Last week’s Facebook IPO may go down in financial infamy as being the biggest and most high profile IPO flop of the century – and this Internet Marketer's content marketing efforts may have inadvertently triggered the epic Facebook IPO meltdown. Sounds ridiculous and completely preposterous, right? Read to the end of the story and decide for yourself!
Our Big Idea
Earlier this month, my colleagues at WordStream and I were planning our monthly content marketing effort. Like most other companies, we do a lot of content marketing on our blog, but we also make a point to publish at least one high-level story that might appeal to people who aren’t expert search marketers. The goals of these efforts are to raise the general public awareness of our company, and also drive valuable editorial links to our site.
This month, with all the intense media focus on the Facebook IPO, our big idea was to develop a study comparing the effectiveness of Facebook Advertising vs. The Google Display Network. For those of you who don’t already know, The Google Display Network is the banner advertising component of Google’s business – it consists of banner ads on Google sites like YouTube, Blogger, Gmail (etc.) as well as over two million other popular websites (it’s roughly 25% of Google’s total business). Our research compared the two biggest banner advertising venues on the Internet based on criteria such as advertising reach, supported ad formats & ad targeting options, advertising performance, etc.
Our study concluded (for now at least) that, that the Google Display Network offered advertisers greater value in the areas that we tested, which came as a surprise to many investors who aren’t familiar with the two advertising platforms. To help people visualize our study results, we partnered with Brian Wallace at NowSourcing, who turned our research into an Infographic. (Click to Enlarge)
Launching our Facebook Advertising Study
We timed the launch of our Infographic for Tuesday May 15 at 9AM EST, just three days before the Facebook IPO. We wrote a simple press release and a blog post, and then reached out to some of our friends in the industry to help get the word out. Early on, Rand helped us out big time by posting our article to inbound.org (thanks rand!)
And we got a few press pick-ups from Jim Edwards at Business Insider, and John Letzing at the Wall Street Journal, and Laurie Sullivan at MediaPost, by lunchtime, we were thrilled with all the progress – we had nearly a dozen major news pick-ups! Little did we know, that we were sitting on a story that was about to explode.
Our Study Goes Viral
As if to validate our research, a mere six hours after we launched our study, the Wall Street Journal announced that GM was dumping all advertising on Facebook, and our newly minted research – seen as a possible explanation for GM’s move – got picked up by Mashable, ABC, CBS, Fox Business, PC Mag, PC World, the Washington Post, USA Today, AFP, CNN, The Register, Fast Company, The Economist, Forbes, etc., etc. Here’s what it looked like on Google News:
In a matter of just hours, our Facebook Advertising study got picked up in thousands of the world’s leading news publications!
Our Study Goes International
Our study got picked up by all of world’s largest news networks, such as Reuters, Agence France-Presse (AFP) and the Associated Press (AP), and USA Today. Content from these news networks are translated into dozens of languages in over 150 countries – so for example, our study was being picked up in even small-town newspapers like my college newspaper: the Kitchener-Waterloo Record in Canada, as well as newspapers in New Zealand, Indonesia, Turkey, and many other countries I had never even heard of!
We Got on Cable TV and Radio, Too!
Within hours of publishing our study, we started getting phone calls from producers of major cable TV channels, asking us to appear on Fox Business well as national and Radio Stations such as The Takeaway, the BBC and NPR. Here’s a picture of Ralph Folz, WordStream CEO, on Fox Business last week!
5 Quick Tips to Help Make Your Content go Viral
I definitely have had my share of content creation efforts that went absolutely nowhere. Each effort is a learning experience, and so I’d like to share the five key ideas that I learned this time around!
1. Pinterest is Very Effective for Infographic Marketing
When you content goes viral, expect to get a large chunk of traffic from social media outlets. Our top referring social sites were (in order): Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn. I was quite surprised to see Pinterest beating out Google+ and LinkedIn. In fact, Pinterest was our 12th largest traffic referring site to our study. So if you ever do an Infographic make sure you add that Pinterest button! (If you need to make space, dump the Delicious bookmark button – that was nearly useless)
2. Twitter is still very effective, too.
This isn’t to say that the other social networks are any less important. In fact, Twitter is effective as it always has been. For example, we got this mention in the Guardian just by reaching out to an author via Twitter!
