Social Media

Google Plus is Much Better Than Facebook

Google + A Faster, Leaner, and Better Facebook

Google + Stream Shot — Picture of Google Stream

You all know that I am not the biggest fan of Facebook. Their system was good but I am not an apps guy so that whole system is a waste of time. I don't really need the e-mails for games like Farmville and Mafia wars. I know you can turn them off but in the user face is always asking for new request and I just can't stand that. Half the time the invites are from people I really don't know very well.

Will Google Plus Catch on? It Already Has

I can see this spreading like wild fire, All they need to do is put a message across the top everyone's Gmail account and they will have millions of users overnight. That plan worked well for Hotmail. Then the next step would be to add sponsored messages to the right like Gmail and allow companies to advertise on either search results, content network, or social network. G+ would be an immediate money maker for Google. I wouldn't mind the intrusion of ads, you don't even notice them on your Gmail.

I have been playing around with Google + for two or three days and I can tell you I really like over Facebook. For one you can add people to circles, and only send messages to those people on your wall or as Google calls it your stream. I have set up different circles for family members, press, birdwatching, Atlanta Falcons fans, SEO, and affiliate marketers.

What I really like about Google +1 is the photo section. The photos are much larger and they have the person's name who took the photo and they are all right in your face when you open up the photo section. The photo section can make you a better photographer. I haven't played with the video section yet but I'm sure it will be just as fast as the rest of Google +1.

The one thing I wish Google +1 had was a Google -1 button. This way you can give a negative vote to something you didn't like. This would balance out the so-called social media gurus who have disciples clicking on everything they do thinking it's the gospel. I know some people won't like that but that's the way I think.

The Google + Android App

So following the best things about Google +1 is the android app. It is by far the fastest app I have on my phone. What I like and what I don't like at the same time is the photo upload. When you upload a photo you have a chance of geo-targeting it. You can tell everybody where you are when you take the photo. Of course all of this information will be shared across Google's servers.

On the app you have five places you can go stream, photos, circles, huddle, and your profile. I'm not exactly sure what huddle will be used for right now but it looks like you can get some friends and put them all in a huddle and it could be used if you were going to meet at a certain place. If plans changed you would be able to shoot everybody in your huddle a quick message letting them know what the new plans are. At least that's what I picked up from the YouTube video.

Will this be the Facebook killer, I don't think so some people still like to play Farmville, and Mafia wars. Will this be the twitter killer, I don't think so. Will this put the final nail in MYSpace, I think so. What I do see it killing is daily booth. With faster and better resolution photos, I see no need for daily booth to exist. Of course that's only my opinion. I do see Google +1 as something that will definitely make its mark on social media and the way we communicate with each other. Of course it's all too new to speculate, but when I see Chris Brogan and all the points that he made in his post about Google +1 I think it has a very good chance.

I have been nothing but impressed with Google +1 so far. The only thing I don't like is the nested comments on a post. I would rather see every comment that is made than having to click a button to open up the thread when it has more than three comments. I am also sad that I had to use an older Gmail account to sign up with because I have a Google business's account that is my main account. Hopefully Google will let us switch that at a later date when they let business apps in. Right now there are a lot of smart people sitting on the sidelines because their main account is a Google business account. I have been told by some people that they are working on this right now, I just hope they let us switch.

Google Hangouts Can Become All The Rage

One cool feature that I like is the Google hangouts, you can do a 10 person video chat all at the same time. This will come in handy for me, as I can have 10 people and teach them common sense SEO all at the same time. I will probably set something up like Tuesday night hangout club or something like that. It is much easier to explain stuff when you are all looking at the person or they are seeing you. We'll Google hangouts kill Skype video chats, I don't think so. It's just something cool and I'm sure some businesses will use it once they get in. Parents will have to keep an eye on their kids as this will be a time suck and take away from homework time. At the same time it could also be used for parent teacher meetings.

You can immediately have a family reunion, using Google hangouts. You can also set up a hangout every Sunday at one o'clock during the football season and talk to your buddies all around the country all at the same time we watch the game. Doesn't that sound cool!

Thanks for reading my little wrap up I hope to see you on Google +1 when they open it from the beta.

Social Media Planning

Branches going in different directions — What Direction is Your Social Media Plan Heading

How is Your Plan Going?

A couple of weeks ago a buddy was asking me about social media and he had some very basic questions.

At first I was surprised but after he told me what he was doing I quickly realized that he didn't have a social media plan in place.

He just got promoted to run their social media and really didn't have a clue as to what was going on. He was trying to track results and of course the dreaded ROI that he needed to have for his boss.

After a few minutes I knew he was in trouble and had to discuss with him what he was trying to do. Then we set up a detailed plan I showed him how to track results so he would have something to show his boss eventually.

