@BasilPuglisi

Content & Strategy, Powered by Factics & AI, Since 2009

Digital & Internet Marketing

“Privacy” is a great way to stay unemployed, unconnected and extinct [Opinion]

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Social Media does not create a brand, it takes the brand (or character impression) and carries it. Just like in the “old” days when you worked in a community and everyone knew everything about you anyway, social media has played into the global business revolution.

“Privacy is for old People” but perhaps we misunderstood “old”? It was my interpretation, it was for people who try to “network” the “old” way. Keep sending out those paper resumes, no really keep doing it, in the mean time those that are out in the digital space that have embraced transparency are taking all the job leads and finding and creating careers.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pexGCUPlUeA]

“Think Digital, Act Social”, this is the best way to find a career and not a job. Your resume starts with one word, Google! This is what almost 90% of hires will go through before they get a job or enter into their career. The power of LinkedIn is not just in its ability to connect, it’s in the uniformity that the professional social tool provided.

A resume was traditionally put on a piece of paper that had a million different formats, was presented in infinitely different ways and contained a variety of info that could range from too little to too much. The paper resume then needed to be mailed, emailed, uploaded into a system that could scrape keywords, if you knew how and where to put them.

LinkedIn created a space that provided basic continuity in your digital resume, then provided you the flexibility to be different without losing the Education, Experience, and transparent influence.

If your concern is privacy, then good luck, your “old” way of thinking is what has you unemployed or in a dying industry.

Here lets show you a example of why this is so important and relevant.

  • Position: Writer
  • Duties: On a regular basis produce a variety of articles on subject “A” that people want to read to help increase site/paper/blog readership.

How will you apply? How will you be evaluated?

  • Traditional Applicant: Resume with impressive samples, clean resume, quality education, phone numbers for references.

vs.

  • Digital Applicant:  LinkedIn Account, this includes a good work history, quality education, samples of articles from the connected blog. The impression that you understand digital, with 500+ LinkedIn connections, a Twitter account with 3,000 followers a Klout score that shows that you influence people in a call to action style with your tweets/articles. A Facebook page that shows who you are as a person, Spouse? Parent? Sports Fan? Alumni? Hobbies? the things that provide comfort about the applicant being hired is of good and cohesive character to the organization. How about the power of say 12 “Recommendations” on LinkedIn from people who you can see are reputable, professional and also of good character.

If you’re going to spend money on mailing paper resumes or email spam, you might want to consider target marketing ads on Facebook or LinkedIn, as you’ll only pay for who you target when you know they have looked at you.

Why this matters?

Social Media transparency is better than the traditional background check, this gives you a look into what has been legally off limits and even though you may say it doesn’t belong as part of the hiring process, the data shows that it clearly is! Now consider the business model, the writer with the traditional resume path only tells they can do the work, the digital resume can show you that they can do the work and generate revenue!

How?

Writers generate content to create readers, the first shows they can create content that people might be interested in, the second using the digital resume shows that they CAN and DO produce followers and views for their content. If you’re an online media source, like a news paper gone digital, you NEED the second writer more. Advertising revenue is about “eyes” the more eyes you get on your content the more valuable the ad space is, the second writer shows that they can generate more “eyes” or views from the start.

Now the same can translate to PR positions, Sales, Business Development and any position where reaching people is important. Then imagine you’re a prospective employee that can show a following or influence over 50,000 people across the social networks that drives 10,000 clicks or views a month, you’re on your way to being your own business. Big brands got to their ivory towers on the shoulders of their employees being representatives in their communities, social media is an extension of that practice.

This is why it’s important to “Think Digital, Act Social”. Having transparency allows you to show value by using digital means to display who you are, the professional and the personal. Things like video, websites, social sites create a foundation that then allows you to act social by reaching out in both traditional networking and digital networking methods.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5e-6psDk8U]

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Jeff Pulver’s Second #BRANDSconf Kicks off This Month!

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The second Jeff Pulver’s #BrandsConf will be kicking off on November 9th, 2011. BrandsConf helps businesses to explore the options for ‘humanizing your brands’ as well as the possible effects this can have on your business.

