Going Above and Beyond In Your SEM Career

Hey Everyone,
I have been posting less frequently lately. Why? Since I got promoted to Vice President, Search Marketing back in March, I have been pushing my SEM career harder than ever before. I worked all day Sunday, all day and night today, and pretty much every waking hour over the past week. The last week has been intense for sure. It has also been incredibly rewarding, my team and I are accomplishing so much.

Long story short, I am doing everything I can to go above and beyond in my search marketing career. I’m giving my company and my team my 110%, nothing less. I have found it to be an amazing cycle. The more you give, the more you get. It only works in that order. Also, I love what I do and I love working at my company so as a perfectionist I find it hard not to give my 110%.

These days, search marketing is becoming more mature as a career path. There’s more competition. It’s just like the Google AdWords landscape. While CPCs rise and new competitors enter the market, you see new SEM experts growing their careers in our wonderful field. How are you going to maintain your edge? Just as you maniacally optimize your SEM accounts, invent new strategies, and push the envelop of online marketing, you need to do the same with your own career. Go all in! Don’t hold anything back, even if it’s at the expense of other priorities. (Of course, this only works if you love what you’re doing.)

Personally, I need to catch up on some sleep and also work out a bit more. That said, I have made some conscious tradeoffs and it’s this type of attitude that will really take you places. Get out there and grind harder than you ever thought possible. That’s how you can go above and beyond in your SEM career. Just remember to also reward yourself, everything goes in cycles and you’ll need an “off” cycle from time to time.

Wishing you all the best!
All the best,
Ian

How To Optimize Search For Mobile Devices

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jul 9 0

In 2012, it’s all about mobile search. Mobile search advertising on both smartphones and tablets is truly taking off. Both Google AdWords and also Microsoft adCenter provide a multitude of options for mobile search advertising. It’s so easy to segment out by device and even operating system. It’s exciting! It’s just like desktop-based search back in 2003-2004. We’re still in the early days of mobile…

Mobile advertising can be quite different than desktop/laptop-based search engine marketing. When it comes to strategy, you’ll want to clearly think through your mobile smartphone and tablet strategy in terms of: bidding, keyword selection, match type selection, and landing page experience. This brings us to the topic of today’s post: Adobe’s Brand New Mobile Matters On-Demand Webinar.

Recently, I wrote all about Adobe’s Going Global In A Social World whitepaper. Now, they’re back at it with their brand new on-demand webinar. In Adobe’s Mobile Matters webinar, you’ll learn all about: Recent trends in mobile advertising, best practices for mobile search campaigns, mobile landing page tips, and so much more. The best part: You can watch the webinar on your own time. It’s an on-demand webinar so you don’t have to wait for a specific date/time. One thing’s for sure: It’s all about mobile advertising in 2012. Watch Adobe’s Mobile Matters webinar today and dazzle your organization tomorrow!

Image of mobile advertising © iStockPhoto – pressureUA

How To Pick Lending Club Loans

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jul 3 6

It’s one of my 2012 Goals to save money and invest wisely. Where have I been investing my savings? Several places including stocks, my savings account, and the topic of today’s post – LendingClub. I’ve already written two exciting posts about Lending Club that you may wish to check out:

Today, I’m thrilled to share greater context behind my overall Lending Club strategy, how I personally pick Lending Club loans. Without further ado, here’s how I pick Lending Club loans worthy of investment.