3. Stay Out Front.
The news cycle is fast – it’s important to adapt your story to the prevailing narrative, by anticipating different angles for your news. When we first launched our study, our press release headline read: New Research Compares Facebook Advertising to Google Display Network: Who Comes Out on Top? It was OK, but not viral.
But when the GM news broke, we re-released a similar press release with a slightly different angle: Does Facebook Advertising Work? This was because we found that the press was now looking to find reasons for why GM dumped Facebook. This new angle was much more effective than our original angle.
And we didn’t stop there. I wrote follow-up stories, such as: Why I Bought Facebook IPO Shares Today and Why I Dumped My Facebook IPO Shares at the Open Today, to keep this thing going.
4. Don’t Miss The Window.
I did an interview with The Independent at 4AM EST on Wednesday morning. Why? Because if you’re a reporter in London, that’s when you typically arrive in the office. The attention of the news media cycle an incredible force that is both incredibly powerful and incredibly short. If you happen to catch a lucky break as we did, be prepared to do whatever it takes to make the most of it in the short amount of time you’re in the media spotlight.
5. Don’t forget to include the “so what” factor in your story.
I have found that my most successful content marketing efforts are the ones that contain an unexpected result – something unusual or contrary to conventional wisdom. I call this the so what factor. As in: so what, why should anyone care about this story? Our research basically concluded that (for now at least) Facebook Advertising options aren’t that effective, and that was a pretty profound conclusion given that Facebook is essentially an advertising company (86% of revenues last year came from advertising last year), and given all the IPO hype and that exuberant +$110B IPO valuation.
Summary: Did My Study Really Burst the Facebook IPO bubble?
No. I don’t actually think I ruined the Facebook IPO (apologies for the sensational headline, guys!). The Facebook IPO will go down in history as one of the worst IPO for retail investors. Why did the Facebook IPO crash and burn? It’s because there were more sellers than buyers at that price level.
If you’re looking for someone to blame for the loss of around $20 Billion in Facebook market capitalization as of today, blame the greedy bankers and Facebook management for setting such a high IPO price, or the Facebook for not yet developing compelling advertising options, or possibly GM for the unusual timing of their announcement.
But here’s what I can say about the impact my Facebook advertising study.
- In the days leading up to the Facebook IPO, there was a lot of fanfare, yet by the end of the week, there wasn’t any news report that didn’t at least in some way question the value of the Facebook Advertising Platform. Our study had helped change the media narrative. (As an example of this, watch the Fox Business news clip below.)
- We simply exposed (in an easy-to-understand way) some rather large flaws in the current Facebook advertising platform – something that might have been somewhat obvious to marketers but not necessarily obvious to Facebook investors.
- All in, we estimate that over 10 million people around the world read or heard about our study. It was so many people that our Apache Web server even crashed once (it’s never done that before!).
What do you think of our most recent content marketing effort? Any additional tips to share? Do you advertise on Facebook? What have your experiences? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
About The Author
Larry Kim is the Founder/CTO of WordStream, a PPC software company, provider of the AdWords Grader and the 20 Minute PPC Work Week.
We'll miss you when Mark Zuckerberg's ninja squad "disappears" you ;)
We imagined that our infographic would be on Mark Zuckerberg's desk when after it was released...With FB stocks trading at less than $29 a share today, some of us think Zuck might have us on a dart board ;)Fortunately, it doesn't seem like all this Facebook talk is about to end anytime soon - just like how Google and Apple keeps showing up on our everyday conversations. To replicate our success, it's almost as if we have to be oracles in order to ride another wave of this magnitude. While that's pretty impossible, establishing reliable relationships with media contacts to serve as eyes and ears has become a high priority for viral distribution.
ha ha yes. i was wondering if he was going to order that my account be deleted!
I don't usually comment on SEOmoz/YouMoz posts, but when I do, it's because the post is freaking awesome.
"we got links from every news outlet in the world!"
4 Thumbs up to you!
*and I just realized that this is my first ever comment.
thanks kim. I think we got more links in one week than we did in 4 years of link building. (and we were link building like crazy for those 4 years!).
