Many companies may be fooled by the free cost to open a social media account, failing to consider the expenses that go i
On hand to give their insights were representatives from The New York Times, Esquire, The Washington Post, Facebook, Foursquare, Reuters, Time, Inc. and TVGuide.com, among many other notable companies.
Mention YouTube and most people will picture cats playing piano. But among a certain type of small businessperson, the name conjures another image: Dollar signs.
Klout studied the impact of a tweet over time, based on a user’s Klout score.
Earlier this week I posted on smart markets, a challenge for companies conditioned and organized to broadcast agendas. The post focused on the need to make the market smarter about your product, your organization and the way you do business. Easier said than done.
Fact is, media we use to form opinions continues to morph into a hard-to-categorize-mix of traditional, personal, shared, commentary-rich, experiential, remixed media. And there is A LOT of it pumping through broadcast and interactive pipes every day. It’s a massive shift and attention deficit marketers now play into. Adding for emphasis just how much, some stats:
- YouTube users upload two days of video every minute. They receive up to 3 billion views per day.
- Twitter users generate over 2 million daily tweets. 2,200 new tweets every second.
- The average Facebook user creates 90 pieces of content each month. More than 30 billion pieces are shared monthly, an average over 7 billion a week.
- Google takes in over 8.5 billion monthly search queries to find relevance in it all.
Underneath this thickening blanket of socialized media, three trends are coming into focus; each an element to factor into competing through content.
- Frictionless publishing: Anyone with a smartphone can be a publisher. We’re all media and we’re on all-the-time. Including those who represent brands and brands themselves. This creates new opportunities and challenging demands.
- Content remixing: News organizations, and brands for that matter, can no longer produce content in singular, comfortable formats. We have seemingly countless ways to express stories – with text, photos, graphics, audio, video and code as raw material. Question is how to deliver stories in highly engaging ways, where customers already are rather than where we want them to be.
- Functions converging: Is a company’s Facebook page marketing, advertising, customer service or public relations? Actually all and none at the same time. Ideally we land on new language and an organizational approach to address internal conflict and contradiction that can come from multiple brand sources – especially where content converges on specific platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
Sitting alongside lots of agency partners, inside organizations trying to make sense of it all, there’s a gap that fundamentally bypasses these trends. We discuss brand strategy, media planning, creative development, social media, news calendars that guide PR, plus all avenues to get employees behind corporate and brand programs.
Content is in the center of it all.
Few organizations have an overarching strategy that channels all this branded content into a consolidated planning model. In parallel, we see lack of defined leadership for overall orchestration and accountability for content-driven programs.
This will become a business priority as companies seek more discipline in how stories are conveyed – not to mention cost savings that come with more disciplined sourcing, curating and production.
Look for new leaders and content functions to emerge to support a range of marketing disciplines and community programs. And as part impart new ways to help teams understand how content plays holistically within plans that reflect the way people now consume and share content.
Clearly content is all the rage; question is how to best take advantage of it and add value to those you want to engage in the process. New roles and models are needed, not to mention practices grounded in where media’s going vs. where it’s been.
Being on Twitter all day can be a huge time suck. Yet, at over 250 million Tweets posted each day, and over 460,000 people that are signing up daily, one has to find a way to make Twitter work.
So how are the Guy Kawasaki’s and TweetSmarter’s of the world doing it? The answer I have found is to make use of Twitter tools. There exist a lot of them out there and they are the absolute key for me to make Twitter work.
At over 1 million apps and one new one being registered every second, it is very hard to know which one to pick. So here are my top 10 tools to help you transform your Twitter experience into something a lot more efficient and powerful:
#1 TweetStats – Full analytics for all your Tweets
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” said Peter Drucker a long time ago. With TweetStats, you have a powerful tool to measure all your Twitter behavior in one place. It shows you your Tweet timeline to understand how much you are Tweeting each day and each month. It also dives deep into analyzing your best times to Tweet via a Tweet Density report and follower comparisons.
Pro Tip: What I like best is the @reply and Retweet analysis. It gives you a clear picture if you hit the right balance of engagement and content Tweets.
#2 Nurph – The Ultimate Twitter Hashtag Tool
One of my most recent discoveries is Nurph. The App has received a revamp and is now more powerful than ever. It lets you invite friends into a private chat room via a simple Tweet. This is amazing if you want to take a brief connection to a new level and have a longer conversation. A great example for using Nurph is to keep your Twitter community engaged in longer talks. I also had great results using it for support purposes if you want to get feedback on your product or service.
Pro Tip: What I like best is that the App offers featured channels as well as an archive for your chat conversation.
#3 MarketMeSuite – Your powerful Tweeting dashboard
Although there are a ton of Social Media dashboards out there, MarketMeSuite is a great new solution that boasts a ton of additional features. You can connect multiple social networks and the App also supports PeerIndex and Klout support. On top scheduling and pulling in RSS, MarketMeSuite also allows you to white label your Tweets.
Pro Tip: A great feature of MarketMeSuite is to create reply campaigns which allows you to geo-tag and target users a lot more specifically than normal Tweets.
#4 ManageFlitter – Send tweet reminders for important events
Sometimes, finding those updates which are most useful on Twitter are buried somewhere amongst irrelevant Tweets. Whenever this happens, it is time for me to go ahead and sweep out all those Twitter accounts, which don’t add any value for me. With ManageFlitter this is super easy to do. The App displays all accounts which are inactive, don’t follow you back or are spamming your stream and you can unfollow them with just one click.
Pro Tip: What makes ManageFlitter most recommendable is that you don’t have to sign up for anything. You can sign in with Twitter, unfollow the people which don’t add value and off you go.
#5 StrawberryJ.am – Reading Tweets made simple
Seeing through the clutter on Twitter can be very hard sometimes. With StrawberryJ.am, there is no more searching through your stream for finding the good stuff. The app automatically finds the top mentioned Tweets and shows them in a new order beginning with most retweeted update at the start. You can also create lists and search terms that StrawberryJ.am filters for you with their goodness.
Pro Tip: If you really don’t want to sign into another new website each day, try StrawberryJ.am’s handy email feature. They will email you a summary every evening, which is super convenient.
#6 SocialBro – Managing your Twitter community made easy
If you are looking for a tool that tightly focuses on managing your community, look no further than SocialBro. The app lets you manage your lists, see your community in a map and browse your community conveniently based on their engagement. On top of this the app allows you to bucket your followers according to time zones which is very useful to know when to best reach them.
Pro Tip: What I like best here is that SocialBro shows you how fast your followers have been growing over the past and at which times you have lost most followers.
#7 Tweriod – Find your most valuable Tweeting times
This is one of my favorite Apps particularly for its simplicity. All you have to do is sign in with Twitter on the landing page and the App crunches the numbers for you to find your best times to Tweet. It will then show you the results on a beautiful graph and with all your key results in one spot. You can also go ahead and export your results via .pdf very conveniently.
Pro Tip: Tweriod also gives you some great additional analysis showing you different optimal timing for different days of the week. I found this very powerful.
