No offense to the fine folks at Microsoft working on this product but I don’t often use “wow” and “Bing” in the same sentence. We assume the search engine market was locked up years ago and Google walked away with the top prize.

However, with change comes opportunity and the major search engines are working hard to figure out how best to integrate social signals with traditional search results. There is an opportunity to capture more market share based on how social integration is implemented. Bing is making some progress in this space which seems to eclipse what Google has accomplished to date.

While it has not launched yet, the redesigned Bing is going to include Facebook and Twitter data (among others). This is something that Google is not technically/legally able to do right now. If early adopters take to Bing based on their social integration there may be opportunities for socially savvy companies to capture additional eyeballs.  Based on your overall marketing spend, this could be a factor to consider.

Personally, I’m not happy with the social signals built into Google.  I don’t hate it and I’m certainly not part of the cadre of people who have railed against it.  I just don’t “love it”.  I’ve used the social signals built into Google a few times and face all the normal issues that exist, the most obvious one being that my Google+ Circles are not representative of my real social graph.  ”The idea is wonderful.  The execution is poor.“

Now….imagine a similar scenario but one that actually thrusts you onto a stage under a spotlight in view of thousands of peers – some you know, many you do not.     Now imagine these thousands of peers looking up expectantly at you and anticipating ….what?

Well, what they will be expecting from me (and my Sage Summit band members) in August at Sage Summit 2012 is a rockin’ good time.  Imagine (for those that know me personally) how awesome it felt when one of the Sage Partners called to tell me I had been selected as a band member for the Sage Summit 2012 battle of the bands.  I will get to stand on stage with them and perform after only a few hours of practice.  The winning band then gets to perform later in the week LIVE at the Grand Ole Opry in front of 4,000 of their peers.  Very cool.

So, what does this have to do with social media?  The winning band will be chosen by their peers through a series of votes.  QR codes will be scattered about on jumbotrons and messages will flash encouraging attendees to text a code for their choice of best band.  What I have learned through the planning process is that social media, as it can be specifically applied to live events, poses some very different challenges.  Expect me to write more about those challenges in the future.

For now, I think it’s safe to say that when I need your vote I can can’t on you.  Right?

Are you thinking about incorporating Google+ into your social media strategy but haven’t made the leap yet? There are a few important advantages to participation you need to consider. But first, some background.

What is Google+, really?

For the uninitiated, it’s a social network. For those in the know, it’s a Facebook clone (that’s a tongue-in-cheek comment but it’s partially true). Google is understandably avoiding making any comparisons to existing social networks. If I were forced to do so then Facebook would be the most likely comparison. As you think through both this post and your strategy, Facebook will do if you absolutely need a point of comparison (at least for now).

Something to keep in mind is that Google+ is not +1. They are two separate names to two related but very different things. For those that don’t spend their professional time geeking out on social networks (I do) the terms can be confusing. That’s completely understandable. As discussed above, Google+ is Google’s social network. The +1 is their equivalent of the Facebook Like (to stretch the comparison a bit further). So when you “+1” something you are giving Google a signal that you like the page/link/ad (Yes, you can +1 an ad. Who does that?!!?).

To add further confusion to the understanding of Google+ terminology, Google is now aggregating +1 and Circle activity for business pages. I’m not even going to go there right now (see the footnote for an explanation¹).

Why should you consider incorporating Google+ into your social media strategy?

As marketing practitioners we all need “another social network”, right? Well, under other circumstances I would relegate Google+ to a second tier network, monitor it for any activity about my brand and respond as appropriate. Then I would move on with my life. But this is Google and, while their network is still nascent, it does require more attention than you would give other burgeoning social networks.

