Interesting questions being asked in the blogosphere. Obviously, Google + has drawn a lot of attention since its launch, but already people are discussing its demise.
Cynic that I am, it is hard not to wonder whether the mass exodus from Facebook to Google + and the breaking of the FB habit, was an intended or unintended consequence of G+. For instance, from checking FB every day, for both clients and personal reasons, I actually find that on a weekly basis, I now *only* remember that FB exists because of the need to check client sites. On a personal basis, the vast majority of posts to the FB wall are automated anyway from other social media posts such as Stumbleupon, Twitter, Delicious etc.
Do I check Facebook hourly any longer? No. Do you?
It is interesting how far behind the major brands are with actuality, in that now nearly every TV advert has a facebook.com/thisisus URL rather than a website URL. But have your audience moved away from FB? Have you invested a vast number in Facebook marketing only to find that the numbers are falling away?
Google + has only just worked out verified accounts i.e. those for people who wander the internet under pseudonyms, handles etc. Business accounts have not yet been rolled out and to be honest, you would not choose to invest marketing budget in Google + if you were a brand anyway. Not yet, anyway as there is far too much work for our Mountain friends to do yet.
Google + may leave a legacy of Hangouts – the only thing I personally feel right now stands out from G+ – but it is being surpassed by sites such as Subjot.com on a daily basis. Circles lose quite spectacularly to Subjot right now. Probably because the subject structure is given to you whereas no-one can tell you what to name any circle you choose to put friends in.
Infinite choices on the Internet are not good.
What comes next? Well, the first thing has to be that everyone is now exhausted with trying out new things, new places to check in, update a status, share, or rabbit about the inanities of their day. Enough now!
Whatever comes next that will pick up an audience has to be a game changer, not a rehash of what has gone before. In a way, that may be why Google + has failed so far. It was too “samey.” There was no mould breaking. It just became another drain on your time.
It could have been amazing, but with hindsight, maybe Google and Facebook were so busy trying to do outdo each other, they forgot the customer/ user experience. They forgot us!
If Google had only launched Hangouts, as a stand alone option, it would have taken off. Interestingly, Hangouts can now be started within Youtube and it surely will not be long before you can start, record and broadcast a Hangout with minimal fuss. THAT will be a winner.
As part of the big picture of Google +, and particularly for marketers and brnads, little else, right now from Google + seems to stand out sufficiently to detract marketing budget from any of the other equally outdated resources that the Board love.
Yet, Stumbleupon drives 50% of social media traffic according to the latest stats – how much social bookmarking are *you* doing???
Thought Facebook Places might be a serious contender to Foursquare and Gowalla for location marketing? Think again.
Whilst it ought to have stood a chance in the geolocation marketing stakes, Facebook rolled out Places as an afterthought, a feature with no thinking behind it. And now it has gone. In the hullabaloo of yet more privacy changes on Facebook to affect all users, Places has been consigned to the pile of tried and failed apps.
It would be interesting to look at why certain features ‘fit’ in a social network, and why users prefer other features to remain in a dedicated space. For instance, it is unlikely that everyone will start making voice calls within Facebook rather than using already established solutions such as mobile, Skype or the good old landline. Even Ebay has not really resolved that one although it was a logical fit to allow buyers and sellers to communicate via Skype.
Those who use geolocation, for whatever reason, have a preferred tool for the job. Facebook was not it. And never could be without becoming increasingly good at delivering what the dedicated solutions had found to be the big wins – badges, tips, photos, event location, crowdsourced and unique awards, discounts etc.
It will be interesting to note during 2012 how far down the social graph Facebook sinks. Already, it is feeling like it has lost its edge. And for that, you should probably blame Google+. Not that Google+ is going to fill in the space, more the space has moved.
Facebook has suddenly taken on a MySpace tumbleweed type feel, and once sites such as this lose the interest of users, there is rarely a way back up.
Which geolocation tool do you use, and why? Is it to inform friends of your whereabouts? To track down deals? To meet people you share common interests with, or FOAF? (Remember that?!)
Or are you as a marketer far less interested in any time of check ins than you were 12 months ago? In which case, what is piquing your interest right now? Tell us more……
This story has been doing the rounds for a while but it seems that Facebook is taking on both the Apple App store and Google’s Market in the mobile and smartphone marketplace, and the launch may be imminent.