#8 Klout for Chrome – Find top influencers with one glance
Despite some of the recent uproar for Klout’s changes in its algorithm, I believe it is a fantastic way to cut down on time spent looking for the right people on Twitter. With its Chrome extension, you will be see immediately who the best people are you should start engaging with right inside Twitter.com. Since it is often hard to decide which Tweets to pick up and reply to, this is very helpful.
Pro Tip: What I like best is that you can click on each score and get to their Klout profile page to learn more about what they are up to.
#9 Twylah – Beautiful Twitter brand pages
Twylah is an up and coming must have tool for anyone who wants to be serious about Twitter. The App turns all your Tweets into a new, self-branded landing page filtered by the top topics you are Tweeting about. I found this to give a much better overview about what the person is Tweeting about than only looking at ones stream. The rich media display and concise summary of topics turns your Tweets into a great visual experience.
Pro Tip: Twylah also boasts a great feature called Power Tweets. You can send special Tweets, which are surrounded by other relevant content and have proven to decrease bounce rate by over 4x.
#10 WhoTweetedMe – Find out who is Tweeting any article
Always wondered who those people actually are that make the count go up on the Tweet button? With WhoTweetedMe you have a powerful to answer exactly this question. You can drop in any URL and the app will display who Tweeted it, at what times and with what reach. It is a very powerful measure to understand the impact a Tweet can have across the Twitter universe.
Pro Tip: WhoTweetedMe also gives you a list of the top influencers that have retweeted that article. Via the “thank you” button you can thank them right from inside the app.
Making use of these tools has improved my Twitter experience significantly. Staying on top of Twitter, tweeting frequently and at the best times is what has been facilitated tremendously through these Apps for me.
Over to you now. Do you think any of these tools can be of help for your Tweeting effort too?
About the Author: Leo Widrich is the Co-Founder of Buffer. Buffer is a smarter way to publish your Tweets and FB updates that has shown to increase clicks on links by 200%. He also writes a lot more Twitter tips on the Buffer blog.
Hosting an online contest is an effective method for marketing on Facebook. As many companies have already proven, a contest can cut through the clutter of marketing messages and attract people to your business Page. Contests are not a new concept. Consumer marketing companies have traditionally relied on them to create buzz and attract traffic, taking advantage of the irresistible lure of winning something of value for free. Big or small, backed by a full scale media campaign or spread by word of mouth, contests are powerful tools that motivate people and drive engagement. Facebook provides tools that let its members create their own contests and make them available to all the other members of the social network. All the advantages and benefits of conventional contests outside the Facebook platform also apply, but marketing on Facebook using contests lets small businesses run side by side with the big corporations and major brands. Businesses and individuals don't need to spend much to get their contests running, and the bulk of costs can shift toward providing high value prizes that pull in people to participate.Anyone with a Facebook Page can create a contest and promote it through the network. Although Facebook itself does not provide a native contest application, there are numerous third party app providers that you can use, and you can easily announce your contest on your Wall. Here are some of the advantages and benefits contests offer marketers. Contests help you promote your brand. Word travels fast when you offer something that catches people's fancy. Contests appeal to the competitive nature of people. Contests drive traffic toward websites. Contests help build community.Now here are some tips to help create effective contests for marketing on Facebook. Offer an attractive prize. You'll get a higher response rate if the prize you put up for grabs is something people aspire to have. But an attractive prize doesn't need to cost a lot. Starting is always difficult. Use your existing customers and contacts to kick start your contest until you get enough traction to build critical mass for your contest. Just like any other promotional campaign, you need to promote your Facebook contests across all of your channels to gain maximum participation. You can integrate with a media campaign, or promote using Facebook ads to maximize the viral effect and amplify the number of engagements. Keep things simple. Make sure the rules are not overly complicated. It's a good idea to keep the requirements to a minimum. You want people to participate, not get discouraged by how difficult and complex the contest requirements are. Let your contest run for at least one month. You need time for word of mouth marketing to kick in and perform its magic. The longer you promote the contest, the more likely you'll get people to join. When planning a contest, keep in mind that members want to be entertained. If your contests offer outlets for members to express themselves, interact and share with their friends, and communicate something unique about your brand, then you stand a higher chance of succeeding with your marketing objectives on Facebook.Check out Isis Toolbox for free social media marketing tools.
A guest post by Sherry Orel of Brand Connections.
It’s a word that gets flung around a lot in our business: authenticity. Mostly, authentic is used by social media pros to mean “transparent.”
It’s true that a consumer can gain a brand’s trust online when they think they’re speaking to a real person. But making an authentic connection between brand and consumer takes more than a community manager on a brand’s Facebook page asking fans what they had for breakfast that day. For consumers to authentically connect with a brand, they must feel as if they are engaging with the brand on their terms.
Here are four ways for brands to authentically engage with their consumers, offline and on.
1. Offer them a genuine experience with your brand that’s out of the ordinary, funny or surprising, and yet makes perfect sense given where they are in their lives at that moment. Strategic and offbeat pop-up events tied to online activation are great for this. Young women attending Natasha Bedingfield concerts this summer stopped for a bite at Freschetta Simply … Inspired branded food trucks. They then went online to share their excitement about the brand; Freschetta earned more than 2,000 hits on its social media sites. A mobile phone company scored when its exclusive series of inflight programming featured travel tips for smartphone users. The messaging was unexpected and useful (take a photo of everything in your wallet in case you lose it, for example), and it was delivered when consumers had time to act on the advice.
2. Reach them when they least expect it. A company that paints an entire house with an advertisement recently received press attention. Whether this is effective is doubtful. Advertising in unexpected places works, as long as the messages are highly relevant to consumers at that very instant. This year, some ski slopes featured ads on chair lift maps located on the safety bars. The ads, for juice and energy bars, delivered just the right message at the right time to the active audience. A few airlines use CareCovers, an antimicrobial tray table cover that features an informative ad and user polls indicate that fliers like receiving content and information this way.
3. Read their mind. Understanding your customer’s frame of mind when sending a message helps advertisers be more relevant and creative, especially when that message is being delivered at their point-of-need. For example, 40% of travelers forget to pack toiletries. Why not consider giving away products that hotels don’t typically provide and that travelers want and need? Then, don’t stop the conversation. Place a QR code on the sample insert that leads travelers to the brands’ social channels. Here, you can encourage these “rescued” (and likely grateful) travelers to comment on their experience right away. Make sure your community manager is armed to quickly reply to the feedback.
4. Make it incredibly easy for your passionate consumers to do the engaging. Sampling and advertising aren’t enough today. Consumers expect to be able to say something about the brands they love online, so brands must enable and encourage fans to be the experts. The best way to do this is to use an online platform designed for sharing opinions about brands (beyond Yelp!) that prompts brand fans for comments or guides them with questions about their experience. After they received special samples, a group of cold-sufferers chatted up a popular cold remedy, sparking more than 5 million conversations in social media, increasing share of voice by 14% over the competition during the campaign.
Of course, your community manager can and should prompt relevant conversation on your brand’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Daily engagement can give brands a seat at their customers’ tables. But, tying a promotion to a customized platform that encourages consumers to dig a little more deeply into their experience with the brand can be much more effective in spreading richer messaging. The best part is that the prompts allow your consumers to spread the words they want to spread.