I have to say his company was messed up and their plan for the web was basically having no plan. Their blog was nothing but press releases that practically yelled at the person reading it. Even worse then that was when they made a blog post it was in 3rd person and speaking down to the reader. They also had no SEO knowledge so that had to be addressed also.

Not exactly rocket science on how to fix that so that was the first thing we addressed. They have writers on staff and he got the ok to have them feed content to the blog with his approval first. Problem solved there as they have published a few post now and they are on the right track. I gave them enough SEO knowledge so they can do basic stuff like title tags, meta tags etc. Just enough SEO to make them a little dangerous. They also have their keyword research and know what the competitors rankings are. They also didn't have a way to capture email addresses. Huge mistake that they are setting up now. We will address the blog again later as I just needed to get the ball rolling in that area for now.

Their social media plan was

1 Twitter account that was hooked up to the blog rss (Nightmare's coming from this I am sure)
1 Facebook account with 21 friends and no fan page.
1 YouTube Channel with 3 videos
1 Blog

Now that I got the blog out of the way I started with YouTube since they had 3 videos up and running and 10 more waiting to be uploaded. I am in shock that they had an account on YouTube in the first place but since they already knew how to upload videos I wanted to start there. The videos they shot were ok but they were way too long so I had them edit them in half and they now had 20 videos. Their videos were named something like abcnyffra333.avi which of course as you can imagine was also their title. Yes lovely I know.

We went in and renamed them and had the writers watch the videos and write up a description with a soft call to action and of course put the URL in there as well. More important then having them write the descriptions I showed all of them how to do it so it wouldn't fall on one persons lap. I did this with most of their plans as making it a team effort is so important.

Next post we will talk about some of the other steps I took and get an actual plan in place.

Why Would You Invest in Charlie Sheen

Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with this country. You have potential train wreck in Charlie Sheen who has advertisers waiting at the bit because of the media attention. Then you have good honest people like Joe Nemechek who can't find a sponsor for his race car. Right now you will probably say Vinny what does one thing have to do with the other. Let me take you on a ride for a second.

Charlie is making headlines for hanging out with strippers, porn stars, and getting fired from his TV show. Most people I talk to are already tired hearing about Charlie Sheen. Every time I hear Charlie's name on my TV I say to myself that I am not going to watch that network for a while. It is my own form of punishment. Never in 1 million years would I buy something because Charlie had anything to do it.

Joe on the other hand is a totally different story. Joe will have his car circling the track for four hours on Saturday and four hours on Sunday without a sponsor. Almost prime time to have your company name on TV with someone who is a hard-working American and just trying to earn a living. Being a racing veteran most loyal NASCAR fans would buy from a company that sponsors Joe.

Joe's operation is very small, it's a family type business in which his mother is the bookkeeper. Joe is the typical ideal sponsor situation, as he will never be in the news doing something bad. He really is a sponsor's dream, but it seems like advertisers would rather waste their money and not protect their brand and put their money wherever Charlie Sheen is going. This to me is just crazy!

This week Charlie Sheen signed up for a twitter account and got a crazy amount of followers. The account was secured by an advertising company which I'm sure will be putting ads in Charlie's twitter stream somewhere along the line. Why any company would want to put the ad there is beyond me.

The media is hyping Charlie Sheen, I see Charlie as having a problem and needs help. Hopefully Charlie gets the help he needs, and gets it quickly. I don't know why any brand would want to be associated with Charlie Sheen. Sure your company will be getting some traffic from his twitter stream, but do you really think that traffic will convert anyway. All it does for me is tell me that your company has a problem also.

Joe goes out every weekend, tries to make a living doing something that he loves on television with millions of people watching and yet he can't find a sponsor. I just can't figure out what American companies are thinking. Here you have a good guy and a family operation that would bend over backwards to protect your brand but yet he can't find a sponsor. Companies need to look at the loyalty that NASCAR fans have that sponsor race teams.

As I'm writing this it's a Friday afternoon, and I am watching NASCAR practice. It's three clock in the afternoon and I'm watching Joe's car circle the track without a sponsor. It is just a shame, a good opportunity to have your name on a car on TV and yet so many companies are missing it.

I suggest if you're looking to sponsor somebody who will promote your brand go to Joe's website and look around http://www.joenemechek.com/ tell Joe that Vinny sent you and thank him for not being Charlie Sheen.

Twitter Auto Posting Lessons

A few weeks ago you may have read about my auto posting experiment which turned out rather successful. Before I conducted this posting plan I was not in favor of auto posting and thought I would never do it. That line of thought has changed for me and it will be something I will be doing more often.

I knew with a few tweaks it could be something that could aid a social business plan. After looking at results a little more closely I noticed a few things. Since my last post I have run this across different accounts with very varied results. One thing I noticed is you have to have a good plan and not just set up a bunch of tweets to go out automatically.

