What the heck were you thinking about when you named your two new social networking products Google+ and +1? Those names are sooooooo confusing and soooooo egocentric! For those of you (99% of the world) who are confused or think these are the same (they aren’t), the following will hopefully un-confuse you and show you why you just might care.

Google+ also referred to as G+ and Google Plus, is a social network. And, I might add quite a good one. For those of us who found Facebook too much of a pain to segment the various facets of our lives (like personal from professional, for instance), Google+ is a highly intuitive user-friendly social network with some key features that will really knock your socks off. It’s worth getting engaged for their incredible Hangouts video feature alone – more about that in another article.

You may have heard that Google+ was only available by invitation while it’s in Beta mode. Fear not, Google opened the doors to the public and their subscriber base immediately soared even higher than it already was soaring.

G+ for business is coming soon, if it hasn’t already happened by the time you read this. Based on what we know from the beta tests they already have underway with a select group of companies, it appears that it will be far easier to use for business branding and marketing than the other social networks out there today.

Google’s +1 is a social sharing function, similar to Facebook and LinkedIn’s Like products. You can now see the +1 button nearly everywhere on Google properties and websites all over the web. If you own websites or publish content in places like YouTube, Squidoo, etc., then adding the +1 button is a new “must do” in digital marketing.

+1ing something means that Google can potentially show people they deem to be in your social network (and for most of us that’s quite a lot even without any effort on our part – Google knows all!) or in your Google+ Circles that you have “liked” that content. At minimum, your +1 will increase the count that shows in the +1 button denoting the popularity of that content. Google’s betting social voting will make search results even more relevant.

Both of these products were announced in the Spring/Summer of 2011. Both have hit record numbers of subscribers or users within weeks – mega millions & billions.

So, then the burning question is… why bother? Of course there are die-hard Facebook aficionados out there who call this a blatant rip-off of Facebook and decree that it won’t work… too little and too late they say. Not so fast, Google’s early new member growth simply astounds.

Aside from the competition underway between these two giants and their surrogates, here are a handful of additional reasons you might care:

• Initial testing indicates a benefit to search engine ranking and clicks.
• +1 is now on Google’s AdWords search & content networks – differentiating and potentially improving advertising results and cost per click.
• +1 is now mobile – potentially a great boost for local-based businesses that rely heavily on consumer recommendations.
• G+ is a great way to smoothly stay in touch with divergent groups of people that are important to you.
• Google distribution clout — current and anticipated integration opportunities within the ever-growing family of Google products easily extends your reach.
• The features in Google+ are actually great productivity tools.

Well, I have to say there are a lot more reasons to dig into this. They’ve really done a nice job with G+ and the features are fun, easy and productive. It’s Google — why not give it a try?

No Related Posts.

A few years ago online pundits were predicting LinkedIn’s demise. Now LinkedIn is at the 100 Million-member mark – adding 1 new member a second! If you’d like to actually see these members as they join LinkedIn, a cool visual that works with Google Earth to show new members names and locations as they join real-time. Check it out here — it’s worth taking the time: New In. (You’ll to add Google Earth plug-in which just takes a few seconds.)

In fact, in developing our clients’ social media marketing strategy, LinkedIn frequently gets as much (if not more) focus than Facebook whose 600M members far outstrip LinkedIn. That’s because people expect to be doing business when they’re on LinkedIn, not catching up with friends.

Since this is a moment in time that LinkedIn rightly celebrates and most of the folks I know use LinkedIn in one capacity or another, it sure seemed timely to review some of the top ways that you can gain traction using LinkedIn.

Below are some of my favorite ways to leverage LinkedIn’s capabilities which can now reach more prospects than ever, along with some great resources for doing more with less effort:

• Business Development
• Brand Management
• Relationship Building
• Online Visibility — Get Found!

Business Development is by far my favorite. You can get the scoop on companies you’re targeting, speak to past employees and even find someone in your network to make a warm introduction for you.

