First Facebook Advert!

We have received some feedback from the last few events about the need to get ourselves out there and seen, that people didn't know about us and are now glad that they have.

One of the challenges of this is the 'how', we are still spending more than we are making on events and that means that there is a limited budget for advertising. The holy grail of advertising in the professional magazines still feels like a distant dream.

So I thought we could try a different strategy and use a Facebook advert, I have been reading that there are now over 700 million people on Facebook and surely some of the people who would enjoy our events are on Facebook and would be interested in connecting with us there.

We have been running a Facebook campaign for the last few months exchanging a 'like' on our Facebook page for one months free access to our library and have been excited to have just over 100 people come along and join us in this way.

So I thought that offering a Facebook advert to let more people know about this campaign might be helpful, I selected the advert to display only to people who had stated on their profile that they are interested in either counselling or psychotherapy or both, and to only be shown to people located here in the UK and chose a modest amount of money to be paid to Facebook for everyone who clicked through to our page.

The results of this have been amazing! From late Friday night when the advert went live till Sunday late afternoon 65 people have come along and 'liked' our page. This feels like a fantastic increase and hopefully will mean that many more people will get exposure to our work.

Our passion at onlinevents is around feeling connected whether we are physically or digitally present and in that environment opening ourselves to learning and developing as professionals. Looks like Facebook has afforded us an opportunity to have that experience with a lot more people!

I would love to hear your experience of being on our page this weekend, have you been with us a while and noticed the increase in traffic, did you respond to the advert and exchange your 'like' for time in our library? I am wondering what you think of this way to connect, does it feel like we could build an expanding community in this way, will you be coming to one of our events?

The potential to connect like this also feels significant in terms of building a private practice and I am wondering whether anyone has used a Facebook page to create awareness of their counselling / Supervision work? Understanding social networking as a therapist feels tricky and important. All comments welcome!

Feel free to leave your comments below, and please join us at one of our upcoming events and spend some time with us in the chat room.

Oh ... I nearly forgot to say ... if you have 'liked' our page remember to send Sandra an email and we will get your free months membership sorted out asap!

John