Google Plus is a topic that lends itself to great debate amongst people in the socialsphere. Many immediately critique it’s adoption rate and member base as being non-existent. Advocates who point out it’s benefits are often dismissed as “fanboys,” despite their points. No matter what your position, the Google Plus debate is fascinating to explore.

It’s no secret that Google has had a poor track record with social technology. Their first experiment, Google Wave, was a combination of email, instant messaging, and wiki-style collaboration. The service failed to become widely adopted, and was rebranded and soon forgotten. Google Buzz launched shortly after, and was designed to serve as a microblog that shared info from other areas of the social web. Buzz found itself in hot water with privacy groups soon after launch, due to it’s automatic opt-in for gmail users and a flaw that made active contacts visible to the public.

Google learned from their mistakes with the launch of plus, with a closed invitation system for early adopters, and gradual integration into other Google branded services. t Google+ had reached 10 million users just two weeks after the launch of a “limited” trial phase. After four weeks in operation, it had reached 25 million unique visitors. According to Larry Page, by the end of the year Google+ had 90 million users.

One of the most raved about features of G+ is the “circles” feature, which requires users to classify connections immediately for easier sharing and communication. Shortly after the positive press from critics, Facebook went out and immediately added two similar features – sharing with specific lists per update, and subscriptions to follow people without being “friends.

Currently, G+’s best standalone feature is “Hangouts” – the video conferencing feature that allows for chatting, webcasting, and live streaming. The most well known hangout to date was with President Obama in January.

It’s very likely that a hangouts style video chat feature could be added to Facebook – their current relationship with Skype would make that easy. Given the climate of Facebook and the inevitable backlash they are likely to face after a lukewarm IPO, I don’t see this as a killer app.

The Post-IPO  Facebook will look to Mobile devices as their next big move. Even with the acquisition of Instagram, Google has the advantage in Mobile. Their deal to purchase Motorola Mobility was just finalized this week, and sales and patents from that division will be more profitable that user data from a the instagram userbase.

Web icon Guy Kawasaki recently came out in strong support of Google Plus with this powerful testimonial:

“I noticed something very parallel between Macintosh and Google+, which is I thought Macintosh is a better computer, it was used by far fewer people, and the experts -– I use experts in quotation marks euphemistically and sarcastically -– the experts were saying that Macintosh would die. Fast-forward 25 or 30 years, I saw Google+, thought it was better, fewer people were using it, and the experts were saying it would die.”

So yes – Google Plus is mostly for tech geeks. They are not attracting brands the way Facebook is, and it can get pretty quiet in there at times. In the end, it’s just a small piece of the puzzle for Google. It serves as a complement to an already organized internet – not as a one stop social network.

Chris Warden

Chris has been passionate about social media since a young age starting his first online company at age 21. He currently serves as CEO of a high end, boutique digital marketing agency. His hobbies include sharing innovative thoughts with like minded individuals and staying as close to the ocean as possible.

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Online social networks like Facebook and Twitter are quickly becoming the fastest and most direct way for customers and consumers to share their experiences about the products, services, and experiences that they have. The main reason for this is convenience – customers don’t want to spend time waiting on automated phone lines to explain their situation. Another reason is the public nature of social media – a complaint on a page with thousands of eyeballs on it is more likely to get noticed and resolved then a private issue.

It’s not just web businesses either, real-world businesses such as hotels, restaurants, or doctors can suffer from stains on their reputation through local social networks like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and AngiesList. By not monitoring and maintaining your online reputation on the social web, your brand name can be stigmatized with a scarlet letter that can and will hurt future business. Here are our tips:

• Don’t Wait for it to “Blow Over” -The sooner you address a problem, the faster it will be resolved. Most customers, when handled carefully and respectfully, will appreciate the response and share their positive experience. With minimal effort, you’ve turned a bad situation into an example of fine service. By ignoring customer requests on your social networks, you are disappointing the customer, and everyone can see how you blew it.

• Always be Monitoring – Not every issue will come across the official social account or contact form for your business. Most likely, a person will post something negative using your brand name to their main account, putting it front and center in the feeds of their connections. By using saved searches, page tagging, and Google alerts, you can see brand or name mentions in posts even if people are not fans or followers.

