Turning over a new leaf with Social Media for 2015. Trying Facebook advertising

Like many small businesses I have made a token effort on Social Media. But it has never really appealed to me and there is always something else to do at work rather than thinking up something to post on Twitter or Facebook. Last month I  had the offer to have my business appraised by the government's Growth Accelerator program which prompted me to look at our weaknesses from an outsider's viewpoint.  And guess what?  One of them is definitely a lack of Social Media presence.  This has serious  implications for lack of engagement with customers, for the ranking of our websites in Google and for missing out on the chance to interact with a whole new audience of potential customers.
I have been busy reading blogs by such experts as Jon Loomer.  and VerticalResponse. There seems to be some kind of Social Media 2.0 emerging where businesses can no longer recruit fans just by posting regularly and will have to be prepared to pay for Facebook Ads. 
I actually like the idea of paying for adverts to recruit fans to my page. As a hard-headed businessman I do not believe in the airy-fairy something-for-nothing of a lot of Social Media hype.  FB adverts are quantifiable, with very good stats, and once I have people as fans I can try out various offers and promotions.   It is very much in Facebook's interest to make the adverts work because they are playing catchup with Google.  The underdog must try harder.

I had not realised how precise the targetting of Facebook Ads can be.  For example you can say that the ad will only be shown to customers who have first visited your website.  (This involves putting a special "pixel" on you site first of course.)   And you can select audiences by their likes using Facebook Graph - you could target only fans of  Breaking Bad for example. Or fans of my competitor's page.
 I can upload my mailing list and Facebook will find my customers' Facebook accounts. Then I can "clone" this audience to build a Lookalike audience of similar people.  And when I run the ad I can do further selection, male or female for example.
  There is something called Power Editor which you use to fine tune the ads, by creating new "Advert Sets" which could have a different photo or a different audience. Just remember to only use jpeg images, Facebook does not appear to like pngs.
 After using Adwords for so long it is a breath of fresh air.  Google are always asking me to increase my Adwords budget but mysteriously I do not get many more sales when I do as they say.  And if you ever let their "experts" tweak your campaign  then be prepared to have a big increase in costs.

With Facebook ads I seem to be ahead of the curve. When there is something I do not understand I go to www.peopleperhour.com and ask a PPH consultant.  But there is nobody specialising in Facebook Ads. Many of their consultants will reduce your Adwords spend or improve your SEO but FB ads  are apparently untouchable.  I will have to teach myself then.
Watch for my next posting when I report back on my results!

Savings on postage costs with Itembase and PackCrowd

We sell a lot on Ebay and a company called Itembase contacted me several times  by phone and email before I gave in and listened to what they had to offer.  Their main pitch is that they can increase your sales by using their database of your customers to send reminder emails and other offers. We already do that with our email marketing (using MadMimi). So not really interested. They also provide a lot of stats about your sales.

But then their sales rep Anika showed me a page of postage rates if we joined up and use their PackCrowd shipping service.  I think is based on Itembase's link with UPS who are also investors in the business.
Needless to say the prices looked great with shipping inside the UK for under £2.00. I am so fed up that we cannot get a better rate than £2.80 from Royal Mail or anybody else  for small light parcels. Not much cheaper than if we went out and bought the stamps.  Anything wider than 25cm or thicker than 2.5cm is a parcel now.  I do not want next day delivery, I just want the package to get there reliably within 3 working days.  And when my customers complain I want tracking which I think Itembase will include.
Also sending packages to Germany by airmail we are having a lot of failures and at a cost of over £3.50, without tracking, this is a bad value service.  Again Itembase promise a cheaper tracked service.
And every small mailorder business hates the fact that Royal Mail charge us a whopping £900 each year just for their vans to collect our mail. The red vans turn up here at least 3 times a day delivering letters and parcels anyway so could they not collect my mailbags for free?

So we are still waiting to be linked up to the shipping service. Is it too good to be true - watch this space!
December 2014: Latest news is now that nothing will happen until New Year.  I might have a word with Mr Jørgensenand  on LinkedIn. 

PS ItemBase is a Berlin based startup . It was founded by Denmark native Stefan Jørgensenand investors include UPS.

Learning curve for our first job colour printing on serviettes

First experience of printing a real life order on our flatbed inkjet printer. Big learning curve.  Running out of cyan ink so have to order more by next day delivery.  Marrutts have despatched already.

Inkjet print on napkins, placecards

I have read many posts about digital printing that ask about the cost of ink per item. Some printers rely on  the printer software to measure ink usage.  It occurs to me that with the CISS ink system (continuous ink supply system) which has the ink tanks separate from the printer it would be quite easy to weigh the tanks before and after printing a job.  Then if you assume 1ml of ink weighs 1 gram the same as water you can estimate the volume used.   Or you can do the same with the bottles of ink when you top up the tanks to a marked level and find what weight of ink has been added to the tanks.  I have never seen this idea of weighing the tanks posted anywhere else.

 I might need to purchase some small accurate scales but it would repay the cost to be able to cost jobs accurately.  We offer printing on 3 sizes of paper napkins, cocktail, lunch and dinner sizes. So if a customer wants a big image on the 40cm dinner napkins I need to factor in the ink cost.  Also in future  I will be removing  dark backgrounds from photos because printing these is drinking ink!