Talk It Up!

Lazy brands will hate Google+ pages

Google+ brand pages distinguish +1 from adding to a Circle. Lazy brands will hate it because it will force them work harder for real relationships and communication.

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Google+ brand pages launched yesterday, and now the finer points of their use is being revealed. One distinction I mentioned in passing might discomfit brands: when users +1 a brand, it merely expresses a mild affinity. In order for users to receive brand updates, they must add the brand page to a Circle. Instead of a passing click, users must deliberately choose to treat a brand just like a friend.

Ooooh, lazy brands are gonna hate this.

Fast Company reports:

Google+ rips the “Like” button into two devastatingly separate entities. Show up at a corporate page, and you can give it a +1. That’s simple, it’s the digital equivalent of giving a storefront a thumbs up while driving by.

To see a company’s updates, a consumer will need to actually add them to a circle, which of course beckons the question, just how intimate do I want to be to Glade air fresheners? Can I really call them a friend? They sure aren’t family. Should I make another circle for Products I Purchase Every Two to Three Months With Clever Commercials?

Call it a hunch, but I suspect we’ll see a lot of people +1’ing their favorite products, and that’s it.

And perhaps that is for the best and is actually a more realistic of brand affinity than the Like button ever was. Brands may hate the +1/add-to-Circles split, but fans will love it. Think of it this way: on Facebook, many folks who have a mild affinity to a brand will Like it, but that doesn't necessarily indicate a strong love or affection. They most likely aren't glued to the page's updates and are unlikely to engage with the brand on Facebook unless the brand is providing riveting content.

Love not like

And that's the distinction. On Facebook, there is no Love, only Like. And I don't know about you, but I Like plenty of brands that I don't love. I never look at their pages and ignore their updates.

Google+ allows the distinction between a mild affinity for a brand (+1) and the desire to actually keep in contact with the brand on a regular basis (add to Circles). Brands that are only interested in bulking up fan numbers may look at this differentiation with dismay. However, brands that are interested in truly engaging with a smaller number of influencers rather than stacking up up meaningless Likes will rise to the top and find ways to enhance communication with their real fans.

Basically, this distinction means that brands will have to work for something beyond mild affinity. They will have to produce high-value content and regular engagement in order to merit being in a user's Circles. They will have to generate the same kind of relationship that a friend does--and that will be a challenge.

Which brands are up for this? Can't wait to find out.

Google+ launches brand pages

Google+ has finally rolled out official brand pages, at least for a few select brand partners. The question on everyone's mind: are they better than Facebook?

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Social media gurus, mavens, divas, strategists, professionals and plain old practitioners scrambled to Google+ this morning upon the announcement that the service was finally allowing a limited number of partners official brand pages. The Open for Business sign is out!

The service, whom many see as a viable competitor to Facebook, launched a little over 100 days ago and now has 40 million users and 3.4 billion photos uploaded. One of the early complaints about the site, however, was the lack of ability to create a business (or "brand" page). Google has insisted that only people could create accounts, with the promise that corporate brand pages were coming, and that they would be really great. 

So... are they really great? As a company, Google tends to do limited rollouts so that users can play with the product and help crowdsource new features, and Google+ is no exception. Over the last few months, Google has added over 100 new features to the burgeoning social networking site.

And today, the Google+ brand page is born.

Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President of Engineering, introduced pages today on the Google blog:

So far Google+ has focused on connecting people with other people. But we want to make sure you can build relationships with all the things you care about—from local businesses to global brands—so today we’re rolling out Google+ Pages worldwide.

So... are the brand pages really great and worth the wait? TechCrunch reports the following features:

• You can place people into Circles, which lets you share content with specific sets of users.
• You can launch video hangouts, which lets you have face-to-face conversations with your followers. 
• The Pages work through the site’s mobile app. 
• Pages have both a +1 button and an ‘Add to Circles’ button. The latter is what permits the Page to start sending you updates. And the +1 button? It does essentially nothing, at least as far as users are concerned.

A few partner brands have put up pages, including the Muppets (who have a Hangout scheduled at 4:30 Pacific today) and Burberry, which created a magical animated GIF (you have to imagine the snow falling. Trust me; it's pretty). If Twitter is any barometer, that one distinctive feature sets Burberry apart, even in the early adopter crowd:

Social media savvy Dell also took care both to create a page and to blog not only about the page's mission statement but also about the basic use of Google+ for those not yet converted--a bang-up idea for a brand looking to extend its outreach to users.

So far, Google+ brand pages are merely potential. Brands can share content in a remarkably Facebook-like way... and that's it. So far, brand pages are lacking some of the features that give Facebook its value for marketers: the ability to add apps and the ability promote events and host event discussion boards. With any luck, the next 100 edits to Google+ will incorporate those functions.

I'm not ready to call these a Facebook-killer yet. But I'm curious to see what companies do with them.

Where to post your status

This graphic illustrating which social network is best for which type of posting was all over Facebook yesterday. It seems like all the social media geeks and a few non-SM-geeks got a chuckle over the logic that was all too accurate. My favorite qualifying questions:

1. Do you want anyone to see it? ("No" response leads to Google+--ouch!)
2. Is it boring? ("Yes" response leads to LinkedIn. Again, ouch!)

