Week 11: Online Advertising

I found this to be one of the more difficult assignments that we've had, for a few reasons. The first is that, given the nature of my department, we would never have a budget to use for paid advertising. The truth is, we have more customers than we actually need and one major goal of implementing social media in our department was to disseminate information more efficiently and effectively once a web presence and following were built.

With that in mind, I was fairly limited in the "possible" Facebook ad types that we could use if a budget were ever allotted for social media. Mostly, this would be for promoting our page, raise attendance at an event, increase engagement on our apps, and boosting posts. Frustratingly, every time I attempted to enter a URL for the option to increase engagement on apps as well as raising event attendance, I was prompted with an error. I was then recommended to try instead to "Use Clicks to Website". I ended up making a few of these, as seen below, which directed users to the department page, or pages with information on these events.

If I were selling a product or service, I would consider getting people to claim an offer, reaching people near my business, and increasing conversions on the website. Even with these options on Facebook, LinkeIn, and Twitter, I felt that the information at the end of the lecture would best serve businesses that I may work with whether for-profit or not-for-profit. I think that the beauty of Social Media is that businesses can organically build large followings with time, effort, and creativity. Paid advertising to me is contrived and rarely entices me to be a consumer. I find it annoying on television, on the radio, and it often makes me not want to be on Facebook. I follow companies that offer great information and that naturally make it seem like getting my money is NOT their top priority, even though it usually is.

Below are a few sample ads that I created on Facebook. They are fairly simple and I feel that first building an audience over time through engaging and informative posts and information could accomplish similar results at a much lower cost.