These are the important and distinctive advantages to using Google+:

• Google allows for long form content (somewhere around 100,000 characters if you would like to personally test it). You can post long status messages like this entire blog post or even a novella (literally).  Sure.  Sure.  Facebook recently also increased their character count on posts to 63,206 (Facebook … Face Boo K … hex(FACE) – K … 64206 – 1000 = 63206) but it wouldn’t flow or feel right if you used all characters.  The Facebook community is not used to long posts.  The Google+ community see long form content regularly.
• Google+ posts can be referenced through unique links and shared publicly. There is no need to worry about whether or not someone has a Google+ account. Everyone can view your public content regardless of their Google+ account status. This is not a distinct advantage in and of itself but when combined with the next point it is important to consider.
• Google+ posts perform extremely well in the search results. Some prominent bloggers have used anecdotal evidence to support the idea that, while their blog post performs well in the Google SERPs, a Google+ post about the original blog post performs better. See this note from a former Google Apps product management lead as an example of said anecdotal evidence.
• Google “Search plus Your World” (a.k.a. social search) is a significant change to their algorithm in which social signals (mostly the +1) are incorporated into Google’s search results. Currently, signals from Twitter and Facebook are not being included in these results so activity on Google+ is the only way to increase your chances of being seen (there has been plenty written about this already). This is a complex advantage so lets look at some pretty pictures.

Look at these screenshots for an example of how social search is affecting results even today. They are both for the search term “SOPA” (an extremely egregious and disgusting bill making its way through Congress). The results are very different when social search is triggered and the difference does not have anything to do with proper SEO. It’s almost entirely based on your Google+ Circles and +1 activity.

Based on the incorporation of these new social results, there has been some healthy discussion about how traditional SEO is not important (see an excellent argument from Ed Kless about SEO and social search). I think this conversation is great because we are in a transition phase. SEO is still extremely important for your digital marketing efforts if your goal is to be seen by more people.  It’s difficult to tell if SEO will continue to deliver the same results using the same formula as social search becomes more prominent. My educated guess is that it will not.

The carrot and the stick

The advantages listed above are all carrots. That is, they are the positive benefits of having bought into participation on Google+ for your brand or business. Here’s the stick:

Not only do Google+ posts rank highly in their search algorithm but activity around the +1 will directly impact your cost per click advertising costs. Stay with me here because this is the most important part of the post (Yes.  I buried the lead). Based on the 2011 Search Marketing Report from MarketingSherpa, the paid search click through rate of social media users compared to non-users (the 3 of you left out there) is double. Double. Let’s put that in terms a bit easier to understand. The more your Google AdWords ads get clicked, the higher your quality score. The higher your quality score the less you pay for ads. In my best mafia voice, “Capisce?”

In Summary

Google+ was officially launched on June 28, 2011. Just prior to that the +1 button was launched but didn’t have much of a purpose without the accompanying social network. In other words, it hasn’t been that long (Leo Laporte asked an excellent question on his TWiT podcast recently, “How many internet years is represented by a real year if a dog year is 7 years?”). You can clearly see Google’s focus here and their desire to make this product successful. Personally, I’m in. The conversations on Google+ are intelligent and in-depth. I really enjoy it. From a business perspective it’s hard for me to argue against the points above. Get your pencils sharp and dust off your thinking caps. It’s time to focus some of your effort on Google+.

¹Footnote: Just like on Facebook, you can like a brand or business on Google+. This is done through the +1 and, for comparison’s sake, it matches the Facebook Like perfectly. You can Like a status update. You can +1 a status update. You can Like a brand or business. You can +1 a brand or business. If we look at the Los Angeles Times business page on Google+ we can see that “14,127 have +1’d or added to circles”. Wait. What? Yes, if you Circle a brand on Google+ you are counted in their aggregate influence number (What are we calling that number, anyway?). Breaking down the number, 13,986 have the Los Angeles Times in a Circle which means that only 141 have +1’d the venerable west coast publisher of news and information. I’ve seen similar trends skewed in favor of Circles for other brands as well. I’m not sure why Google is aggregating these numbers but it can create a small amount of confusion as you are measuring the success of your efforts.

Google+ pages (launched recently) now provide an opportunity for businesses, and not just individuals, to participate in the still nascent social network. Along with this feature launch from Google came myriad articles and how-to guides all geared at bringing people up to speed quickly. There are a few key features that are showing great potential and also a few features that are glaringly absent.

First, the drawbacks:

1. Page administration – This is the biggest current drawback. Business pages on Google+ can only be administered by one person. Google prefers you be a “real” person to participate on Google+ as an individual. Further, only individuals (a “real” person as Google sees it) can create business pages. So once a business page is setup by an employee only that employee can do anything with the account because it is tied to their Google+ profile (and their Gmail account by extension). Trying to get around this requirement is risky as Google has proactively closed many accounts of personal profiles that were not genuinely tied to “real” people.

