Khalil Gdoura | Blog

3 reasons why you should invest in Facebook Ads

2011-10-07T11:56:00.011+01:00

to promote your brand page

And this is not an advertising note :-) Rather, I like to describe my own experience with this paid solution, comparing to free marketing strategies I have been using on Facebook.

Over the last years, Facebook has updated more than once its layout and many of its features, including the famous facebook pages basically made to promote business and media.

As any beginner, willing to recruit free fans on this growing network, I have been trying to take advantage on every feature, like sharing my page on my connections walls, and obviously, inviting them to join my page, asking them to invite their friends, etc.

Unfortunately, this function has been disabled for a while, in the start of this year, then it was restored but can be only used by admin, after that all facebook pages have been updated their layout.

Worse, invites are nor more visible as notifications, you may invite as much friends as you have, but your page is still striving to get new fans.
I finally realized that there is no durable and efficient solution, it’s time to give my money and to try professional paid solution. And I have been by far satisfied. Here are some great opportunities to optimize your marketing plan thourgh Facebook Ads :

You surprise your prospects

It’s even possible to wish happy birthday to your prospects by sending promotional offer to them. In fact, you can choose to only target people whose birthday is coming shortly, and you can imagine how much they would be amazed to see your offer.

You fit their interests

The more specific is your ad, the more informative it will be. Though, you need to target the right people, who would be the most concerned. Referring to the previous step “Interest > Broad Category”, you can specify the ideal profile of your prospects from a wide range of interests including their preferred activities and mobile phones, etc.

Word-to-mouth

In real, your are more likely to trust a product your friend has been using. It goes the same in the virtual world. Through sponsored stories, you can create an efficient buzz. Only friends of your page fans will see your advertisement which they can “like” without leaving their current page.

You will be given an estimate number of targeted people accordingly to your targeting options. It’s just professional, and it won’t never be substitued by any genius marketing plan you “tinker”. By using paid Facebook Ads, you can be sure to take full advantage of the wide network and detailed information Facebook collected about users.

At any time, you can simulate your marketing plan using Facebook Ads without obligation to pay or to give your billing information. Just check in this link : www.facebook.com/ads/create/

Read it later ! An improved bookmarking solution

2011-10-02T08:20:00.009+01:00

While browsing the web, you are continuously exposed to great discoveries and interesting articles you did not suspect.. But you are in office, you are busy, or in hurry… so you like to read such article or revisit such website to sign up, etc.

Read It Later is basically a bookmarking solution. First time I used it, I wondered how it can be different from default bookmarking feature of browsers. Though, I have been sincerely fascinated by the large enhancements brought to this tool, and this is my review:

Advantage #1 : Tag your bookmarks and easily retrieve them !

Read It Later is definitely one of the most intuitive and efficient solutions to help you to bookmark huge number of pages dealing with different topics, in an intelligent way.
Read It Later stores your bookmarks and displays them on your browser, you need only one click to check them ! You need once more click to list your bookmarks related to a given topic - tag - you have previously set.

Advantage #2 : Read It… Everywhere !

You just need to sign up for an account, to bring your bookmarks everywhere : at Home, in your Office, during a travel, thanks to the multitude of platforms supported by Read It Later : browsers, mobile applications, …

Moreover, using your Android application for example, your bookmarks will be automatically downloaded so that you can check them when you lose connection ! Synchronization feature works without troubles.
Whatever is your devise or your preferred browser, you can find here the appropriate version of Read It Later. Take full advantage of your browsing experience, now !

You, and only you, are responsible for your own privacy

2011-05-29T15:57:00.008+01:00

Privacy concerns are among the most sensitive criteria to trust such and such website or social network. With no doubt, websites are asked to not abuse your personal data, and to ensure your privacy by giving you options and settings to control who can search for you (e.g. on Facebook). Don’t hesitate to regularly check latest updates of privacy settings , to fully take advantage on them.

Linking profiles together, good idea ?

In order to make it easy to connect and to update your fans/friends on different networks, you can find it useful to connect your facebook wall to your twitter profile, for instance. That’s great. Let us, however, imagine this situation : you are networking for new books on your Scribd profile, which is linked to your Twitter. Your friends will know instantly what are you reading, whatever is the book. Are you ready to get your beliefs and private interests public ?