• Go to the Source – Don’t underestimate the people who reach out to you. With social media, you have the ability to peek into their social network, and discover how your brand fits in their life. You can also reach out to them in an offline capacity, such as a direct phone call to resolve the problem that they are having.

• Don’t Feed the Trolls – There are people out there that have nothing more to do than harass others. If you find comments or posts that seem like they were designed purely to make you angry, they probably are. Don’t waste time with frivolous comments that bring down the level of discourse.

As potential customers become more empowered to vet their product and service providers, online reputations become just as important as personal reputations. Unsatisfied customers should always be expected, and a system to put them at ease can pay in spades if they share their positive experience. If you try to ignore the problem, or get defensive, the wrath of the internet can be unleashed – take a look at what happened to Cooks Source Magazine or Paul Christoforo.

If you find yourself overwhelmed with negative publicity and unsure about what to do, you can turn to an online reputation management service to help control the situation. Reputation management services use proven methods to make negative content less visible in search engines, and create fresh content to establish your brand name as an authority in your market.

Chris Warden

Chris has been passionate about social media since a young age starting his first online company at age 21. He currently serves as CEO of a high end, boutique digital marketing agency. His hobbies include sharing innovative thoughts with like minded individuals and staying as close to the ocean as possible.

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The Personal Brand Strategy: If you are looking to have yourself and your name branded as an expert or authority in any niche, social media can help you find people who need your expertise, and explore your products or services. In addition to a main site or blog, managing your personal brand on social media should focus on these cornerstones:

• Be Yourself - Honesty goes a long way in on the social web. A person who takes the time to genuinely engage other users gives the appearance of being easily accessible, which naturally leads to being discovered by other users. Additionally,  not all your content has to do with your product or business. By posting about news stories, personal experiences, or general observations about your day, you avoid the risk of being pigeonholed as a one-topic user.
• Stay Consistent – The time you dedicate to your presence on the social web is always well spent if it leads to new opportunities. Don’t focus on imaginary benchmarks that “experts” claim will bring you success (i.e. following 50 people per day, posting 3 links per day). Consider how someone who discovers your profile for the first time, and the impression that they will get about working with you.
• Approach Each Tool Separately – All social networks have basic ground rules, and some level of integration. Saving time is important, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of your reputation. Don’t over-automate your content – otherwise readers see hashtags on facebook (which do nothing), or tweets with cut off text (with a link back to facebook that will be ignored).

The Professional Brand Strategy: Many businesses have a presence on social media, but the successful ones are using these general guidelines.

• Find Your Customers – Depending on the target audience for your product or service, you may find that a specific social network has a more active community of users for your efforts. If you work with professionals or people with specific credentials, Linkedin is ideal for your goals. This is just one example, but finding a primary source for your relationships to develop is ideal.
• Research Everything – The amount of data that can be collected from the social web is worth billions, and the barrier to entry for analyzing it is incredibly low. Using pre-programmed plugins and customizable reports from tools like Hootsuite and Google Analytics gives your instant insights as to how people are interacting with your content on the social web. Use this data to develop better marketing strategies, or even develop new products.
• Integrate Social Sharing Logically – Many brands think that just being on the social web is enough. For some, it is, but the real power comes from having your customers share their experience with your brand to THEIR social network. If you have a sign up form, or commenting on your site, integrate with Facebook Connect for users to share their activity automatically. If people are buying from your site, add an option for a post about the purchase to be automatically tweeted or added to their timeline.

The Corporate Brand Strategy: Big brands have been slow to adopt social media, often playing “follow the leader” to rivals, or finding themselves forced to jump in to resolve bad PR. Large organizations have the resources to dedicate to campaigns of a larger scale, and can see success with the following points:

• Divide and Conquer – For companies that sell many different products, it makes perfect sense to create different social hubs for different target audiences. Amazon is a perfect example of this strategy, as they have multiple twitter feeds for updates on books, music, movies, and other specialized topics. Additionally, a specific account for customer service will allow for more direct communication with customers in need.
• Develop Policy – For brands with different levels of management and a top down decision making culture, before you even create an account, you need to have a clear chain of internal communication as to what your responses will be, who is authorized to post and where to direct opportunities for business development.  In social media flexibility and speed are expected – on the social web, you’re judged by how fast a question is answered.
• Empower Employees – This aspect ties in to the social media policy point, but by encouraging your staff to share their experiences with the company, and acting as a contact point for the public to approach them with questions is a powerful way to be recognized as an innovator. The most well-known example of a company with an open social media platform for employees is Zappos, the shoe retailer who was purchased by Amazon for $1 billion in 2009.