Rule 1: Don’t let Lending Club pick loans for you. Rather, click the little link to “browse notes” so you have full control over the precise notes in which you invest. How do I sort through the notes? Check out the next few bullet points!
Rule 2: Invest in notes that don’t have many days left in their funding cycle. The more days you have your cash sitting around, the less interest you will earn. Also, loans closer to becoming fully funded are typically of higher quality (in my opinion). Why? Partially funded loans can always be reviewed by Lending Club staff and get rejected. If they’re closer to being fully funded, it’s likely they’ve been reviewed and are good loans. Moreover, you’re taking advantage of the collective intelligence of other investors. Go to the popular loans.
Rule 3: Invest in low dollar amount loans. It’s a lot easier to pay back a $3,000 loan versus a $30,000 one. Generally, I feel like those taking out smaller loans have a more targeted, specific need for the money. They are more likely legit people. I get a bit concerned when folks are taking out major loans. As such, I’m sticking with small loans these days.
Rule 4: Go with “A” and “B” loans. I’m a conservative investor and want to minimize loan defaults. I feel that it’s essential to stick with the top-rated loans to achieve this goal.
Rule 5: Stick with debt refinance loans. It’s a simple equation: You take a high interest rate and consolidate your debt into a lower interest rate with Lending Club (bypassing the middle man). As compared to loans for other purposes, I just feel safer going with debt refinance loans since they’re all about saving someone money and reducing their monthly expenses (as compared to increasing their expenses, the case with other loans).

These tips are definitely not the only criteria for evaluating Lending Club loans, but definitely should provide a great starting point. My strategy is constantly evolving and these rules mark some of my latest thinking. Do you invest in Lending Club? Any special strategies for investing in Lending Club notes?

Lending Club Strategy

Important Note: I’m not a financial advisor and this is not financial advice. Please consult your own financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
Image in this post © PPCIan.com

Watch Out For Double Serving On Google AdWords

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jul 1 1

Hey everyone, it’s Sunday night and I waited a little late to blog, so I have a quick post for you tonight. That said, it’s a good one! Today, I’m thrilled to share a Google AdWords tip that will give you instant leverage.

Copy Paste Double Serving

If you’ve been advertising on Google AdWords for a while, you probably know that double serving is prohibited – most of the time. Google is all about user experience. They want each business to show up one time. If you have a duplicate site that provides the same experience as your main site (or links into your main site as a “doorway page”), that does not add to user experience. It wastes the user’s time.

There’s one rare case where double serving is allowed: The case of acquiring businesses. Let’s say you own a business and advertise on AdWords. Then, let’s say you acquire another that already advertises on AdWords (and provides different user experience than your main site). In this case, you should be golden – you can continue to double serve as long as the two businesses remain different. (A quick tip: Let’s say you plan to acquire a business. You may want to ask your Google account management team if you would be able to double serve. It’s always best to know this type of stuff up front, before spending money.)

Now, onto today’s tip… Paid search is getting super competitive. You will get a ton of leverage via traditional PPC optimization – keyword generation, bidding, ad copy testing, landing page testing, etc. However, it’s also possible to get leverage by “cleaning up” the landscape. Audit the competitive landscape. Look at all geos. Search at different times of the day. (Side note: Tools such as Adgooroo can help greatly with this type of analysis.) See if any of your competitors are double serving. If they appear to be breaking the rules, alert your Google account management team. See if they can run it by their policy team. In many cases, they will pull down the double serving. The result: Less competition for you! Hope this quick tip helps. Sometimes, it’s not only about optimizing your account, but it’s also about keeping the landscape as clean as possible. At the end of the day, this type of policing will help improve the experience for those searching in your vertical, and your bottom line too.

Image of copy/paste double serving © iStockPhoto – pressureUA

Fun Times With Search Engines

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 26 0

Last night, our Google AdWords team treated myself, my team, and leaders from my employer to the Giants/Dodgers game. We had so much fun enjoying the game from Google’s luxury suite at AT&T park. It was honestly one of the best networking events I’ve experienced with Google. It was a great game too – The Giants won in an 8-0 victory. Thanks Google, we cannot thank you enough!

A few weeks ago, our Yahoo! account management team traveled to Silicon Valley and took us to a gourmet lunch (one of the best meals I have experienced in months). That day, we also spent hours planning strategies to grow our adCenter campaigns. Yahoo!, we cannot thank you enough, you rule! I am so thankful for the amazing friendships that I have made with Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft’s world class teams.