Shall we cluster our contacts as far as possible (e.g. using Facebook Lists), to prevent such situations ? Unfortunately, not every social website has advanced privacy settings.

We have different faces

Shall we have multiple accounts ? Shall I switch to my second “private” Scribd profile, to read “private” books? Or shall we simply unlink our Scribd profile (in this case) with global networks where expose our life to our families, friends, colleagues, and may be fans ?

This is a big issue, in my opinion, perfection can’t be reached shortly, meanwhile, I believe that more than one has… two (or more) profiles, in the world wide web. How many ?

Best branding using Facebook Pages, Groups or Profiles ?

2011-05-04T22:05:00.010+01:00

1 - Compare

Basically, Facebook Pages offer many great features to customize your presentation as far as you want. For instance, you can insert a welcome page including contact form or links to your website. Pages are also ideal to link with your YouTube, Twitter and a wide range of useful services.

On the other hand, groups using the new layout are good for discussions, while profiles are supposed to represent real persons. Groups and profiles bring interesting features pages don’t have.

- They make communication closer and “more human”.
- They better bring your updates to your fans (members) through messaging and notifications.

Using groups or simply profiles, let you reach a maximum of your fans and to interact with them in a better way. That’s what is branding about. Let’s take a glance at pros and cons of these tools on Facebook.

2 - Take it !

Page or group ? In my opinion, it would be better to take advantage of both. While your business page perfectly presents your brand / media and give it a professional appearance, groups help you to develop and to spice up a community of potential customers or readers (in the case you are branding your new website).

Groups are powerful to immediately engage most people, whereas pages ensure your notoriety and reputation in the long term.

Finally, let us keep on mind that we subscribed in Facebook, basically to keep in touch with our friends. We are more careful to what they share and like, and reciprocally. Let us find a way to encourage our fans to engage their friends, using Facebook Apps and buzzing videos, for example.

Figures can be rude or... not ! Three Ways to better present your media kit

2011-05-01T00:48:00.012+01:00

Total Visits and Total Pageviews ,such master figures are commonly appreciated by your advertiser / ad-agency, to properly estimate the impact of their campaigns.

Though, the potential of your website can’t be described using only these figures. Here are some additional insights you can join to your media kit and reports to make your client more trustful.

Audience = Ideal Target

How much is your website suitable for your advertiser products, and vice-versa? Let’s look at an example : your site is dedicated for geeks, then you would be more lucky to get a software reseller or trainer interested in your media.

It would be interesting to provide a broader information about your site members: occupation, average age, main locations, etc. Keep on mind that advertiser wants his banner to be viewed, clicked, and more…

Making sure that your audience profile meets your advertiser’s target can be a valuable guarantee of return-on-investment. Definitely, your advertiser expects for real results from a virtual campaign.

Are you famous ? Say it loudly ! Say it proudly !

A wide range of figures can be witness to your website popularity:

- Total fans and followers over Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Total subscribers to newsletter and members of your site.
- Total backlinks from well-known websites and blogs in your niche.
- Total shares on your content, through popular social media.

Statistics are not everything. Think to attach impressive screenshots showing your articles and press releases published in famous webzines.

You are engaging your community

The more often visitors come back to your site, the better they remember and interact with your advertising content.

Your prospects appreciate when they can take advantage of your close and successful user experience. For this, you can check:

- Percentage of repeat visitors.
- Progress of new registrations on your forum, for example.
- Engagement rate of your Facebook Page updates.

These are some suggestions to enrich your media kit, and to give a meaning for numbers. In the following, let us see in depth :

- How to calculate and to enhance your Facebook Page engagement rate ?
- How to track shares of your content over any external service ?
- How to get more repeat visitors ?

Have fun on writing and updating your media kit, thank you for reading, stay tuned !

Stick your notes to your sites

2011-02-06T16:49:00.008+01:00

I have been amazed by a solution I never suspected : InterNote, an addon for Mozilla Firefox, which makes it possible to create notes on every page / website you often visit.

