Facebook ad & what’s happening at the moment

Posted 05 Apr 2011

It’s been a while (well, 7 days!) since I blogged last, so I thought it was update time. So what’s been happening in my studio, on facebook, on the website, & in my head?

What’s happening in my studio
I’ve just finished designing a new Easter greetings card. It has lots of fluffy, cute animals & birds on it, with the three crosses & tomb of Jesus in the background.

Now I am moving on to Easter cartoon illustrations, & will start designing scenes of Jesus carrying the cross through the streets of Jerusalem.

I want to design some more Bible Cartoons merchandise; perhaps some mugs & more T-shirts. Someone told me today that they like the Roaring Lion T-shirt design… I was encouraged! I’m interested in creating a series of Christian encouragement greetings cards, which would have scriptures that help people in times of difficulty or adversity.

What’s happening on facebook
We have been running a facebook ad campaign, which is in the second week now. I am getting lots of replies to friend requests & quite a few click-throughs to the Bible Cartoons (BC) website. Yesterday I spent most of the day pouring over Google Analytics data, trying to make head or tail of it all! I think the data tells me that we are attracting interest with the adverts.

When you take out an ad on Facebook, they give you statistics & a pretty graph to look at. According to that, over the past 2 weeks our advert has appeared 474,000 times on the Facebook website. And we’ve had 158 clicks, from the facebook ad to the website.

What’s happening on the Bible Cartoons website
We have made a number of changes recently, mostly as a prelude to the Facebook ad campaign starting on Fri 18/03/2011. We wanted to get the website firing on as many cylinders as possible! Here’s a list of the changes:

1) replaced the Rainbow header on every page. Some people thought it was rather 70’s happy clappy Christian in nature! |We now have a solid purple header, with a new strapline “Helping you communicate the Bible in fun, truth & power.”

2) On the homepage (or Main Navigation page) we created a hyperlink in Big blue capital letters for the “TO VIEW ALL CARTOONS Click here” text.
Also added a “View ALL cartoons” button at the

3) Deleted (hidden) the “Donate” button at the top of the sidebar. No-one was donating, so what’s the point of having the button there!?

4) Placed a “View ALL cartoons” button at the top of the sidebar.
Created a new page (which this button hyperlinks to) that shows all of the cartoons I have drawn to date, all on one page. I think it looks great, being able to see all the cartoons on a single page!

5) Added 4 “Benefits of…” hyperlinks to the sidebar, that appears on all pages. Added 4 full pages (in Articles & Issues section) which outline how various people might use Bible Cartoons. The idea being to help people see how Bible Cartoons can help them, in the ministries of Sunday school teachers, Pastors & Preachers, Small group leaders & in Evangelism.

6) I created various little images which are the facebook ad content. The ads are only about 100 pixels wide, which is tiny! Sop we added a hyperlink to the BC website homepage (or Main Navigation page), so that viewers could see the advert in much larger detail.

7) Added A4 free colouring-in sheets. The 7 designs (so far) can be downloaded directly from the BC website. I decided not to charge anything for these – as it’s nice to bless people with free things now & again!
I plan to upload whole colouring books soon – just as soon as I can make time to create them!
There is now a hyperlink on the homepage (or Main Navigation page) under “Top Freebie…”

8) We added a few articles/pages to the BC Encyclopaedia section:

Composite Bible cartoon explained
Hebrew camp & marching order
Jacob’s sons – Who’s who?! – Clothing notes
John 19 – Jesus crucifixion – who’s who?!
John 18 – Gethsemane – who’s who?!
John 12 – Jesus anointed at Bethany – who’s who?!
John 13 – Jesus washes disciple’s feet – who’s who?!
Mary – which one’s which?

I want to add a lot more of these, but haven’t found the time of late to do so.

…And what’s happening in my head?
I must admit, all this thinking about the website, & especially trying to figure out how to make certain functions within the programming is hard work, but when the end result actually works & the website improves what it delivers, then I am very happy!

The facebook campaign has required a lot of my time, monitoring what is going on, & building up connections & friends on facebook. I must admit that my artwork output has nose-dived, as a result. I want to get back to producing the cartoon illustrations now, but also recognise that I must make sure the ad campaign ruturn-on-investment is as high as possible. As anyone will tell you, facebook advertising isn’t cheap!

My wife & I went to hear Roy Godwin speaking on Saturday 02/04/2011. He was telling us about “The Grace Outpouring” book that he co-wrote, which outlines the amazing & miraculous events occurring at Ffald-y-Brenin Christian retreat in South Pembrokeshire. We visited the retreat (for a quick look) last August. Roy Godwin was a good speaker, & we came away very encouraged in our Christian walk with the Lord.

We hope & pray that God will bless you, dear visitor to the BC blog.

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