This is a quick post today since I was out late at the game last night. The main point: I have found in business that it’s all about building world class teams. Spend time to really get to know your search engine reps and support teams. They are amazing and I couldn’t imagine running enterprise SEM accounts without their support and guidance. As a team, you will uncover amazing opportunities and take your paid search engine accounts to new levels.

Image in this post © PPCIan.com

Business Gifts Go A Long Way

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 23 5

Whether you’re in the corporate world of online marketing, or any other industry for that matter, business gifts go a really long way. Just recently, I received two really amazing gifts. The first was from my great friends at Rocket Clicks SEM Agency. I had recently helped them out and they sent me an amazing gift and also a thank you note. I received it today and was so happy and excited. Thank you, Steve, Nicole, and the entire Rocket Clicks team, you rule! (Side note: If you’re looking for a great SEM agency, I can’t recommend Rocket Clicks enough.)

Business Gift

The second gift I received recently was from one of my good college friends. He now runs an investment fund and spent some time with my wife and I going over investment options. As a thank you for our time and also hospitality when he was in town, he sent us an amazing gift and thank you note in the mail. Again, we were super happy and impressed to receive such a great gift, how awesome!

A while back, I wrote a post about Online Marketing Business Etiquette. Both Rocket Clicks and my friend have so much business class and etiquette. Such etiquette goes a really long way, it sets them apart as people who truly care. They’re true business leaders.

The point of this post: When someone does something to help you out, send them a small gift in the mail. If you cannot afford a gift (or do not have the budget for it at your company), send a nice handwritten card. It’s not the size of the gift that matters. It’s the thought! Some other quick tips:

Send gifts and cards around the holidays. Take the time to write really nice and genuine notes. These days, corporate budgets are lower around the holidays. No problem! It’s the thought that matters.
If you manage a team, consider giving small gifts to those on your team who hit certain milestones. You need to stay within the guidelines of your company (many HR departments will place a limit on such gifts). This is a great way to Celebrate Success.
Always try to give as much as possible. There’s nothing more fun and rewarding than helping others, in life and business.

Image of business gift © Tomwang112

The Best PPC Benchmark Data Ever

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 18 2

A while back, I blogged about Marin Software’s Q4, 2011 Online Advertising Report. Today, I’m thrilled to share with you Marin Software’s Q1, 2012 Online Advertising Benchmark Report. In my opinion, this is the best PPC benchmark report ever!

If you’re in the corporate world of online marketing, it’s super important to keep a pulse on the market. You need to explain trends, predict the future, and understand how you stack up against the competition. Tools such as AdGooroo can help on a tactical, keyword-by-keyword level. Benchmarks from your reps at Google and Yahoo!/Bing can help with high level industry-specific trends (especially if you spend a lot of money and have dedicated reps at the search engines).

All of these data sources are awesome! However, let’s say you want a little more information. Let’s say you want data by industry that shows trends in major search metrics (such as impressions, clicks, CTR, CPCs, spend, and usage of match types). Let’s say you want to understand trends in clicks and spend by device. Let’s say you want to understand overall search marketing strategy from leading advertisers? You will find this information (and so much more) in Marin Software’s Q1 Online Advertising Benchmark Report. Marin is in a truly unique position (with over $3.5 billion annual spend being managed by their platform) to aggregate data anonymously and provide stellar search insights.

I highly recommend downloading this report (it’s free) and then sharing with your co-workers. There are some real interesting trends and insights that will help drive your overall business. At the end of the day, benchmarking is a critical part of the online marketing planning process. Leverage Marin’s report to benchmark and plan your search marketing strategy.

