To the amusement of many in online marketing this week, Sarah Palin has been caught out commenting and supporting her own posts and content on Facebook with a second, fake account. Needless to say, this is somewhat discrediting. Therefore, I write this post, partly for her so that she may learn and move on to greatness she is destined for. Ahem. I attended the annual Search Engine Strategies meeting this week and was lucky enough to catch Liana “Li” Evans’ (@storyspinner)session Killer Facebook Marketing Tactics. She talked about how Facebook is not a search engine and rather a connectivity platform. She showed us an example of a search she did for a hotel called “The Mint”. For obvious reasons Facebook does not show the correct, or in this case; desired result.

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Today I wanted to cover an old technique that many clients don’t seem to embrace enough. I am referring to split testing, if you are not familiar with it that’s okay. It’s the art of scientifically testing two or multiple items one against the other through a period of time.  In marketing the purpose of the tests can be very diverse from different wording in your content to trying different call to action buttons. The variables are endless and so are the tests. So what does this all mean and why is it related to dating you may ask? Well let me tell you that this is the true story of a friend who happens to have used simple A/B testing whilst trying to find a date online. Our friend (who has requested to be kept anonymous) shared the story with us and we thought that it was really ingenious and funny as well as a great source of creativity and inspiration. In this case our friend A.K.A Mr. D had created a bunch of profiles on several dating sites like The Guardian’s Soulmates and Lovestruck.com amongst others. He had pretty much the same information on all of them, bio, picture, interests etc. At this point he thought that he had done all that was required to get bombarded with requests for further information and consequently a date.  Sound familiar? Yet, Mr. D had made a crucial mistake. He picked the information and images himself without any additional feedback. Being somewhat unsuccessful on his first couple of months he started investigating what it was that was making his profile less appealing than he had hoped. The most obvious in this case was the profile picture; this is by far the most important aspect of a profile in this sector. We are very much led by first impressions so this was the first variable that needed to be looked at.

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