[Update: This is the single largest feature currently being requested by business users of the Google+ platform.  Given the highly iterative nature of Google it is natural to assume they are working on this.]

2. Notifications – Business pages do not receive notifications via email or in the notification bar. Everything is still manual.

Advantages:

1. Search, of course. Google+ pages, the +1 button and Direct Connect (more on that below) are all geared at providing Google with more intelligence.  This will help to improve search results and also search advertising.

2. Message segmentation – The Circles feature in G+ allows you to segment your audience. Once done, you can also segment your messaging (very similar to segmentation when sending email marketing messages). One big caveat is that creating Circles is currently a manual process and can be very (very) time consuming.

3. Direct Connect – This feature allows G+ pages to show up as the first result in Google search when using the “+” qualifier. Visit Google.com and type “+a”. Experiment with different letters and you will see the companies that are currently participating.

Those are the big advantages/disadvantages out of the gate.  This platform will change fast.  What’s clear to me is that Google has moved beyond a remedial understanding of social media.  They get it now.  They’ve spent critical time thinking about how to build out a social network and the most compelling issue for marketers to consider is how G+ activities will affect their search marketing (including advertising) results.  Pay attention here and stay ahead of the game.

[UPDATED] Mashable reports that multi-admin capability is coming soon.

Facebook buried the lead during Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote. Yes, music sharing is fun (announcement number 1) and your new Timeline (replacing the personal profile) is visually pleasing (announcement number 2) but the changes they have made in enhancing the open graph trump everything else.

The new open graph will allow application developers to share your activity on third-party sites (or within applications) without restriction and without continuous approval. Sign in via Facebook, agree to the level of sharing and you’re done. This is being called “frictionless sharing” by many because, once setup, you will share everything from a third-party site or application with Facebook without needing to take action every time (Was hitting the “Like” button REALLY that hard?). All activity from these open graph applications and websites will feed back into the Ticker (you know, the thing on the right that looks a lot like Twitter).  The two big examples today are music and news. Sign in to a supported third-party music app and Facebook will share every song you listen to in the app. Sign in to a supported third-party news site and Facebook will share every article you read with your friends.

Privacy implications aside, thinking about this from a product development perspective is interesting. I’m sure we will see some very creative frictionless sharing examples from Facebook developers in the coming weeks and months.

Frankly, I don’t care.

No, really.  I don’t care because it’s not a winner takes all competition.  There is room for multiple social networks and we (collectively) will learn how to use them to our advantage over time.  The use of a specific social network is a personal preference at this point.  Not for brands, that is.  They play by different rules.  For the individual, it’s your choice.  If Google+ doesn’t work for you, I’m not sure that’s the end of the world.  Likewise for Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Ultimately, I think you should end up choosing a social network based on three questions:

• Where are my friends?
• Where is the best source of information for my personal interests?
• Where can I find information about my profession?

The answer to these 3 questions will not always be the same social network.  Lets break down my personal habits to demonstrate.

• Where are my friends?  That’s an easy one.  I suspect for the large majority the answer is Facebook.  Fair enough.
• Where is the best source of information for my personal interests?  Your “friend” social graph is not necessarily aligned with your personal interests.  I found the answer to this question is a mixture of Twitter and Facebook.
• Where can I find information about my profession?  For me, that’s LinkedIn and Google+.   Google’s efforts are still in their infancy and many of the people I have circled are posting information about social media related topics.  Intelligent conversations ensue.

From my personal example hopefully you can find a takeaway.  Pick the social networks that work for your interests and needs.  This is not an all or none choice and I’m afraid many treat it as such.  For example, “I already have a Facebook account.  Why should I sign up for XYZ social network?”  That’s a fair question if you are only looking to answer one of the 3 questions above.  Diversify and you’ll find the information streams across these networks are much richer when used for specific purposes.

The following is an adaptation from an article I wrote recently for the Sage Channel Marketing Newsletter.

With over 100 million registered members, LinkedIn is the largest professional social network. Sure, it is true that Facebook is approaching 800 million registered users (wow!) but they are not specifically focused on the business professional. This gives LinkedIn a distinct advantage, particularly when it comes to sourcing higher quality leads.