Authentically engaging with consumers means being relevant and in tune with their frame of mind. This insight enables brands to deliver messages, experiences, samples and coupons organically that are memorable and conversation-worthy. Making the best use of these tactics engenders engagement that sticks. And brands build equity and turn fans into ambassadors because, to these fans, the brands feel authentic.
Sherry Orel is the chief executive officer of Brand Connections.
Tags: Advertising, Branding, customer experience, Marketing
A recent post from Joe Pulizzi got me thinking about an important role within marketing teams that too many companies are overlooking these days. Joe calls this role a Chief Listening Officer or the “air traffic controller for your social media and other content channels.” Titles aside, having someone who dedicates time to regular online listening/ monitoring is an extremely valuable role that every company needs.
For this post, here are some insights into how we use online listening tools (and what tools we use) for ongoing monitoring as well as for up-front strategy development and post-campaign analysis of the overall success of our content marketing efforts.
Before you plan
Prior to developing the online marketing, content, and website strategies for any of our clients, we initiate a “listening” (research) effort with an online monitoring tool called Spiral16 that helps us get a better feel for four distinct things:
- Who is having online conversations surrounding their industry, product, or service categories (influencer identification)
- What they are saying — the topics that are being discussed and the words/ phrases being used
- Where they are saying it — types of sites, social networks, blogs, forums, etc., that are housing these conversations and content
- Benchmarks for brand mentions — how to set an overall baseline volume of current brand mentions
Getting this lay of the land gives us a better understanding of current online/ social conversations and provides a data-backed foundation that helps to guide our strategy development process.
For example, prior to developing an online marketing strategy for a client that manufactures women’s legwear (tights, leggings, novelty socks, etc.), we initiated our listening effort and found that 69 percent of online conversations surrounding those product categories were happening on blogs. Specifically, the majority of those blogs were “fashionista” bloggers who post daily on new fashion trends and the outfits they’re wearing that day. Many of these fashionistas support their blogging habit through sponsorships and the affiliate programs provided by apparel manufacturers. We were amazed to find that many of these fashionistas have significant followings (3000 to 5000 subscribers).
(Spiral16 Site Types Distribution Graph)
With this data it became glaringly obvious that a fashionista blogger outreach program was needed. We proceeded to create that program along with a monthly blog feature, “Fashionista of the Month,” and a new fashionista affiliate program.
Without this initial listening effort, we would have never realized the influence of the fashionista community. Not to say that we wouldn’t have figured it out eventually, but this research allowed us to hone in on the best strategy right from the get-go.
During your campaigns
An ongoing listening effort during your content marketing campaign is definitely a must and can be accomplished easily with both free and paid listening tools.
- For larger clients, we continue to use Spiral16 to monitor brand mentions, campaign performance, and filter the web’s fire hose for relevant content and conversations that may be worthy of engagement (response, comments, retweets, curation, etc.).
- Free tools like Google Alerts, SocialMention.com, and Twitter Search may not do as good of a job delivering the most relevant results, but they can still get the job done if you can spare the time to manually sift through their results.
Setting up your RSS reader is also a vital part of this equation. As you come across influencers, blogs, forums, and social networks that are consistently talking about your product/ service categories, you should:
- Subscribing to those sites via RSS
- Subscribe to any feeds that your competitors are providing
- Pull in feeds from other industry vendors or partners that are providing auxiliary products or services.
Think of this as creating a dashboard that allows you to keep tabs on all the new content that is being created within your industry. (For more on how to set this up, here’s a video that walks you through it.)
If you’re finding too many feeds to monitor individually, you can use Yahoo Pipes to aggregate (group) them and create single, filtered feeds that fit together. For example, there might be several forums and Ning-based social networks that you want to monitor. Most forum or discussion board platforms allow you to grab (copy) RSS feeds, which can then be plugged (pasted) into Yahoo Pipes and filtered for the specific keywords or phrases that are relevant to your business. Yahoo Pipes will then provide you with one filtered feed URL that you can plug into your RSS reader. (For more on how to set this up, check out the video on the Yahoo Pipes homepage.)
After you’ve launched your efforts
I don’t know about you, but my goal for almost any marketing campaign is that we’ve done enough work to help the product or service grow organic legs of its own. How are you going to know if that happened if you’re not monitoring after the fact? Depending on the goals of your campaigns, listening after the fact can help you uncover some of the most juicy nuggets:
- Viral, organic spread of your campaign’s messaging
- User/ customer reviews and testimonials
- User-generated ideas for new features (send these to R&D)
- Any drop in mentions/ activity when the campaign stops, which normally indicates the need for a more sustained marketing effort.
No matter which tools you’re using to get this done, it needs to be done regularly. Larger organizations will probably have the ability to hire that Chief Listening Officer or analyst who has a nose for digging into data; but even small organizations can benefit from dedicating a little time each week. At the end of the day, we need to be using all of this data to help us make better, smarter decisions.
What other tools are you using to find relevant content and conversations surrounding your industry, product or service categories? How are you using them to make smart decisions?
The CEO of Zappos Tony Hsieh has 1.8 million followers on Twitter, but he dislikes the term “social media.”
In fact, if you say the word near him, you owe him a dollar.
“So many companies are chasing the social media hype, thinking it is a great way to connect with customers when they haven’t even gotten their telephone interactions with customers’ right.”
Create Genuine Engagement
What Tony is pointing to is a cultural mindset of an organization.
Either you are truly engaged with the person on the other end of that interaction or you aren’t.
It doesn’t matter if that interaction occurs in person, on a phone call, via a website, or on Facebook, Twitter, or a YouTube channel.
As Pine and Gilmore so wisely foresaw in their 1999 book, The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage, the opportunity (actually, necessity) for us to create a meaningful, non-commoditized, and therefore extremely profitable business will increasingly be based on our ability to create (as the title suggests) a unique and memorable EXPERIENCE.
The experience need not be a grand production, but it is does center on the recognition that every activity, every single customer touchpoint has as its primary objective, the creation of an emotional response in the mind (and heart) of the recipient.
As the poet Maya Angelou once said…"people don’t remember what you say, they don’t remember what you do. They remember how you made them feel.”
So, How Can You Measure Emotion?
You measure it by assessing the relative level of engagement that an individual has with your brand/org/campaign, etc.
My friend, Aliza Sherman, offers up a 6 step hierarchy of Facebook fan engagement, which I like in its context, but think it doesn’t go broad enough (though easily could).
What you need is a filter you can put over all of your fans and figure out…at scale…who cares and who, well, not so much. In other words, a Passion-o-meter.
I haven’t finished inventing that yet, so in the meantime, you could do a lot worse (for the social media portion of your efforts) to use the framework proposed by Avinash Kaushik of Google (long read, but worth it and a HT to @ragythomas for the link), where he suggests these four metrics:
- Conversion Rate
- Amplification Rate
- Applause Rate
- Economic Value
Please keep in mind, coming back to Tony’s original comment, is that you can (and MUST) measure engagement in many different ways, not just via social media. Starbucks, for example, is making a killing by tracking (and driving) engagement via their Starbucks Card.
