Week 10: Submitting to Our Tech Overlords

Hello, hello hello!! 

Welcome to the end of week 10. Which is pretty scary ahaha. It doesn’t feel right to only have two weeks left before final presentations are due and school is all over. 

I have published my final satire work on Medium! This time without submitting to McSweeney’s or TheBelladonna first, because of time constraints. The summary is as follows:

“Viewing the Glass 1/10th Full: Satan’s Guide to Total Joy”

If it’s Hell on Earth, what the Hell’s the point of Hell then? Toxic positivity propaganda from Hell’s wellbeing departments. 

Facebook Advertising, Indulging Hypocrisy

Courtesy of the advice of Mr Brady, I have successfully published my first Facebook Ad Campaign! 

While taking advantage of the vast stores of personal identification that Meta has stored on its users is a tad icky, I really did want my stories to reach more people. Especially since I haven’t been published on any comedy sites, I needed a strategy to get more people to view my content and ideas. Facebook was the simplest way to do that- as it didn’t require me creating an entirely new WordPress site. 

So far I have had 4,219 page engagements (link clicks, comments, reactions, likes) and 4,200 link clicks– which lead directly to my medium account. If you remember from earlier posts, this is a major tenet of POSSE: Publish on own site syndicate elsewhere. Essentially, I want to direct engagement to my original post. The ad has reached 201 thousand accounts and will still run for three more days! 

As for how this has affected my audience stats on Medium… well, all I can say is that it’s been marvellous :). Shown above is a screenshot of the views I’ve had since May. They have skyrocketed since I published the ad! I have the most views on my “World Domination” satire piece, since I referenced it in the ad, but my other stories have seen an influx of readers as well. 

Designing an Ad

Surprisingly, it’s terribly simple! The process goes as follows: 

1. Create a business page on Facebook

2. In Ad Manager, create a tagline for your ad as well as the images to go alongside it

3. Select what result you want this ad to create (eg. app download, web clicks, general engagement)

4. Choose the people you want to target: location, interest, occupation, family status etc. (the possibilities are eerily endless)

5. Pick the duration and strength of the ad. Minimum FB recommends is $5/day for 4 days (surprisingly cheap)

My Target Audience

I purposefully put down regions that I had mentioned in my stories before (Hence the capitals of Laos, Romania, and Haiti), as well as hobbies that are more about puzzle solving and strategy. It’s impossible to predict what types of people will enjoy my writing, but that felt the best place to start. You can continually customize this throughout the duration of the ad, as well. I have no clue why 90% of my viewers are people from the Vientiane Prefecture, and why there are zero from London and California, but, shrug :)!

According to Facebook, “Your ad is performing well!”, so I’m glad my stories are agreeable to people. I have tried to balance my likes with the views of others, but you don’t know until you distribute on the big bad web hehe. (only one “angry emoji” so far).

Next Week 

The only thing I have planned is to work work work on my final presentation. It’s been tricky so far coming up with ideas that feel exciting to write about but I know they will come eventually!

I only have 15 minutes- not a lot of time to cover 5 stories and three months of preparation- so some tactful summary will be in dire need. 

See you all later!

P.S. Here is what my ad looks like. Excuse the bad language, but it’s necessary to grab people’s attention.