Many solutions have been provided for a better notes management experience, but most of them run from desktop or web interface.

In both cases, you would find yourself shortly with a considerable number of stickers, related to your online tasks and thoughts. This can be frustrating...

Thanks to InterNote, you can from now on stick your note on the right place, that's to say, on the appropriate web page (which can be your mailbox, your site, your calendar, ...) to which your note reffers. You will never lose your notes once created.

Some features I like about InterNote stickers :

(+) Fully customized.
(+) Fast to create and to load
(+) Can be shown on a particular URL, an entire website, on every page, and accordingly to other criteria.
(+) Can be easily imported and exported.

Developers are reactive to suggestions and feedback of users, the addon is continuously updated. (view all versions)

Regarding the increasing usage of portable and complementary devices like smartphones and tablet PCs, I hope that the upcoming version of the addon will help us to synchronize notes wherever we are, and to share them with our colleagues and friends.

Enjoy discovering !

Better e-Business using web analytics

2010-11-11T09:30:00.001+01:00

Visualizing Data Mining : Amazing application and presentation

2010-11-10T22:28:00.005+01:00

A TED Talk presented by Sebastian Wernicke, statistician who has been focusing on bioinformatics algorithms.

This presentation is highly intertaining, it introduces in a funny way how to take advantage on data mining.

It consists on gathering feedback on TED Talks videos (available in the website), and to combine it with various data describing every talk :

- Topics of the talk.
- How it was delivered : how long ? etc.
- Visuals : How did the speaker look like ?

You won't believe at the end when the funny speaker tells about his upcoming tool to make out of words a really good or a really bad TED Talk.

Statistics can be that friendly !

Event : Presentation on Web Analytics usage for intelligent e-Business

2010-11-04T22:15:00.007+01:00

I have been offered a nice opportunity to summarize and to share my latest web analytics project. My teacher who supervised my work suggested me to present some applications of web analytics, to e-Management master students, at the ESSEC - Tunis.

Set up a media kit for your site (How to approach an advertiser ? #1)

2010-10-23T05:00:00.019+01:00

In a web context, a media kit is a document which provides advertisers and ad-agencies with description of your site, its audience and its ads specifications and rates.

You can share your site's media kit on demand, but also you can include it in a mailing campaign in the case you are looking for new potential advertisers.

Consequently, you should provide an attractive and short presentation of accurate and complete information about your site. How to deal with this ? Let's go into details :

- Short description of your site including its age, its niche, etc.

- Ups and advantages of your site content / services, etc. Just be proud of yourself and your community to stand out from your competitors.

- Approximate traffic level : including monthly unique visits and page views, avergae time on site...

- Demographics : If you have verified data about age and gender of your visitors, don't hesitate to indicate it. This information helps you to underline how suitable is your site to your customer's products. Usage of percentages would be easier to understand.

- Advertising specifications : If you sell banners, precise acceptable sizes and formats, locations, and any other description. Linking this information to a screenshot of your site will be great for visualization. Besides, you may include your advertising rates.

- Contact information : your email address and your phone number would be enough.

How reliable you are ?

Don't hesitate to mention "warranties" about the reliability of your tracking data. If you are an analytics package reseller or certified, say it. If you have testimonials from your customers, share them.

What if advertiser can be lazy to read all that information

Especially when you send your site media kit, your recipient would be less likely to open your mail or to finish reading it. You should call a graphic designer who :

- Makes a reduced and smart presentation of all information above.
- Considers likely updates and additional information and then provides you a suitable customized template.

Below a media kit example done for recent project www.tounsia4ever.com.

How to approach an advertiser ? #0

2010-10-22T02:35:00.004+01:00

You have worked hard on your website for a while, and now, you suppose that it's time to monetize your site by selling advertising banners, videos, etc. How to seduce advertisers ? You should make them interested in your website, confident and... loyal once they give you a try.

It's whole a process, but it's not a machine. The closer you are to your potential advertisers, the more likely they will trust you in return. Simply keep on mind that your potential customers (advertisers themselves or ad-agencies) really appreciate to be listened and feel your interest on what they do and what try to buy. It's human !

