July 2015 – Virginia Allain

When my mother self-published her memoir at 85 and then a book about Dad’s life, I set up a Facebook fan page for her. Gradually friends, family and fans of her books discovered it and she had almost 100 LIKES on the page.

I’ve been wanting to spread the word further, so I decided to try a Facebook advertisement. They offered $5, $10, and up or set your own price. Uncertain what the return would be on this investment, I opted for a modest $3 a day for 2 1/2 days.

Here's the statistics for the Facebook ad that I ran. — Here’s the statistics for the Facebook ad that I ran.

Figuring that her memoir of growing up in the 1930s appealed most to older women with a Kansas background, I opted for those demographics for showing the ad. So Facebook showed the ad to 426 women from the evening of July 1st to to midnight on July 3rd. Of that number, 30 opted to LIKE the page and become fans.

Will any of these new fans be intrigued enough to take the next step and buy my mother’s books? I’ll let you know about that next month. In the meantime, I spent a mere $6.72 on the ad campaign. That’s about the price of a fast food meal.

Here are further statistics on the Facebook advertisement results.

The new followers on the Gail Lee Martin fan page are age 55 and up. Total fans are 60% in that age range, with only 8% male. Most are from the Wichita area and other Kansas locations like Olathe and El Dorado.

I may try another ad in a few weeks with more diverse demographics. Perhaps I should include men and a wider age range or wider geographic range.

For now, I need to post topics on the fan page to keep the members interested and engaged.

I use Facebook to network with fellow writers, to keep up with family news, and to follow topics that interest me like genealogy and the Civil War. Increasingly, I’ve used Facebook to keep up with political factions and to express my political views. In case you aren’t a friend of mine on Facebook, I’m a feminist and a progressive liberal.

I know that not all my friends and family share my views of the world or even if they do, they might not want to see it day after day. Facebook has a solution for that. You can adjust the settings so the person is still your friend, but so their posts do not show up on your news feed. If you hate my politics and still like me, then I recommend that you do that.

Today I approved a new friend, even though I didn’t recognize the person. They were posting in a group from my hometown on a post where I’d put a photo of my brother. Assuming they were a friend of his or possibly an old high school acquaintance of mine, I said OK to the friend request.

Shortly after that, they posted this on my timeline:

“Words mean things people…STOP hating with them. Sticks and stones…that’s a lie from the pit of hell. Thank u JESUS Christ for dieing for MY sins. 💕❤👣✌❤💖”

What? You asked to be my friend and within minutes you are telling me you don’t like my words and preaching at me? That’s pretty pushy. Maybe they befriend lots of people just so they can spread their message across Facebook.

I guess that’s what the unfriend button is for.

And one more point here, I’ll take you a lot more seriously if you are reasonably literate. “Thank u JESUS Christ for dieing for MY sins.” Please, don’t use those texting abbreviations, write in all-capitals, and misspell simple words like “dying.”