The More Engaged, the Better-Yes, there’s ROI
The best part of this evolving focus on Emotion as measured by engagement?
It pays off.
A recent study conducted by Bain and Company finds that social media users who are engaged with brands spend 20% – 40% more money than those who are not engaged. (source)
The Takeaways: What You Should Do
- Social is a given. So much so that the product marketing manager for YouTube went so far as to so “social, as a buzzword, is dead.” Connecting with people as people…based on THEIR core motivations is critical. (See here for more. Full free book here)
- Practice creating engaging experiences. A quick way to do this is Think Mobile First. Simply put…how would someone feel if they encounter this on their mobile device? (That’s a different paradigm-as you know-than a PC. We just need to catch up.)
- Campaigns are dead (or at least dying) because they are increasingly expensive ways of getting new customers. This, however, is a really, really cheap way of doing that.
Or, just for starters, take some solid (as usual) advice from Godin and open a conversation.
Wow, you made it all the way to the end. I appreciate that. What was the best part of the post?
This guest post is by Alexandra Carroll, Director of Summus, a market research firm specializing in strategic insight.
The Wall Street Journal raised some interesting questions with its article “Big Brands Like Facebook, But They Don’t Like to Pay.” While 96 of the top 100 U.S. advertisers bought Facebook ads in the past year, the majority of Facebook’s advertising revenue comes from small, local companies, the article notes. I’ve been thinking about how Facebook has landed in this position, and I have a hypothesis.
Smaller, less well-known companies can rely on the targeted nature of Facebook ads to reach new and repeat customers in their specific demographic. On the other hand, the largest, most well-known brands might not necessarily see the upside of the small, marketplace ads that run on the social network. Most of them have not yet harnessed the power of the highly targeted niche advertising Facebook allows.
Another challenge for Facebook is that large brands are becoming more likely to have dedicated social media staffers at work building a robust community and creating an engaging social media experience for their fans. Data that Summus collected last year in The State of Social Media for Business shows that 35% of the largest companies (more than 50,000 employees) were “using multiple social media platforms in a coordinated effort” and more than a quarter (27.1%) of these largest companies had “at least 2 employees dedicated full time to social media.” Useful Social Media found that in 2011, 79 of the Fortune 100 are using social media as a major channel for their marketing and communications.
While it would seem like this dedication of human and financial resources would be a positive development for Facebook, it also means that large companies can more easily pull off complex social media campaigns such as the Ford Focus campaign around its spokespuppet “Doug.” The campaign cost Ford many millions of dollars to produce those ads and pull off that viral campaign, according to the WSJ. Unfortunately for Facebook, it didn’t see very much of that investment. The WSJ article explains how once “Doug” got 10,000 likes, Ford pulled the rest of its advertising and let the power of the network take over. Ford says Facebook only saw 5% of Ford’s total online ad budget for the Focus campaign.
If companies can inspire true engagement on social media networks by spending very little in traditional ad dollars, how does Facebook ever hope to grow its ad revenue? Many of the options Facebook has would seem to run counter to principles Mark Zuckerberg has stood by for seven years. Larger ads or branded environments, where a company could “sponsor” an individual’s Facebook page, could certainly irritate already frustrated users. Facebook could go the way of other “free” networks like Craigslist and start charging companies to use the site. Craigslist is free to users (and ad-free, I might add) with the exception of job postings that companies must pay for. Facebook could start charging companies to maintain corporate sites or to post certain types of content, like videos or surveys. But I wonder if such a policy would, in turn, hurt ad sales. Facebook seems to be maintaining a carefully calibrated balance between the needs of users, companies and its own bottom line.
Of course, advertising is not the only revenue stream open to Facebook. The true wealth of the network likely lies in the value of all these interconnected social ties — what Facebook calls the social graph. Facebook is not just another website with millions of users. The level of personal engagement and the power of the social graph is unprecedented and opens up a number of revenue possibilities.
If Facebook chooses to go the way of other social revenue models, it could compete with online marketplaces (such as eBay) using its credits system. It could also make companies pay for recruitment services (a la LinkedIn), enterprise services (a la Twitter’s paid tweets), or even a Facebook app store where some programs were free and some weren’t (a la Apple).
Facebook also stands to drive significant revenue through partnerships with developers using its API. Large companies are already leveraging the social graph to create innovative user experiences that have immeasurable marketing power. Toyota recently launched their Facebook app, called Social Media Racer, an innovative take on a racing game that turns the user’s Facebook page into the racetrack. Toyota could never have created this experience without access to the social graph. If Facebook can find a way to monetize these developments, the upside is huge.
Of course, what Facebook has right now is millions of engaged users and the natural corollary is good ol’ fashioned targeted advertising. “Advertising dollars follow eyeballs, and both the number of users and time they’re spending on Facebook has and continues to go nowhere but up. With consumers actively engaging directly with brands alongside their friends and family — and the opportunity to measure those interactions — Facebook is arguably the most transformational media platform of our time,” explained Ric Calvillo, CEO of Nanigans, a fully automated Facebook advertising solution built specifically for large-scale advertisers.
Companies are learning to love social media because it allows them to connect with their customers in new and sometimes innovative and exciting ways. But what’s good for companies isn’t necessarily good for the social networks themselves. The free and open nature of the networks means looking outside the language of traditional online advertising to find new and innovative revenue streams. Social advertising is in its nascent stages; with it Facebook has the opportunity to create a multi-billion dollar ad space. It just has to figure out how to lure the big fish.
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With more than 800 million users, Facebook is a major player in the world of social networking. Businesses looking to market using Facebook have one major tool at their disposal: the Facebook Page. Facebook Pages were specifically engineered for businesses. These pages provide a public home on Facebook for a business, and they allow businesses to publish content and receive comments and feedback from fans and customers.
Facebook Pages are a simple tool, but they allow for many interesting business opportunities. So we combed through the web to find 15 Facebook Pages that you absolutely MUST see. Put simply, these pages are awesome. Each of them has different strengths, but they're all AWESOME.
The 15 Best Facebook Pages You've Ever Seen
1. L.L. Bean
Why it's Awesome: This is an example of a great like-gating image that also includes an email opt-in form as well as Twitter and YouTube links above the fold. The page also uses a sidebar image to connect to a relevant and timely promotion and includes a custom tab to support its new free shipping program.
Why it's Awesome: Great Facebook pages aren't only for huge companies. Travel agency Intrepid Travel has put together a great page complete with an awesome like gate, a special tab to meet and connect with other travelers, and a tab that lets users book a trip directly from the Facebook Page.
3. Threadless
Why it's Awesome: T-shirt company Threadless makes great use of the image gallery at the top of their Facebook Page to showcase some of their products. Threadless also carries over important functionality from its core website, allowing users to vote for t-shirt designs and enter design contests. Threadless does a great job of creating a fantastic user experience that doesn't require the user to leave Facebook.
4. Nutella
Why it's Awesome: How can a hazelnut spread have an awesome Facebook Page? Well it does. Beyond a sweet looking like gate, Nutella has a special tab outlining the rules of its Facebook Page, setting expectations with its fans. The company also shares a ton of great images on its wall that generate a huge amount of engagement.