Image of pie chart © iStockPhoto – Violka08

My Friday Musings, It’s Been An Exciting Week

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 14 4

This has been a super exciting week. Just last week, I attended SMX Advanced Seattle. This week, I worked really hard, played in a golf tournament, met a domain industry guru for lunch, and attended the US Open. I’m excited to share my Friday musings…

PPC Ian and Work Colleagues in Randy Cross Invitational

Golf is a really great sport. On Monday this week, I played in the Randy Cross Invitational with three other colleagues from work. Our company was one of the event sponsors and we had a fantastic time. We played at the Stanford Golf Course and then enjoyed a reception (and charity raffle) after at the Rosewood Hotel, Sand Hill Road. The tournament raised money for the Ronald McDonald House, an amazing charity. (Side note: Charity is one of my huge goals this year, so I love how this event lined up with my goals and also provided some truly amazing times.)

This event was so much fun because I got to spend time with amazing co-workers/friends, help raise money for charity, and play golf. I have not played as much golf in recent years, but did better than expected (especially on my long game). I’m truly thankful that my parents got me playing golf from an early age, it’s an amazing sport (for fun and business). If you play golf, I highly recommend playing with co-workers. If you don’t, I recommend giving it a try! Golf is a great sport for fun, exercise, and business.

PPC Ian and Nima Jacob Nojoumi

I’m a huge fan of Nima Jacob Nojoumi (@domainadvisor). I have been chatting with Nima about domain names for years. He’s a real leader online in the domain industry. This week, I finally had the chance to meet Nima in-person. We grabbed lunch in downtown Mountain View and chatted domain names, websites, SEO, PPC, and so much more. If you ever have questions about domains, he’s the guy to ask on Twitter. My advice: Find influential people within online marketing and reach out to them! You will build some amazing connections and friendships.

It’s important to spend time with co-workers and partners at fun events. Today, our account executive at Marin Software treated a colleague and I to the US Open. It was truly an event to remember. We got to talk business but also so much more. It’s important to spend time with those you work with outside of the office. Marin went above and beyond with the US Open and it was such an amazing way to spend Thursday.

The last few weeks have been amazing. They have marked an incredible combination of fun, networking, and of course work. While it’s been a busy few weeks, I feel like my team and I have also made incredible progress on our “real work”. Sometimes it’s the “extra” activities that motivate excellence and push you even further. Wishing you a super Friday and weekend! (Note: Like my musings posts? You may want to check out my last one, my mid-week musings.)

Images in this post © PPCIan.com

SMX Advanced 2012 Pictures and Recap

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 8 5

Today, I’m excited to share a ton of pictures from SMX Advanced 2012. This great conference, hosted in Seattle, covers all sorts of advanced PPC and SEO topics. 2012 marks my third year at this search marketing conference, you can read my 2011 recap here and my 2010 recap here. Each year, I try to take more pictures and I think I accomplished just that with 14 in this year’s post! I hope you enjoy the recap and pictures…

Day 0: The Day Before The Conference

Ian, Nicole, and Andrew at Six Seven Restaurant

This year was the best yet because I attended the conference with my amazing wife, Nicole, and my teammate, Andrew. All three of us flew from San Francisco to Seattle mid-day on Monday. We took Virgin airlines, and it was quite a pleasant flight. I had never flown Virgin America before, and am really happy with the experience, I definitely plan on flying Virgin again.

Once we arrived in Seattle, we took a taxi over to our hotel, The Edgewater. The Edgewater is a really great hotel, and it’s the third year in a row I stayed there. Each time it’s so much fun, I really love this place! I especially enjoyed this year because Nicole and I had a room on the water side of the hotel (as opposed to the city view side) with a really cool balcony and nice water view. All the way at the end of this post, you can see a view of a sailboat going by from our balcony. After checking in, the three of us were so hungry so we headed over to restaurant Six Seven at the Edgewater. The food there is great and the atmosphere too. Each year, I always have to eat at Six Seven at least once. You can see a picture of Nicole, Andrew and I enjoying lunch to the right.