Perhaps, you are impatient to earn money from advertisers, so they are, reciprocally ! And they never donate ! That's to say, you should pay increasing attention to the expectations of your future advertisers : what do they want to communicate? how can you help them to measure their campaigns ROI (Return On Investment) ? etc.

Then, remember that you are not the only publisher trying to approach advertiser. Usually, this last is continuously flooded (may be bored) with offers from new and popular websites. Sometimes, advertiser just prefers to invest in mailing or offline campaigns.

The question is, how unique is your specific site ? Why advertising there instead of the competition ?

One first step consists on preparing a media kit for your website. Stay tuned for next tips !

Tounsia 4Ever.com : 5 months later

2010-06-15T00:36:00.020+01:00

New born webzine Tounsia4ever.com is now 5 months old. It's amazing to see and to live the evolution of a concept & business for which I have had much of passion.

Here is my first post about this experience. Though, I like to share some new thoughts and practices I have learnt along the last months.

The goal of our team has been to reach people as far as possible, to drive considerable traffic then to turn visits into money. What about reality ?

(-) Building links in common tools (directories, forums, blogs, press release, ...) doesn't always result in the expected huge traffic.

(-) Mostly, our new members "have not time" to check the features of the webzine. However, social networks are more likely to catch visitors and to make them more loyal.

(-) There are many experienced competitors (online and paper magazines) and new motivated ones, evolving in the same niche.

(-) Then it's not obvious att all that an advertiser will immediately pay to be in our webzine itself. This is totally another concern, welcome to commercial tactics !

Illustrated by Bayrem Zouari
Copyright © 2008-2010 . Tounsia4Ever.com

When I chose to venture into this project and to support its founder, graphic designer, it was clear for both of us that success is the only option. We believe that we have enough power and resources to make of this webzine enough popular, lovelable and trusted...

Greater synergy and innovative ideas have to be found in our team for effective branding of Tounsia 4Ever, the web magazine of tunisian modern women.

Stay tuned for more details. Here is the guideline of the next posts :

1) Social Marketing : choosing the plateforms . settling a strategy.
2) Tracking competitors is better than feeling ok.
3) Be unique ! How to make visitors and advertisers trust your site.
4) Partnership and public relations are vital.
5) And ... think about the future and the risks.

To be continued ...

Google Analytics vs privacy policy

2010-03-26T21:46:00.013+01:00

If you are used to make your decision upon Google Analytics reports, you will need to know this : visitors of your website will be alerted to opt for being tracked or not. Here is the news announced in Google Analytics blog :

"As an enterprise-class web analytics solution, Google Analytics not only provides site owners with information on their website traffic and marketing effectiveness, it also does so with high regard for protecting user data privacy. Over the past year, we have been exploring ways to offer users more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics. We concluded that the best approach would be to develop a global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics. Our engineers are now hard at work finalizing and testing this opt-out functionality. We look forward to make it globally available to our users in the coming weeks". Amy Chang, Group Product Manager, Google Analytics.

source : http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/03/more-choice-for-users-browser-based-opt.html

Nevertheless, I still wonder how can online statistics interfere with privacy concerns. Currently, visitors sessions are not recorded by IP address. Moreover, GA data is agregated, there is no detailed logs like in the server-side.

Some people think that this is a strategic change, before a paid version of the tool would be included.

Anyway, note that a part of your traffic will not be taken into consideration, then figures would show trends of usage of your site rather than exact amount of visits, pageviews, etc. You will handle with samples of traffic, instead of total traffic.

How to track searches within your site

2010-03-13T00:47:00.011+01:00

Discovering the effective usage of each of your web pages is important to find out which parts of your website or blog are most successful.

Nevertheless, your curious visitors would use the search function of your website, and you want to know what exactly they are looking for.

It is common that your readers search for articles, products, events and other stuff you have not included yet in your blog / website.

Consequently, you will immediately need to list all keywords entered in your internal search engine. How ?

Every search query can be found in the URL. Searching "track" in this blog will result in the following address :

http://www.khalilgdoura.com/search?q=track

A common part of search URLs is "q", this is called "query parameter". If your site is built with Joomla, the query would be "searchword".

How to take advantage of query parameter ?