In recent times, many businesses on and off the web have begun to find that utilizing Facebook and Twitter as a part of their business marketing plan has helped to firmly establish their presence on the web. This provides a new challenge in a business’s marketing campaign. Do you need to need a person, or a team of them to help establish and maintain your brand in the social world?

Views From BrandsConf on Humanizing Brands

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBqSRXYMaog]

What to Expect at #Brandsconf

Instead of just standing by and watching those who have achieved success and trying to learn from them at a distance, Jeff Pulver has invited them to attend #Brandsconf  and participate in the vital discussions held there.

You will hear from some of the most creative and innovative thinkers who will share their personal knowledge from the inside of several types of business segments. Since brands can transcend business elements, Jeff Pulver’s hope for #Brandsconf is to have a wide variety of industries represented.

With the same tradition practiced in the #140 Conferences and events, panels will run for ten to twenty minutes and presentations will remain ten minutes long.

Exploring a wide range of topics with the best practices for corporate branding, everyone should be able to come away with a new insider perspective in their particular industry.

About Jeff Pulver

Jeff Pulver is a top-notch entrepreneur who grew up in Kings Point, New York.  Graduating from Great Neck North High School, some of his early accomplishments include the founding of Spreadsheet Solutions Corp. that marketed macros and add-ins for Excel and Lotus.

In 1995, Pulver cultivated an interest in Internet Telephony. During this time, he was a systems administrator for the Cantor Fitzgerald firm. In 2003, Business Week listed him as a tech guru. Co-founder and shareholder in Vonage, a voice-over-ip provider, Pulver also invented a device known as CellSocket. Cellsocket could make and receive cell voice calls through standard telephones.

Pulver also helps to organize the #140conf, or 140 Character Conference, and is an investor in many startup companies.

Guest Speaker Ryan Osborn (@rozzy) – Director of Social Media at @NBCNews

In the summer of 2010, Ryan Osborn was named the first social media director at NBC News. With earlier beginnings as an aspiring journalist, he went from a page on The Today Show in 2002, to reaching the rank of Director of Social Media. However, Osborn does not have the typical view of how to utilize social media.

Osborn concentrates his efforts on Facebook and Twitter in the form of extended storytelling editorials from NBC News, instead of using it solely as a marketing tool. Osborn knows his organization well and knows the specific personalities that make it function smoothly. He believes that if you tell the right story, it will market itself. Having discovered Twitter in 2007 at a SxSW conference, he carried this knowledge back to The Today Show and began a feed. Ryan brings loads of vital social media marketing knowledge to  #BrandsConf .

Please help share awareness for the event by sharing the Twitter hashtag #BrandsConf

Want to attend? Enter Discount / Coupon Code “dbmei.com” to save 10% OFF, special discount for dbmei.com readers.

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SMX East: Acquisio for SEM Display Management

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A productivity efficiency platform, Acquisio was specifically created for search engine marketing agencies. Agencies are able to establish, organize, automate, and optimize their PPC campaigns across all search engines with Acquisio’s management tools, including search display and social media. This helpful platform will help marketers save time on repetitive or superfluous tasks so that more time can be allotted to campaign planning and improvement.

Acquisio offers:

  • External Data Feeds
  • Multi-Engine Bulk Editor
  • Seamless DART Integration
  • White Label Reporting Engine
  • Easy-to-Use Campaign Automation Engine
  • Advanced Budget and KPI Tracking
  • Automatic Currency Conversion

At the SMX conference on September 13th, 2011, Acquisio shared insights and their results from a year-long partnership with demand side platform. Without leaving the Acquisio platform, nearly 3,000 users are now managing over 7,000 brands by purchasing, tracking, comparing, and reporting on their display purchases across multi-million websites, without the need to leave Acquisio’s platform.

Many users believe that search and display should have been brought together far before now. The focus is on supplying targeted display ads for consumers who have shown intent by querying search engines with keywords that indicate they are likely to make a purchase. Acquisio has filled this gap by integrating this type of approach in an easily scalable manner.