5. Zappos
Why it's Awesome: Zappos is known for great customer service. That extends to its Facebook Page. Zappos has an amazing like gate that sits next to a featured photo submitted by one of its fans. Users can also easily join the company's VIP program from the page.
Why it's Awesome: The NHL rocks Facebook. They have a like gate with a very compelling call-to-action. They also have a customer photo generator application that allows users to customize their Facebook profile picture with their favorite NHL team.
Why it's Awesome: Everyone likes TVs -- but not always on Facebook. Samsung Televisions does a great job of integrating a contest into its page. Additionally, Samsung provides custom tabs for more in-depth product information and even support questions!
8. Bing
Why it's Awesome: Bing might just have the coolest welcome page on this list. It uses social proof and data from Facebook to actually show why people like the Bing page. Bing also uses like gates within its custom tabs and integrates its social search product into its Facebook Page.
9. Starbucks
Why it's Awesome: You have to love a fan page that lets you manage and share your gift card information. Starbucks was an early social media adopter, and it comes through in the polish and features of its Facebook Page. Beyond an awesome gift card app, Starbucks uses its page to run contests for seasonal products and also offers a slick store locator application.
10. Livescribe
Why it's Awesome: Facebook commerce is a huge opportunity for many businesses. Livescribe does a great job of integrating the product shopping experience into its Facebook page ... and then make it social! This is a great example of a robust page that, in many ways, functions like a business website.
11. Burt's Bees
Why it's Awesome: Your customers can be your best marketers. The Burt's Bees Facebook Page uses a customer tab to aggregate the global online word-of-mouth buzz about its products in an interesting and unique way. It also has a great like gate with a $2 off coupon as well as the ability to order products directly from the page.
12. Clarisonic
Why it's Awesome: Sometimes the best way to build a community is through a shared cause. Instead of offering visitors a coupon, Clarisonic offers a donation to support a non-profit. Clarisonic also uses like gates throughout its page tabs to generate Likes prior to users entering its contests. Overall, the page is on brand and clearly displays the utility of the product.
13. Community Coffee
Why it's Awesome: A great Facebook page can help bring a product to life. Community Coffee uses recipes and fun birthday ecards to help bring its products to life. Overall, this is a deep page with lots of content to keep engagement high.
14. ecycler
Why it's Awesome: A page is only as good as its content. Recycling company ecycler is a terrific example of a Facebook pages with interesting and engaging content. It shares a TON of great videos that are both educational and entertaining.
15. Mabel's Labels
Why it's Awesome: Mabel's Labels is a great example of going beyond simply asking for the Like. Its Facebook welcome page has a contest entry that collects contact information and gets opt-in permission for email marketing. In addition to this awesome welcome, Mabel's has a great Facebook store and awesome multimedia content.
Use these awesome page examples as inspiration to finally create a Facebook page for your business or as motivation to improve your existing page. You don't have to do everything. Instead, focus on the core needs of your fans and customers.
What are some of your favorite Facebook Pages? What makes them so awesome?
SM Humor
Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, post links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.
Companies are often uneasy about social media because it gives consumers a public platform for complaints. But there can be huge benefits. Here's how you can dive in.
By Jeffrey L. Cohen
BufferMany B2B marketers approach Facebook with the knowledge of how to maintain a personal profile, but still shake their heads at how to get results from a business Page for their B2B company. There are two basic things you need to know about managing a Facebook Page for a B2B company. The first is that you must post compelling content that people who like the Page will engage with. This is especially true since Facebook introduced the EdgeRank algorithm, which only shows popular content in the newsfeed. The second thing to know is that you need to include calls to action, both on the Page and ones that drive traffic back to your company website.
Next week I will be presenting a session, along with Deirdre Walsh and Susan Solomon, about Facebook Marketing for B2B Companies at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum. In the process of preparing for the presentation, I found and reviewed lots of recent articles that provide tips that can help B2B marketers manage Facebook Pages. Here is a link to the complete list of Facebook resources, but I have selected and organized the best tips from each article. A link to the source of each tip is included if you want to read more. If you have any additional tips to share, please leave them in the comments below.
Liking the Page
1. Ask your staff, customers, vendors, and partners — who already know you and like you — to “Like” your Facebook page first. (source)
Facebook Content
2. Share lots of photos, and ask your fans to share photos. Facebook’s Photos remain the most viral feature of its platform. (source)
3. Write for the newsfeed, not for your wall. (source)
4. Don’t worry about writing too little. (source)
5. Be strategic and pay attention to signal vs. noise. (source)
6. Write posts that encourage sharing across the network. (source)
7. Boost your comments by asking questions, but stay away from simple Yes/No answers. (source)
8. Mix it up a little between videos, photos, questions and information (source)
9. Use the 80-20 rule to determine how much other people’s content to post versus your own. (source)
10. Use @ tagging strategically. (source)
11. Target by location or language. (source)
12. Tailor your content to mobile users. (source)
13. Diversify your team’s voices. (source)
14. Open the door to user content — but not the floodgates. (source)
15. Keep posts 80 characters long or shorter. (source)
16. Don’t Be Afraid to Show You’re Human. (source)
17. Have a Unique Voice. (source)
18. Diversify Your Content. (source)
19. Post original and relevant content. (source)
20. Post industry articles and blog posts fresh from your newsreader. (source)
21. Share exclusive, behind the scenes information. (source)
22. Write simply and plainly. (source)
23. Think mainstream for content. (source)
Analyze and Optimize Content
24. Use Edgerank to find your best & worst days. (source)
25. Monitor which posts attract the most Likes and comments (eyeball), and use Insights – Facebook’s own analytics tool – for data. (source)
26. Track the Performance of Your Posts. (source)
Calls to Action
27. Treat your Facebook “Like” button or link to your Facebook Page like any call to action – make it easy to spot. (source)
28. Encourage others to share your calls to action, so they show up in their newsfeed. (source)
Tabs and Landing Pages
29. Make creative use of Tabs. (source)
30. Choose a “landing tab” wisely. (source)
31. Have calls to action on your landing tab. (source)
32. The landing page should be relevant to the ad driving visitors there. (source)
33. Offer incentives. (source)
34. Keep it up to date. (source)
35. Provide interesting content. (source)
How and When to Post
36. Watch Your Post Frequency and Timing. (source)
37. There is a short window of opportunity to gain traction with an update. (source)
38. Be careful with automated posting services like NetworkedBlogs or syncing updates through your Twitter feed. (source)
39. Establish a regular schedule for your brand’s Facebook updates. (source)
40. Post towards the end of the week (source)
41. Weekends are more Facebook sharing friendly. (source)
Audience
42. Know your audience well, and when you make a mistake, quickly own up, do right by your audience and fix the problem. (source)
43. Don’t forget to send an update to fans. (source)
44. Allow your fans to tag photos on your Page. (source)
45. Put Your Fans in Charge Every Now and Then. (source)
Interaction off the Facebook Page
46. Integrate Facebook outside of your Fan Page, on your website, in as many places as you can. Create more compelling opportunities for people to buy your product based on their friends’ Likes. (source)