Chris Warden

Chris has been passionate about social media since a young age starting his first online company at age 21. He currently serves as CEO of a high end, boutique digital marketing agency. His hobbies include sharing innovative thoughts with like minded individuals and staying as close to the ocean as possible.

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From the day it became popular, Twitter has been a magnet for spammers – users who only create accounts to trick legitimate users into buying products, downloading software, or spreading unwanted material. Twitter has always been proactive in combating spammers, but with the ease of use to create an account, massive userbase, and open source architecture, the spammers have always been one step ahead.

This week, Twitter announced on their official blog that they have filed a lawsuit against software providers who’s programs are used to aggressively abuse the service’s features through automation.  Software providers named in the suit include TweetAttacks, TweetAdder, and TweetBuddy.

These tools work in a variety of ways. They allow for the creation of multiple accounts with minor variations, which are designed to appeal to people interested in different topics. They also allow for a list of users to be created and auto-followed in bulk, and to be unfollowed after a certain time frame. These programs also monitor specific tweets to be sent to users who mention specific keywords, usually with no context in the hope of picking up traffic to the linked site.

All of the tools are reliant on Twitter’s API, and skirt the user terms of service. Users must pay for a license to activate the software on their computers. Twitter seems more interested in shutting down the tools and sending a message to would-be spam tool providers, but will be seeking damages as well.

Earlier in the year, Twitter acquired the security firm Dasient to lead the charge in their efforts to reduce malicious links that are shared on the service. Twitter’s built in link-shortening service (t.co) automatically scans links to ensure the caliber of the site linked to, and to flag suspicious links and the accounts that sent them.

With a service like Twitter where there are countless opportunities for interaction, it’s natural for users to report something they don’t like or didn’t ask for as “spam” even if it was not. In order to avoid being labeled as a spammer, you should NEVER do any of the following:

Massive Adding/Deleting of Followers – This strategy of following others with the hope that they will follow you back is one of the biggest myths of success with Twitter. The number of followers you have is not a reputable measurement, and it never was. Smart marketers know that the real metric of importance is engagement.

Keyword spamming – This strategy involves sending an automatic reply to anyone who is posting a specific keyword or phrase. To the average user, there is nothing more annoying than posting a tweet about anything (i.e., iPad, news story, celebrity, sports team), and then getting an avalanche of responses trying to get you to click on a link to “learn more about (whatever you posted).” This is especially annoying to newer users who are looking for true conversation, and can be turned off from using Twitter from it.

Link Stuffing – If your Twitter stream is nothing but links back to your main site (or worse, an affiliate product that you are using pre-written content for), no one is going to follow you. Make your tweets worth reading and go beyond the bare minimum.

Of course, the most successful Twitter users are active, involved with their followers, and engage them daily. When used ethically, the following automated strategies can help marketers be successful on Twitter.

Scheduled posts – Pre-scheduling content to promote an upcoming event, promotion, or sale is a powerful way to constantly have your followers notified of what you are offering. Be sure to change the language and writing of the tweets to maximize effectiveness. Scheduling is a standard feature in Hootsuite – my social dashboard of choice.

Other Service Integration – Set up your Twitter stream to automatically post when you make certain actions, such as posting on Facebook, uploading a video to your Youtube Channel, or publishing a new blog post. Also be sure to monitor your Twitter account regularly to review the services you have authorized to post on your behalf, and disable any that you don’t want to have permissions.

Welcome messages to new users – Again, this is a strategy that can do more harm than good if abused. Use a tool like SocialOomph and create a message that is sent privately to new followers. Make sure the message is genuine and include a link to have people contact you or learn more. Don’t pitch special deals or offers, but sell yourself and how people can work with you going forward.