Got to watch out for that Panda too! That's a lot of big links in a short space of time. But hey ... if all the links do trigger a Google flag you've got to trust they manually undo the penalty. If they don't it would show just how rubbish/penalising their algo is without manual intervention.
Ha!
You lured me in and I'm glad I was curious enough to find out the REAL intent of the article. :-) Just shows that when you do your work right, you can truly find opportunities out there to "make good content others want to link to". Well done!
ha ha. thanks Alan. I couldn't resist the sensational headline.
But seriously, my previous content marketing efforts were much harder. It felt like trying to push a big heavy rock up a hill. This one was the opposite. People just naturally wanted to link to the content. You will know that you have passed the tipping point when reporters start calling you!
Amazing! I am proud that i work with you Larry!
i'm proud to work with you sergey!! :)
heh, brilliant. Larry and Sergey.
Looking at the history of digital media IPOs, I always doubted about this. I came across this link which displays history.
https://gigaom.com/2012/05/17/digital-media-ipos-2011-2012/
Larry you just shake up Facebook. This is the best example of viral marketing in my life. Certainly it's a case of best content released at best time got best attention and goes viral comprehensively. Might be FB is staring at you. :)
Exceptional post, Larry! Talk about a perfect storm of marketing; good content, effective promotion all coinciding with a major news story makes for happy backlink heaven. Thanks for sharing your story!
Thanks Mitch. I feel like I won a Link Building lottery.
What a rare insight into a truly successful content marketing come research project. You must be stoked!
I do wonder how much the fact you are someone who is known plays a part in the virality of the piece. As an example, not that many of us can drop an email to Rand Fishkin and have a high chance of getting his backing. I guess this goes back to a lot of the discussions that have been had here previously which is how key a network to draw from is when you are looking to push content viral.
This post highlights some really interesting points for content marketers. Obviously the first point is that being topical and trying to find the next wave of media coverage can be a great place to get a story to the masses. This example is seemingly as good as it could get on being topical and timely. And secondly, this illustrates if you can be just ahead of the wave, you can ride it right into some beautiful inbound marketing. Well done sir
indeed an exceptionally great post and case study. I so curious to know the whole story that I read all the posts (linked with this post) Great Job!
I really enjoyed the infographic, I also liked your previous ones where you had the top search spenders in the US market on Adwords, nice stuff.
I think you just need to pick the right style of infographic for your niche before something goes big, but then aggain every ones doing infographics, you just need to set the bar higher, I have seen about 20 infograhpics for the Olympics this year already lol, but like the saying goes you have got to be in it to win it ;)
Well done. You deserve all the publicity and links!
Great read! Nice combo of luring in unexpecting passers-by and making their day. As for "link building like crazy for 4 years" both Calvin and Gladwell would say you weren't lucky, you created your own luck :-). Congrats.
Hi larry,
I am agree with the points you mentioned in your post and especially INFOGRAPHIC you shared on Facebook ADS is really true. We all still in thinging process tilld date why not Facebook is improving his ADS program network. Google is still ruling in this section.
Kim, if you were Facebook or Morgan Stanely, what online monitorning tool would you have been using to get an early warning about the post?
Nice one Larry. Its quite interesting what you can do when you jump on any News worthy marterial.
Kudos to you also to get a range of links back to Wordstream in the blog post, all relevant of course. :-)
Thanks for the post. Interesting info...
Trending and relevant content, released at the right time and executed perfectly. Well done.
Very informative tim, i must admit i have gleamed some new tips regarding rehashing the Direction of the content you are providing for the end user
Good solid tips also on quality of quantity too ..
thanks man
Thanks robert. glad you liked it.
awesome post larry, totally agree with you and your points, you deserve all the publicity and links! such a nice case study.
Do you think that FB's ads get worse CTR's because FB allows just about anyone to put an ad up? Bad landing pages etc? Poorly worded ads, poor images?
When content + outreach + social + timing all come together. Fantastic example of how a content marketing strategy in the modern era. I doubt many of us can ever hope to replicate this level of success, but even on a much smaller scale this highlights the potential.
Thanks and congratulations.
Ben
It was pretty obvious to most in the business that the Facebook IPO was way over priced.
Great job on pulling all of the data together and getting tapped as the authority on why it was way over priced.