For the second set of auto tweets I had more planned for hours that I would be online, I noticed that even though the post in the middle of the night were not done to get a reaction and an interaction they just didn't get the amount of results I expected. Instead of tweeting every half hour or so I cut them back to once an hour. This was done just to keep my keyword terms into the recent results if someone used Twitter search.

This time around most of the tweets were set up for more interaction. Some involved some slightly opinionated and heavily discussed topics in the niche that I knew would get a response. Sure putting some opinionated tweets out there may lead people into trouble but done carefully and thoughtfully it shouldn't be a problem. It sparks a reaction and from that you get interaction from people you may not have had at all. Turning that person into a paying customer is now a reality because they respect your position. (I feel another post coming on that topic)

Since I was awake for most of this auto posting one of the accounts I used was the same as the last test so I could judge the differences between the two. I am glad I did this as it really showed how auto posting could be used as a guide. I started off and made up 48 tweets designed with better questions and I had a list of better landing pages where I could send the user off to.

The auto post went out every 20 minutes instead of every 30 minutes. This allowed me to get in 3 tweets an hour instead of 2 an hour like the previous test. The reactions were so much better and during the course of this I had more interactions with people in the niche that I hadn't had before. Here is the kicker, as I was exchanging with people another question or fact would be tweeted. All of a sudden we had something new to exchage about. The first time this happened I didn't have a clue as to what the peeople were talking about with me as I was still heavily involved with the first tweet that went out. This is were I saw the power of auto-tweeting, not using it to just throw tweets out there and hoping someone sees them. This time it was used as a posting aid.

Over the next few hours we exchanged a lot of tweets, it was by far the most tweeting I have done on one account in one day. I wasn't glued to the computer as you would expect. I went about my normal business and had Hootsuite loaded in another browser that I went back to every 10 minutes or so. I also had my email open in case of a direct message.

After all was said and done

I interacted with over 210 tweets
Sold 9 items through the store.
Had 16 people sign up for the email newsletter
20 more twitter followers.
5 more likes on the Facebook fan page
33% increase in my contextual ad revenue.

Although we only picked up only 20 more followers it should be noted that most people on Twitter in the niche are already followers. The real gold here is the email newsletter sign up because now I can interact/market to these people as I see fit. I also learned the Hootsuite needs an affiliate program because with results like this I would be able to market it until the cows come home.

Am I sold on auto posting? Yes, but not as a set it and forget it. It will be used as a tool in the arsenal as a Tweeting guide.

Twitter Auto Posting – Is It Worth It?

Yesterday I did a little Twitter experiment. You should know that I am not a fan of auto posting to a twitter account. That said I figure I try something to see if you could post tweets for 24 hours without anyone caring or unfollowed.

I use Hootsuite (paid account) they have this cool bulk upload feature which allows you to upload a csv file with up to 50 tweets at a time. You can set the times and schedule the tweets out as long as they are 5 minutes apart from each other. I decided to use this and interact with my readers for almost 24 hours straight. I did this using my NASCAR twitter account since it has the most scattered fans throughout the country. @awesomeracefans

I started the experiment at midnight and had the tweets scheduled for every half hour or so – a total of 48 tweets. A few of the tweets were generic things like what is your favorite NASCAR track etc, Some tweets were shout outs to our Facebook fan page encouraging “Likes” and also to our newsletter sign up page.

The tweets started at midnight and since I was still awake until around 2:30am I could actually interact with people on the west coast that were retweeting the messages or responding to the questions. I figured the middle of the night would be dead so I wasn't expecting any interaction. These are when I had the account send tweets like “Cant wait until Nascar starts again” and some tweets out to our NASCAR shopping section. Basic stuff where I didn't have to do a direct response and wouldn't expect any interaction.

When the sun started to come out on the east coast I put some of my tweets into a question form. This way when I woke up I would have some tweets to interact with. Asking people what their favorite NASCAR movie is and what is their home track etc. Just some basic questions that any NASCAR fan would have an opinion on. Nothing too controversial just some casual questions which I expected some responses too.

When I got up I started to reply to some of the responses left and picked up right along as if I never slept. Over the course of the night I had a few people sign up for the newsletter, a few likes on Facebook and a few responses.

I answered the responses and kept on tweeting every half hour and had over 40 interactions with people. All positive and I learned some things about my followers.

Results:

Sold two items from the NASCAR store, my contextual ad revenue went up 20%, Got a few newsletter sign ups, a few Facebook likes, a few more Twitter followers.

Was it worth it, I am not sure yet. It did take me 15 to 20 minutes to set up, another 15 to think of questions. The jury is still out for me, might try it again on another account and see what results it brings.

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