Chris Warden

Chris has been passionate about social media since a young age starting his first online company at age 21. He currently serves as CEO of a high end, boutique digital marketing agency. His hobbies include sharing innovative thoughts with like minded individuals and staying as close to the ocean as possible.

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When it comes to social media success, there are numerous metrics, goals, and forms of measurement that any marketer should consider. You can focus on actions people take – liking a post, commenting on an article, retweeting you. You can monitor growth of connections over time, and relate growth to participation, advertising, or use of software. Additionally (and most logically), you can measure increase to bottom line numbers, such as direct sales, newsletter signups, or downloads.

The biggest mistake a marketer or brand can make with social media is to get involved with no goal or vision of what they want to get out of the use of their accounts. Companies who create a page just because they “need to be on Facebook” and then ignore it miss out on a golden opportunity to connect and communicate with their biggest advocates. On the other hand, companies with no focus that go anywhere and everywhere on the social web, but lack a vision of success, are just wasting their time.

Before embarking on any social media promotion or marketing campaign, a proven way to close business should be developed. For most marketers, it will involve a direct sales form that leads to a direct download. While this is the most direct way to increase revenue, other options of building business can be reached through social media marketing. Providing a free report, consultation, or phone conversation in exchange for a name/email address through a sign up form is ideal, and can lead to long-term marketing opportunities. The bottom line is, your method of closing needs to be finalized before dedicating any time to social media marketing.

Many old-school marketers still are insistent on relying on micromanaging every possible aspect of their campaigns manually. This results in folders of endless spreadsheets with shorthand code that is nearly impossible to analyze and learn from. There is no shortage of tools that can automatically track stats of all kinds, and provide ad-hoc reports that are completely customizable. Here’s a few that we recommend:

• Google Analytics – Essential for measuring website traffic and user interests. You can also review the specific keyword phrases that people used to find your site, and also measure social actions that people take with your site content (e.g. facebook likes, click-to-tweet)
• 1ShoppingCart – An all-in-one sales management suite that allows you to deliver digital products, process orders for physical products, and track sales specifically from social media services.
• Hootsuite – A social media “command center” that allows users to update multiple social media accounts and view activity from all connections from a central location. You can also schedule content to post, import RSS feeds for automated distribution, and create saved searches to monitor keywords. It’s custom reporting module allows for hundreds of detailed reports of social activity, such as growth, interactions, and influence.

Although these tools allow for some automation, social media marketing is not  “set-it-forget-it.” You will still have to dedicate time to researching what content fits best with your connections,  as well as changes and features offered by the networks you use. If you are tracking your results close enough, you may even discover what specific times of the day are more likely to get you closer to your results.

Busy marketers who want to outsource these kinds of activities really have an open field to choose from. Unfortunately for them, they commonly look for an intern or college student to pass off social management. Social media is not just a toy for teens, nor should a brand be trusted to someone with barley any professional PR or marketing experience. When outsourcing social media management, the best option is to go with someone who has a background in PR, can understand the goals of the brand, and has a track record of quantifiable results from social media marketing.

Chris Warden

Chris has been passionate about social media since a young age starting his first online company at age 21. He currently serves as CEO of a high end, boutique digital marketing agency. His hobbies include sharing innovative thoughts with like minded individuals and staying as close to the ocean as possible.

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It’s been about one week since the mandatory transition for all Facebook pages for brands to the new Timeline format, and for many marketers, this change can throw a monkey wrench into a steady and reliable online presence. Once you get beyond the initial shock of the new style, however, marketers and brands will discover a plethora of new tools and features that will allow them to better utilize their Facebook presence as a true engagement hub, and convert more customers along the way.

First  – the Insights platform has been expanded with new analytical data that can help Facebook brands understand the impact of their posts and content to their social network. Friends of Fans are exactly what it sounds like – an approximate total of the number of friends that your fans have. As your page gets new fans, this will grow, allowing you a potential new audience to be introduced to when fans engage your content. Virality is a closely related metric that measures people who shared or passed on your content; knowing what clicks with your fan base is essential to determining what is of value, and what future content should consist of.