In the case you use Google Analytics, simply :

1 - Go to "Analytics Settings".
2 - Click on "Edit" near your site profile.
3 - Again, click on "Edit" in the "Main Website Profile Information" menu.
4 - Check "Do Track Site Search".
5 - Enter the specific query parameter of your website.
6 - "Save changes".

It's done, now when you visualize your report, you can find the complete list of searches in your website related to the date range you set :

1 - Click on "Content", on the left menu.
2 - Click on "Site Search".
3 - Enjoy advanced metrics!

Some search metrics given by Google Analytics reports

Regardless to your preferred analytics tools, keep on mind that search queries are just urls like any existing page of your website.

You can always sort your viewed pages as to get the list of URLs related to searches, which all begin with the query parameter.

Now, you can easily keep an eye on your visitors' information needs and then, you will efficiently improve your content. The closest you are to your audience, the more loyal it will be.

See you! :)

How to track outgoing links

2010-02-21T13:02:00.026+01:00

You installed Google Analytics tracking code on your pages or template, and you started to enjoy detailed insights of your website usage.

However, you still need extra statistics regarding elements such as flash, videos, or simply outgoing links which don't include your tracking code.

To achieve this, Google Analytics provides a javascript function as follows :

< href="http://www.your-partner.com/"> onclick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/outgoing/your-partner-com');" >

Simply add the onClick function next to your outgoing link. That's all!

Now, you will be able to keep an eye on all what your visitors do inside your website. Also, this smart code can help you to impress your advertisers or partners, giving them in a reliable way how much of your visitors are interested in them.

Note that Joomla includes a banners module which calculates the total clicks on ads.Though, Google Analytics onClick function can be used whatever is your site or blog.

Next example on how to track videos. Stay tuned!

Tounsia 4Ever.com | Day One

2010-01-14T21:15:00.020+01:00

During the last month, I have been busy as I participate in a web magazine project, Tounsia 4Ever. It has been a great experience of team working, so many things to learn. The team is basically composed of a graphic designer and me.

After designing the layout of our website and writing its detailed specifications, we had to find a passionate developer to turn all this into reality, and to help us to take advantage of the latest web technologies.

The few last weeks were like ages, as we had to learn and to understand so different issues : ergonomics, CMS, forums solutions, hosting, security,...

Now, dream just comes true, but it's not the end, never! Now, it's a big challenge to make the fresh website known as much as possible throughout the web.

Although I have always believed on Internet marketing techniques, and despite all the different tasks I had to do when I was SEO employer, I feel right now huge responsibility for handling a project since its beginning.

In fact, Tounsia 4Ever is not existing label or firm, nor some known figure or artist. It has just been created through an illustration, an icon. This creation aimed to make a new and exclusive place for tunisian women. Facebook has been a great tool to brand the new concept, so that the group we created started to gain notoriety.

For more than one year, the group's forum dramatically became a selected place for dozens of members to discuss about topics regarding social issues and taboos, and to leave feedback about local media.

The need on the website was increasing, so our team started to think seriously about the structure of a likely portal for Tounsia 4Ever community on Facebook, and much more... We have been encouraged to build this web magazine, and so we did!

Only now, I can realize that it's really a challenge to move from an easy-to-use Facebook group to a new empty portal, where a new visitor is not used yet to check the website and to come back there. Moreover, a new visitor is not likely to start the very first topic on the forum of the website. That's a common issue in all new born forums.

I can conclude that link building, search engine optimization and any online marketing technique aren't enough to reach our goals.

We don't just need traffic, rather we want to build a user's experience with the website, to make its content more rich and more social. Here is the challenge.

I guess that we need extra effort to convince people to come use the new website, not just looking around and forgetting it after a while.

In short, it's much more than webmarketing routines, it's about webmastering. it's like a small business I must care about, and I should be patient.

About Organizing

2009-11-24T22:49:00.008+01:00

I would like to write down what I think about this trait : Organizing. More than a simple routine, it means too much for me.

By organizing, I mean every technique, method, software and any other tool helping to get a better and faster access to files, information, documents, and any interesting resource likely to be used one day.