Acquisio allows agencies to handle all tasks associated with their ads performance from the time of purchase. They host their own third-party ad server while employing single tracking functionality across channels. This in turn, provides agency marketers unrivaled conversion, revenue modeling, and reporting proficiency.

Who Uses Acquisio?

On the corporate level, users of Acquisio include the Yellow Pages Group, Media Experts, DAC Group, Guava, and many others. On the website level, Aquisio is currently ranked at #56,440 around the globe but does have a more concentrated following in Edinburgh where it ranks at #2,153.

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Facebook Contests: What are they? Who’s doing them? Why?

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Facebook contests have begun to prove themselves as the buzz generating, engagement increasing, fan count boosts that they are. Facebook landing pages have made creating email list for more in-depth advertising smooth and contact list-friendly. However, Facebook has their own notions about what you can and cannot share, administer, or promote via their platform. These days the best way to prevent your contest from kicking up Facebook moderator’s fury, is to keep any explicit elements from any type of promotion you run.

What Tools Help with Facebook Contests?

There are many ways to get a Facebook contest up and running. Many users with reasonable internet content experience can likely run them with little or no additional knowledge or training needed. Other users who may not have the knowledge or the time can easily engage the services of most any marketing consultancy to target this particular type of social media marketing campaigns.

Wildfire provides users with the ability to create different contest types.

  • Sweepstakes
  • Coupons
  • Group Deals
  • Trivia

Bulbstorm offers a similar experience as a consultancy and social media management firm. They have top-notch services that offer interactive campaign management to help those who may not have their own tech or social media department to do so for them.

BinkD is also another great option with free and paid options for creating Facebook contests.

Who Has Used Facebook Contest as Part of their Social Brand Management?

Many big brands have relied on Facebook contest to give themselves a boost in traffic, sales, and user-interaction.

Burger King

A unique and bold move by fast food giant Burger King was a contest they held in 2009 where Facebook users could claim a free Whopper for deleting at least ten of their friends from their lists. This contest gained instant popularity for a couple of reasons.

The main reason being of course that a coupon for a free Whopper was very enticing, but another reason was a smooth play on words that Burger King Contest developers used. As Facebook users deleted friends to gain their coupons, a message went out via their news feeds saying, “John Jones has sacrificed Emma Taylor for a free Whopper.” Many enjoyed the spirit of the contest, not just the free Whopper.

Coca Cola

Coca Cola execs also seemed to find value in Facebook contest when they attracted many new fans to their page with a photo contest. Users were asked to take photos of their most refreshing Coca Cola experiences. The top one hundred images with the most “Likes” moved onto the next level of the contest.

This method utilized a common feature of Facebook in that when users uploaded a photo, it was shared in their own account photo list. This triggered more fans that joined simply because they had seen the contest photo on a friends account.

Why FaceBook Contests?

There are a long list of reasons why using Facebook contest can be beneficial to your social media campaign as well as overall business growth. Considering the statistics of social media usage in marketing and business research, as well as the nature of many who love to enter contest, share photos of their friends and family, and of course win prizes, this is likely one of the biggest win-win’s in customer engagement for any size enterprise.

 

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What Makes Mobile Search Marketing Beneficial?

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Mobile marketing changed its definition in the early 2000’s when the original meaning, which was marketing on the go, changed into mobile search marketing, which are in essence, marketing techniques carried out over a mobile device.

SMS marketing is an advertising technique that involves the collection of mobile phone numbers to add to a messaging platform database. These numbers are collected so that when a special promotion or offer becomes available, the number list owner can send out a mass message to what they hope will be future repeat customers. SMS marketing relies on opt-in users due to practices established by the Mobile Marketing Association to help prevent unwanted messaging, similar to the protection offered by the Federal Do Not Call registry.

The fact that SMS messages are commonly read in the first four minutes after receipt means that this form of marketing is highly convertible.

A New Digital World

If we thought SMS marketing was impressive, then came the smartphone. A new world of marketing was then opened in many new forms.