Technically, the problem for Facebook has been a lack of presence in the mobile space ie no specific app for iPhones and iPads that would then allow them to capitalise on mobile spending eg in-game and in-app purchases. All revenue went to the handset OS manufacturers – that is, Google and Apple, with Facebook missing out on its share. The big problem has been the use of Flash in games and apps on FB (which does not work on iPhones) and the lack of a mobile app to add an FB ‘skin’ to in order to suit iPhone users. This would then help them spend their money through Facebook credits.
It seems that a project at Facebook called Spartan may have been set up to resolve this issue for FB and that the end is nigh! However, FB has taken Spartan down an interesting route by basing the solution on HTML5 and hence within Apple’s very own browser – Safari, which is resident on every iPhone and iPad.
Facebook Credits – the virtual currency which FB insisted all virtual goods must be sold for earlier this year – is the key to the potential success of this strategy, and for anyone who is in the virtual goods market, FB’s entrance in to this market place gives yet another route to customers. Developing a community of apps that will operate from within Facebook could unlock revenue streams that FB has to date been unable to access and take them beyond advertising being the major source of revenue.
Obviously, we do not all sell virtual goods such as items for farms, or cheese for Mousehunting, but there are major brands who have jumped on to the virtual goods bandwagon in order to create new revenue streams and markets, and it is a growing market. Offering a free game that then requires money to be spent to advance is a not so novel branding mechanism now, and it seems that brand loyal consumers are as willing to spend hard earned cash in this way as to buy an actual product.
One can see how this virtual goods element could become important to brands and businesses, especially those who have realised the income potential within the social and mobile worlds. We are already seeing mobile payments for actual goods coming into play and for those who want to make micro payments for goods in vending machines etc, having all of this accessible from within a single FB Credit account may prove attractive.
However, it goes far beyond this in that FB has a keen community of developers already, and challenging the apps market without losing the 30% share has been one of the problems facing those who are ensconced in the FB space.
HTML5 may prove to be a further death knell for Flash, which has been the bane of Apple for quite some time, although it has kept app developers on their toes working around it. The Android success may have something to do with its ability to work with Flash, but it is hard to ignore the popularity of the iPad and think that Facebook are being a tad canny in going out to the browser for the solution rather than struggling within the OS.
Companies looking to keep ahead of their competitors would do well to hold a brainstorm about virtual goods over the coming months……
In my post last month I talked about the increasing need to focus on social media optimisation (SMO). Part of this activity is finding ways to make your content more shareable.
Research suggests that sharing amongst friends, families and other “tribes” is becoming more important.
ShareThis and Starcom MediaVest recently released a study. The study focuses on ShareThis’ database of sharing activity for it’s widget in March 2011.
Social sharing now produces an estimated 10 percent of all Internet traffic and 31 percent of referral traffic to sites from search and social. Search is around twice as big.
It’s a big sample; 7 billion shares, 300 million users across the top 1,000 publishers. So remember – it’s more typical of new sites than most businesses selling products and services online.
The details of what is clicked when shared shared shows that Facebook accounts for 38 percent email and Twitter are both second with 17 percent each:
So what are the implications for non publishing businesses?
1. If you don’t have blog, customer magazine or similar “content hub”, then you will be missing out on introducing others to your brand via the network of people who know you already.
2. Having a defined content strategy to define the right content to engage and how to promote is needed to underpin your content hub.
3. Since sharing signals are now used by Google and Bing for ranking as I explained in my previous column, so you are also missing out on the potential ranking boost.
4. Email sharing is still important and often more personal, so don’t exclude this!
5. Encouraging sharing of other product and service content is also important.
6. You can encourage sharing after purchase too.
7. There are many free tools like AddThis.com and ShareThis.com which make it easy to integrate sharing on your site. Paid solutions to consider include Gigya and Janrain.
8. Many of these tools provide “social sign-on” which integrate with a users social network account to make it easier to share.
The addition of the +K feature on Klout has seen a flurry of activity on the social networks as everyone rushes to court favour with customers and contacts by scoring a +K for specific topics as requested by the recipient. “K farms” is the term being currently used, and one wonders how these farms will fare compared to all the other farms which have been stomped on over the years for artificially raising rankings etc.
But getting involved in dubious techniques such as offering to add a +K to your loyal customers’ Klout scores, despite it being the hot trend amongst social media folk, would seem unwise.
Do you have Klout?
However, the lack of involvement by the big brands in many aspects of social media activity highlights an ongoing problem for brands, corporates and businesses.
How to use social media or so-me to engage with customers, build brand and reputation and see that necessary evil – return on investment.