47. Find synergy with other organizations and entities, and then work together to promote each other’s Facebook pages so that everyone benefits. (source)
Optimize Your Facebook Page for Search
48. Link to your Facebook page from your website home page, using your brand in the anchor or alt‐text. (source)
49. Use your brand name in your posts. (source)
50. Get links to your Facebook Page by driving social engagement and “likes.” (source)
51. Use Facebook Shares and Likes to improve rankings of any page on your website. (source)
52. Interlink your directory pages with parallel Facebook pages. (source)
53. Integrate your website broadly with Facebook Social Plugins and Facebook Connect. (source)
Facebook Advertising
54. Restrict ads to people that don’t Like your Page. (source)
55. Invest in sponsored stories – they work. (source)
Resources
56. Find the resources to respond to your fans questions and inquiries. (source)
57. Accept you won’t work a 9-5. (source)
Miscellaneous
58. Assess the business value of your Page. (source)
59. Hold real-world events. (source)
60. Make use of “Add to My Page’s Favorites.” (source)
61. If you have a physical location, use Place Pages and Deals to drive traffic through your doors. (source)
62. Respond to comments. (source)
63. Polls delivered directly to users’ news feeds are not only effective in their reach but also in their ability to drive engagement. (source)
Facebook Mistakes
64. Broadcasting Content. (source)
65. Not Investing Adequate Time. (source)
66. Being Boring or Predictable. (source)
67. Failing to Learn About Facebook Mechanics and Tools. (source)
68. Violating Facebook’s Terms. (source)
69. Assuming People Go To Your Fan Page Versus Seeing Your Posts In Their News Feed. (source)
70. Expecting Welcome Tabs To Get You Lots Of Fans. (source)
71. Overestimating Apps and Tabs. (source)
72. No Budget For Ads To Acquire Fans. (source)
73. Posting In A Self Centered Way, Not Trying To Get Likes And Comments. (source)
74. Not Optimizing For Impressions And Feedback Rate. (source)
75. Over-Selling and Hard-Selling Without Conversing Or Arousing Desire First. (source)
Jeffrey L. Cohen is the Managing Editor of SocialMediaB2B.com. Follow Jeff on Twitter at @jeffreylcohen.
By Adam Holden-Bache
Buffer
According to a recent study by BtoB Magazine, 93% of all B2B marketers are engaged in some form of social media marketing, with most putting their focus on the most popular channels (LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter).
The Big Three
B2B marketers overwhelmingly favor “the big 3″ social media channels, with LinkedIn being the most-used channel (72%). Facebook (71%) and Twitter (67%) are close behind, with those three channels forming the core of most B2B social media marketing efforts. Other channels used by B2B marketers include YouTube (48%), blogging (44%) and online communities (22%).
When asked to cite their single most important channel, LinkedIn again rose to the top with 26% favoring it. Most respondents identified lead-generation as the most valuable result of LinkedIn marketing. Facebook was the most important channel for 20%, while blogging (19%), online communities (14%) and Twitter (13%) rounded out the top tools. Facebook was cited as being a channel where users “pay attention”, while blogs and communities were cited for their customer feedback and engagement.
Despite being used by 67% of B2B marketers, Twitter was only the top channel for 13%, perhaps showing that Twitter is an important piece of the overall social marketing picture but not the best channel for B2B marketers to find value. According to survey participants, many marketers only see Twitter as a way to support website traffic and product/event promotions.
Challenges:
When B2B marketers were asked to identify their top three obstacles to adopting social media marketing, 70% identified a lack of resources as being the biggest obstacle. Other challenges faced by marketers include: poorly defined success metrics and key performance indicators (57%), lack of knowledge about social media (44%) and management resistance (22%).
Measurement:
One of the most interesting statistic to come out of the report is the lack of measurement by B2B marketers. About 75% of B2B marketers who conduct social marketing say they do not measure the ROI of their social marketing programs.
The Study:
This results of BtoB’s exclusive research study Emerging Trends in B-to-B Social Media Marketing: Insights From the Field focuses on how B2B marketers are leveraging social media. Conducted in March 2011 and based on the responses of 577 B2B marketers, this study not only looks at the demand for LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter but how marketers are using the unique applications to their best advantage across all marketing functions.
Does this data match your social media experience for your B2B company?
Adam Q. Holden-Bache is the CEO/Managing Director of Mass Transmit, an Internet Marketing Agency specializing in email marketing, web development and social media marketing. Follow Adam on Twitter @adamholdenbache.
Tags: B2B marketing, B2B Social Media, Facebook, linkedin, Social Networks, statistics, stats, Twitter
By Jeffrey L. Cohen
BufferAs more B2B companies start using Twitter to communicate with their customers, prospects and industries, they look for examples of companies that are already using the platform. Part of Twitter’s success has been based on its simplicity, and that has given people and companies a wide range of options how to use it.
So B2B companies could have a definitive reference point, we wanted to rank B2B companies based on their use of Twitter. We will review this list on a monthly basis to see how it changes. This is not just a ranking based on number of followers or other single criteria, but a series of measures, which also include using outside measure tools. The list of potential companies are ranked by each of the factors listed below, which are then combined to create a total score.
We only included the main account of a B2B company, and the account needed to be identified as the company, not a person. This left out @MarketingProfs from consideration because it is also Ann Handley’s personal account. Sorry, Ann.
Factors Included: The first factor that makes up the ranking is the number of followers, because companies that can attract a large number of followers have a larger reach to spread their message. This certainly skews the list towards larger companies. Over time, as we refine the rankings, reducing the importance of this one factor can allow smaller companies to break into the list.
So that it is not just a numbers game, we include the ratio of following to followers. This gives some credit to companies that are using Twitter to communicate with other users. While you can certainly send an @ message to any user without following them, the perception that a company is fully participating in Twitter increases when they are following a number of users that relates to the number of users following them.
One of the best ways to measure whether companies are providing value to the Twitter ecosystem is to look at how many times a company has been added to a list. If a company appears on lists, this implies that people want to make sure they don’t miss the messages of this company. While people compile lists for other reasons too, we have included number of lists in the ranking as another data point.
And then to measure factors such as reach, engagement and influence, we turned to outside tools that have established algorithms. Not everyone may agree with how any individual tool measures these factors, but by including several sources minimizes the impact of any single factor. We have included company scores on TwitterGrader (rank, not grade), Klout and Twitalyzer. The potential companies were ranked based on the score from each source, which was included in the final rankings.
So that’s what currently goes into the list, and we would like your feedback on these factors, or other factors that can be considered in ranking B2B companies on Twitter. We will continue to tweak the weighting of the different factors as this list moves forward. If there are companies you think should be included in the list of potential ones that get ranked, please let us know in the comments below.
SocialMediaB2B.com Top B2B Companies on Twitter
(January 2011)
1. Hubspot (@Hubspot)
2. Forrester (@Forrester)
3. eMarketer (@eMarketer)
4. CME Group (@CMEGroup)
5. comScore (@comScore)
6. Cisco (@CiscoSystems)
7. Gartner (@Gartner_Inc)
8. Oracle (@Oracle)
9. radian6 (@radian6)
10. Intel (@Intel)
Jeffrey L. Cohen is the Managing Editor of SocialMediaB2B.com. Follow Jeff on Twitter at @jeffreylcohen.