The moderation blocklist is a great feature for pages that often find themselves targeted by spammers, competitors, or bad PR. Page owners can set up specific terms that won’t be published by visitors to the page, and set a profanity filter as well. This is a smart tool to help keep upset posters from feeling censored or discriminated if a post they make is deleted by a moderator.

My favorite new feature is the activity log. As the name suggests, this feature lists updates that the page makes (including comments and questions) in chronological order. For brands that often find themselves promoting the same products and features regularly, they can review the exact copy they’ve used for each update, and see how the fan base reacted.

It’s a great start to encouraging more genuine engagement for Facebook brands, and seems to specifically target pages that are just there because they feel that they need to be. As it stands now, there are better management tools for a full scale social presence, and Facebook needs to implement the following to compete:

• Allow for team management and tracking - Many brands and companies have a staff or assistance updating and maintaining their Facebook page.  A “manager mode” allowing stats for what staff is posting specific content, as well as segmenting engagement per staff member would help bigger brands use Facebook as an enterprise solution
• Make the Twitter Integration less spammy – Currently, the integration tool allows for one-way posts from Facebook à Twitter. Brands with a big social strategy are already using tools that allow for posting to both. This feature should be as robust as others like Spotify and Foursquare that take advantage of timeline.
• Allow deeper demographic targeting – I don’t expect Facebook to ever include the targeting tools that are available to advertisers, but anything beyond Country and Language would be useful. Ideally, age would be the best first start.

Chris Warden

Chris has been passionate about social media since a young age starting his first online company at age 21. He currently serves as CEO of a high end, boutique digital marketing agency. His hobbies include sharing innovative thoughts with like minded individuals and staying as close to the ocean as possible.

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The US Sports Social Media Report By Braveheart Sports Network for September 2011 shows that the Los Angeles Lakers are far and away the most dominate US sports franchise in social media.

Braveheart Sports Network looked at the number of Twitter followers and Facebook fans that every NBA, NHL, NFL, MLB and MLS team has, to see who is winning the social media battle online.

It is rare that a brand and/or team can successfully execute a winning social media strategy on both Twitter and Facebook, but the Lakers have found a way to dominate both social media platforms.

Twitter
With over 2.1m followers the Lakers dominate with over 2.1m followers, basically double that of the next most followed team which are the Orlando Magic (just over 1m followers). The 2.1m Lakers followers makes them the second most followed sports club on Twitter behind Spain’s Real Madrid who have 2.3m followers.

Out of the top most followed sports teams 4 are from the NBA, 4 from MLB and 1 from the NFL and NFL

Surprisingly, only 18 out of the 141 US sports franchises in the report have more than 100,000 Twitter followers showing that either US pro teams have not fully embraced Twitter yet. There is a huge opportunity on Twitter that is being missed by 87% of US sports teams.

Top Ten US Sports Franchises With Most Twitter Followers

Facebook
As mentioned above, not only do the Lakers dominate on Twitter, they also dominate on Facebook, with over 10m followers. That number is almost double that of their rival the Boston Celtics who have 5.3m fans

Out of the top ten most followed sports teams 4 are from the NBA, 2 from MLB and 4 from the NFL

The NFL teams do a much better job embracing Facebook than they do with Twitter, while the opposite is true of the NHL who only has one club in the top 20 rankings of Facebook followers.

With 24 out of the 141 US sports franchises in the report having more than 1m Facebook fans, it appears that that pro teams are doing a slightly better job embracing Facebook than they are Twitter.

But there is still a huge opportunity on Facebook that is being missed by 8 out or 10 (83% ) US sports franchises.

Ten US Sports Franchises With Most Facebook Fans

Data as of September 10, 2011

David Wilson

I have been in providing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services to clients for the last 8 years. I believe that SMO is where all the online services are going to converge over the next 18 months.

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Interesting new survey by office services firm Regus, showed that 47% of businesses successfully used social networks for customer acquisition in 2011, a 7 percentage point increase over 2010. The US followed closely behind the average, at 43%.

