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Photo by Pieter Musterd (tempo doeloe)

The great thing–and the challenge–to creating Facebook Ads is targeting who is interested in your ad or product, not only what they’re interested in (unlike in PPC advertising which only cares about what searchers are typing for keywords).

If you know your industry or niche well, knowing who to target is probably easy.

But if you don’t know who to target, there’s a way to figure it out with demographic apps, for example:

Alexa’s Site Info or  Quantcast.

How To Uncover Market Demographics

Finding information on your target market like age, sex, income, education, and household takes just a few steps:

  1. Enter the keyword(s) related to your Facebook ad in Google.
  2. Select the best matching website in Google’s top 5 results.
  3. Enter the site’s domain name (or URL) in the search field on Quantcast or Alexa’s Site Info (click on the “Audience” tab).
  4. Repeat with another top 5 result from Google, and compare the overall demographics results for consistencies.

Demographics Research Example

Say you have a family-run motel located in Maine and you want to advertise a special discount in Facebook. You may have a good idea on demographics based on your reservations, but aren’t sure, especially when it comes to online users.

Let’s go through the steps again using Quantcast and screenshots:

1. Search Google for “Maine motels.”

2. Select the best site from the top 5 results, like: www.maine.info/hotels.php.

3. Enter the URL in Quantcast, then look at results.

4. Try Quantcast again using a different URL from a top 5 result in Google: www.maineinns.com/.

Who to Target with Facebook Advertising is Apparent

Who your target market is for Maine motels is pretty easy to see.  Although Maine Inns’ demographics is a bit more skewed towards Females (who may be more interested in a Bed&Breakfast or inn), the market demographics can be plugged into Facebook’s ad tool as follows:

  • Male/Female (about even)
  • Over 35  (over 60 is the highest group)
  • No Kids
  • High school to college grad education

This technique will work for almost any market or keyword phrase you need to target for your ads. Happy Facebook advertising!

Photo by Traitlin Burke

Photo by Traitlin Burke

You know, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be an expert, an authority, a guru, a beginner, or a newbie.

I must be on some odd mental track, because two other blogs that I read regularly addressed this very topic of what is an expert, and what’s required to be an expert. Do we need to be an expert at all?

The conventional wisdom is 10,000 hours of dedicated study and focus = an expert.  In fact, Dr. Ericsson and his colleagues studied this topic thoroughly as reported in The Harvard Business Review in “The Making of an Expert.”

Dr. Ericsson and colleagues suggest some specific markers on the road to expertise:

  • Practice deliberately
  • Take the time you need
  • Find coaches and mentors

My take on this is I think there has to be a balance for most subjects in life.  Can you answer the question:

Where do you land on the scale of expertise?

  • not knowing anything at all
  • knowing something, but need to learn more
  • mastering a subject
  • a true expert

This X-number-of-hours-to-be-an-expert idea works well when we’re talking about studying a certain subject or mastering a certain field. Obviously, all medical doctors are experts – the average medical student spends 4,670 hours in classroom not counting residency and move onto actual practice.

The problem with being online is that some online marketers are promoting the idea that you really only need to have five to ten hours of study on a subject to be proficient enough in order to make “it” happen.

OK…minimal study and how many hours to what end? To learn HTML? To understand Google AdWords? To make your own blog?

A lot of new “online professionals” take courses online to create an online business model for themselves.  But yet they have no idea to build a website, very basic HTML, what SEO is, how to run a PPC campaign, or how to use social media.

They are on the newbie/beginner scale of not knowing anything or a little, but want the knowledge that comes with mastering a subject–actually many subjects–to get to “How to have a profitable online business.”

I empathize with them. So what to do…If you don’t know the basics, what’s the easiest way to get started?

IMO, the best place to get up and running online is to start with a blog:

  • The cost is minimal
  • Get a feel for creating content
  • Learn formatting and inserting an image/media
  • Have an opportunity to use FTP and/or HTML
  • Learn/test SEO and back linking methods

…and some other basics to starting online that will serve you well for a long time.

What should you focus on?

With the adoption of social media in the mainstream and a whole group of new people wanting to create an online business, we’re all in an information glut (and a helluva lot of competition). It’s tempting to find something just to make money.

So rather than do what someone else says is the way to make money, think about:

  • What special love or skill can you share?
  • What do you have a passion for?
  • Who would you happily converse with day after day (rather than get just customers)?

Perry Marshall addresses this very issue in his post in answer to “a …very frustrated woman.”  I’m posting this here not to promote more Internet marketers (AT ALL).

But do read Perry’s messages to specific people and what he advised them. You can leave the rest.

My test yesterday worked for the new cut/paste blog widget inside the Bixbe list creation area.  It took me literally a minute to follow the few steps and get a listing on my blog. I was also testing a way to “pull in” a Bixbe listing by adding a Bixbe URL in a blog post and it didn’t work with my set-up.

That was yesterday.

Thanks to the very fast and friendly Support at Bixbe, I got a simplified method to add a plugin file to the server (ACK – sounds bad, but was a simple FTP and plug in activation – maybe 3-4 minutes total).

UPDATE: All the info you need to add short codes to WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress.org blogs on Bixbe’s blog.

Today, I can just add a Bixbe listing URL inside my post, hit publish and there’s my Bixbe listing (below) with pic and “Buy Now” button. So nice!

I’m Selling This:

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