Gerry samples some Sublime wine.
Haha. Off The Meat Track with a picture that says it all about magazines.
While it’s a guide on how to blog for the Washington Post, this is a good guide blogging for yourself or for an organisation.
Author: Damien Mulley
Fluffy Links – Thursday November 22nd 2007
Thursday, November 22nd, 2007How to advertise on Facebook – A perspective from Ireland
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007So you want to run ads on Facebook for your business, whatever that business is. Thanks to social ads from Facebook you can target 167,000 people in Ireland that currently use the service in the same way that Google’s ad system allowed you to target ads but even better than Google you can almost be sniper-like on how you target the ads. You can target by age, gender, work status, relationship status, college education and interests, something Google can’t quite do yet. (though when the next iterations of Open Social happen, they will)
In this walkthrough, let’s present were the typical snobby TCD student who can make an almost professional career of sneering at UCD students. So you’ve decided you want to advertise to UCD folks. All you need is a credit card and to spend a minimum of five dollars on your ad campaign.
1. You need to decide what your ad is going to be. For this example the Trinners student is going to advertise jobs in McDonald’s to those in UCD.
2. So first go to Facebook.com/ads
3. Click on the big green button!
4. Choose what website address you want to be clicked. Here it’s the job page on www.McDonalds.ie
5. From here choose your audience. We picked 18-25 year olds that attend UCD.
6. It said there were circa 1380 people from UCD on Facebook:
7. Then write your ad and you can also include an image. The McDonald’s logo was chosen.
8. You can also see a preview of what the ad will look like:
9a. After this you can choose how much is to be spent and what times the ad will be shown. You can also pay per click or by views:
Update: Left out this bit:
9b. If you choose pay per views you have the option of also display the ad in the News Feed of people, something which will probably get you a lot more clicks and views since people actively scan and read their News Feed.
10. Finally, review the campaign and pay up and off you go.
Happy annoying people or er doing business.
Remember though that just because you can advertise and target specific people does not mean that you will get a lot of click throughs. You have to work hard on writing good copy and using good images to get the attention of a Facebook public that doesn’t seem to pay too much attention to ads. While I do think general advertising is becoming disintermediated, in the end if the web is truely democratic/equal and everyone knows SEO, everyone blogs and tells the story of the product and gets the cluetrain, it will again come down to branding and marketing professionals to help make your product the most liked product out there. Not everyone out there can work on making global microbrands so I forsee ad agencies and marketing companies training and educating people on how to do it right and of course helping those too busy to do it themselves.
Fluffy Links – Wednesday November 21st 2007
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007(Welcome new subscribers to Mulley.net)
Fantastic. Claire is helping to get an Educate Together school set up in Greystones. Well done Claire.
Sharon points out that the fundymedia folks are picketing the state broadcaster over their censorship of some important issues. When cancer experts are now allowed on air because their pithy analysis of cancer care in Ireland does not please a Minister, then a stand needs to be taken.
An Irish Pharmacist blogs about the HSE and their war on pharmacists and the medical card.
Head of special initiatives at Google thinks Auctomatic is hot.
IrishElection got a makeover. Great design and love the new additions.
Meebo, my fav web based multi-IM client is becoming even more of a social network with this games addon.
PollDaddy also expands. If I owned this Irish-owned service I’d be leveraging the install base to carry out polls across this “network” of polling widgets. “We can poll a million people for you in the next 24 hours” and then send the poll out and give a little cash to the people who host the poll. Facebook make money with the quick polls. PollDaddy should do the same.
Séan is teaching his peers in school how to blog. More of this.
Via Stephen is this YouTube video that looks like it’s from the 60s but two vintage cameras from eBay gave it this look:
[youtube 8ouI5KcyHfE]
Cringe! Chuck Norris political endorsement. Chucks gotten some plastic work done.
[youtube EjYv2YW6azE]
Donncha recently asked me how I compile the fluffy links I generally do every day. Mainly I have my blog editing window open in a tab in Firefox. As I see things that interest me and I find interesting, I will update a draft blog post with these links and a little bit of commentary or just open a new tab in Firefox with that link. At the end of the day I can sometimes have up to 60 tabs open. I become more selective too the longer the tab is open. I’m subbed to about 220 news feeds right now and the content from them mixed together is quite eclectic so I think at least one link each day will appeal to the (allegedly 800+) people that are subscribed to this blog. What I’ve noticed in the past while is I’ve been putting stuff that highlights what Irish bloggers are saying or doing at the start of the fluffy links. Something which was not a conscious decision. I’m also noticing too that resultant from this I get emails almost every day asking for a Fluffy Link. Just so you know, I am happy to link to something that you think I’d find interesting. So email away. At one point I was 2 weeks ahead with my fluffy links but not so these days.
Science Week Blogging Winners but the science blog posts continue
Tuesday, November 20th, 2007Sorry about the lateness in this, apparently people were emailed about it. Was too caught up with other matters to let you know the winners and to blog the past day and a bit.