Not only will you be checking them out, when you engage, they’ll check you out. How neat would it be for them to get a first impression of your company based on the great presentation or video you’ve posted to your LinkedIn profile? You can do that with any of these three LinkedIn Apps:

• SlideShare Presentations
• Google Presentations
• Behance Creative Portfolio

These days it seems as though the first thing anyone does when they get curious about a business or a person is turn to LinkedIn and learn more about them. That’s why being proactively present in LinkedIn and managing how you come across makes good sense for personal and corporate Brand Management. While you’re at it – why not take advantage of another LinkedIn App to monitor what is being said about you? Try their Company Buzz app.

Now you can also extend your branding through LinkedIn Ads. This tool enables you to target by company (how cool is that??!!), job title, group, gender and age. You have the option of using Pay Per Click or Cost Per 1,000 Impressions (CPM) and can advertise with a budget as low as $10. There’s a lot more to this and I encourage you to check it out.
Why not take the opportunity to manage the message? LinkedIn keeps adding great tools to help you keep your brand alive. In addition to those previously mentioned, linking your blog using one of the following Apps highlight your company’s expertise.

• Blog Link
• WordPress

TIP: Company logo pix should be 120px wide 60px tall or 50px by 50px if square.

One of the biggest mistakes we all make is to let good business contacts go dormant. Relationship Building has never been this easy before. Pay attention to the updates people connected with you post and send them a note or make a call when it’s appropriate. Proactively sending out useful or entertaining information on a periodic basis in your own updates will also keep you in front of them.

Does the sound of paying attention to the status updates of your growing network seem overwhelming to you? LinkedIn offers two high-efficiency solutions:

• LinkedIn Signal enables you to cut through the clutter and set up filters based on what matter the most to you (and it also includes the Twitter stream). There’s a lot more behind this life-saving tool and it is really worth checking out and giving it a whirl.
• LinkedIn Today helps you stay current with the top daily news by delivering top news tailored to what your connections and industry peers read & share.

TIP: Make this a conversation — this doesn’t work as well in send-only mode.

I started this out by mentioning how often people seem to use LinkedIn to check out companies and individuals. Yet they are also using LinkedIn as a Search Engine to locate resources for all kinds of good reasons that may result in business. Getting Found for the things you or your business want to be known for is now more important and lucrative than ever with a network that is over 100M strong and growing.

And it all goes back to using basic search engine optimization techniques such as making sure your profile and information are built using the keywords you are targeting. I can promise you that even simple changes here can make a difference in how many times you come up in LinkedIn search results and people view your profile.

Well, there’s more but that does it for today. Congratulations LinkedIn — keep the great ideas coming.

CGG38HFPFSGA

Related Posts:

1. Can You Teach an Old Dog New (Social Media Marketing) Tricks? Ask Old Spice!
2. Social Media Woes: What About the Rest of Us?
3. Getting it Right: Social Media Measurements

As of late I’ve been in the dumps. It seems to me that we’ve moved into an era of mean-spiritedness and paralyzing political and cultural polarization. Add to that an economy where millions of families have lost their homes and/or jobs, worldwide environmental concerns and it’s hard to remain optimistic.

That’s why I want to give thanks to the Clean Tech Open. They’ve restored my faith that we can get beyond the bickering and paralyzing polarization. Watch this Clean Tech Open Gala Video to understand why.

I recently attended the CleanTech Open at the invitation of Dia North – a fantastic filmmaker, colleague and friend who brought her creativity and resources filming the stories behind the clean technology companies competing.

Well, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up and explain what the CleanTech Open is about for those of you who are not familiar with it.

Clean Tech started 5 years ago with the mission to “find, fund, and foster the big ideas that address today’s most urgent energy, environmental, and economic challenges.”

The Clean Tech Open is an awards event that celebrates at least a years’ work to identify and help clean tech entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to fruition. And the fruit they are beginning to bear is so encouraging that by the time I left the event my funk had changed to enthusiasm about the future!

Here’s a sampling of the incredible creativity that is underway as told in Clean Tech Open videos – this is but a smattering of the innovation power and diversity that was present at this global competition:

• National Grand Prize Winner: Puralitics – water purification innovation
• California Region Winner: PureSolar – thin silicon technology innovation
  
• Global Ideas Winner:  Denmark’s Abeo – super-light concrete construction structure innovation
• North Central Region Winner: EarthClean – fire suppression innovation
• Northeast Region Winner: On-Chip Power – small (like computer) power supply innovation
• Rocky Mountain Region Winner: INOTEC – electro-biochemical reactor mining innovation

So, why am I’m writing about the Clean Tech Open’s innovations in a blog dealing with Internet Marketing? Because innovation occurs at all levels. And because I’m jazzed about the role that Internet marketing can take to build awareness for these companies where it matters.

