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Thursday, June 30th, 2011
Well, managed to wangle an invite into Google+ in the first few hours of the invites being issued, so here’s a quick look around. [Update: less than 1 hour after typing that sentence, the invites have been switched off for now!]
Firstly, in case you were unaware, Google+ is Google’s potential rival to social networks such as Facebook. However before everyone tries to suggest that Google will fail in this space, even from the outset Google has obviously learned from some of the ‘mistakes’ that have been made elsewhere, as well as with Wave and Buzz.
Once you have joined, you should first complete your profile. Most people with a Google account may have already added some information to their public profile, but now is the chance to add much more, including multiple profile pics, which you can rotate through simply by clicking. You can connect accounts eg Twitter, Linkedin, Quora, Facebook etc, as well as add photos, bio information, and adjust privacy settings.
Google does appear to have taken into account the many complaints that there have been about privacy issues on social networks, with a full range of privacy options available. The amount and kind of notifications are also easily changed to prevent inundation of your inbox. Interestingly, you can also receive notifications by SMS but as yet this appears to only be available for India and the US.
The black toolbar that has been the subject of much debate these last few days now has easy access to Google+ at the left hand side, and notifications on the right. However, it only appears on Google.com at present, although the toolbar does appear in all Google properties eg Gmail, Reader, documents, calendar etc.
Once your profile is complete, you can add people to Circles, and seemingly these can be unlimited in number, allowing you to slice and dice friends, family, colleagues in numerous different ways. People can be added to various different circles and privacy settings can be customised for each circle. A circle can be added as a tab in Chrome, allowing you to easily click on a Circle and follow what everyone is doing.
Google + Circles
You can see people who are in other Google + users’ circles and add them to your own. However, these people do not have to add you to their circles – just as people do not have to follow you back on Twitter. The names of your circles are not revealed, allowing you some privacy over your choice of circle names.
Sparks is a really interesting feature which allows you to search on interests and find sites and news of interest. For any companies putting out regular press releases and featuring in Google News, your keyword optimisation is going to be important if you want to be found here. Sparks may take over from Readers in some ways, pushing the content to you for your interests.
Hangouts have huge potential, particularly for businesses who want to do online collaboration, run webinars easily, and for tech support. There still seem to be a few bugs – avatars not showing if no webcam, difficulty of adding a single person rather than an entire circle, call drop outs etc – but there are some very cool features such as public notifies of mute, sharing YouTube videos, and the sound and video quality for voice does seem to be at least as good as Skype when it is working.
Huddle allows you to have up to 6 people in a threaded text chat, making decision making simple.
There is a mobile app at m.google.com/plus and an Android app already in the store, with an iPhone app coming shortly once it is approved.
The mobile app makes following your stream simple, as well as bringing together all your Google properties in one place eg gmail, calendar etc, which is a long-awaited service.
Adding people to your circles brings plenty of content into your streams and for businesses is likely to prove preferable to Facebook, allowing targeting of users who are not FB fans. Google recently issued a statement that this time last year over 20% of searches were conducted by people who were logged into a Google account, so it is likely that this will rise quickly once the buzz about Google+ gets out and people want to try it.
By limiting the number of invitations, Google is playing a canny game and making this currently a fairly exclusive club that many more will want to join. Once the invites are opened up again, the Find and Invite feature offers a chance to add people who Google has identified are in social networks or linked to you in some way by email etc.
More shortly….going back to play!
Tags: black toolbar, buzz, Google, google plus, invite only, Social network, wave
Posted in Blog, Google, Social Media
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Thursday, June 11th, 2009
There seems to be a commonly recurring theme in the blog posts recently about how important it is to talk to and listen to your customers. It really is not all about SEO if you want to win business, market share and higher search engine rankings – it is about adopting a holistic policy to marketing online that hits all of your potential customers and audience’s buttons.
Do they want to talk on the phone or do they prefer email? Do you actually know what your customers prefer? Do they want to see a live person and ask questions or do they want to peruse your FAQ, manuals, How to guides etc online at their leisure? Do you offer all the potential choices so that each customer can interact with you and your company how they choose to, rather than a limited set of choices that may not be to that potential customer’s taste?
Years before Facebook etc, I fell over Cyworld – (this is the link to the US version as the original Korean site is too hard for the average non-Korean speaker to work out!). You can basically create your own virtual existence, there is a fantastic monetization method for Cyworld to generate real world cash from virtual world spending, and bearing in mind that Cyworld is now 10 years old, it was waaaaay ahead of its time.
What fascinated me was the involvement of certain savvy businesses. The site was the world’s first social network, it looks totally bizarre to our eyes – too fanciful and cartoony, and yet here were businesses playing the game. They had got in there, created mini-hompies (mini homepages) and were engaging their potential customers in live chat, video conferencing, competitions, give aways, discussions about products, you name it. (You need to remember that Korea has one of the best networks in the world so bandwidth for them is not an issue and they take things like video conferencing as a given and have done for years.)
The point is though that most Western businesses just haven’t got this yet. Still. A decade later.
You need real-time interaction with your customers. Most business websites still have an olde worlde contact number on their site. Very few have yet added Live person text chat, let alone webcams etc so customers can see who they are talking to.
So, today’s task is to investigate TinyChat. The potential of this free tool for ANY business is enormous. If you don’t get it immediately for your business, consider these options:
* Run a once a week webinar or chat where consumers can talk to a techie, a sales rep, the CEO of the company, a real live person. Let them voice their concerns, ask their questions, give you feedback on your products, service, website etc. Make it a two way conversation.
* Let existing customers persuade potential ones of the benefits of your product. Tie it in to your affiliate program so your virtual sales reps can earn money from their involvement.
* Struggling to get a focus group together to review a product? Do it online through TinyChat. Who needs to rent a room in a hotel or conference venue when they can all sit in the comfort of their own homes and talk to each other online?
* Hold a conference for your sales reps or affiliates dotted around the country so they can share what they have learnt about selling your product, the competition, difficulties with marketing collateral, strategies that work etc.
* Do you sell information products? Hold a brain storming session and find out what people actually want to know and where this overlaps with your experience. Then get writing!
I could come up with ideas of how to use Tinychat for ever, for any business. And it’s free.Set up a room, tweet to your followers that you will be holding a session on xyz that you know will be of interest, plan it so it is interesting and engaging, and have a pile of links/white papers/coupons/money off offers etc ready to share with them that meet your core goals, and away you go.
If this doesn’t create a buzz amongst your customers and differentiate you from your competition, read the blog tomorrow for another idea for any business! There are hundreds of high tech opportunities for online marketing available to play with ……..
Tags: affiliates, buzz, consumer engagement, internet marketing, marketing, online marketing, Search Engine Marketing, tinychat, tools, video conferencing
Posted in Content, CRM, Online PR, Small Business Resources, Social Media, Tips & Tricks