The problem is that learning about your audience by conducting conversations with them is a time-consuming affair. The ROI is not always clear, although the benefits of such engagement may be more apparent when metrics such as influence, reputation, authority, and the increase in social signals are considered. However, these are ‘nebulous’ metrics which are often difficult to assign £ signs to.
The problem for businesses is comprehending that a lack of engagement will have a far more negative effect on reputation etc that can carry a sting in the tail for a long time. If you switch consumers off by failing to engage at all, it is likely that the negative association with your brand in consumers’ minds will continue into the future, however much advertising and marketing budget you throw at the problem.
There are some clear examples of brands failing to engage at any level, who just seemed to have misunderstood entirely what so-me is about. The clue really is in the name!
Social media is not a one way mechanism, and it most definitely is not about broadcasting and then failing to listen. Monologues are not social! Establishing a dialogue with those you are targeting is vital; yet it seems to be one of the major problems that companies are struggling to come to terms with.
One of the red herrings that has caused this problem is “the need for followers”. Yes, you need followers, and numbers may keep the management happy. However, if this is at the cost of building customer relationships and creating quality dialogues, then it is a crash and burn technique. However large your social media team, there is a limit to how many conversations can be successfully carried on.
Whilst the vast majority may be one-time conversations eg “How do I get a refund on this faulty product?”, there will be other conversations where you are building a relationship that will help turn a single purchaser customer into a loyal evangelist of your brand. It is those dialogues which are possibly most important as they permit you to enjoy the benefits of customer retention vs customer acquisition.
The K Farms episode should highlight for all brands and companies the importance of developing strategies which can make the most of short-lived trends, where appropriate, whilst focussing on long-term engagement using the right tool for the jobs the company needs to undertake to succeed.
Empire Avenue
Whether it is Twitter, a Tumblr blog, social bookmarks, or adding +Ks to your followers as a goodwill gesture, it is important to realise that each action you carry out will build on those of the past and it is necessary to consistently add to those actions on a daily or at least weekly basis to maintain the conversations.
I’m not sure I can!
OK, where do we start for this weekend’s update?
Google added +1 last week – you knew that, I’m sure, and already there are a rake of articles about how to add +1 to your blog, as well as whether this is Quality vs Quantity again, undermining Google’s relevancy scores.
Would you like to guess how many more hours it is before the spammers take this on and put a farm on to adding +1 to every site they believe should rise in the SERPs? Is it included in the algorithm or just in personal results? Either way, how will these social signals affect your search results?
Then, hot on the heels of Google’s +1, comes +K. If you don’t know what Klout is yet, start checking the CVs that come in to your recruitment department. The “standard for influence” is this year’s hot topic right now. Although, I would like to say that putting a log in pop up box on your site without a Close button is about the most irritating part of Klout; however, I am about to reveal other irritations with it.
+K (and +1) appears to be an opportunity for 1000s of people to leap out of the woodwork and ingratiate themselves to others because ‘Klout matters’. Says who? Read this about “The Emperor’s New Klout” by Anni Bricca
Twitter this morning is ripe with +K on this and +1 on that. It may be the fastest way to lose Twitter followers yet invented ;o) Or it could be that those who have established themselves amongst their following ride this storm whilst they discover the effects….we shall see.
I need to write a Part 2 for this update.
Coming up….Empire Avenue and WWDC – Apple’s Dev conference. And a few other bits and bats!
The Guardian is reporting that Apple have toppled Google as the biggest brand in the world.
Just before this puts the world into a spin on Monday morning, I’d like to look at how real this thinking is. OK, it’s only one list, but this is going to be big headlines, as no doubt the researchers, Millward Brown, knew when writing their press release.
Obviously, the world revolves round money, stock markets and brands, (or the world that makes news does) but in reality much of this is very nebulous. Millions of dollars can be wiped off a company’s value (and hence brand) over night often for seemingly spurious reasons.
Is Apple a better brand? There are, of course, the Apple fanboyz, just as there are for Open Source, or Marmite, or thousands of other brands. But is the estimated market price of a company a true reflection of its value? After all, surely the consumer is the best judge of value? And should brands seek purely to increase perceived market value rather than customer satisfaction?
Consumers, as we know, are often forced/persuaded into purchase through sophisticated marketing and advertising techniques. That is what many in our industry do for a living. But, to date, the largest brands have seemingly failed to be penalised in such assessments or valuations for poor ‘after sales’ service, and are judged purely on sales figures ie money in.