China saw the greatest gains in customer acquisition from social networks among all countries studied, increasing from 44% in 2010 to 65% in 2011. That is a massive increase in one year.

The survey had one other interesting finding: Social networks made the biggest impact for companies that are operating in developed markets.

A significantly higher percentage of companies that used social networks for customer acquisition in developed markets, including the US, the UK, Japan and Canada, saw a revenue increase over the previous year vs. those companies that did not use social networks to acquire new business in developed markets.

As companies continue to look for ways to increase sales, it is clear that in both developed and developing markets, that social networks are proving to be a reliable source of customer acquisition and increased revenues in both, but can provide a necessary edge over competitors in developed markets.

David Wilson

I have been in providing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services to clients for the last 8 years. I believe that SMO is where all the online services are going to converge over the next 18 months.

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The number of daily deal sites has exploded in the last six months with Groupon and LivingSocial the two dominate sites in this market. But while both play in the same space, there are huge differences in the geographies and demographics of the two sites.

For example the comScore analysis found that LivingSocial had more of an East Coast bias to it, while Groupon is more entrenched amongst Midwest and West Coast-based consumers.

But what are demographics? Are Groupon and LivingSocial users the same? Well comScore found that internet users under 45 leaned toward Groupon, while those ages 45 and older skewed more in favor of LivingSocial. Those ages 12 to 25 underindexed on usage of daily deal sites in general, but underindexed less strongly on Groupon. Both sites were used by women more than men.

But Nielsen found the opposite age skew when it examined the sites’ demographics in March 2011. That analysis found that 33% of LivingSocial visitors were ages 21 to 34, compared to 25% for Groupon, while 51% of LivingSocial visitors were ages 35 to 64, vs. 57% for Groupon.

But ultimately before using Groupon in LivingSocial for your business, the secret is understanding what kind of offer appears most often on each site appears. ComScore noted, is that more than half (56%) of Groupon’s offers were for restaurants, while the hefty portion of LivingSocial’s deals (41%) were for books and magazines.

The frequency of these types of offers is ultimately what drives users to use one or the other of these two sites. If you are a restaurant, then Groupon will provide a better ROI for you than LivingSocial.

David Wilson

I have been in providing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services to clients for the last 8 years. I believe that SMO is where all the online services are going to converge over the next 18 months.

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Avid sports fans use Facebook to follow their favorite, but when game time comes, fans prefer the interactivity of Twitter according to a survey conducted by Catalyst Public Relations on behalf of SportsBusiness Journal.

More than three-quarters of avid sports fans who use social media to keep up with their favorite teams use Facebook to interact with their favorite clubs, according to the survey results.

Sites Used By Fans To Follow/Discuss Their Favorite Team(s)
Facebook

• MLB 83%
• NBA 77%
• NFL 86%
• College Football 79%
• College Basketball 74%

YouTube

• MLB 22%
• NBA 35%
• NFL 17%
• College Football 33%
• College Basketball 41%

Twitter

• MLB 21%
• NBA 27%
• NFL 17%
• College Football 25%
• College Basketball 27%

The study shows that social media use increases as game time draws near, and it usually peaks with postgame activity.

What is interesting though is that once the game begins, there is little change in Facebook activity among MLB and college sports fans. The NFL’s Facebook users cut back on usage during the actual game, and NBA fans increase their use.

Twitter users, on the other hand, generate a surge of activity during MLB and NFL games. Roughly half of the college sports fans surveyed use Facebook, Twitter or both before and during the game.

The biggest postgame activity comes from avid NBA fans, with 79 % of them turning to YouTube. Melissa Rosenthal Brenner, NBA vice president of marketing, said more than 650 million NBA.com videos have been viewed on YouTube since the league signed a content deal with the site in 2005.

What I take from these numbers is that people interact with different social networks differently depending on what is going on.

So for example if you are a sports teams and your focus is purely Facebook then you are missing out on the interaction that goes on with your fans during a game.

Or if you are an NBA team, how important is YouTube as that is the destination of choice for basketball fans after the game is over.

David Wilson

I have been in providing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services to clients for the last 8 years. I believe that SMO is where all the online services are going to converge over the next 18 months.

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