Follow these steps to build out a strong presence on LinkedIn and start connecting with the right people for your lead generation efforts.

1. Manage Your Profile – Keeping your profile complete and up to date is the first thing you should do before any other activities on LinkedIn. Potential leads (and even minor connections) will check out your profile. An accurate and current profile on LinkedIn will give everyone who looks at it a very good sense for what you do and how you can help. For extra points, consider including a professional head shot as your profile picture (or at least a picture that looks professional).

2. Grow Your Network – Once your profile is up to date you can begin to grow your LinkedIn network by connecting with current and past business associates. LinkedIn provides a basic message when you send an invitation to connect with someone. It typically says, “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” This is largely a missed opportunity as most people accept the default message and hit send. Make it personal! It will only take a few moments to write a more personal note. Don’t miss this opportunity to make a truly warm introduction. Another way to grow your network on LinkedIn is by using the “people you may know” feature. LinkedIn provides a list of people you may know based on your current connections. Scroll through the list and start sending invitations to those you have done business with in the past.

3. Use Company Pages to Your Advantage – Using the company profile pages on LinkedIn you can collect information on target companies. Do you have connections that work at a target company? Who have they hired recently and into what type of role? The LinkedIn company pages will tell you the answers to these questions.

4. Your Profile Views – Monitoring who has viewed your profile on a regular basis will help you to measure interest in your business and products. An updated profile attracts interested people and, based on the data LinkedIn provides, allows you to source leads directly from that list. There is one caveat in this case. LinkedIn provides full access to this data as a paid service. The free version is not nearly as useful.

5. LinkedIn Groups – The groups product from LinkedIn remains one of the most active areas of the site. Join the groups where potential customers gather (you can see this on their profile pages) and begin posting relevant content. Over time you can build credibility with the group and begin to influence the buying decision. If you are already posting to other blogs and writing industry articles then be sure to repurpose this information for the LinkedIn groups you join.

6. BONUS ITEM: LinkedIn Answers: Not for the technically faint of heart, LinkedIn Answers is easy enough to figure out on the surface. Ask a question, get an answer. If you’re the expert, then start answering questions. Over time, you will be effectively voted up and viewed as an expert resource. Answers can be a difficult product to monitor based on the lack of detailed search features (for example, there is no way to monitor all questions about social media). Using the Answers search product, get as specific as you can. Grab the resulting RSS feed, bring it into Yahoo! Pipes, set a search term on top of it, and bring the resulting RSS feed into your Reader of choice. Kludgy? Probably, but there is not an easier way right now to sift through the noise. Here is the Pipe I built to monitor questions about social media on LinkedIn Answers.

There are a few experiential lessons to consider when investing your time in a more active LinkedIn presence for lead generation purposes.

- If you are looking for groups to join the most important factor to consider is not how many members the group has. It is more important to consider the activity level of the current members. Are they engaged and actively participating? Pick groups with active members as opposed to groups with large member counts and little participation.

- Use your existing sales and marketing collateral (white papers, webinars and articles) as a part of the conversation. Do not sell directly as this has a tendency to elicit a negative response. However, it is perfectly appropriate to ask for feedback on an article you have written recently or a webinar that was conducted. The difference between selling directly and asking for feedback is subtle but important.

- Quality can be an issue on LinkedIn. There are many job seekers and independent consultants looking for work involved in the conversation. This is an important part of the LinkedIn community but is not necessarily important for your lead generation activities.

For continued reading, please reference these articles:
http://mlcwideangle.exbdblogs.com/?p=4175
http://b2bleadblog.com/2009/04/5-steps-for-using-linkedin-as-lead-generation-tool.html
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=31315#

Sage Summit 2011 is sure to fill your business brain with lots of exciting ideas. While a business conference might not be on par with a show from your favorite band (Or is it? More on the Fire and Ice party later!), this year you will be able to capture your excitement through one of the video kiosks in the main hall.

Walk over to the kiosk (conveniently located near the Twitter feeds on the big screen), push the record button and off you go. It really is that simple and now you can take your ideas, and your excitement, with you after Sage Summit 2011 is done.

Are you going to be at Sage Summit 2011?  Check out the Wiffiti technology here.

