Nicola Cairncross received a big blow this week as Facebook disabled her ad account, but after the initial shock, she’s working to resolve the issues whilst keeping her mind on a tight leash!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Email | TuneIn | RSS

Clicks And Leads is a “tongue in cheek” digital marketing Vzine by entrepreneur, author, podcaster, speaker, Nicola Cairncross.

Mentioned in the Vzine

• Be Everywhere Online – 30 Day Challenge
• Facebook Ads Policies
• Own It! The Podcast on Radio Public

On the blogs

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders: Heather Cairncross
Vzine 062 | You Bring The Magic
Vzine 061 | How To Be More Efficient
Own It! 175 | 30 Day Challenges
Own It! 174 | Tom Evans – How To Own Time

Prefer to read?

So Welcome to the Vzine, and it’s been quite an interesting week, I’ve had a real body blow to my business this week, and I’m gonna talk about that in the middle section so yeah I just wanted to just let you know what a glorious day it is here, I hope the weather’s improving in England, and I’m looking to keep these beginning and end bits a bit short now because I wanted to keep these videos under 10 minutes so they can get on to Linkedin as well.

My whole family got together without me this week. It was quite a quite a tug on the old heartstrings, I can tell you. They Facetimed me from my nephew Spud’s 21st birthday celebration so they were all having a great time together in Brighton and it’s at these times you just have to really remember why you’re doing what you’re doing, why you’re living where you’re living, and the fact that you can go and see your loved ones anytime. It’s not that by living in a different country that you’re exiled and you can’t go back, in fact I’m going back within the next four weeks, so I’m really looking forward to that.

Let’s get on with the show, shall we?

Okay, so I said I was gonna tell you about the body blow that my businesses had this week, I’m right smack bang in the middle of my 30 Day Challenge, “How to be a everywhere online” and it’s going really well.

I’ve got about 70 to 80 people going through that at the moment, and one day this week I recorded the segment where I was showing people how to set up their own Facebook ad campaigns, to boost their video content that they’ve just created and now I’ve got to say that they’re making some great video content too, I’m really proud of them.

Anyway next day I open my own ad account, and find it’s been disabled!

Facebook had suddenly taken an objection to me after a whole year of perfect advertising. And not only that, they have said, “This ad is disapproved”, they’ve closed my account.

Well, I’m not taking that for an answer because apparently you can get your accounts undisabled if you don’t argue with them, that’s the main thing, and then you go and try and find out what’s wrong.

Now there were two or three things that could be wrong. I had an exit pop, which was a Messenger exit pop so I thought it would be okay, and I thought exit pops were okay but I’m still not sure if they are or not, and I’m living in a different country most of the time so my payment method is housed in a different country than the one I currently reside in, and that could be a problem.

The main problems turned out to be though, they don’t like my business model anymore.

Now we all know what this is about, it’s basically Facebook trying to free up some more space for advertisers, so they’re making swinging cuts on people whose business model or adverts might be a little bit borderline for them.

I keep very very up to date with their Facebook terms and conditions of advertising you can imagine that, but what I hadn’t done was looked at my website recently and one of the two things they don’t like, was very evident on my website.

One was that I was making time-bound claims, because I was saying “Be everywhere online in under 20 minutes a week.” Now while that is actually factually true, because if you outsource most of it you can just take 20 minutes to make a video like this, Facebook don’t like claims that are time-bound. So I’ve had to get rid of that for a start.

The other thing they don’t like, is anything talking about any specific financial outcomes, so when I say I’ve started four different businesses and achieved six figure incomes for those four different businesses in the last ten years, they don’t like that at all. So I’ve had to take that off.

And when I talk about my in the testimonials section where my clients have actually said what they’ve earned, they don’t like that either. So I’ve had to take that off.

I’ve also put a whacking great disclaimer on the footer menu, the header menu, and whenever I talk about clients’ results because you can’t take everything off your testimonials, nobody would ever sign up because they would never believe people achieve any results at all. So I think you are covered if you have big disclaimer notices everywhere, ugly as they are.

Okay, I’m always keen to comply. I’m a law-abiding person, I’m not someone who’s ever tried to bunk off paying fares and things like that. So, I will be working with them to comply 100% with every requirement because it is still the best way to advertise and get your potential future customers.

I’m just changing the site, and apparently, the other thing they like is they want to know what you’re selling. So when people arrive at your site, it should be very obvious that you’ve got something to sell, and so I’m making my books front and center again because if people buy my books then they’re likely to become clients, and that is a low cost purchase, that a potential future client can make quite easily to see if they want to work with me or not.

So, working with them to become compliant, it felt like I had been sucker-punched in the stomach that morning when I got that email, but you know you have to just get in control of your mind as I’m always talking about on this Vzine. And carry on and work things out.

Hopefully that’s helped you, and you can go and have a look at your website now to see if Facebook would like you. And if not, make some changes.

Okay so what’s on the blog or the podcast this week? Well, on the Own It!a podcast, there is a fantastic interview with Tom Evans. He’s an amazing person, he’s a very spiritual businessman, and he tells us how to invent time, which you can actually hear the gasps of amazement as we listen to him. It’s a fantastic interview.

We try to encourage everyone who loves the Own It podcast to go and listen to us and subscribe on Radio Public, because rather marvelously Radio Public are now starting to pay people per listen And as our Podcast is largely for marketing purposes only but our existing and new clients absolutely love it. We’re just saying, “Give us a bit of support by going and listening on Radio Public today, and let’s get us up the charts.

We’ve already been featured on their independent podcasts to watch so that’s really nice, and a few listens over there would not only I mean it’s something like two cents a listen but it does all mount up eventually.

What else? Oh right so I’m doing recycling on my own blog, and my own podcast every month. An interview with someone who’s doing business a little bit differently and this month its with my very own singing sister, Heather Cairncross.

Now Heather is a really practical person as well as being incredibly artistic with a fantastic voice obviously. But she decided she wanted to make a jazz album, and she blogged the whole process on her website, I was helping her with the marketing obviously.

I interview her in this podcast all about how she became entrepreneurial enough to release her own album and to see it through the whole process, from choosing the music through to getting the cover made and then distributing the records.

So if you’re interested in the music industry at all, and you’d like to share that with someone, do pass it on because it will be incredibly helpful, and then they can visit her blog and actually see how she went about making her own album.

And then finally last week in Vzine number 62, I was talking about “You Bringing the Magic” I was talking about the fact that Michael O’Neill in his book, “Creating The Impossible”, says that any project’s only ever got a 50/50 chance of success, and the one percent that tips you over into success or otherwise is you. You’re the magic.

It was a really interesting thought process I followed in that Vzine because it made me realize that all the things that have succeeded in my past are largely because I stepped up and I became the one percent that perhaps somebody else might have done a different job, or they might have succeeded in a different way, somebody else might have not succeeded, and in other projects, I might not succeed, because I bring my one percent to that project and it’s what’s required.

So I go round the round the houses a little bit on that one thinking about that whole concept and if you enjoy that kind of thought process then I think you’d enjoy it too.

Have a fantastic week won’t you, and I will speak to you again next week.

Find out more about Nicola’s Clicks And Leads Academy and get the help you need to start your online business today

Creative Direction & Video Editing
Phoebe Soremekun

Intro Music
Pool Cosby

Incidental Music
To be confirmed

Drone footage of The Mani
Georgios Ser-Aouas

Check out more videos on my YouTube channel