Awesome post. Looks like you timed a great piece of content right and had a bit of luck with GM's move, but you showed your worth in capitalising on it when it went viral. Where you expecting it to be that big?
Hi Tim - I never know how content marketing efforts will pan out. And it's quite frustrating sometimes because most of the time you put in so much effort into these things and they just fizzle or barely pop. Before we launched this thing, I suspected that our article had the right ingredients to acquire a few dozen placements in major media publications, but even then I wasn’t completely certain!
Great post Larry! But you know Mark Juckerburg is not here to comment on this post. :)
Kim nice post as if we use the right strategy we can achieve it.This post gives an clear view for all internet marketers
Surprised to see GDN get the nod over Facebook when it comes to targeting. Sure GDN has a a decent amount of bucket layers, but I can't imagine Facebook can't be even more specific. Anyway, nice post.
Was curious how you did on StumbleUpon? Couldn't really tell from the graphic. Congrats. Larry, on seeing the hurricane of interest coming, then riding the wave! Was thinking the Transit of Venus might cause a fuss but didn't really know that much and people want photos. I had a big hit on St. Parick's Day with a post on Irish toasts old and new, including my homemade (funny) new ones and classic toasts.
I saw your study in the news. I will say this. Test Test Test...people need to test facebook advert & google display and see what works for them. It all depends, really.
Yes, you did a good job on the content marketing side and yes, the whole thing in and of itself is a good case study..but every marketing molecule in my body says...TEST.
of course! I agree with you that with enough testing, you can make just about anything work! (even facebook advertising!)
Can you do another one and help those poor old derivatives boys?
Or, do one on the iminant departure of Greece from the Euro and my mortgage will go down :D
I'd love to see a follow up study on the effect of all the links from this blast!
well written and great post. I think facebook is less effective for sale, it is more about brand awareness.
Downright kickass! Love the transparency of your post. For me - Facebook advertising does *work*, it just comes down to your margins on the advertising spend and good, effective tracking analytics and analysis :)
Thanks
Agreed. Facebook Advertising can be quite effective for many advertisers, and I'm glad you're seeing ROI. But I don't think anyone would say that it is slam-dunk easy! I think my study is saying that on average, advertisers aren't doing that great with FB advertising. (this doesn't mean it *can't* work for all).
Great post! I work on the new business side of things for the UK's leading managed IT & Communications service provider.
I will be taking your points on board when we release case studies etc..
Any more adivce please get in touch!
Thanks,
Scott.
Glad you liked the tips. Keep in mind that this may have been something of an outlier... none of my other content marketing efforts have turned out like this! :)
I don't know that I agree with the conclusions you reach from your research, but it was certainly a great position to have taken, given the way things worked out.
Good work!
Great case study! Way to ride the tide of a rising new story to success! Very inspiring!
"Ride the tide of a rising new story to success" is such a great way to describe it. I feel like i got hit by an international media tsunami last week and am still in a bit of a state of shock/disbelief as to what just happened.
Very cool success story!
Rockin' post Larry! I'll echo Mitch's statement about this being a perfect storm. Timing is key, but when you have the goods to back it up like you did that's some real magic!
Thanks Blu42media. The study had the added virtue of being factually true!
why do bloggers do this? it's the same with all the articles with the title "[XYZ] is Dead" but when you read the article it says, "ok, it's not really dead but . . ."
"Oops, I Ruined the Facebook IPO!"
"Did My Study Really Burst the Facebook IPO bubble? No."
i think the fact that you read this article proves that sensational headlines work :)
THIS ARTICLE IS A FRAUD: LARRY KIM DID NOT WRITE IT
I think seo_f2012 is annoyed that you lied to him. Which is fair enough. In my experience, reputable publications which have editors don't do this to readers. Sadly in the web SEO world people commit and get away with reader abuse like this.
So did Larry Kim write this article? Yes. Sorry for the headline. But I guess the fact that you read my comment proves that sensational headlines work :).
wow. i'm speechless at that response. best of luck with your writing. i won't be reading any more of it.
Appreciate the shout out, Larry! We're very happy with your success!
thanks brian. no matter how many times i look at this infographic, the Owl-teacher character at the top always cracks me up! A reporter from reuters mentioned that he really loved the Owl. I bet that's the real reason this thing took off. You guys make the coolest infographs!
haha! Studies show that infographics with owls in them increase virality by a factor of 10.