What would be most interesting, is to see how many people have forked out for an expensive Apple item, and then never bought from Apple again…. for instance. Where is the satisfaction index?
Here’s mine. Our Apple satisfaction index is very low.
Our Mini Mac (now quite unloved) stopped working properly within less than 2 years of purchase, and despite a long trip away to an Apple repair shop, it now does only the barest minimum. And that whilst making the most horrendous noises.
Then, thinking those who espouse Apple, and whom I respect, must be right and that the MacMini experience was a mere blip, I recently acquired, against my better judgement, an iPhone. I was travelling, my 3 year old handset gave up the ghost overnight, and I needed a phone to get hold of the people who I was supposed to be meeting that day. This iPhone has, to date, driven me up the wall (even more so than the Nokia N97 it replaced) and really, if I lived nearer to an Apple Store, this latest handset would also go the way of the previous one – for replacement or refund. (THAT is a whole other post over the fact that handsets now last less time than your mobile phone contract).
The last iPhone had zero battery life and was replaced after 3 weeks (would have been much sooner but I couldn’t get to a store).
This one refuses to connect to a network, of any flavour – GSM, wifi etc – most of the time. It is bordering on useless for every reason I got it – phone, online, wifi. It is right now as much a smart phone as my cat is. The only thing that does work well is the camera but I can only share my photos if I go through a mind-bendingly tedious process to remove and share them. Whilst plugged into my attached-to-a-landline computer, which means the word ‘mobile’ is bordering on anathema to my iPhone.
From what I can see, the vast majority of apps in the AppStore (ditto the Android store apps according to the BBC) are not really worth the time their developers’ have spent on them, although there are some glorious gems such as Photosynth which has solved a problem I have had for years – stitching a panorama together. But that comes from Microsoft! (And of course, I can’t view my final attempts on the Net as that requires Silverlight, which Apple does about as well as Flash).
Let’s be balanced though, considering the headline – there are days I dislike and distrust Google too, as part of my general distrust towards big business vs small business, consumer and community interest, but looking at what has been achieved by Google for the customer – gmail, maps, search, and so on – I feel more comfortable in assigning a value to Google for services, than I do to Apple for products.
I am though quite concerned that the two biggest companies in the world, as of this morning and a single assessment (let’s make that clear!), suffer such a major #fail when it comes to those that matter most – the people who buy their products. Google will not answer questions in their forums; yet, there seem to be hundreds of thousands of people with problems that affect their daily lives, businesses etc. Apple suffers similar issues – the AppStore is full of them. My iPhone problems were only solved after I drove 200+ miles to a store – which now makes this device the most expensive I will own in a hurry.
But I cannot afford to be without a phone for the x days/weeks it takes to replace this one, which hasn’t worked properly since the day I got it. And as to my MiniMac problems – it’s now a very expensive box on the desk I should probably tidy away, into the bin.
So, in conclusion, whilst the money markets may make the headlines, and encourage other brands to aspire after those wielding the highest stock prices, is that what you should be doing with your brand?
I don’t believe so.
It comes down, I believe to a slightly different approach to assessing brand value. Social capital sells, as well as Quality Goods. Which. Work. Rushing to market to get the headlines and hence these type of valuations are all well and good, but personally, I may buy a PlayBook which is late to market but probably does what it says on the tin rather than an iPad. How will that decision be reflected in the news?
Traditional business values often bring you longer term value than any shiny quick wins. Many of the most successful businesses are not hitting the headlines of WSJ, NYT, or any of the British broadsheets this morning. They just keep on delivering, day after day, to a happy customer base who will support them through generations.
THAT is value. But it ain’t news. And sadly, those hard-working valuable companies will be written off by the meeja and thrown to the wolves by newcomers’ shiny claims. Leaving us with an ever-decreasing QUALITY for consumers in the rush for the headlines and the stock valuations.
Have a great week! Your comments are as ever welcomed.
Landing hard on the heels of SXSW, one could wonder what exactly Color was doing in not being at “the” event. But the investors must know otherwise.
Is it just social interactivity via photos, or something more?
Right now, it seems hard to say exactly, and as a rural user of such apps, I doubt I personally will get the benefits seen for urban users in densely populated areas. Same as Foursquare etc, for the vast majority of users outside of the cities.
But, no, hang on two ticks….
We see that magic word “elastic” appearing. Elastic computing started to appear more frequently last year, and whilst it still hasn’t moved into the space that ‘cloud computing’ has taken up, it looks to be heading that way now as more companies advance their programming to be ‘elastic’.