As well, Internet marketing provides the tools that enable each of us as individuals to contribute to the success of innovations that could well change the world. Whatever your particular area of interest may be:

• bringing low-cost potable water to the poorest of third-world countries
• championing faster, less expensive green construction materials
• helping game-changing energy technologies reduce our oil dependence…

you have the ability to participate in making them successful by engaging your social networks and social media.

If you, as an individual, have the will to participate in making the promise of these breakthroughs happen, you now have the tools at your disposal to do so.

If you, as an entrepreneur, understand the need to get your story out to your relevant target markets, funders and key influencers – Internet Marketing represents a great way to do that cost-effectively and quickly.

Breakthroughs don’t have to come from the top down. Given the state of our political gridlock, that’s probably a good thing. We, as entrepreneurs and individuals have more tools at our disposal than ever to effect change.

START NOW – share this with your community. Visit the links in this article – blog, tweet and share. Subscribe to get more information from the Clean Tech Open. Don’t sit on the sidelines!

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3. What’s Your Internet Marketing Strategy Missing?

My Father used Old Spice. I can still remember the smell wafting out with the steam from his shower when he cracked open the bathroom door. It was, simply… wonderful.

Many years ago (Before Social Media Marketing).

When we asked Dad what that smell was, he said “frou-frous” and encouraged us kids to get some for him for Father’s Day or Christmas.

Of course, I didn’t know it then, but Old Spice had a brand image that most companies would kill for — then or now. Yet Old Spice had languished in the face of new fragrances that were accompanied by hip, megabucks marketing campaigns; their brand seemed dormant. Until two weeks ago.

Old Spice Guy - Social Media Marketing Icon

Old Spice Guy Video

As it turns out, you can indeed teach an Old Dog new tricks if you have the right creative team and willingness to test social media marketing.

Old Spice launched an aggressive social media campaign as a follow-on to their successful Super Bowl commercial featuring Old Spice Guy. In a matter of a few days they cranked out over 180 YouTube videos that have “Gone Viral” (viewers are telling their friends, who tell their friends, etc.). Heck, just go ahead and watch them for the sheer fun of it — they’re really entertaining!

Then, Old Spice Guy engaged in banter in key online communities such as Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and blogs. The “engagement” included celebrities such as Demi Moore, Ellen DeGeneres, Apollo Ohno and Kevin Rose (founder of Digg) that drew in their huge fan base as well.

You now can even get a “customizable” Old Spice Guy voicemail generator created by an enterprising entrepreneur.

What’s the secret to this runaway social media marketing success?

• Creativity
• Talent
• Smarts
• Chutzpah!

It turns out there’s a lot of sniping online that the campaign was all well and good, but Old Spice (Proctor & Gamble) was rumored to have lost money. Not so. The campaign cost was as near to zero as you can get, their YouTube channel alone has over 11.6 M views at the moment and Old Spice has already seen a 107% increase in sales.

What’s more, Old Spice Guy (Isaiah Mustafa – previously under-employed actor and former NFL football player) has just signed a contract to appear in a movie with Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell and Jamie Fox. The creative geniuses behind this social media marketing coup will, no doubt, be able to name their own future as well.

SWAN DIVE!

Related Posts:

1. Hospitals Embracing Social Media & Networking
2. Social Media Woes: What About the Rest of Us?
3. Getting it Right: Social Media Measurements

How many times have you been in a conversation with someone about Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter to hear them proudly tout how many people follow, friend or connect to them? Herein lies the basic problem. After all, if you ONLY had 5 “followers” but those followers were:

• The Dali Lama
• The President of the United States
• The Queen of England
• The Pope
• Bruce Springsteen (I can’t help myself sometimes…)

wouldn’t you think that was pretty awesome? And well you might — because, it is not HOW MANY — it is WHO, how ENGAGED they are with you and whether they contribute to the GOALS you set out to meet with those Social Networking channels in the first place.

