facebook campaign

Two weeks ago we brought you the results of our job search experiment in an article titled Use Facebook Ads to Make Employers Hunt You Down (don’t want to read it, listen to my interview about the experiment with Chris Russell from Secrets of the Job Hunt podcast). We found that Facebook ads were an extremely effective medium for catching an employer’s attention. This week, LinkedIn, a professional networking site, announced their own advertising platform. That begged the obvious question: Can LinkedIn be used in a similar way to target employers with ads that link to your resumé?

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If you pay any attention to the news, you might think that anyone who is looking for a job should immediately cancel his or her Facebook membership and never sign up again. Headlines read: Bank Intern Busted by Facebook, Employers Look at Facebook Too, and Employers Snoop on Facebook. There’s rarely anything new in the stories, but somehow they continue to pop up in all sorts of media outlets. More and more companies are using Facebook as a recruiting tool (and those who aren’t yet should hire us to help them), but for the most part any press that has included the words “employer” and “Facebook” has been negative. Not anymore.

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So, I told you about Facebook’s new Flyers Pro feature and how it’s going to change the world of recruiting, or at least help me a lot with building One Day, One Job’s audience. Well I’m still waiting to use Facebook Flyers Pro. Every time I try to set up a campaign – and I stupidly keep trying to see if they’ve fixed it yet – when I enter my billing information it tells me that the address that I’ve entered is not valid. So I e-mailed Facebook’s support staff for help.

My first e-mail to them on September 15th:

Hi, I keep trying to sign up for my flyer, but the sign up form keeps
telling me to enter a valid address. I have entered a valid address,
and it is definitely the address that is linked to the credit card. It is a
PO Box, which may be the problem. I also tried my home address,
which was also rejected. I want to get this campaign going ASAP, so
please help.

A response from Reece at Facebook on September 16th:

We are aware of the problem that you described and hope to resolve
it as soon as possible. Sorry for any inconvenience. Let me know if
you have any further questions.

My second e-mail on September 16th:

Thanks for your response. Is there any current workaround or is the
whole Flyers Pro program not yet up and running? Is there anyway I
could register my billing info through another form, and then save it
and have it used to get my flyer published?

Reece’s response also on September 16th:

Unfortunately, at this time you will be unable to purchase flyers on
the site. We are aware of this problem and are hoping to resolve this
glitch as soon as possible. We are sorry for any inconvenience this
has caused. Let me know if you have any further questions.

So I tried once more today, September 18th:

Flyers Pro still isn’t working for me, I’m sure you all are working
on it. I was just wondering if there is any word on when I’ll be able
to start launching some Flyers Pro Campaigns. I’m really chomping on
the bit to give Facebook my money.

And Reece responded promptly again today:

We are actively trying to fix this problem on the site. We thank you
for your patience and are sorry for any inconvenience this has
caused.

I expected it to take until Monday to get this issue resolved, but I’m still waiting. On Sunday, I noticed a lot more flyers and thought that maybe some people had found a way to start their campaigns, but since then I’ve just seen a lot of banner ads on the left side of my Facebook.

Two things to note in defense of Facebook. First of all, I didn’t see any press release on Facebook Flyers Pro. It appears that they just added the feature, so it should work, but at least they’re not hyping it yet. Second, their customer service response has been prompt and courteous. I guess Reece couldn’t have really helped me out, since the feature just isn’t working yet.

It appears that Facebook has fallen flat on its – er – face with this one. Has anybody had Facebook Flyers Pro work yet? Please respond in the comments.

Yesterday Facebook released their Facebook Flyers Pro CPC advertising solution in response to the demand for an alternative to the disappointing results that the original Facebook Flyers program delivered. Facebook Flyers enables you to target a specific network with ads at $2 CPM, which sounds cheap, until you realize that the click through rate is typically well under 1%. I did a test run on the Cornell University network and managed a .2-.4% click-through rate, which apparently is excellent compared to others who have used the program. Basically I was paying over 50 cents a click during my trial, which is a lot more than I’d like to spend per visitor.

Now, with the Facebook Flyers Pro option, I’m extremely excited about the prospects of advertising on Facebook. Beyond the fact that now you only have to pay for results, the platform allows for an impressive amount of targeting (by gender, relationship status, network/school, interests, age, etc). It’s a phenomenal platform at first look, but if the low click-through rates continue, it will still be difficult to get a meaningful amount of traffic from Facebook unless they give you a ton of impressions. I will be trying it out as soon as they get over their little problem of rejecting my billing address every time I try to sign up for a campaign. If anything, the results have to be better than their original Facebook Flyers solution.

In terms of One Day, One Job and recruiting in general, this platform has a ton of potential. It can be a supplement to on-campus recruiting, or it can be used to reach campuses that a company may not be able to visit. It is certainly a tool that I will be using to build my audience, and I think it also has potential to be used as a supplement to drive traffic to a company’s One Day, One Job posting. I will certainly be testing Facebook Flyers Pro and figuring out how I can best leverage it in the recruitment of college students and recent graduates for entry-level jobs.