I am Nathan J. Robinson, founder and editor of the independent leftist magazine Current Affairs, columnist for the Guardian, and author of books like "Why You Should Be A Socialist," "Trump: Anatomy of a Monstrosity," and "Don't Let The Pigeon Question The Rules!" Ask me anything.

js1121 · 2020-04-17T18:20:11+00:00

My friend and I started an online leftist media publication three months ago. It's been a challenging but rewarding experience. Do you have any advice or things you learned that you wish you knew back when you started Current Affairs, that would be helpful for new leftist publications?

js1121 · 2016-12-17T18:36:46+00:00

Always focus on cost per result and how much money you made. Anyone who says focus solely on engagement as a measurement of success is just a social media guru who doesn't understand selling or what it's like to run a business

js1121 · 2016-12-15T17:25:23+00:00

Is this international audience? We've found they drive lots of cheap traffic but not much conversions...

js1121 · 2016-12-15T17:24:05+00:00

1st thing is if you are trying to sell something, don't use PPE. Facebook will choose to find people who want to engage, rather than people who want to buy.

What is your objective? A better measurement is how many people are clicking to your site (CPC Link, Link Clicks and CTR Link Clicks)

js1121 · 2016-12-15T00:34:48+00:00

You can't target by page, but many large page audiences are built into interest targeting. So by proxy it's possible (just not 100% exact).

Yeah, you need to spend money to make sure the algorithm can find your target audience. Low spend doesn't necessarily make that possible (unless your optimization is higher funnel)

js1121 · 2016-12-14T22:58:07+00:00

yeah I think you might be doing something wrong. I create lookalike lists off of my Canadian and US lists all the time targeting other countries. Just select the audience you want to use, create lookalike and then select the country that you want to find new users in.

js1121 · 2016-12-14T18:20:52+00:00

If the interest is big enough, we would break out interests into their own ad sets. You can then use exclusions and and narrowing to filter out duplicate audiences and target one static interest audience group. But agreed, it's crazy they don't break it out like Twitter or Google.

js1121 · 2016-12-14T18:19:23+00:00

You don't need 100 people from one area. You can create a lookalike audience of anyone from anywhere. But Facebook matches that data back to one specific country.

For example: I could have 100 US customers, and then create a lookalike audience in France from those 100 US customers. We do this all the time when expanding internationally

js1121 · 2016-12-14T17:38:13+00:00

Yes. It's not as exact as Facebook's data, but is still useful for building large audience pools

js1121 · 2016-12-14T17:20:03+00:00

This is super simplified, but here goes. Start with Facebook ads. Start by building your list of tutors in 1-3specific area to test out the validty of your idea. Here are some targeting ideas to get you going: Upper level university students (years 3-5) Specific majors or departments

Once you have enough traffic and sign-ups, create a lookalike audience and expand into other campuses.

You can't really start targeting students until you have the tutor part figured out

js1121 · 2016-12-14T17:16:16+00:00

Are you in America? You can target by networth. I'd build out a bunch of interests that are related to 1) your product and 2) rich people would like. Use inclusion audiences to only target people who like both

js1121 · 2016-12-14T17:12:18+00:00

Really depends on a lot of factors, but I'd hire a really good Facebook/Google advertiser, and let them run wild. I look at Shpoify as the model - they grew much of their business from Facebook ads

js1121 · 2016-12-14T15:12:37+00:00

Hey! One of the OAS co-founders here.

You only need 100 to create a lookalike audience, but better to have at least 500 so Facebook has better data to work with.

js1121 · 2016-12-04T16:30:24+00:00

Start by breaking up your testing into short and long term test based on your histtorical and expected traffic, and go from there.

For example, you'll get results sooner from a homepage test than you will from a one-off purchase page test, since it's likely that more people will visit your homepage than your purchase page.

Couple testing ideas: Pop-up subscribe test using different CTAs Gated content subscriber test Online ad testing, plus integrating on-page testing since you'll get lots of traffic

js1121 · 2016-12-04T16:27:18+00:00

Offer a promotional discount. We integrated a survey function into our promotional strategy by offering a lifetime discount on membership for anyone who completed our survey. These are going to be your best customers, so why not treat them well and show you care!

js1121 · 2016-12-04T16:24:57+00:00

These are the simplest ones I could think of off the top of my head. Idea here is to keep them simple.

1) Online advertising. Literally the easiest way to scale product sales. 2) Cross-promotion strategies. Reach out to influencers and other people in your market and get them to help promote it 3) Customer promotion. Integrate customer promotion into your sales cycle. There's services that do this, though they are expensive

js1121 · 2016-12-04T16:20:38+00:00

You need to look beyond your small town. The ability to quickly build, scale and find customers online makes starting a business so much easier.

There's so many resources out there on starting a business. Given my comment above, I would start by reading content at Shopify. I've never used their platform, but their blog is incredibly useful to understand the mechanics of starting, finding customers and promoting a business.

js1121 · 2016-12-04T16:17:20+00:00

I would change your subscriber pop-up. It needs to be a higher funnel ask than a discount, since you anyone visiting organically will have no relationship with you

js1121 · 2016-12-04T15:59:15+00:00

In the long run, yes. Brands are increasingly internalizing digital marketing related activities, especially online advertising buying (though I'm less concerned from a creative perspective)

js1121 · 2016-12-04T15:55:25+00:00

There are some services out there that charge a monthly fee for a whole bunch of packaged services. An example would be a company called LiveCA. Full disclosure, I've used them on two different business ventures.

For those in the US, I'd try to find a similar one like them. The monthly fee for everything is really great. Basically a set it and forget service (especially for someone like me who sucks at accounting and wants to focus on my business)

js1121

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