Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

Two weeks ago, I tried an experiment.

As some of you know, in addition to this blog I have a Facebook page for my writing, which feeds through to my Twitter account. (I don’t like Twitter, but I’m not convinced it’s useless.) Posts here also go to my LinkedIn profile, to Google+, and to Tumblr.

I don’t have too many readers here—hundreds, but not thousands—and membership on my Facebook page is . . . modest, if you catch my drift . . . but I figured that this situation was the perfect foundation for a small experiment.

In short, I ran an ad.

Readership on this blog reacts strongly to specific factors. Proper tagging brings in readers, and certain tags (like “creative writing” or “David Chang’s Chicken Soup Recipe) drive more traffic than others. There are several other factors that come into play, such as the “Barb Effect”; when Barb (a friend who has many more contacts than I do) links to one of my posts, traffic on my blog spikes, big time. (I need more friends like Barb. Hehe.)

But spikes, by their nature, are not trends, and trends are what I want to see. Well, upward trends, anyway. Flatline trends, those I’ve got.

So, I decided to try a Facebook “boost,” to see if it made a difference.

If you’re not aware of what a “boost” is, it works like this: I give Facebook some money, and they push an advert for my post to people I think would be interested in it.

In theory, the target audience will see the advert, click to see the Facebook post, and (hopefully) click through that to read the full post here. That’s a fair number of moving parts, and there was bound to be some signal loss along the way. I mean, think about it. Just because an advert is displayed on someone’s feed, there’s no guarantee they’ll actually see it. Of those who do see it, some won’t find it of interest. If a person does find it interesting, it’ll have to be interesting enough to make them want to click through to the post. And finally, of those who see the Facebook side of the post (which includes the title, a picture, a slug-line, and a brief excerpt), only some will actually click through again and come here, to the blog.

The final question, of course, was whether this boost would generate new readers, either of the blog or of my books.

The cost for a five-day run of the boost was minimal ($5USD). The promised “reach” would be from 400-1000 people, all within my specified demographic factors. The post I selected to boost was the one I wrote about a Licton Springs in Seattle, so I chose to target people who lived in Washington State, who expressed interests in writing, reading books, or self-publishing. Age was not a factor.

The results were pretty clear.

For the run of the advert, it reached 458 people. That was so near the low end of the advertised range that I figure the upper end is just there to draw me in. Note to self: You’re paying for the low end.

However, of those 458 people, there were 48 clicks (10.4%) and two “shares.” That is a good result, as most successful marketing generates an engagement of 3–4% from the “reach.” This may have been attributable to the demographics I chose. Good targeting means higher response rates. But, now, of those 48, how many went to the actual blog post?

Most of my blog posts have a lifespan of about 60 hours. Over half of my readers come in on Day One, with another third on Day Two, and the stragglers coming in on Day Three. Then, it’s pretty much a flat line. Did the advert’s five-day run affect that?

It did.

Readership on that post was more than doubled, with readers coming in not only during the five-day run, but continuing during the following week (albeit in reduced numbers). In addition, there was an uptick in hits on other posts, either adjacent to the boosted post, or throughout the blog, as new visitors took the time to browse.

But now the big question: What were the long-term effects (if any)? This one is harder to answer. I believe the boost generated a few new regular readers, here and on Facebook, but there was no uptick in book sales. Frankly, I didn’t expect any sales, so I wasn’t disappointed, but it’s worth mentioning. Boosts generate interest and readership, but it takes a longer interaction to get someone to click through (again) to actually purchase something.

As an experiment, it was a success, and by that I mean I learned something. The goal wasn’t to generate new readers, but to see if it was possible. Obviously, it is, and perhaps a few additional forays into this arena will create a synergistic result that leads to a few more book sales.

Spending money on marketing—in amounts small or large—is a crap-shoot, and it takes a lot of it to translate that into revenue. As long as I keep my expectations reasonable, I think it might be worth doing more often.

k