In less than five years, Twitter has catapulted its way on to the social media scene.  One area of particular strength for Twitter is in the business world.  Business is all about people and relationships.  At the end of the day, so is Twitter.  There is a very natural fit.  The basic features are very simple and the barriers to entry for creating a Twitter account are practically nonexistent.  [Here is the Twitter business guide if you need more information about how to get started.] What we see most often is that professionals tend to struggle with the learning curve on Twitter.  After continued moderate use of Twitter over time it becomes more difficult to manage and use effectively.  Here are a few tips to help you along.

1. Continue to grow your network intelligently – At the heart of Twitter are two ideas: connecting with people and finding useful information.  Unfortunately, connecting with the wrong people on Twitter can pollute the stream of information and devalue the service.  Visit Klout.com and enter your Twitter handle.  Use the information from this service to determine who influences you and start conversations with them.  They could be influential in your industry or an excellent connection as you continue to build your professional network.  Take Klout.com one step further and determine who influences the people you are already following on Twitter.  Follow those people.  This will further expand your audience on Twitter in areas you are likely interested in hearing more about.
   [Some clarification here: There are plenty of other methods to determine influential users on Twitter based on your industry or areas of interest.  Klout.com is here today.  Something could replace them tomorrow.  In addition, the management of your Twitter stream does not have to rely solely on following the right people and clicking unfollow for those you do not wish to hear from.  Experiment with lists.]

 

2. Use a proper management tool – The Twitter website is great but the experience does not have to stop there.  Twitter has gone out of their way to create an ecosystem of third party companies empowered to build exciting tools on top of the base service.  Find a tool to allow you to manage your Twitter account more effectively.  This will save you time and allow you to get more out of the service.  Popular tools today include Hootsuite, CoTweet and Seesmic.  The added benefit of these tools is that they also allow you to manage your other social networks as well (Facebook and LinkedIn, in particular.  You do have a LinkedIn account, right?)

 

3. Position yourself and your business – We’ve seen Twitter used in different ways.  Some of the more common ways are for conversation and thought leadership.  As professionals and business owners, positioning ourselves as thought leaders can help to grow our reputation and our business.  Find your voice and stick with it.  Resist the temptation to mix your personal life with your business life on Twitter.  Not because it is potentially damaging to your reputation (we don’t all attend raging keggers on the weekend) but because it sends a conflicting message to those that follow you.  Are they following you because you are a thought leader in the industry or are they following you because you are both headed to the ball game on Saturday?  [Additional note on this topic: This is my opinion.  It is not fact.  I prefer to use Twitter for business purposes which has lead me to the conclusions in suggestion number 3.  I'm not suggesting this is the right approach for everyone.]

 

4. Track your performance – “What gets measured, gets managed” as Peter Drucker would say.  [Technically, Peter Drucker would NEVER say this.  Please see the footnote for more information.]  Your Twitter account is no different.  Measure your performance on Twitter over time to determine how effective you are.  Here are a few suggestions.  Use Klout.com (already mentioned) to measure your overall influence.  Use TwitterGrader.com to measure how you stack up against other Twitter users.  Use Timely.is to determine if your messages are reaching the largest possible audience.

 

5. You can’t drink from a fire hose – The most important thing to remember is that the stream of information pouring out from Twitter every day is called the “Twitter fire hose”.  Why?  It’s massive.  On average, 140 million tweets are sent per day.  So don’t expect to be able to read everything on Twitter like you would all messages in your email inbox.  You can’t drink from a fire hose.  Instead, you should sip from it.  The important themes and trends will surface themselves more than once.

[Footnote about Peter Drucker and the quote attributed to him above]: Peter Drucker did not say, “What gets measured, gets managed.”  Far from it.  I have left the original text of the article written intact and am using this space to clarify.  As Ed Kless has indicated, Peter Drucker would not likely be in favor of anything resembling a time sheet for management.  There are two related quotes I can find which might be confusing the issue.  One is the McKinsey Maxim which is argued against by the Versage Institute here.  The other quote is closer to the original (poorly attributed) quote in point number 4 above.  ”The things that get measured and rewarded are the things that get done well.”  This quote can be loosely attributed to Michael LeBeouf.