By Jeffrey L. Cohen
BufferOne of the biggest challenges B2B marketers face is measuring their success using social media. Social media should not exist in a silo and needs to connect to your business goals. Tying these together may not something that you can do right out of the gate. You need to establish social media goals that are in line with meeting business goals, and it might take you several steps to get there.
For example, if one of your business goals is to drive sales, as measured by increasing leads, you need social media goals that can get you there. You might start by growing your following base to increase reach. You might develop a content plan so you have something to share. You might set baselines of page views or other traffic driving metrics. These are all short terms goals that get you to your longer term goal of tracking how social media drives leads. And when starting out, you may not even have significant data to tie to lead generation.
A study by Chief Marketer and published by emarketer revealed that most B2B marketers are really at an early adoption stage of social media, because while they focus on social media engagement in their tactics, they are measuring their success by largely irrelevant numbers. 60% track followers and likes and only 35% measure qualified leads from social media as a metric of success.
What are your biggest challenges in measuring your social media success, and how do they compare with what other marketers are doing?
Jeffrey L. Cohen is the Managing Editor of SocialMediaB2B.com. Follow Jeff on Twitter at @jeffreylcohen.
Tags: analytics, emarketer, measurement, social media tactics, statistics
Twitter is testing a new feature that highlights a link labeled as "top news" or a profile labeled "top people" at the top of its real-time search results.
A couple of practical jokes and a man getting reverse-tattooed appear on this month's most-shared ads for October.
By Annie Pettit, Published November 2, 2011
You know, this seems to be a simple question that ought to have a simple answer. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.
I’ve been to a number of conferences and conference sessions which have focused solely on social media research and every time, I am taken by surprise when few of the talks are actually about social media research. That is, social media research as I’ve come to understand it.
Some of the talks have been about:
- Focus groups that take place in the online space
- Surveys that are conducted on the internet
- Sampling techniques that collect responders from the online space
- Qualitative groups that incorporate digital photos and videos uploaded into online research communities
Perhaps I’m a little biased since I’ve been so heavily focused in my little corner of the research space but I don’t think any of those are social media research.
- Focus groups that take place online are online focus groups
- Surveys on the internet are online surveys
- Sampling from the online space is online sampling
- Qualitative groups that take place online are online communities
These are all traditional research methods that take place online instead of offline. Social media is not their inner guts and glory, but rather a tool that facilitates the overall methodology.
On the other hand, at the heart of social media research is social media. Social media research measures social media data. It scores social media data. It samples social media data. It creates norms with social media data. Without social media data, there would be no social media research. There WOULD be online focus groups and there WOULD be online surveys but alas, there would be no social media research. There is no other way but the social media research way to listen to naturally occuring conversations that take place via social media.
So let’s call a spade a spade. Do an online focus group. Run an online community. But listen with social media research.
This webinar no longer requires registration. Please click here to view. Questions? E-mail cswebinars3@napco.com or call 215-238-5300.
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Turns out Twitter has been a little sneaky today. With no word from the official Twitter Blog, it looks like the microblogging service is slowly and quietly rolling out two new features to its search functionality: "Top News" and "Top People."
Top News
This afternoon, GigaOm reported that, for certain lucky users, Twitter.com now includes a "Top News" section at the top of search results. These "Top News" results highlight relevant, timely news articles about the topic being searched.
Top People
In addition, for certain users, Twitter.com's search function now also includes a “Top People” window that highlights Twitter users who correspond with specific search queries. So, for instance, a search for "obama" conducted using Twitter.com's search function, would show something like this:
It's pretty obvious that these new features have been added to make it easier for users to locate relevant and more timely content through their Twitter.com searches.
Marketing Takeaway
There has yet to be an official announcement from Twitter about the launch of these new features and when they'll be available to all users, but marketers should be aware that they're coming.
We don't yet know how Twitter is determining which articles to feature in its top news section, and they don't appear to be tweets, but once we do know, marketers should understand if and how they can leverage it to get their content in front of more Twitter searchers.
In any event, the fact that Twitter is now featuring top news in its search results emphasizes more of a focus on search. As marketers, we must be cognizant of this trend, and make sure our all pieces of content we create -- yes, even our tweets -- are optimized with appropriate keywords that are relevant for our business. Are you putting enough of a focus on search engine optimized content?
Now that Google+ is available to the public, there is no excuse for anyone not to be using it! Sure you may feel that you just don’t need it, but keep in mind that Google+ is not just another social network. It is the social network endorsed by the leading search engine, and one that is only growing in popularity. If you ever wondered why you should be using Google+, here are just a few good reasons.
- Google+ (thus far) doesn’t allow people to auto-update from other networks. This means that when you see an update on Google+, someone is actually on Google+ making that update.
- Engagement on Google+ status updates seems to be higher than engagement on Facebook and Twitter updates (possibly because people are actually on Google+ and not updating it from other programs).
- If Google is going to incorporate social signals into their search algorithm, they will more than likely give precedence to updates and sharing within their own social network.
One important thing to note before we begin. Google+ is currently only allowing profiles for people. This means you cannot set up a profile for your business or use keywords instead of a name. Business profiles are coming (the buzz is that they will be available sometime this year), so the best thing you can do to prepare for them is to get to know the Google+ environment using a personally branded profile. The following guide will help you establish your personal brand on Google+.
Getting Started
If you haven’t signed up for Google+, you will need to do so on their start page. You can sign up for Google+ using your current Google Account or by creating a new Google Account. Keep in mind when signing up that you will want your Google+ profile under a Google Account that is your own personal account. If you have a company account that is shared by multiple people for AdWords or Analytics, you might not want to combine your Google+ profile there as others would have access to it.
When signing up, one of the first things you will be asked to do is enter your first & last name. Google+ is only accepting personal profiles at this time, so be sure to enter your real first & last name, not a company name or combination of keywords. You will be asked to upload a photo – be sure to use the same photo you have on other networks such as Twitter or Facebook, so that others will easily recognize you.
After signing up, you will be asked to have Google+ search your email contacts on Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail. You can skip this step which is what I would suggest – you can add email contacts later.
Building a Strong Profile
Once you’re in, the first thing you should do is to set up a strong Google+ profile before you start connecting with others. This way, when people come to your profile, they will know why they need to connect with you and add you to their circles.
If you’re into personal branding and SEO, Google+ has a lot of great options for you to take advantage of both. As you can see from the highlighted areas in the image above, you can optimize your profile for search easily with specific fields on your profile as well as build links back to your own website on a Google-owned property.
Even if you’re not into SEO, you should still consider filling out everything completely as this is how people will get to know what you are about so they can determine whether they want to follow you or not. Click on the profile icon (as shown above) or click on your name in the Google+ toolbar and then click on Profile to begin.
If you just signed up, you will initially be asked to enter your Tagline which is the line under your name (also used as the Meta Description for your profile), employer information, and other basics. You can enter your information there or click on the Continue Editing link to edit your full profile. From there, click on each section you would like to add information and fill in your details.