Color’s substantial start-up funding reflects the enormity and complexity of the task before them in delivering their concepts to the world. Each photo that is included in Color’s database has a substantial amount of data behind it. We have moved beyond on the fly recording of aperture and light settings to Bluetooth, neighbours in the vicinity also uploading photos, social network contacts (on multiple levels), plus further data that is undoubtedly copyright and patent pending.
However, possibly one of the interesting concepts of Color and elasticity is the “dying of” with relationships that comes from non-interaction. No more friending and being a friend on a static level. For brands, this type of interactivity could become interesting….how serious is one of your ‘followers’ even after the odd poke or two to re-invigorate their interest?
What this misses though is that if I buy a washing machine, I may not need to even think about a washing machine again for 4-5 years, or more. Ditto with long lost friends. Just because I haven’t seen someone for a decade does not mean that when we catch up, online, offline, by phone, through a FOAF contact or similar, we may just pick up the thread where we left it, 10 years earlier.
Assuming that non-contact implies non-interest may be a mistake that purely data driven Color has missed by failing to take into account human psychology etc.
We’d be very interested to hear from anyone using Color from the Android and iTunes app stores. Especially anyone who can see a commercial benefit.
I recently took part at the Econsultancy Digital Cream event where client-side marketers discuss approaches to improve their digital marketing.
I was moderating the SEO roundtable where we discussed the main challenges and opportunities marketers were seeing with their SEO.
These were the main topics which were of interest to the 30 or so marketers at the roundtables:
1. The impact of social signals on rankings
The announcement that social signals now influence SEO rankings is well known, so this has to be a big issue to consider, particularly since many companies don’t have a blog and/or it’s not so well integrated into their site products and services pages.
At each of the roundtables we discussed how to integrate the type of content that will be shareable and linkable into commercial, non-publisher sites. Methods to gain backlinks are unsurprisingly still a major concern.
Even before this announcement I noticed many companies making efforts to integrate their SEO with online PR and social media. There seem to be more joint responsibilities for SEO and social in the larger companies that get it, a good move I think.
Many of the challenges for larger organisations involve getting SEO specialists to work more closely with other parts of a company or agencies working on online PR and social media initiatives.
2. Mobile search
Google revealed recently that over the past two years, its mobile searches have grown by more than five times.
As I showed in my last ClickThrough post, you can see how much this matters for your sector using Googles own tools.
3. Local search
Closely related, following an algorithm and interface update towards the end of last year, Google Places has become a lot more important for local searches involving the name of a location plus a service.
If you see the tell-tale red balloons dominating the search results for searches related to your services in an area, that’s a sure sign you need to take action.
4. Video search
Did you see the stats showing that YouTube has become the second-most important search engine in many countries? That suggests the opportunities for video SEO should be explored alongside other forms of blended search, if they’re not already.
5. Opportunities to engage on other sites
There’s a tendency within SEO to think inwardly about driving traffic to your sites and gaining links on other sites. But as the social web has evolved there may be new options for reaching an audience on other sites which perform well in the SERPs.
I see these types of sites as increasing in importance – often within the SERPS:
Few of the companies attending had been directly affected suggesting that if a site is a recognised brand producing unique, quality content, this update will have a limited impact.
6. Site migration
I chaired 3 roundtables and was surprised to see, in each one that, at least one person mentioned their concern of how a site redesign or relaunch affecting their URLs might impact in SEO. This was based on their experience of previous refreshes. All of this just goes to show that as well as reviewing new approaches, it’s important to know how to get the basics right too.
OK, that might be a slightly over-hyped view, and will undoubtedly fall foul of all those female driver jokes, but there is an opinion piece doing the rounds that seems to imply that females are:
a) setting up more new e-commerce and internet companies than men
b) supporting social and internet sites more than men
c) spending more online than men
Missed the Mumsnets in your targeting? Maybe you shouldn’t lose a percentage of your market who have serious spending power….
Not just spending power in the consumer markets, but also in the commercial markets.
There are a growing number of business executives and owners who are women. This is an indisputable fact which is regularly reported.
It is an interesting piece, and undoubtedly, as the world returns to work on Monday, it will be forwarded, shared, taken to pieces, debated and annihilated – depending on gender.
Why not continue that debate in your boardroom, amongst the sales team, ask the receptionists, check your customer info?
My personal point of view is that I know who has to make the calls, ask for directions, deal with online purchases, update the sites/status and answer the tweets…..
