Disqus - Latest Comments for briancarter

Re: CamelCrusher

briancarter — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 11:25:00 -0000

Or, install the 64 bit version :-) Maybe that wasn't in the zip when you downloaded it. I'm installing in Ableton Live 9 right now and it was super easy.

Re: How to Write Viral Headlines: New BuzzSumo Research

briancarter — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 11:38:14 -0000

Great stuff, Steve, love it. I recently used Buzzsumo to analyze a number of social media blogs, and some of the findings were slightly different (and surprising), so I'd recommend (and I'm sure you'd agree) checking the patterns in your own specific niche :-) But your findings are great- I'm not sure some of the blogs I'm looking at have tested ALL of what you're recommending here, so naturally I only have data on what they HAVE written. Good ideas for the next 6 months of posts!

Re: Facebook Native Videos Trump YouTube, Instagram (Study)

briancarter — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 17:49:52 -0000

Interesting- but what about time watched per video? Last look at my own experiments, people were watching about 15 seconds of FB video but 65 seconds on YT.

Re: The Truth About Facebook Ads: They Don’t Actually Work.

briancarter — Sat, 21 Mar 2015 12:07:33 -0000

Whether they work in any one case is determined by two things- #1 How good is the offering and do people actually want it? #2 How good is the Facebook advertiser. We've done a lot of successful lead gen and ecommerce with Facebook ads over the last couple years. We always try to move toward conversion. Some of my case studies will be in my SMMW presentation this Thursday. We definitely have clients where we find that people don't want to buy what they're selling. And we have some where it takes longer to find great cost per lead or cost per sale ads, but we usually find them. It's a process that requires creating as many as 500 ads to find those 5-10 ads that really work. If you're not testing enough, that's one reason you're not getting Facebook ads to work. You have to test 1. targeting 2. image 3. headline 4. body copy and sometimes 5. the squeeze page or website. The easiest clients are ones that have already had some success with other traffic sources, so there's proof that their offering and their website work already. It's also CRITICAL that you use conversion code and choose the website conversion ad type. Otherwise, you may get a lot of clicks and no results beyond that.

Re: We Tested All the Best Advice to Get More Clicks on Facebook. Here’s What Worked.

briancarter — Wed, 12 Nov 2014 00:04:32 -0000

Awesome post, Kevan!

Re: How to Capture More Email Leads With Social Media Contests

briancarter — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 11:55:59 -0000

Without doubt a great strategy- At the Brian Carter Group, we've tested all the approaches with Facebook ad lead gen for clients, and contests and webinars usually win. In fact we had a tuition giveaway recently that got a 30% conversion rate. Great article, Zsuzsa!

Re: Purchase Black Wins Black MBA’s Innovation Whiteboard Challenge

briancarter — Sun, 21 Sep 2014 22:06:57 -0000

I was there- he killed it- amazing presentation, I want video! This guy could run for office if he wanted to. Great great great.

Re: Social Selling Works But Not How You Think

briancarter — Wed, 03 Sep 2014 13:50:45 -0000

I agree for the most part (there are a bunch of indirect case studies, like you suggest), but there are fortuitous exceptions- we have generated high-profit-margin sales from Facebook ads for several companies- one is a pizza delivery chain in Scotland, and the other is a company that books music-cruises to the Caribbean. These are, yes, sending people directly from ads to websites to buy. And in some cases, Facebook ads are the only viable direct channel, because AdWords CPC's are too high.

Re: 12 Facebook Success Factors Based on Real Data

briancarter — Tue, 20 May 2014 13:17:53 -0000

Great study, John! Totally fits with what I found in Contagious Content (Six categories of things people share). http://www.marketo.com/eboo...

And I've applied those lessons a lot lately to some of our clients- PrideStaff (https://www.facebook.com/Pr... and Careers at Rx relief (https://www.facebook.com/ca.... I think if they used Rival IQ they would have done well in your study.

We find that the quotes + amazing images combo works well. But we also look at what themes each audience responds to and doesn't in terms of engagement rate (likes/impressions). Every audience responds a little or a lot differently to the same content. For example, the pharamacists and pharmacy techs at Rx relief respond well to the topic of learning, but the PrideStaff folks don't.

We combine those types of posts with post promotion ads. And then more factors come into play- when you advertise, sometimes a post just gets a lot of photo view clicks. Each company will have to decide if that action is valuable given their campaign goals or not. In some cases, it's not! And by the way, some of the images that do best in non-paid situations have too much text to get promoted- so that's a trade off.

Re: Why the best content is about marketing sideways

briancarter — Wed, 14 May 2014 13:48:04 -0000

Life Technologies are some smart cookies! I got to go keynote to them last year during their marketing planning meetings. Fun group. They've been ahead of the curve. Those videos are from 2011!