Don’t miss out on adding your website links within the Introduction and under Other Profiles, Contributor To, and Recommend Link areas. You can also add five photos at the top of your profile – great if you are a photographer looking to showcase your work or a web designer looking to have a little portfolio built into your profile.
Also note that your location and the employer name of the company with will show up under your name when you connect with others as shown above. If you feel that people might easier recognize you from your website or blog than your employer, you might want to add your blog name or domain as your most current employer so it shows up instead.
Adding Contacts to Google+ Circles
Once you have your strong profile, it’s time to start adding contacts. Google+ allows you to follow people by placing them in circles. You can learn more about circles in this quick video by Google.
To find people to add to circles, click on the circles icon to the right of the previously mentioned Profiles icon. Here, you will likely see all of your Gmail contacts or suggested people Google thinks you might know. Below that, you will see your first five default circles – Friends, Family, Acquaintances, and Following. You can use these, or if you don’t like them, click on the circle and you will the option to edit its name and description or delete it. You can add people to these default circles by dragging people into them or create new circles by dragging people into the blank circle to the left.
After you have extinguished your list of imported or suggested contacts, you can move on to finding new people by typing their name in the Search Google+ box. You can even search for particular brand names or keywords to find people related to them. To add these people to circles, hover over the Add to circles button and check the box next to the circle you would like to add them in or create a new circle instantly. You can also go to a person’s profile and see (based on their privacy settings) who they have added to circles vs. who has added them to circles. Click on the View all >> link to see the complete list and add people you recognize to your own circles.
As mentioned in the video, circles are a way to organize who you will share information with as well as how you will be able to see information. So choose the people you add to circles wisely and organize them in the way that best suits how you want to share and read updates with your connections.
If you’re still looking for more people to add to your circles, be sure to check out the Google+ Top 100. Even if you don’t want to follow them, you might be able to find more people in your industry by seeing who they follow as well as who follows them.
Sharing Circles
One of the latest features with circles is that you can share them with others. This is a great way to promote your connections and help others find people with the same interests. To share a circle, go to your circles page, click on a circle, then click the Share link. You can add a comment about why you are sharing the circle, choose how you want to share it (publicly, to specific circles, or to specific people), check whether you want to be included in the circle, and then share it.
If you see a shared circle from one of your connections (like the example above), you can click on the View people in circle button. From here, you can add people individually to your own circles, or add everyone in the circle to an existing or new circle.
Posting Updates
The next thing you’re likely to want to do on Google+ is to start posting status updates to show future connections that you are, in fact, active on the Google+ network. You can post a plain text update, photo, video, or link as a status update (the one showed above is a link) by clicking on the box under Stream on your Google+ homepage and clicking on the icons for the update type.
Once you have filled out your status update, you can click on the Add circles or people to share with… link to choose whether you want your status update to be sent to the following:
- Public – the update is viewable by anyone on Google+ or anyone who visits your Google+ profile regardless of whether they have an account.
- Circles – the update can be shared with one or more circles so that only people in those circles will see the update.
- People – the update can be shared with one or more specific people. Start typing in a person’s name and click on it to share a status update like a private message to one or more people.
I would suggest that you post some updates as public so that everyone who comes to your profile can see that it is active and learn what you update about like they can with your public updates on Twitter. Some people will not follow a profile that doesn’t appear to be active.
Another way you can add status updates to your Google+ profile is by clicking on the Google +1 button whenever you see it on a website or blog post. Whenever you click on it, it will give you the option to just +1 the page and also add it to your Google+ profile as an update as shown above.
Interacting and Tagging
As with most social sites, the best way to grow your network is to interact with others. You can do so on Google+ by interacting with your connections’ status updates through commenting upon them and using the +1 to show that you like the main update and the comments on that update. Since comments on public status updates will also be public, your profile will be seen by anyone who reads the update and its comments. Be sure to leave great comments that will help build up your authority in your industry.
You can also interact with other people on Google+ by tagging them. You can tag them in status updates and comments – just start by typing the @ symbol and their name in and select it from the resulting dropdown. Be sure to only tag people when you are talking to or about them. Don’t just wildly tag a person to get them to look at your updates or comments as that is looked upon by others as spam!
Viewing Notifications
When people add you on Google+, interact with your status updates or updates that you have commented upon, or tag you, you will get a notification in your Google+ tool bar. New notifications will have a white background.
Changing Your Account Settings
I would suggest you take a look at your Google+ settings by clicking on your name in the Google+ toolbar and then click on the Account Settings link. This will take you to your overall Google Accounts settings. Click on Google+ to see the options specifically for this network.
Here, you can control the types of notifications you get via email and on your mobile (I chose to not get any and just view them using the toolbar). You can also choose to only get notifications from people within your circles. You might want to consider leaving this open to at least Extended Circles (people who are connected to those you have added to your circles) so you can see when someone you might know mentions you in a post. If this becomes too much, you can limit it further to only people you have added to circles.
Also, be sure to check your Photos settings. If you upload photos to your Google+ via your mobile phone, you may want to turn off the geo-tagging option unless you want people to know exactly where you are when taking photos (not so bad if you’re traveling, but potentially bad if you are uploading images from home).
Hanging Out in Hangouts
Image credit by Adria Richards.
Want to have a video chat with some of your connections? Then you’ll love Google+ Hangouts. Hangouts allow you to chat via webcam to up to a total of 10 participants (including yourself). You can invite an unlimited amount of people, but only the first nine plus you will actually be allowed into the hangout.
Click on the Start a hangout button which can be found on the right sidebar of your Google+ homepage. To use this feature, you have to have a webcam plus the Google Voice and Video Plugin installed which requires you to have Windows XP+, Mac OS X 10.5+, or Linux. Once that is installed, you will be able to invite people to your hangouts and start your video chat!
A new version of Google+ Hangouts is in the works called Hangouts with Extras. This version of Hangouts will allow you to not only have a group video chat but also do screen sharing, Google Docs integration, use notes and a sketchpad, and create named hangouts. It is in testing at the moment, but if you see the option to try it out when creating a hangout, be sure to do it! This could be the start towards a new video conferencing option for individuals and businesses.
Going Mobile with Google+
If you have an Android phone like I do, you can enjoy the benefits of the Google+ Android app. You can use this app to view your news stream, add updates, check your notifications, view photos, find people to add to circles, check out your profile, and use Google+ as an instant messenger via the Huddle option (now called Messenger in newer app updates). If you don’t have Android, you can use Google+ on your mobile browser with a similar range of features (except Huddle / Messenger).
Coming Soon: Google+ for Businesses
Now that Google+ has opened their network to the public, it is only a matter of time before they start allowing companies to create business-centric profiles. The buzz about business profiles is that they will be available in 2011, so it should be sometime within the next few months. My advice is to be on the lookout for news about beta testing for businesses – the earlier you can get in, the stronger you can make your business profile for your fans to connect with.
There you have it – the meat and potatoes about Google+. What has your experience been with this continuously growing network? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
About the Author: Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, blogger, and social media enthusiast. Her blog Kikolani focuses on blog marketing, including social networking strategies and blogging tips.
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