It’s interesting to see that, with half the ‘fans’ (352 to the Kigali page’s 730), the Kampala Facebook page has a much much higher reach. I guess this is a good indicator of the size of the communities in each city. Kigali’s expat community and population in general is a lot smaller than Kampala’s and maybe we’re seeing it through Facebook.
So, all up, I see Facebook pages as an amazing communication tool for all of those little things that don’t warrant a blog post of their own. It’s an awesome way of sharing cool things you find and of making contact with a lot of different people who are into whatever it is your page is about. If you have a website to pair it up with, a Facebook page is a great way of sharing new posts and things with a lot of people (or at least the people who’ve liked your page) and then makes it easy for those people to share the link with their friends and suddenly you’re reaching some new people fairly easily.
Facebook Ads
So now that I’m all jacked up on the wonders of Facebook pages (finally), I’ve decided to delve even deeper and put out a couple of ads for my Kigali and Kampala pages. So far the results have been pretty amazing. I’m not sure how advertising a website would work, but advertising my Kigali Facebook page has resulted in over 150 new page likes in just three days. Considering it’s taken over a year to crawl up to 700 likes, I think that’s a pretty miraculous thing. The best part? It’s cost me a whopping £5 so far! That’s some serious value for money, my friends.
The Kampala ad was set up a day later and is seeing the same amazing results, so far. Over 100 new likes for under £4. I’m impressed. I feel like there’s likely to be an initial spike in new likes at the very beginning as people see your ad for the first time. After awhile, I’m sure the ad will reach lots of people but many will either already like your page and many others will have decided they’re not interested. There’s only a finite number of people you can reach but, once you try geographical groups with certain interests, you can always mix it up a bit and try for a broader audience. I’m new to this so I’m not sure what works best but my goal was to get more people to like my page and my expectations have been exceeded already.
I really think that Facebook ads are a fantastic way to reach a very targeted audience – by location, interests, demographics or any combination of the three. This is a pretty powerful thing, especially if you’re on a limited budget and don’t want your ad displaying to the whole world. I’ve never used Adwords but I’m already seeing some pretty major advantages to Facebook ads. The results I’m getting so far are speaking for themselves. I wonder if my ad prices are so cheap because of the combo of not many people in my niche using Facebook ads yet and because Africa might not be a topic that commands high prices. If I were in a more competitive niche, I feel like my ad prices could potentially be a lot higher and I wouldn’t be getting nearly as much bang for my buck.
Another good thing is that ads are really easy to monitor. There’s no logging into another advertising platform to set everything up… you just do it from a different page within your regular Facebook account. I’m on Facebook all the time anyways in the background so I just need to swap windows and click on one thing and suddenly my ad stats are right in front of my face. It makes me feel less guilty about spending time on Facebook because I’m doing work… right?
So… given that I got into the Facebook page thing relatively late (a couple of years ago, I think?) and am only writing about it now for the first time – you guys probably already know all of this stuff! But I’m into it. I like it. I think it’s good! I used to think of the pages as extra work needed just to stay afloat, but now I really enjoy using them to share and connect. Plus it looks like Facebook ads are going to make finding new readers a lot easier… and I like it when things are made easy for me!
So if you have a blog or website and don’t have a Facebook page yet, get one. If you’ve got a Facebook page and you’re looking for some more ‘likes’ and you have an extra $50 kicking around, try setting up an ad for the month and see how it goes. I’m really curious to hear about other people’s experiences with Facebook advertising because, so far, I’ve got nothing bad to say!
Leave a Reply