02Jul
Google, Twitter, & Facebook
I’ve been on Twitter for a little while now. I enjoy the break-away from Facebook because I’m kinda getting sick of it.
I hate being invited to events and to do a bunch of quizzes. I hate being invited to use some other application. I’m just getting sick of how bloated Facebook has become over the years. There is wayyy to much JavaScript and AJAX on that site. Nerd talk.
It has been interesting to read all the articles and interviews with Zuckerberg explaining how they are looking to change the way the internet is used. They’re apparently trying to take Google on, something I can only laugh at. Facebook doesn’t have a real way to make any money and I understand they have advertising, but it is very limited. And yes, I know Mr. Mark has said Facebook advertising has a more direct marketing approach available because of all the personal information people share on the site, but companies like the ones I work for are never going to see the utility in that. No one is going to go to Facebook to search for industrial products or industrial product manufacturers. Yes, Pepsi might advertise and yes Nicklefuckingback might advertise too, but they’re never going to have the revenue Google will. Over the past year or so, I have slowly but surely talked my employers out of advertising in traditional print mediums. We’re spending more and more money on Google advertising through their AdWords program. This approach has proven far more successful.
In the past we relied on advertising through adverts in trade magazines and the like. We even spent a few hundred dollars a month on adverts in the yellow pages. But it is nearly impossible to track it’s effectiveness when you have sales people unwilling or lacking the time to ask the simple question, “where did you hear about us?” That is where Google has been able to shine.
Together with two of Google’s services, AdWords and Analytics, it is easy to track. You can see the impact your ads on Google have through the web stats Google keeps for you. You can see the pages the visitors visit, the average time on the site, where their from, the bounce rate (extremely important), and more. We paid a few hundred bucks a month to the telecomm companies with the belief that it was necessary. They had to keep telling themselves that and had no way to be sure it was actually worth it. With Google AdWords we can actually see that people are not only visiting the page we advertise, but also viewing other pages on our websites. Google acts as a middleman and gets the initial traffic to the site. Then I do the rest with effective design and marketing on the websites.
For us, Google has become indispensable. Facebook will never be what Google is. An Facebook will never make the money Google does.
But back to Twitter. Over the past week or so, Twitter has been super sweet to me:
I be-friended Royal Blunts (@Royal_Blunts) and they sent me over 30 blunt wraps in the mail for free.
I almost won a script signed by the cast of Weeds in a contest. The contest was put on by Andy Milder (@AndyMilder). Two questions and if you answer them and were the 33rd person to, you won. I was 29.
I won the first season of Eastbound & Down on Blueray from Kenny Powers (@KFUCKINGP) [Danny Mcbride] for this post here.
That same post that Kenny Powers re-tweeted won me $100 from Stoner Nation (@StonerNation), the guys behind the new Cheech & Chong animated movie.
Twitter has been cool.