How Brands Will Use Google+(IMHO)
Current Affairs

How Brands Will Use Google+(IMHO)

Enjoying the growth of Google Plus for a specific reasons – 1) it let’s me connect to my community in a way that is relevant for the messages I want to post and 2) it’s the best, most viable competition to the behemoth that is Facebook today.

Brands are not yet settled into G+, but it’s reported that Google is looking for the optimum combination of brands and consumers so that it’s a more natural extension of how consumers want to connect to brands. My hope is that it is not yet another iteration of the interruption driven model that has predominated marketing for decades, but I got to wondering what would it look like if G+ actually addressed the paradigm and sought to try something better, what would a brand interaction in G+ look like? Here’s my take on what it might be like.

For brands to connect with consumers on G+, (when they can) the consumer will have to opt-in to the brand and include them into a Circle that they see regularly. I think we’ll see a permutation of the Google AdWords product that is smarter. Keywords will be scanned and the connection between the conversation and the offer will take on a better meaning. I think that brands will be able to better identify the real influencers in respective markets IF (and this is a big if) the brand can be given access to the social graph / Circle stats of the consumer. How will they get access? Consumers will grant it – usually in exchange for something of value. What kind of value? Some people will trade access to their social graph for a cup of coffee at , others will require a bit more consideration.

Accelerators to adoption will include connections between products like +Personal.com, which I really like, but do not yet understand how they’re going to be relevant if I cannot connect my permissions and profile to the social networks I’m using – profile fatigue is starting to set in with consumers and we, as an industry, have to find a solutions.  OpenID, Google profiles and Facebook Connect are just placeholders for now and the real power in this space I think has yet to emerge.

What to do for now is to develop a presence in the social space in a way that is both genuine and in a way that recognizes that your persona can vary relative to the audience you wish to address without being disingenuous.   Learning this, knowing it and being able to act on it for a brand though will be a challenge – too many of them are wrapped up in an old-school mindsets that places monthly and quarterly.

The Vampire of Social Media Purity Deserves to Die
ROI of Social Media

The Vampire of Social Media Purity Deserves to Die

“And I will have Carfax Abbey torn down stone by stone, excavated a mile around. I will find your earth box and drive that stake through your heart.” ~ Edward van Sloan as Van Helsing / Dracula 1931

edward-van-sloan-van-helsingWorking at the intersection of ROI, marketing and social media in particular has been a topic that has drawn my interest since the early development of social media as a connecting consumer technology.

As social media came onto the scene, a debate cropped up that social media was a ‘tool of the people’ and that to propose its use as a business tactic was heretical.  We still see vestiges of that debate now and then, but by and large, we do not see much of it I think because the flood of early practitioners has subsided and the bar for entry as a social marketer has been raised past the point that creating a Facebook page and opening a Twitter account suddenly launched a new consultancy.  The discussions by marketers has risen to a point that business people recognize that marketing has an ROI that can be associated with it and that social media marketing can have a VERY high ROI indeed.

The Top 3 Key Apps for Driving Social Media Marketing Traffic – Updating the Trinity
marketing

The Top 3 Key Apps for Driving Social Media Marketing Traffic – Updating the Trinity

I’m exploring CoursePark.com as a site to host educational content and I recently received a request from Tim Margolis, their social guy and a new online acquaintance over there asking “What are the top 3 applications do you think or believe are critical to driving good website traffic?”

I was not sure if his question was for a survey, if he was looking for engagement or if it was a professional question he is trying to answer for CoursePark,  but his question made me think for a moment to a blog post series from July 2009 on ‘The Trinity of Social Media” that suggested the trinity should be a blog, a micro-blog and a social network.  I have thought of the post often and continue to wonder if the trinity might need an update eventually.  The 2011 edition of the Trinity I think does warrant a refresh and this will be the first in the series.

Let’s put the construct of the Trinity in context here for a moment; we’re talking about a business presence, not personal and we’re talking about spanning two of the relevant media networks; Owned & Operated (O&O) media and Earned media, which relies heavily on social media.  There is no distinction at this level of a B2B company presence or a B2C.

What’s changed for 2011 and beyond?

The objective has not changed – we want to drive traffic to the O&O site or network of sites.  Eyeballs on pages, not revenue at this point, but traffic – which is a proxy for awareness of our product, service or brand.   What has changed is the social technology and the features and capabilities of the various platforms.

Do any of the changes warrant a change in the model?

Yes – in one particular area: the social network component.  When the original Trinity model was introduced, Facebook Groups were supported and Business Pages were not yet introduced.  Are there be other changes?  Yes – but not in the tool selection I do not think.  The fundamentals are holding and IMHO the foundational tools and technology for an effective social presence are still a blog, micro-blog and social network.  The tactics we deploy however are different today than they were in 2009 and as we cover the new state of the Trinity, we’ll discuss the changes.

Audience Participation Notice

I’ll write the articles, but I’d like to include your comments.  Whose comments – you, the person reading this right now.  If I could reach through the screen and point at you I would.  Comment below on what you think the changes might be for you or send me an email with whatever your thoughts are.

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