PPC Ian, Andrew, and Kenshoo - Geoff, Chad, and Claudia

By the time we had enjoyed a late lunch, it was time to head on over to the SMX Meet and Greet. It was totally packed there. Check out the picture all the way towards the end of this post (the first under the “More Pictures” section). As soon as I got into the Meet and Greet, I ran into the Kenshoo leadership crew – Geoff, Chad, and Claudia. I got a great picture with them to the right. It’s really funny because I got a similar picture way back in my 2010 SMX Advanced Post. I think we all aged quite well over the last two years, we all look the same!

PPC Ian and March Poirier from Acquisio

After chatting with Kenshoo and complementing Geoff on his amazing social media skills (make sure to follow @geoffshenk on Twitter), I bumped into my good friend Marc Poirier from Acquisio. (Later in the conference, I heard Marc speak about Retargeting, one of my favorite sessions in the entire conference.) After about an hour of networking, we were getting hungry again and decided to leave the Meet and Greet and find some dinner.

After searching restaurants not too far from the conference, we decided to go to Serious Pie. This place was amazing. There’s a reason it has four stars and 1,200+ reviews on Yelp – the food is so good (and not too expensive either). (There’s a picture of Serious Pie in the “More Pictures” section at the end of this post.) After Serious Pie, it was time to head back to The Edgewater, catch up on work, and then finally get some sleep! Search conferences are so much fun, but can be very tiring too. My advice: Make sure to pace yourself and get as much sleep as possible.

Day 1: An Action-Packed Day of SMX Advanced

PPC Ian and My Marin Software Friends

Before the Meet and Greet, I had picked up my SMX badge so the next morning I was able to get there right around 8:30, walk in and grab some breakfast, and then head into the SMX Advanced sessions. Day 1 was an awesome day – the sessions were great, the lunch was really good (SMX Advanced has much better food than other search marketing conferences), and I got to network like crazy at the expo hall. In terms of sessions, here are the ones I attended on the first day:

The Periodic Table of SEO – 2012 Edition
Perfecting Your PPC Landing Pages
Getting The Most Out of Retargeting From The Pros
Breaking The Speed Limit: Fast Sites Win!
You&A With Matt Cutts

How do [you] Kenshoo? PPC Ian and Chris Cohen

All of the sessions were good. I especially enjoyed the retargeting one because I got to hear my good friend Marc Poirier speak. He brought in great data from his own Acquisio retargeting experiments. Want to learn ore about retargeting? I highly recommend checking out Acquisio’s Retargeting eBook. I also enjoyed exposing myself to SEO sessions. While I’m PPC (pay per click) Ian, I also thoroughly enjoy the SEO discipline too. SEO is so engineering-focused, and I’m a Stanford CS graduate, so this stuff is right up my alley.

During day 1, I also spent a lot of time networking in the expo hall. I’m a huge fan of networking and really enjoy people, especially the amazing people in our industry. You’ll see a lot of pictures throughout this post from the expo hall. It’s become PPC Ian tradition to grab pictures with all of my friends, new and old, with the signature “thumbs up”.

PPC Ian and Adobe Digital Marketing, Ian and Julia

One of the first booths I stopped at was Marin Software. Marin Software is an amazing SEM platform. I’m friends with a ton of employees there and really enjoyed catching up with my good friends Samantha Lee (in the picture above) and also Matt Lawson, Marin’s VP of Marketing. Marin always has an impressive and crowded booth.

After spending some time with Marin, I headed over to the Kenshoo booth. The night before, I had spent some quality time with Geoff, Chad, and Claudia. On day 1, I ran into one of my other Kenshoo friend, Chris Cohen. you can see a picture of Chris and I above. I had a ton of fun with this picture because it was part of Kenshoo’s “How do [you] Kenshoo” campaign. That’s some really solid marketing, and I’m a huge fan of this amazing SEM software platform.