If one of the above luminaries blogged about what a terrific product/service you offered, would it not change your results, just a little? Connecting and engaging with Key Influencers online in your markets or industry is far more valuable than simply building up a large group of subscribers who have little ability to help meet your bottom-line goals.

While how many people subscribe to you is a good statistic to track, it is not usually THE definitive statistic that matters. What matters is how the people you connect with through Social Networks contribute to your goal success.

In addition to tracking THE definitive goal statistics, you’ll also want to track milestone metrics along the way (such as how many follower by channel). This will give you the raw intelligence you need for performance management. If all you track are followers, expect disappointment.

And, while I am on this topic – let’s talk about goals. Most organizations don’t set them at all as though merely the act of showing up in those networks were the goal. Those that do set goals often do not ask enough of their Social Media Marketing — aggressively connecting the actions to results will help you see where more can be acheived. Here’s  a partial list of some of the goals you might consider: Sales, Lead Generation, Search Engine Ranking, Online Reputation Management, Customer Insight, Customer Support, Product/Service Research, Competitor Tracking, Thought Leadership and Brand Management. There are more.

If you’ve been holding back because you thought that it won’t work  for B2B, you might want to take a look at the chart below from recent eMarketer research that reports a planned 43% increase in Social Networking spending for 2010 among B2B study respondents. You might say that getting into Social Networking and measuring your results is becoming a new competitive baseline for good business practices.

Also interesting is the strong spending increase B2B marketers project for webinars (+ 26%), a topic that we covered in Generating Internet Business Leads: Webinars — a recent podcast with Sarah Kling, Founder and CEO of UEVision. This podcast covers how her company successfully uses webinars to build a robust sales lead pipeline and the role Social Media Marketing plays in that success.

Bear in mind a basic human instinct is to trust peers, colleagues and friends more than advertisements or marketing communication from people they have no relationship with or trust established. Social Networking gives us all unprecedented ability to do just that with ease and speed.

Social Networking is steadily growing as mainstream activity for personal and professional use. Getting a measurable Social Media Marketing Strategy & Plan in place with a performance management system that tracks the right metrics is rapidly becoming an essential component of remaining competitive.

Related Posts:

1. Hospitals Embracing Social Media & Networking
2. Social Media Woes: What About the Rest of Us?
3. KABOOM! Social Media, Competition & the SEC

This past week I gave a workshop in Silicon Valley for the Marketing Education Series for Entrepreneurs (MESE) titled: Growing Your Business Fast Using Social Media and Web 2.0 Marketing.

Whenever I speak with people about Social Media there are some recurring themes that I keep hearing:

1) How can I do that AND my day job?
2) Where’s the value in it for my business interests and me?
3) Isn’t it really just for big companies like Dell or Zappos?

The subtext seems to be: What About the Rest of Us?

While preparing for the workshop I tried to find insight to answer those questions and ran across a LinkedIn case study that fit that task. In case that case study missed your radar screen let me tell you about it — it’s a great story as well as instructive.

This is a story about a man named Henck van Ess, a Dutch technology consultant who found happiness on LinkedIn.

Henk was grousing in a couple of his LinkedIn Groups one day about the super-short battery life of his 3G iPhone (I can relate – an incredible invention yet the battery life is horrible).

Before he knew it, he heard from another member of one of his LinkedIn Groups — someone from a Chinese manufacturer — who suggested that they might have a solution.

He tried out the solution, liked it and bought it. You might think that was the end of the story and it would have been sufficient value right there. Yet so delighted was Henk that he again used the LinkedIn — this time the “What am I Doing” section — to crow about his “find.” And he found a wellspring of interest from others on LinkedIn who read his post.

This piece of serendipitous research (albeit not scientific) gave him so many positive responses that he became a distributor, put up a Web store and took orders from 1,200 customers on the first day of business!

The Chinese Manufacturer and Dutch Consultant further collaborated to improve upon the original battery extension solution: 3GJuice is born!

Then Henk told the LinkedIn crew about it and some publicity happened. The NY Times picked up the story… more publicity!

So, we have a LinkedIn member who wasn’t really trying to build a business yet stumbled into one using LinkedIn. Along the way Henk:

Not a bad tally for Social Media’s ability to add value!