Introducing Google + The Social Network to Watch
Posted on 16. Jul, 2011 by SearchEngineMarketing in Social Media Marketing
What is this Google+ that everyone is talking about? It it the long awaited service from Google that the social media world has been anticipating for months.This is not their first foray in the social networking world with Orkut, Buzz, etc that failed to gain the kind of traction that they anticipated.
With Facebook fast on their heels, Google had to respond or lose it’s status and influence as the biggest site in the world.
How does Google Circles work?
Watch this video below and it will give you a good idea.
They did not do a big launch with new service and for now it is by invitation only. this way, they are expecting it to grow virally. Larry Page has just announced that this new platform has reached 10 million users in 2 weeks.
Funnily, the person with the most number of followers on Google+ is Mark Zuckerberg with 184,842 at time of writing, more than double that of Larry Page and Sergei Brin. See the most followed people here http://socialstatistics.com/
The best thing about this new service is Google Circles. You can create discrete groups of people with well defined borders so that these people will only see what posts that you want them to see. None of the information leakage and privacy issues that we are getting on Facebook. With Circles, there is no chance of your boss seeing your drunken pictures again.
It’s really easy to use Circles, there is a page with thumbnails of all the people you are following and you just drag them into whichever circle you want and as many circles as you want. They only know that you have added them to a circle but not which one.
When you share an update, a photo or a video, you can select which circle you want to share it with. This is the perfect solution to the privacy problems that Facebook has been trying to resolve for ages.
Cleverly, there is something called Sparks. This works like Google Alerts of a search service where you can type in your keywords and any news with that keyword will show up.
One superhot thing that you can do is to have Video Chats with up to 10 people with Hangouts. I can see this growing to be a great function for doing business if they expand it beyond the use of 10 people in a group. Just this week, Facebook announced that they are going to allow Skype calls within Facebook itself but that is only for one person only.
You can start a Hangout for a particular circle and people can drop in and chat to you if they are around.
For Android phone users, you can take pictures which automatically get’s uploaded ready for you to share with your circles.
This is still an ongoing project so there are a lot of bugs to work out. Can’t wait to see how this one develops. It’s simple, it’s easy to use and I love the privacy settings. It’s a winner already.
Super Injunctions exposure go viral on Twitter
Posted on 09. May, 2011 by SearchEngineMarketing in Twitter
This is a great example of how a story can go viral on Twitter. Super Injunctions that were granted by the court to gag the press from revealing identities of celebrities have not taken into account the power of social media.
A user set up the Twitter account @SuperInjunction exposed the stories that were supposedly published by a Spanish Newspaper. This account quickly garnered over 3000 followers overnight.
This caused a flurry of activity on Twitter where other peole were retweeting the stories. Soon after, the names on that account were redacted. You can still see the original tweets by looking at the tweets that were redacted so all the information is still out there on the Twittersphere.
Another account has since popped up called Injunctionsuper which repeats the same story and has been reteweeted continuously too.
The hashtag #superinjunction has also been trending along with Jemima Khan and Jeremy Clarkson, who have been linked in the revelations.
Very quickly, Jemima Khan has been on Twitter denying the allegations but that has not stopped the gossiping.
Social Media Lessons learnt:
News on Social Media has a much wider reach than you originally thought. It does not just go to your Twitter Followers. It can get retweeted and this has the effect of spreading the news exponentially.
In addition, some twitter posts are automatically posted on Facebook walls and also blogs, further distributing the same content.
Think about your content. How can you leverage your social media efforts to maximise the distribution of your brand across the internet.
Do you have an effective Social Media Strategy? Contact us if you would like to arrange a consultation.
Social Media Case Study – Parliamentary Waffle House
Posted on 20. Apr, 2010 by SearchEngineMarketing in Case Studies, Social Media Marketing
What clever way to leverage a trending event and use it as the basis for a social media marketing campaign.
Step By Step breakdown of this campaign.
Step 1. Create a Campaign with a simple website.
Simple landing page redirecting visitors to buy tickets to the event.
Also, not that they are collecting email addresses to create a database of new customers.
Step 2 – Spread the news via Twitter
Send it out via Twitter to bloggers who have a large following on Twitter. In this case, the tweet was quickly retweeted.
Retweeting – the message goes viral
Using a 3rd party to manage ticket sales.
This campaign was very simple as there is almost no work to get that one page set up, with one clever graphic. Hook up to payment gateway like Paypal or a ticketing site.
Spread the word via Twitter, Facebook and your Blog.
This event will go on until May 6th and all the tickets are sold out already.
Is Social Media a Fad
Posted on 10. Sep, 2009 by SearchEngineMarketing in Social Media Marketing
Watch this Video will show you the impact of Social Media on Society, Business and Culture
Recommended Resources
