Family Time Again
Hope you’ll forgive me for a very quick post this week as my Dad is coming to stay for a week – and “things” that needed to be done before his arrival mounted up.
This Blogging After Dark business took on a whole new dimension earlier in the week when I was at the keyboard until about 2:30am trying to “forward plan” – but when I finally went to bed I still couldn’t sleep because I had so many ideas buzzing round in my head.
I guess I should have got up and just got on with implementing, rather than brooding …. but it was at least warm in bed. I finally fell asleep about 5am – and almost missed a 9:30am meeting next day. Oops!
Plan A Instead Of Plan B
Regular readers may remember that my purpose of using this blog is to develop an online business as an income to supplement poor pension provisions.
I suppose it’s just “life” that as the online business starts showing big results, my offline clients have stirred too, and are looking for fast turn-round on pretty big projects. Luckily my main online business allows me to go “passive” and still continue earning, so it’s back to Plan A (offline business) while the team takes care of Plan B!
I have some previously written articles I can use over the next few weeks, so all being well I’ll still be here!
Anyway – rambling won’t get my blog post scheduled ahead – or the final preparations made for my Dad’s visit.
But I hadn’t expected to be so busy this week and arrive at Saturday morning, with my Dad due here VERY soon, and a blank blog page facing me…..
What To Write About?
Happily I am on a few mailing lists and spotted a useful article telling me about something that I’ve fallen foul of a few times in the past. I hadn’t noticed this from any other source, so I’m basing this week’s post on a newsletter written by Trevor Emdon because it’s not something I’ve got round to doing. I still have a queue of other items to work through.
Trevor alerted me to something I hadn’t spotted. Apologies if this is old news to everyone else
The Facebook Adverts Rule On Text Has Been Relaxed
Trevor tells me that Facebook have finally changed the rule that stopped you having more than 20% of an ad showing text.
Click here to see Facebook's updated guide for text on images.
I had quite a few adverts stopped because of this rule, and it got to the stage that I stopped even bothering to re-submit them. Perhaps a few other people did the same, and Facebook had a re-think.
They must have missed my occasional $10 contributions to their coffers!!
However, it's not all good news because it seems that the more text on an advert, the more it will cost. Quoting from Facebook's “Guide For Using Text in Ad Images” :
Facebook ads that contain images with little to no text tend to cost less.
Should You Change?
Many times I was frustrated that I had TRIED to apply the Facebook adverts rule on text, but slipped up somehow, so this will be an improvement for me.
However, many people had already got used to conforming to the 20% rule – assisted by a Facebook grid ad checker such as this, and Facebook show statistics in their guide to text in adverts suggesting that the more words are included in an image the lower the reach.
Looking at the examples they show, I can understand why this might be – so it might still be a good idea to AIM for the 20% rule. Pruning our message to a minimum will help our marketing skills too.
There are times when the amount of text included won't affect the delivery. Read the exceptions here.
On balance I am now more likely to place adverts knowing they won't get stopped.
Will this change affect what / if you pay for adverts on Facebook? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