Congrats to the following who won a Wii for Science Week:
- What was your favourite invention from your childhood? – Kevin Breathnach
- What invention would you most like to see in the future – Brian from atrier.com
- What is the next gadget you plan to buy? – Pedro Monscooch
- What was the best invention of 2007? – Poetbloggs
- What invention helps you most with your working life – Johnny Keyes
But it looks like if you want to keep writing about this, then go see Sinéad. She’s taken up the mantle and is asking people a new science question (no Wii prize this time though), the question is: What changes would you make to an existing piece of technology?
eircom Broadband week – new ComScore stats
Monday, November 19th, 2007More during the week about the various events around Broadband Week. One to definitely to note is that they’ll be announcing an Innovation Fund at the end of the week that tech startups might benefit from.
Remember those ComScore stats? They’re back again for September, via eircom.
Top 10 Internet properties visited by Irish users during September 2007:
FACTS:
* Over 2 million people in Ireland logged onto the Internet in September 2007 (48% of the population)
* Top 5 properties visited by Irish users are non Irish sites
* eircom.net is the number one Irish site visited by Irish users
* Almost 1.2m unique users visited eircom.net during September.
* Only 3 of the top 10 sites visited by Irish users are Irish sites
1. Google
2. Microsoft
3. Yahoo!
4. bebo.com
5. eBay
6. eircom.net
7. Wikipedia
8. Time Warner Network
9. Ryanair
10. Aer Lingus
Top Sporting sites visited by Irish Users
FACTS:
* 65% of Irish visitors to sporting sites are under the age of 35
* 64% of Irish visitors to these sites are male
* RTE Sport is the 3rd most visited sporting site by Irish internet users
* Only two Irish sites in the top 10 – RTE Sport and GAA.ie
* One in three Irish users visited a sporting site
1. skysports.com
2. premierleague.com
3. RTE Sport
4. World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)
5. BBC Sport
Wrestling!!
Top Multimedia Sites visited by Irish Users
FACTS:
* 66% of Irish visitors to multimedia entertainment sites are under the age of 35
* 10% of Irish visitors to these sites are 55 or older
* 43% of Irish users visited a multimedia site during September 2007
1. youtube.com
2. iTunes
3. Windowsmedia.com
4. real.com
5.AOL Music
Top Gambling Sites Visited by Irish Users
FACTS
* The number of unique visits to Gambling sites by Irish users has doubled in the past year.
* lotto.ie and paddypower.com are the 2nd and 3rd most popular gambling sites for Irish users
* 30% of Irish Internet users visit Gambling websites once a month
1. 888.com
2. lotto.ie
3. Paddy Power
4. 365 Media Group
5. betfair.com
OTHER INTERESTING FACTS
* Boards.ie is the most visited discussion / chat site by Irish users in September 2007
* Unique visits to discussion / chat sites have increased 16% in the last year
* 1 in 4 Irish users visited a discussion / chat site during September
Fluffy links – Monday November 19th 2007
Monday, November 19th, 2007Patrick Collison now stars in the Irish curriculum.
Christmas is coming. Check out this sweater. (Via Andrew)
Website managed to buy a football club!
I so want a Chumby. I got my Wii last year and my Elmo. Now it’s this.
Free booze for UK Twitter folks.
Escher’s Hands redone for robots.
Think telecoms in Ireland is bad? How about Regtel for premium number services. Run for the industry by the industry. Read how they redefine what a complaint is and then say the numbers of complaints went down. Scammers.
Another That’s Ireland classic: Fifty Ways to Laugh at Voters the Vidjo
[youtube dm_akheka9w]
Are you local? Google Local comes to Ireland. Register your business for free
Sunday, November 18th, 2007
Fianna Fáil – Never Resign
Saturday, November 17th, 2007[youtube 5VntfcYDNLg]
Minister Conor Lenihan thinks the Govt is entitled to interfere with the media
Saturday, November 17th, 2007From Today’s Irish Times Radio review section.
Seems Kebab Lenihan was on the Marian Finucane show last week and they talked about the Late Late Show and Governments telling the media what to do and then…
All but one of Finucane’s panel of newspaper reviewers were in agreement that the Government should never seek to interfere with the editorial decisions made by programme-makers. It’s a no-brainer, really, unless you’re from North Korea – but not for our Minister of State. “Funny enough” said Lenihan, “I don’t object to the principle that calls could be made. I notice that around the table we’re all getting very precious.”
Uh oh
Buh bye: Door, hit, ass. Pay Per Post fakebloggers hammered by Google
Saturday, November 17th, 2007And sometimes I really like Google. It seems anyone that sold out and polluted the web by fakeblogging for Pay Per Post have now received almost the ulimate punishment and have gotten a Pagerank of zero. Just checked a few sites who use Lie Per Post and yup, zero. Trouble is my ranking has gone down from 5 to 3 too but I wonder is that because of the increased diluting of link weight? Though it doesn’t bother me as I’ve never been obsessed about it.
Update: Loving how Pay Per Post claim censorship by Google yet mysteriously there are ZERO negative comments about their service on their blog post. Everyone is positive.