However, as a follow up to the Google+ owie above, Chris Abraham has written an information-packed post on why it makes sense to use Google+. Abraham reports that Google+ was rushed out early as a response to Twitter cutting off access to Google for search results. The big benefit to using Google+, he reports, is search results:

For anyone that really cares about being part of search, anyone who cares even a little bit about Google’s search hegemony, there’s another benefit to participating in Google+:  search priority, search timeliness and search relevance.

As for the LinkedIn boring rule? Sorry can't help there--LinkedIn is for the run-of-the-mill stuff in my book.

Facebook is beating Google+ for social networking mind share

Is Google+ challenging Facebook's social networking dominance?

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Eh, not so much. Or perhaps, "not yet" would be more optimistic. In spite of the fact that Facebook somehow only managed to make its privacy settings and lists more transparent immediately after the popularity launch of Google+, Facebook still reigns supreme in the social networking market share. Google+ may boast 43 million users in three short months, but more users are still logging in to Facebook.

Silicon Alley Insider's Chart of the Day shows that Facebook captures not only the attention of those looking to network online but of all online activities: a stunning 16% of Americans' online time is now spent on Facebook and Facebook alone.

To be fair, it took Facebook a while to reach a mere 100 million users in 2008, and the monolithic site has been adding users at the rate of about 50 million every three months, so by the measure of adoption rates, Google+ and Facebook are actually neck and neck.

But let's face it; Facebook had a head start. Google+ is slowly rolling out features, but at this rate, it will be a while before the circle-and-stream-oriented site becomes the life repository that Facebook has become. The Facebook wall still has a lot over Google+ as a home for photo albums, favorite media, games, applications, events and of course the ubiquitous life stream.

The differentiating factor: content sharing versus IRL sharing

What Google hasn't yet addressed is that Facebook allows users to share more than online content; it anticipates real-life meetings and facilitates sharing of all aspects of the user's life. As a social media geek, Facebook's events functions are some of the most valuable on the site, allowing me to invite all my local friends to a dine out for No Kid Hungry or to RSVP for a Social Media Club event and post photos of the IRL interactions with my favorite social media friends. Facebook facilitates real life connections, not just online content sharing. In fact, a National Survey of Student Engagement recently discovered a correlation between students who used Facebook to RSVP to events and higher grades and campus engagement.

Google+ doesn't yet interweave real-life events, brands and communities into the stream. When it does, Zuckerberg should stand up and take notice.

In the wake of Google+, Facebook finally makes privacy easy

Facebook adds simple, transparent privacy controls. Too little, too late?

It took Google+ to get Zuckerberg's attention, apparently. After months of complaints about Facebook's complicated privacy controls and overwhelming cries to make privacy and sharing on Facebook more transparent, it's finally happened.

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After Google+ gathered 10 million users in the first two weeks and hit 25 million users by July 24, just shy of a month after launch. Not quite to 750 million of Facebook, but the rate of adoption must be chilling for Facebook, which took 36 months to reach 25 million users.

Zuckerberg, you listening now? About damn time.

Now, magically, sharing can easily be controlled for each status update. A quick tour:

 

Step 1: Tagging. Tagging friends in a post means that they can see the post and their friends can see the post as well. Easy peasy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 2: Now that Facebook has admitted Foursquare's supremacy in the area of location-based services, Places has been killed. However, users can still add a location to any status update. Adding a location is optional for every status update.

 

 

Step 3: Ah, the pièce de résistance. Finally, finally users can easily control who sees each post. Putting up a photo of your kid? Limit to family or friends only. Showcasing your last charity event? Make it public and easy for others to share. File this under About Damn Time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why weren't these implemented before, when people fed up with the lack of privacy control were leaving in droves? Because losing a few users wasn't enough to get Zuckerberg's attention. However, a competing product that makes privacy and content control simple, easy and fun is.

Why would anyone Like, follow or +1 your brand?

Why would I Like, Follow on Twitter or +1 my yogurt?

In this video, Brian Solis joins NBC’s Scott McGrew, Jon Swartz of USA Today and Dr. Moira Gunn of NPR on press:here and use the question, "Why would I Like, Follow on Twitter or +1 my yogurt?" to launch a spot-on discussion of brand engagement in social media. In just 11 minutes, they cover the issues that plague every organization that feels the need to participate in social media channels but isn't quite sure why or what to do. I think every brand should watch this, and I found the information so valuable that I summarized (and editorialized) it here:

Why Like, follow or +1 anything?

Solis begins by pointing out the phenomenon that tortures every social media consultant: most businesses have not asked their customers why or what they expect from their interaction on Facebook, Twitter or Google+ but rather use the social networks as broadcast mechanisms. What social media channels offer is a chance for brands to become a media property and "sell without selling" by creating an experience rather than simply giving a coupon or one-time discount.

Relationship overload

Sure, there are some brands some people are passionate about--Saturn, Apple, Coca-Cola. But how many brands can we really have relationships with? Who is really passionate about their yogurt? Considering Dunbar's number, what kinds of relationships do we have with stuff that doesn't fall within that number? Solis gives an interesting tease of an insight by saying that perhaps we are redefining what a "relationship" is.

 How will brands use Google+

A great example of brand use of Google+ was Michael Dell asking his followers if Dell should provide customer service on that network. Simply asking the question and being engaged in the response gave Dell value in the network and helped to build relationships. In the end, Solis posits, the value for Google+ is the search box - what and where and with what sentiment are people discoverably talking about your brand?