Tim.McGuinn.es/s

Just spell it out

Estimating Views: Newspapers vs Facebook

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Vineyard overlooking Canandaigua Lake, from Ro...

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Some people do puzzles to stay sharp, I like to run a marketing model.  The kind where I set up a spreadsheet, make some assumptions and justifiable estimates, and then hope like hell my hypothesis is in the ballpark. From there I usually have to spin it to make it easy to digest.  Good times.

This week an idea came up about the effectiveness of using PR to support a regional project that would cover Central to Western NY vs using a Facebook Fan page.

Here’s some background with the names changed.

About the Newspapers:
Below are the five largest regional newspapers and their circulations that I found by searching around.  The two assumptions that I added are:
a) Views – each purchased newspaper is viewed twice
b) Impressions – I assumed that an article like this would be read by 20% of the buyers.

Bottom Line: Getting an article in each newspaper in the region would be seen by 180,000 people.

NEWSPAPER    Circ     Readers/Circ   Views  Impressions
Buffalo    160,000   
Roch       119,000   
Syr         85,000   
Bing        65,000   
Elmira      23,000   
           452,000           2        0.2    180,800

 

Now, Facebook:
a) Group size – I used 30,000. I realize that this is a fairly large group, but there is a similar group in the region that already has more fans than this, so it is certainly achievable either working independently or doing a coordinated project with the other group.
b) Impressions – Total impressions are generated by getting “Like” clicks and comments that will then get your post to appear on Facebook walls of non-fans. To determine how many impression a single announcement post would get, I used 5 impressions/fan. This is a very conservative estimate since it is based on the impressions I get for another project that is non-consumer so less viral, but let’s go with 5.

FACEBOOK    
Group Size   Impressions/Fan    Total Impressions
   30,000           5              150,000

 

Bottom Line: A post to our groups Facebook page would get 150,000 impressions.

From the bottom line numbers it seems like newspapers would still prove the strongest plan.

Intangibles:
If you ever placed a newspaper article, you know how much work it is. Now think about doing that for five newspapers. It’s a lot of work to get thos 180,000 views.  Along with the work, you have also relinquished the message to local writer, so you have lost some control in the message. Now let’s look at the effort for doing a Facebook post.  Once you tweak the voice of your press 

Now let’s look at the effort for doing a Facebook post.  Once you tweak the voice of your press release to talk directly to your buying audience, you can post it right up.  You control the message and you don’t have to do all the follow-up and scheduling involved in the newspaper placement.  For this I estimate 150,000 views.

But still 150K is still less than the 180K for the newspapers, so why is this better. First the work effort is less, but #2 is the big thing — you can do it again next week!!  Why not? Add a few new pictures and an update to the schedule, and bam! Another 150,000 views.

FACEBOOK    
Status Update Imp/Fan Fans: Finger Lakes Wines   
imp/fan 2 30,000  62,821
    
Picture Update 4 to 6 30,000  150,000

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Blogging from the iPhone

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This is the first post from my WordPress for iPhone app. It took two versions and help from the tech support team at 3essentials.com. Thanks to their team who went beyond the norm to make it work: Patrick, Josh, Damon and Sam (hope I got you all).

Here’s to trusting auto-correct.

— Tim

Building with Freebase

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Freebase from Metaweb

Freebase from Metaweb

I had a unique opportunity to attend a presentation put on by The New York Semantic Web Meetup called Content, Identifiers and Freebase from Metaweb about ways to use Freebase. I’ll use organizer Marco Newmann’s words to describe Freebase:

“Freebase is a community managed database for knowledge about the world. Information in Freebase is organized as a web of facts, which can be systematically retrieved.”

So get this: Someone else stores and maintains the data, and you get to use it. This is a great resource for building applications or as a repository to supplement content projects.

As I had covered back in June, I am itching to build something using these resources, and last night may have given me a little more inspiration. For help I’ll look to pick up Jaime Taylor’s new book “Programming the Semantic Web“. Jaime Taylor presented a mix of high-level application ideas along with some code samples to show how it works, both the ease and flexibility of accessing data. Robert Cook, the co-founder of Metaweb Technologies, covered aspects about how we can use the Freebase database, including usage allowances (100k queries/day), the Creative Commons licensing requirements, and how we can upload and maintain Freebase data

I can already think of a great semantic search application that can be built with already available data — so if you are that client I spoke to last week — call me fast this is a home run, or I’m building it myself!

Like I said: It makes you want to start building. Great presentation.

Multi-Santa Solution

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Sleeping Santa and Tim

Sleeping Santa and Tim

Sometimes you are just caught off-guard and where you will find genius. Today it was a at Macy’s Santaland(r) (I had to add the R since it seems so silly). We decided that we would take our little one to visit the “real” Santa, according the “Miracle on 34th Street.”

I was ready for standing in line for a couple of hours, but it was like a Christmas Miracle, and we were out in about 30 minutes. But there’s a secret, I’m not sure exactly, but there are more that one Santas in Santaland.

How? It’s not like a mall where Santa sits in the middle, the kigs line up, and we can all walk past. Here they bring the families through an enchanted forest type of setting that ends in a room filled with Christmas trees and helpers, we’ll call them elves, lead each family to a different cubby area hidden behind the trees. The family in front of us was taken off to the left, and then we were taken off to the right where we waited behind a family that was a good distance in front of us in line.

Anyway, the baby cried when she saw Santa, so the whole family ended up in the photo in order to maintain the peace, but I had to say that I had a pretty big smile after seeing how they handled the crowds with the multi-Santa solution. I have to look for places to put a similar plan in place.