Editor of RV websites sold on Facebook

CHUCK WOODBURY

EDMONDS, Wash., Dec. 20, 2011 -- RVtravel.com editor and publisher Chuck Woodbury is a huge believer of Facebook as a marketing tool. In a 24-hour period beginning Monday morning, Woodbury posted seven times to the RVtravel.com Facebook page, and was rewarded with 1,702 click thrus.

All the Facebook postings were linked to articles on blogs operated by RVtravel.com. Woodbury said there are currently about 50 of them, all aimed at narrow niches within the broader category of RVing.

Woodbury began his online business 13 years ago with RVbookstore.com, and was among the very first in the RV industry to embrace pay per click advertising, now dominated by Google. "Back then, you could buy a click for a penny," he said. "We were spending several thousand dollars a month, which was growing our business at a pace we could never have achieved any other way. These days, pay per click programs cost far more, with charges of $1 to $2 per click typical on Google."

Facebook, he explained, offers its own pay-per-click program. "They recommend that I pay between 33 cents and 67 cents a click," he said. "If I paid 50 cents for all those 1,702 clicks that would have been $850 in that one day alone."

WOODBURY SAYS HIS MAIN SOURCE of traffic to both his bookstore and blogs besides search engines is his weekly RVtravel.com newsletter, now in its 11th year of publication. "On a Saturday morning, after our email alert goes out, we'll see 1,500 to 2,000 visitors an hour for most of the morning," he said. "It slows down by mid afternoon but continues throughout the week." Woodbury says each weekly issue is read by approximately 60,000 RVers.

With the success of his Facebook efforts, Woodbury envisions that perhaps in a year or two it could drive traffic to his websites as effectively as his newsletter with far less effort and no expense beyond the time to post. "The number of people liking us on Facebook is growing all the time," he said. "We have about 3,400 'likes' now. It's exciting to think of when that number will double or triple."

Woodbury believes that most businesses on Facebook don't realize the importance of the quality of information they post, and are then disappointed with the results. "If what they post is self-serving, the readership will be weak and they will get nowhere. But if they provide solid, useful information, they will end up with a strong and loyal readership that can build their website's traffic steadily and economically."

VISITS TO RVtravel.com BLOGS 24 HOURS AFTER INITIAL POSTING

SOURCE: RVtravel.com news release.