PPC Ian with The BrightEdge Marketing Team

Next, I found the Adobe booth. Adobe offers an amazing suite of online marketing platforms such as Efficient Frontier and Omniture. Adobe has been on a real great trajectory and has developed one of the leading offerings in our industry. At the Adobe booth, I got to meet Julia Soffa (check out the picture above). (Side note: I’m a huge fan of Adobe’s New Whitepaper.)

I’m so excited and proud: Nicole is now Product Marketing Manager at BrightEdge. This is a really exciting role. You may recall, I blogged about BrightEdge back in my SMX West 2012 Post. What is BrightEdge? It’s the leading platform for enterprise SEO. If you are responsible for managing SEO at a company, BrightEdge is the must-have platform. They are going places and growing at warp speed. Above, you can see a picture of me and the BrightEdge marketing team. To the right is a picture of my amazing wife, Nicole, at the BrightEdge booth. BrightEdge was a Gold Sponsor of the conference.

My Wife, Nicole, Product Marketing Manager at BrightEdge

After having a great time at the BrightEdge booth, it was time to hang out at the SEO Moz booth. I just had to grab a photo with the SEO Moz Bot. Later, I attended You&A With Matt Cutts, one of the highlights of the day! After an exciting day of sessions and networking, I enjoyed the Expo Hall Reception for a bit and then went back to my hotel room to rest for about 1/2 hour.

Then, it was time to head on over to The Purple Cafe for the Marin Software dinner. Marin Software really went all out on this dinner. They invited a lot of clients, both old and new, and treated us all to one of the best meals I have had in my life. The food was so amazing. The company was amazing too. Thank you so much, Marin, for treating us to this dinner, you rule! By the time dinner was over, we were close to 12:00 am. I went back to my hotel room. Nicole was still out at the BrightEdge dinner. I heard amazing things about their dinner too and know that BrightEdge employees and clients had an amazing time. Overall, day 1 of SMX Advanced Seattle 2012 was one of the best conference experiences ever!

Day Two: The Last Day of SMX Advanced 2012

PPC Ian and SEO Moz Bot

I had so much fun on day 1, that I felt a bit tired on day 2. As such, day 2 was a little slower paced but still super fun. It all started out with sessions. On day 2, I attended these ones:

Keynote with Bing’s Derrick Connell
Schema & Authorship: 1 Year Later
Pagination & Canonicalization For The Pros
Landing Pages & Conversion In A Smartphone & Tablet World

I really enjoyed all of the sessions, especially the SEO one on Schema & Authorship. The speakers in this sessions were really knowledgeable and provided a wealth of information and tools to help any SEO enterprise take their business to the next level. I really enjoyed the mobile landing page sessions too. The future is mobile and landing page strategy is especially important to mobile. Carlos del Rio from Unbounce did a great job presenting and I’m glad I got to meet him in-person at the Marin Software booth the day before. (Also, I enjoyed the landing page session from day 1. At that session, Carlos also spoke, in addition to Scott Brinker from ION Interactive.)

Marin Software Dinner The Purple Cafe

Of course, I also spent some great time networking on day 2 as well. I especially enjoyed running into my pal David Rodnitzky from PPC Associates. David is a leader in our industry and runs Silicon Valley’s SEM Agency. It’s always fun running into David.

At the end of day 2, Nicole, Andrew, and I took a towncar back to the airport. If you stay at The Edgewater, they can book you a towncar the night before for only $45, a real deal (considering a taxi would have cost a similar price). This is a super tip if you attend the conference in future years.

PPC Ian and David Rodnitzky

We rushed to the airport for nothing since our flight was delayed (airspace was restricted in San Francisco due to President Obama visiting), but we enjoyed all that the SeaTac airport has to offer. The flight back was full of SMX Advanced folks since San Francisco is such a hub for online marketing. I got back totally exhausted, but super happy that the conference was such a success.