Due to the unmatched amount of data coming from the worldwide web, I have been trying different solutions given by managing software solutions, notes and post-it programs, etc.

Honestly, I don't longer need to make much effort to organize my data sets and files. This is due to the everlasting evolution of software, which becomes actually friendly. As a result, I have felt much more comfortable, productive and pleased to work on any task. However, there is something I should notice : There is no a unique solution nor a definitive one which suits your needs.

For example, when you constantly work on different projects, it's better that you immediately evaluate the layout of your notes, bookmarks, resources, etc.

The problem lies everytime I start to experience some lateness or any incovenience while performing some task. It's all about organizing, seems to be obvious, but you should keep an eye on your habits. Yet, I do repete this to myself, because job must never become boring.

To be continued with concrete examples

My end of studies project in brief

2009-05-21T13:08:00.017+01:00

I am right now managing to achieve my end of studies project. I will be here soon to discuss about this experience of three months.

I just want to summarize the topic of my work: it's about web analytics : I aim to offer to the webmaster an advanced statistical tool to know more about his visitors, and which factors do determine the popularity of the website.

The statistical tool is based on logistic regression, given the wide applications it offers comparing to other datamining methods.

The utimate goal is to make the website more likely to attract advisers and make money, through improving some metrics relating to visits and visitors' behavior within.

Stay tuned for further details !

My first program

2009-02-20T18:12:00.031+01:00

During the scholar year 2001/2002, I wanted to enter the computer club of "Jeunes & Sciences", the tunisian association dealing with various scientific activities for teenagers, monitored by a bit elder youngsters.

We had to learn how to use Visual Basic, version 6. After we get initiated to the software, one of the monitors had the genius idea to stir up our learning by making a competition.

The challenge was to develop a sliding puzzle : the fifteen puzzle.

That was teasing! I liked the mathematical background and the programming issues it gives. However, I also liked the astute ways Visual Basic gives throughout its graphical properties.

Weeks after, I could finally run the game. The joy was big, but some issues were raising :
* The source-code was long and not optimized at all.
* Some rare but unexpected bugs appeared while playing.
* Developing some advanced functions.
* How to automatically combine a solvable puzzle!
* How to save data of players in memory.
And others..

After my first programming experience, I learnt that a programmer's task doesn't stop after solving the problem. Testing and optimizing the software are necessary. Environment (Windows) and compatibility, .. have also to be considered.

Here is a preview of the game.

The start window

Choose a puzzle. I figured 8,
i did not develop random puzzles!

If the player wins, a window is displayed
to enter the name of the player, which saved
with the time elapsed.

Courses, Exams, and then?

2009-02-01T21:06:00.013+01:00

I am student in statistical engineering, 5th grade. I have just sit for my final exams.Suddenly, I became free, I no longer think about my homework, tests, exams, ...

Nevertheless, from now on, I have to focus on my end of studies internship.
I am supposed to become a statistical engineer, in only five months. Then, I would be able to apply for a job and pridely reclaim salary.

The question is, am I enough proud of myself to go as far as I want? Would I be ready to think, behave and work such an engineer?

For five years ago, since I left highschool, I have had mainly courses at theorotical subjects in mathematics, statistics, finance and computer science.

Some clever professors gave smart courses based on real examples in professional life. However, there is big difference between listening to a lovely course showing specific application of statistics, and performing that application itself!

Recently, I have had two job interviews with companies i had contacted to find an internship. One of these firms focused on business intelligence, and needs practical skills in databases management and datamining, while the other firm requires mainly good skills in forecasting and prediction for quality assurance.

In both interviews, I faced the same problem : I could not detail what i can do with software for statistical and programming usage, either because my level is basic, or i have not used the software for a long time...

Now, I am engaged with a webmarketing firm I knew before, to achieve my end of studies project, which deals with web usage mining. I can say this firm was not strict as much as others, but also.. doesn't deal with my education as well as the two others.

Regarding these facts, I guess I have to work hard on my internship, to get updated on software and theorotical knowledge i had in college.

By blogging, I am decided to work regularly, to consider others' works worldwide on the Internet, and to constantly improve my skills and ambitions.

I am willing to change, Later, I want to feel the pride when graduated "engineer".