Source: this comment :)
Great post - and congrats with the success!
One thing that bothers be about the whole Facebook IPO narrative: It didn't flop from Facebook's perspective. They got much more money out of it due to the overly high valuation.
Yes, the IPO sucks for the bankers and investors. But an IPO ought to benefit the company doing the IPO, not the short term investors.
This NYTimes articles explaines it very well.
Yes. Thomas - agreed. That's why i wrote: "The Facebook IPO will go down in history as one of the worst IPO for retail investors." Meaning, i think that FB founders and early investors did great from a money raising persective. Only the new investors are left holding the bag at this point.
Good timing is very important, but you have to position your content just right for it to take off as much as possible.
We write blogs highlighting website performance failures, and how costly these can be to their businesses (we solve performance issues and develop custom software), so I just wrote a blog about the portion of blame Nasdaq.com took for the Facebook IPO flop (the site was overwhelmed by demand and the delays that ensued cost investors millions, reportedly). So while there is plenty of blame to be thrown around, my blog aims to highlight how big a factor the (un)reliability of the technology under extreme load was.
Blog post is here - https://blog.intechnica.co.uk/2012/05/25/performance-nightmare-nasdaq-facebook-ipo/ - It would be fantasic to see this angle under discussion.
Pretty, freaking cool! Its link building + huge PR...quite impressive!
we got links from every news outlet in the world!
See what great content can do? Awesome recognition and awesome job!
This is such a cool post. It's a shame it got burried by newer posts so quickly! It didn't even last a day.
With a good post, it doesn't matter. :)
I think the IPO flopped because of the press in general and the GM story didn't help. It almost seemed tatical like someone wanted it to drop. Chances are the IPO should have started off low maybe around $10 or so, but also you're stupid if you buy into an IPO right away there are enough investment blogs out there to know that. The other issue here is yes Google Advertising does do much better than FB in terms of getting people to the site to convert right away, but if you do FB ads correctly if can out perform your Google ads. Have you ever done a comparative study based on ads going to a well optimized "page on Facebook" rather to an outside sourced website. In my experience using the ads to get them to your fanpage and causing fan engagement with well though out posts actually increased my revenue more so than Google ads simply because the social engagement was higher. The plus side to only running ads for the page is that I was running up numbers and getting social engagement, which means I also was getting people to talk to us on Twitter as well. I remember the last e-tail site I ran our main source of traffic was FB, Google and then Twitter. I think the issue here over all with FB marketing is that people just aren't thinking socialy sometimes and instead they just want eyeballs as many big companies do. The fact is if your content is engaging your ads should out perform even on Google creativity counts.
I don't want to be a party pooper or get in the way of a great story about the power of viral marketing, but I am sure that I was watching a TV programme in the UK at around the time you published and that programme was questionning the advertising model of Facebook quite hard. The material used was, to my eye at least, not something that had been thrown together but rather a well thought out, filmed and constructed documentary.
This suggests that other were seriously questionning the promises. I suspect there will be many chicken/egg debates, but suspect that there was an undercurrent from many sources that became a vortex and, if I may mix metaphors, it is one that you guys rode well.
You did afil to point out that this article itself is part of your "stay out in front" strategy. :)
Hi Ian. I don't claim to be the first person to have thought of the ideas on my study. But isn't that exciting? that anyone can publish a study and make it go viral!
Great, funny and sensational :D Very well written. Loved reading it.
Fascinating look into a viral content event. A great story and well written. As my kids used to say: "Do it again!".
Right. Anyone can get lucky once, but if you can do it twice, then that starts to establish a pattern that proves that you can really do this professionally.
Impressive stuff Larry! Has a bit of humour, interesting facts and more! Great read and well done!
Way to go Larry,
You made a difficult process seam so easy. It takes a lot of skill to do that.
Great job and look forward to seeing you do it again.
i think the hardest part about the process is where you have to predict the future (like the GM announcement).
Thats awsome Dude! What are the chances? Impecable timing I must say : )
Yes it was total luck. But as they say: "chance favors only the prepared"!
Great post. Lot's of typos at the end.
thank you. A useful information