I’m looking forward to future SMX Conferences and thank Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan, and SMX for putting on such an amazing conference. Until next time, SMX friends!

More Pictures From SMX Advanced Seattle 2012

SMX Advanced Seattle 2012 Opening Ceremony

Serious Pie Seattle

SMX Seattle The Edgewater Hotel

My Twitter Ads Experiment

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jun 5 2

I’m a huge fan of Twitter and use Twitter every single day (my handle is @ianlopuch). Twitter is a great way to stay connected with my readers, Find Inspiration, and also learn new stuff. In addition to all of that, Twitter is an open platform that can be crawled by search engines. From an SEO standpoint, it’s a channel that cannot and should not be ignored.

As such, I created a Twitter Advertising Challenge for myself back in January. There were several main goals of the challenge: follow no more than 200 people, redesign my Twitter background, and advertise to gain more followers. Back in February, I called my Twitter Challenge a Success since I had accomplished goals 1 and 2 (and also did a Facebook redesign too). At that time, I had no luck getting a Twitter Advertising account so I couldn’t do much towards goal 3. However, in May I got lucky and received my very own Twitter Advertising account (with $100 free credit) thanks to the Twitter/American Express partnership for small businesses.

Since one of my main 2012 Goals is saving money, I did not want to spend too much on Twitter. Last year, I spent a lot of money Getting Thousands of Facebook Fans for my portfolio of websites/Facebook Fan Pages so this year I’m trying to save and drive as much margin as possible. That said, the American Express coupon coupled with $60 of my own money did yield some interesting insights about Twitter and allowed me to cross this goal off of my list! Here are my findings (also please see screenshot below with stats from my Twitter Ads account):

Promoted Accounts offer a cheap way to drive incremental followers. I spent $110 on Promoted Accounts and got 115 incremental followers (only $0.96/follower). I actually started out bidding really high (I think ~$2.00/follower per Twitter’s suggested bid) but then bid down over time. I could have bid down even more and gotten followers even cheaper. The point here: You will be able to drive followers for $1.00 or probably even less as you lower your bids over time. As compared with my Facebook experience, this avenue seems cheaper than driving a Facebook Fan (although I feel the value of a FB Fan is higher). I have driven Fans as low as the $0.30 range on Facebook, but when I first started out, I remember the unit cost being higher than Twitter.
I especially like the Promoted Account option for newer accounts trying to build up a loyal following and credibility.
Your budget will go really quickly. I set daily budgets with my Twitter Ads test. The budget did not get deployed evenly over the course of the day. Rather, I blasted through my budget right away. Now, the UI I’m dealing with here is the American Express small business one, so I’m sure larger enterprise advertisers may have more options. However, in any event, the point here is to be careful. If you don’t want to spend your budget between midnight and 1:00 am, it will be important to either manually day part, leverage an online marketing platform to do this for you, or seek an enterprise account (not sure if they offer this but assuming they offer more control than my basic account).
Promoted Tweets offer the ability to do SO much more than simply drive clicks. More clicks/traffic is always great, but what I especially enjoyed about my Promoted Tweets test is the fact that I instantly started getting ore followers, retweets, favorites, and overall brand activity than ever before. These days, especially with the Panda and Penguin updates, Google is looking at one’s brand. With Promoted Tweets, you have the perfect tool to build your brand within online marketing. Personally, if I am to spend more money on Twitter, I will probably focus on Promoted Tweets due to the brand ramifications.
Overall, my basic account did not offer a huge amount of control. With Promoted Tweets, for example, I got to select 5 Tweets to promote and set a budget. Other than that, Twitter would just run with it. As a power user, I’m used to having a ton of control. More dials means more ability to optimize. My basic account experience offered little ability to optimize. That said, it was my true pleasure to get my feet wet with Twitter Ads and I’m excited in the future to build my expertise and get my hands on an enterprise account.

I’m a huge fan of Twitter and recommend that you too give Twitter Ads a try!