Oddbean

Sup NOSTR - I got a BIG experiment started and I want your help! I think in order to take on traditional social media, we have to play a bit of offense on their home turf. @fiatjaf has been kind enough to send me some sats to run a trial Facebook + Instagram marketing campaign on my NOSTR 60s short (link in comments of this post) to see if we can get some data on who tracks best to the appeal of NOSTR. https://i.nostr.build/0Qqv.png A few notes: 1. Since I can only specify one URL for the campaign, and the fewest steps possible is generally the best route for ad conversion, I have linked to the Plebstr client's main website (plebstr.com). There are some other amazing guides and resources for getting started with NOSTR but this one to me felt like it had the biggest appeal and quickest pathway to getting a new NOSTR user from FB/Insta. Open to other suggestions.

https://i.nostr.build/LnY2.png https://i.nostr.build/qevw.png 2. I am targeting a pretty general audience just to get data, which I will share at the end of the campaign (should run for around a week). If there are any social media marketers here with suggestions for copy, targeting, or creative - PLEASE chime in 3. If you want to be a part of running this experiment, please feel free to zap or kick in a few sats. 100% of it will go towards running these ads and I'm happy to take notes. In the future I'd like to sort of democratize or crowd-source how we run these ads (if this is successful/worthwhile). It does require a private FB/Insta page but I am happy to hand the creative keys over to a group / collective of people who want to keep this going. 4. In the future I will also be making more NOSTR "ads" - comedic videos, etc. in the style of my other one that hopefully do a good job at intriguing people. If you're a client owner like Plebstr, DAMUS, etc. and want me to make one specifically promoting your client - happy to do that as well as part of this if it makes sense :) I also encourage all other creators to get involved - let's find some punchy, controversial and intriguing ways to talk and push the future of social media 😉

I hope this succeeds @kineticfinance ! In my view I am wary of spending ad $ when nostr is not yet a better experience than FB, Twtr for most users. Nostr = clients + interoperability + other stuff All three need work. However, you might find traction among early adopters who might care about nostr’s properties. These folks are peculiar like us and may be bitcoiners, homesteaders, homeschoolers etc.

totally agree - NOSTR isn't ready for non tech-savvy users yet, this is more of an experiment to collect data on who might be a good targeting fit in the future. right now the biggest appeal to some might just be claiming a NIP on something that looks "promising" as a FB/Twitter competitor. May also be smart to run some ads on Twitter (although I hear they censor any mention of competitors? not sure). Love your suggestions too!

🤝 I don’t know the answer(s). I support identifying the early adopter personas, and figuring out how to attract them in a very targeted manner (ideally organic, word of mouth, via influencers who are onboard with the mission). As opposed to sending sats to the zuck or wef-chat maybe there is some way to provide a personalized invite from nostriches with a reputation (perhaps pre-loaded with sats). Then again there are few things to purchase currently!

your best chance of getting anybody to join is advertising on Pedophile instances on the Fediverse, followed by GAB and Nazi intstances on the Fedi. you don't seriously think normies are going to join, do you ?

do you know why i'm here ? 2 reasons. 1 - i'm banned from Twitter 2 - GAB wasn't free enough for me because it bans Porn unless somebody feels equally constrained by rules on other networks they will not join people who accept the rules ENJOY the rules and in fact enjoy ENFORCING the rules on others. if you're a slave you want those around you to be slaves as well. this is why the Vaxxed hate the Un-Vaxxed for example. NOSTR is basically a network for the Unvaxxed and you're trying to recruit from the Vaxxed population. Get a clue pliz !

I did something similar on Next-door for my meetup. So far had like 20 new clicks on the link from the ad and ~3,000 impressions. Got 2 new folks at the last meetup buy not sure if it was because of the ad or something else.

Your videos are great and this is a really interesting experiment! For a small budget campaign, since the videos are in english, I would set this language as filter to avoid wasting impressions in low conversion segments. The landing page is a critical point, plebstr.com is good but it is just one app, and not open source (right?); we would need a captivating but simple landing page that could offer both a direct conversion goal (download an app, use a web client) and more generic informations for different kind of users (developers, content creators, business, etc). I cannot think of any resource that can fully meet these requirements; a good prototype might be https://getnostr.xyz. Ideally the landing page should include the video itself and propose an easy way to share it outside the fb/instagram garden.

These are great suggestions! Gonna lock it down to English. I like the getnostr.xyz homepage - I think that's what needed most, a simple, linear page to walk people through learning about it as an open protocol. But I almost want to push people towards one or two options rather than give them a dozen for clients... I get that it is against the "spirit" of NOSTR but from a conversion standpoint having to make a decision on what client to use based on a few little icons is daunting/would turn most off. It'd be cool if there was a page similar to this that ranked clients based on user reviews (I also get that would trend towards consolidation, but maybe a simple explainer that says "your NSEC/NPUB travels with you - you're never forced to use one client" would help with this?)

I agree that in this context we need to offer a strong and simple call to action. Maybe a web client could be an accessible and frictionless option for a first read-only dive in Nostr? I will think more about this. Thanks again for your work!

plebstr forces an app download and website app does not exist yet. IMO having a nice landing page and then some for of “let me see” button that takes you to a web app would be better - such as snort or primal- but just a suggestion- me personally I’m not downloading an app from an ad

Once you have enough engagement data, create Custom Audiences based on people who watched your video, visited your website, or took specific actions. Then, use this data to create Lookalike Audiences, which are new audiences that Facebook generates, consisting of people similar to your Custom Audience. This can significantly improve the relevance of your targeting.