Re: How to Create and Promote Explainer Videos

briancarter — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 14:03:04 -0000

Sorry if I wasn't clear- I was agreeing with you! :-)

Re: How to Create and Promote Explainer Videos

briancarter — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 13:25:25 -0000

Not a bad idea, but YouTube has been able to transcribe videos itself for years (although they don't show it), and a lot of people believe that's already used in ranking them, even if you don't add a transcript to the description. I prefer to use the description for a link they can us to get to the company website- you can do both but I put the link at the top of the description. :-)

Re: How to Write The Perfect Headline: The Top Words Used in Viral Headlines

briancarter — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 12:54:07 -0000

those are great headlines nick, i would read them ;-) I don't know, I think it only seems manipulative because you're consciously learning it. look back at what you've learned before about headlines- isn't that also "manipulative"?

Re: How to Write The Perfect Headline: The Top Words Used in Viral Headlines

briancarter — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 12:52:56 -0000

brilliant, thanks :-)

Re: 8 Brain Triggers Guaranteed To Boost Your Social Media Marketing

briancarter — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 12:08:11 -0000

phenomenal post, Jordan!

Re: Why YouTube Pre-Roll Ads Rock & How To Take Advantage of Them

briancarter — Thu, 06 Mar 2014 16:07:21 -0000

That can be, in part, due to inadequate analytics... but analytics are imperfect period, and last-click always looks better than first-click. In my experience, sophisticated VP Marketing or CMO's understand this and allow for best practices and some not-100%-justified-and-tracked activities. Overall, your funnel should do well at every stage. Choose a metric for each stage, measure it, and set goals for it.

Re: Guide to Facebook Reach: What Marketers Need to Know

briancarter — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 13:29:08 -0000

Grrreat post. I would avoid focusing too much on reach though until Facebook makes it more accurate. They told us that their reach numbers and engaged users numbers were inaccurate and were targeted to be fixed by end of Q2 or Q3 2014. Also, note that when a user sees a post via paid, it is no longer reported as organic, even if they saw it organically before. So organic reach is undercounted and inaccurate. I would go with impressions for now instead.

Re: Facebook Engagement Rate: How One Little Metric Got So Tough To Nail Down

briancarter — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 14:08:44 -0000

Agreed- and recently I've done a lot more with FB ad conversion pixel and website conversion objective ads, and find that it's night and day- when you let FB show ads to people more likely to convert (lead gen or ecommerce), it can mean the difference between conversions and ZERO conversions!

Re: Facebook Engagement Rate: How One Little Metric Got So Tough To Nail Down

briancarter — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 11:11:11 -0000

This is just one stage of the whole marketing and sales funnel. But it's important to be able to measure each stage. Talking about engagement metrics doesn't not explicitly or implicitly mean that you don't care about ROI.

Re: Facebook Engagement Rate: How One Little Metric Got So Tough To Nail Down

briancarter — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 11:10:07 -0000

This is a great post Lauren! One thing- a bunch of us were recently told about a month ago by a Facebook rep that their reach is inaccurate (and so is engaged users) and they're working on it- so for our clients right now we divide by impressions, not reach. We still report reach but we've told our clients it's inaccurate for now.

Re: Facebook Is Going After LinkedIn's Advertisers

briancarter — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 12:27:01 -0000

Facebook's B2B marketing viability has already been proven. Marketo and Hubspot are just a couple of great examples. You have only to Google "facebook b2b case studies" to find more. Some executives avoid LinkedIn because salespeople sometimes aggressively message them. Many in the normal executive age bracket spend time on Facebook, at the very least, looking at photos of their children and grandchildren. We can show ads to said executives while they do so. And the line between work and home has blurred for many people. Check out PrideStaff and Rx relief (disclosure: clients of mine) who do well with both Facebook and LinkedIn.

What is missing in this article is the fact that we have been able to target people by workplace and job titles (as interests) in the Facebook advertising interface for years. Facebook beats LinkedIn in terms of popularity and time on site. People spend less time on LinkedIn. LinkedIn's data is more complete- a lower % of people on Facebook provide that data to FB (at one point I saw a study that showed only 1 in 6 people were providing their workplace), so FB is going to have to be more aggressive in prompting profile completion.

One really fine point on the case study at the end of the article above- the cost per hire (which I would think would be the key metric here) on LinkedIn was $500/7= $71.43 while the cost per hire for Facebook was $50. Reading that paragraph, to me Facebook was the winner.

Re: What Is Advertising Anyway? Voice

briancarter — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 12:04:17 -0000

It's not that complicated. Advertising is: PAID.

Re: The generation we love to dump on

briancarter — Sat, 20 Jul 2013 17:29:37 -0000

Whoa- math a little, ever? 39 - 25 = 14.

Re: The World’s Top 50 Fashion Brands in Social Media

briancarter — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 01:01:47 -0000

Grrrreat ebook! Very nicely done.

Re: Kittens & Bacon: The Most Viral Infographic Ever

briancarter — Wed, 10 Jul 2013 15:10:12 -0000

I love you guys :-) This wins the universe. But... what about dogs?