Who is Jane Hambleton?
Prior to January 8, 2008, a blog search on Google would not have yielded any non-spam results for Jane Hambleton. In the three days since then, she’s had 400 or more blog posts that address her directly.
The Google News results are similar. Nothing notable at all prior to January 8, 2008. Since then, over 150 articles have been written about her.
How’d it all start? Jane Hambleton, first described as a disc jockey in local papers, and later self-described on national television as a copywriter, Jane wrote less than 50 words to sell a car she had in her possession.
The ad read as follows:
OLDS 1999 Intrigue. Totally uncool parents who obviously don’t love teenage son, selling his car. Only driven for three weeks before snoopy mom who needs to get a life found booze under front seat. $3,700/offer. Call meanest mom on the planet.
And where did she advertise these words? Not on a billboard, not as part of a massive marketing campaign, and not exclaimed over loud speakers to a large live audience. Ms. Hambleton posted a classified ad in the Des Moines Register newspaper.
If good copywriting isn’t part of your marketing mix, it certainly should be. Just look at the results!
2007 in Review.
2007 was a great year for this blog.
First of all, I broke the dry posting spell by actually getting back to it in May, thanks to seeing a co-worker blog personally and professionally at the same time. (Simon).
Second of all, I actually drove a considerable amount of traffic (for this blog) during 2007. Visitors increased 123%, people averaged 25% more pages viewed per visit, my bounce rate dropped over 30%, and average time on the site increased 120%.
My Top Sources of Traffic Outside of Organic and Direct Traffic:
Stumbleupon, MyBlogLog, and Sphinn.
Stumbleupon traffic appeared to actually read my site, as did MyBlogLog users. Sphinn users did not appear to read content based on the time on site. If they did, they read at least twice as fast.
My Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is definitely improving, and one lone experiment in keyword research prior to posting did result in that blog post lodging itself for several months in a top ten listing in Google for my targeted phrase and subsequently delivering traffic.
The top ten posts by number of visitors:
11 Measures of Social Networking Profile Success
Blog Improvement Tips for the Meme
PPC Bid Management Strategy - Bid Optimization of Non-Converting Keywords
SEO for Federal Agencies
Airline Marketing Strategies and Travel Advertising
Holiday E-Commerce Marketing Roundup
Why Internet Marketing Is Like A Treasure Hunt
Stop Shooting Viral Marketing Blanks
Michael Vick, Atlanta Falcons, NFL, and Reputation Management
Opt-in Email Marketing Techniques
Happy New Year! See you in 2008!
Facebook Flyers Make Room for Facebook Targeting.
When I first experimented as an advertiser with Facebook Flyers, I could purchase impressions for a flat fee and target it to a university. At least, that’s how I remember it going. As a Facebook user, I saw a slew of generic ads for affiliate programs and university apparel, amongst those that I remember showing up in the era of Facebook Flyers.
Now, Facebook ads can be targeted based on all sorts of things: location, gender, keywords, education status, workplace, political view, and relationship status.
Prior to Facebook Flyers being turned off, I was still receiving ads that said, “Single?” Even after, I’m still getting ads for dating sites, though fewer of them.
The following advertisers I assume are doing a good job and are targeting their ads to my marital status as “engaged”:
