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Google has launched Google Pages on Google+, allowing businesses to join the social network and reach a whole new audience. Google+ saw phenomenal growth during its field testing stage, and opened to the public during September. Now, businesses have the opportunity to get involved in the social network too and it would be foolish to miss the chance to extend the marketing reach of any company.
You will need to create a Google page and link from your own website to the Google site because Google looks for the reciprocal link between the two pages in an algorithm to help Google+ Pages to show up in the new Google Direct Connect.
Direct Connect helps people to search on your brand or name and go straight to your Google+ site, simply by searching on +brandname. At present, there are few sites available to see how this works but try +Google or + Pepsi as an example in the search engine. There is also an option to add a site to your circles easily from Google+ Direct Connect which will open up new opportunities for businesses.
You also need to add the Google+ badge to your site along with a snippet of code – described here.
Google+ Pages are very new and there are still some aspects under development or still to be introduced, but it would be advisable to get your page created and in front of your target audience sooner rather than later.
However, there is more to social networks than simply marketing, although many businesses have failed to realise the full potential of networks such as Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. As a customer service tool, building a strong and loyal community can help to reduce costs of supporting your customers by harnessing the efforts of your community to answer questions, offer help and so on. There is also the chance to ensure that your own staff and employees share information internally and externally using social network tools.
It is not very long since social networks were banned in many companies, but the reality is that all companies have a real world social network that allows dissemination of information, best practice, ideas and processes, and missing the opportunity to use online tools to enable better communication can only harm a business, especially if the competition has mastered the art.
As an example, the Muppets may have held a Google Hangout to promote the new film, but the truth is that Hangouts and other similar tools are as useful for internal communications as they are for marketing.
Give it a go!
The big announcement this week has of course been Google+ and the limited field trial. Not so limited that people still aren’t managing to sneak in through various back doors! The general consensus from those within the field trial is positive, although obviously the entire reason for the trial is to find bugs and gather feedback so there are plenty of critiques, complaints and suggestions doing the rounds. And Google are responding in double quick time and making changes faster than users can find things to be critical of!
However, overwhelmingly it seems that the vast majority of the (lucky) early adopters want to see Google succeed; if only, to stop the behemoth that is Facebook, which 6 years in, does seem to be suffering a middle-age crisis for many.
There does seem to be a need for an integrator i.e. a one stop shop for everyone’s multiple so-me activities to be easily found, and perhaps Google + is attempting to be this. Add-ons, plug ins and apps will obviously need to be developed, and probably outside Google, just as Tweetdeck was developed for Twitter. It seems that few twitter addicts are likely to give up Twitter for G+, any more than many of us will stop using email, the phone or a letter when these are clearly the right tool for the job.
It would seem that Facebook are going to make an exciting announcement on July 6th, and the money at present is on a video chat with Skype built into FB profiles. There are other possibilities, but this is about the only announcement that will right now derail the buzz about Google’s Hangouts, which seem to be catching on at a rate of knots.
Facebook has made a few other changes this week too, such as adding the possibility of Klout for brands on Facebook. The vast majority of the non-so-me world have probably never have heard of Klout unless their Twitterstream mentions it, so this measure of influence has just taken a big step from the business world to the land of consumers. Klout’s announcement about Facebook integration means that brands can customise the user experience to any brand page according to their Klout score. One has to admit this is a clever move for Klout, extending their reach to consumers, whilst giving brands even more reason to take note of Klout.
This is a nice win-win for the social media world and pushes Klout, which many have been derogoratory about recently, back towards the forefront of activity in the so-me world. Not just for businesses, who should be at least monitoring their Klout score for an idea of how effective their social media activities are, but also for consumers who may well begin to see brands differently once Klout is introduced into the social networking experience.
Whilst many have to date seen Facebook as a purely social experience, the fact that most TV ads now have “Follow us on Facebook” shows that businesses, whilst relatively slow on the uptake, have finally realised that FB is a route to wallets, sales and “brand love”. What businesses need to do far more quickly than they did with Facebook is get into Google+ as soon as possible. Because Google + is not about social networking per se, and this is only one of the many changes coming from Google over the coming hours, days, week and months.
If your company has been relying on SEO, then you need to know that even Google is no longer relying on that. Read the next post!
People are spending more and more time online on social network site Facebook, according to new research.
As more and more people join the social network – which now claims to have more than 700 million users – they are spending an ever-increasing amount of time on the site.
The average time a British user spends on Facebook has risen in the last two years, according to research by Nielsen.
In May 2009, the average Brit spent five hours and 56 minutes on Facebook.
By May 2011, Nielsen found that had risen to six hours and 39 minutes.
The research shows the increasing popularity of social networks – not only in terms of new users signing up, but the greater time investment of those who visit the site.
For those looking to capitalise on a global market of millions, the figures suggest focussing on social media marketing to raise awareness of brands, products and issues is likely to yield greater results than ever before.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a best practice Internet Marketing Agency.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg thinks that children 13 years and younger should be allowed access to social networks. The move is a smart one, according to SEO experts Queryclick.com who suggest he’s taking a logical stance.
Speaking during the New Schools Venture Fund’s Summit in California, Zuckerberg said he expected education to become more social in the future, in the same way already seen in health, retail and finance sectors.
Zuckerberg is of the opinion that, when it came to education, children had to start learning at a very young age.
This is a bold move for the young entrepreneur, said the SEO experts;
“Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook already have an uneasy relationship with many web users who are concerned about privacy, and his comments could be adding fuel to an already substantial fire.’
‘But we think he’s smart to recognise the potential of catering to younger children on Facebook, they will be the future of the site, and there’s already anecdotal evidence to suggest they are keen to be using it already.”
News brought to you by ClickThrough – specialists in Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing.
Metcalfe’s Law, which is mainly applied to telecoms networks, but can seemingly equally be applied to social networks, states:
the value of a (telecommunications) network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users
Therefore, if you know 2 people, the value of your network is 4. If you need 10 people, the value of your network is 100.
As social networking has taken off, both online and offline (breakfast networking events, niche networks events and so on), those who have the largest followings are often lauded as great networkers, which seems to instil feelings of jealousy and inadequacy in others.
Obviously, applying Metcalfe’s Law to the size of the networks would infer that their networks are more valuable than our own poor attempts! However, there has to be some consideration in valuing your network of: quality.
In telecoms networks, the value of the network is not affected by the quality of the user, so Metcalfe’s Law needs to now include a quality score. I am not the first to state this, and discussions on this subject have been ongoing for quite some time with even Bob Metcalfe himself getting involved, but maybe it bears consideration again as you go for the World record for new Twitter followers in a week!
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In light of the fact there didn’t appear to be any public waves on SEO and internet marketing, Clickthrough decided to set one up!
SEO and Internet marketing Google Wave
We haven’t really publicised it yet, but feel free to tell others to come and join us in our new community.
The point of the SEO Wave is to explore what potential it will have for search engineers and marketers as we move forwards, to test some of the many applications that are being developed daily, and discuss amongst ourselves how we see it being used, what we would change and so on.
We are definitely not drowning, we’re Waving!
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Yesterday, various people pointed out that a bug had been found in Twitter that could hold the potential for malicious exploitation. Last night, Twitter attempted to fix the issue and today, David Naylor, who initially discovered the exploit, has pointed out that Twitter have not fixed the issue.
If you are using Tweetdeck or a similar app to manage your tweets, you should be OK, but if you are using the website, take the advice offered by the experts:
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Habitat managed a major faux pas this week when they misused the hashtags on Twitter in an attempt to jump on the trending bandwagon.
Topics that trend on Twitter are those where hashtags are used to create a ‘channel’ to allow users to easily follow all tweets on that particular topic. For example #MJ has been trending all day, unsurprisingly. As more people use the hashtag, so the topics begins to trend. Obviously, if you tweet and include a trending hashtag, it is likely to be seen by the many followers of that particular hashtag, giving an ideal opportunity to be heard, for your link to be clicked on etc.
None of us are innocent about including a trending hashtag for our own benefit. HOWEVER,whilst leaping on the bandwagon is fine if you notice a hashtag trending that is highly relevant to your business, abusing hashtags is more than just not cricket, it is spam. As the hashtag protocol came from within the twitter community in the early days, this self-same community – the Twitterati – responds very badly to its misuse, and particularly by big name brands who should know better.
The damage to Habitat’s reputation may at this rate equal Ratner’s, particularly when it took days for Habitat to delete the posts and publicly apologise. Apparently, it was an intern (read student in English) who decided this would be a fantastic way to use Twitter, so I guess they may be having to find some other work experience this summer.
The moral of the story is….in fact, there are multiple morals…are….
1) For any business planning to use social media as a marketing tool, learn the ropes and netiquette before you dive in – lurk before you leap.
2) Ensure that each and every person who is involved in implementing your social media strategy has had some guidance and has some guidelines to follow that have been created by someone with some experience of social media
3) If you do cock-up, then apologise immediately, publicly.
4) Learn from the mistakes of your competitors and from history. Johnson & Johnson got it wrong with blogs, Ratner with the trad media, and if you go back further, undoubtedly there are multiple examples of corporates saying completely the wrong thing (feel free to add any in the comments!) via smoke signals, pigeon post, telegram, etc.
Yet another salutory lesson to all who intend to use social media that this is not an easy toy to play with. Be very careful or you will find yourself facing the noise of a major #fail and the damage could be long-lasting.
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Every Friday is Follow Friday on Twitter. Each Friday, people suggest other people worth following using either #ff or #followfriday in your post.
Some people get their knickers in a bit of a twist about it when not mentioned by their latest best friend, but you can be logical about it, rather than emotional.
For instance, if you know that the majority of your audience are looking for internet marketing gurus to follow, then you could suggest @guykawasaki and @unmarketing and @loic and @danschawbel (just as examples, there are 1000s of internet marketing tweeple!)
If you have found someone super helpful on Twitter in the last week (highly likely as most Tweeple are), then recommend them for others to follow.
You may have found someone who is constantly scanning the news in your industry sector who saves you and others a job (and headaches!), so suggest them.
Suggest your own followers too, as that always engenders a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling in your community.
However and whoever you choose to recommend, Follow Friday is worth getting involved in to help enhance the community spirit of Twitter and find you new friends and followers.
See the Thought for Friday as to how this can bring surprise results!
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