  • MMS – Multimedia message service
  • Mobile Web Marketing
  • In-Game Marketing
  • Mobile Marketing via QR Codes
  • User-Controlled Media

Ever-Changing Media

So exactly what is changing about mobile search marketing? For one, it has become infinitely more complex than the simple SMS original formats. Mobile search marketing is unique not only in its format, but also in the way that it approaches the consumer. Traditional forms of marketing can be a combination of intrusive versus elusive.

Intrusive methods include telephone marketing, television advertising, and even door-to-door sales. Although intrusive methods have shown their own positive statistics about effectiveness, many elements such as increased crime rates, new laws and regulations, or increasing costs have made the intrusive forms of marketing much less lucrative in recent years.

Elusive methods are the most effective and can include in-game marketing, user-controlled media, or mobile web marketing. This type of marketing is effective in the sense that the advertisements are usually an ‘in addition to’ or bonuses. For instance, users can play the free game on their phone, or they can purchase the nearby advertisement option to achieve ‘pro’ status on the game. Users can utilize a particular browser and that browser may support and advertise their own series of media, apps, or programs.

Although some marketers still argue that mobile queries constitute too little of an overall end-result to make the campaign effort worthwhile, it is a notable fact that Google’s mobile query share has grown over five times in the last couple of years. Mobile search continues to grow at an accelerated rate than traditional search options.

There may be no time like the immediate present to gain pioneer advantages and initiate your mobile testing and paid search campaigns right away.

 

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Thumbtack Your Products and Services

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There are many ways to get your products and services some visibility while hopefully increasing your consumer or client base. Some are costly, and some are free. Many services offer to get your business posted on the top search engines, usually for a fee. Most small businesses that have done a bit of marketing and advertising understand that every little bit helps.

Getting Started on Thumbtack

Thumbtack does not charge users for listing their site, products, and services on all of the major search engines. Missing potential customers that can be gathered from this free resource seems rather counterproductive.

To get started users will simply need to enter their businesses name, number, location, average cost, and account information. Users should also take care and time with their business description, as this is the pitch that will bring possible consumers.

Once completed, a quick click will lead to the opportunity to upload a business logo, or product picture.

Craigslist Posting and Other Promotions

Once you have activated your account, Thumbtack will take you to their Craigslist posting page. This will walk you through a few prompts and then submit your site to Craigslist as a business service. Users are then be offered the option of earning points by listing their Thumbtack URL on their website or blog.

The rest of the registration process involves earning a few points for providing feedback to Thumbtack site developers, as well as getting users familiar with other elements of their points systems. On Thumbtack, the higher the points are on the user’s account, the better coverage, higher positions they are getting on Thumbtacks service site, and therefore search engines.

To increase your points, as well as provide more information about the behind-the-scenes workings of your business, be sure to answer the questions Thumbtack poses to users. Providing these tips and tricks of your trade can help to build trust with your prospective customers.

Who Uses Thumbtack?

Currently, Thumbtack is ranked at #7,531 globally and three-month traffic rankings show that 77% of those visitors are from the United States and analytics show the sites traffic has increased over 50% in the last three months.

In the US, where it has attained a traffic rank of 1,723. Relative to the overall population of internet users, this site’s users are disproportionately Caucasian, and they tend to be moderately educated women over the age of 35 who have incomes over $30,000. Thumbtack.com belongs to the “Marketplaces” category of websites. The site’s visitors view an average of 3.6 unique pages per day.

Thumbtack is ranked #7,531 in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings, and we estimate that 77% of visitors to this site come from the US, where it has attained a traffic rank…

 

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The Power of Facebook Webinars

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The Power of Facebook Webinars

Webinars are fast becoming a vital source of communication for a variety of different industry needs. Some examples of trending Webinar needs include:

  • Online Education
  • Business Meetings
  • Brainstorming Sessions

This is just the foundation for many of the ways that companies are currently utilizing Webinars. Most businesses and institutions have little choice these days but to look for more cost-efficient manners to carry out communications with a group who are not within affordable geographical reach. Company’s developed and deployed only online may also have serious outsourcing needs that can include vital training for their businesses. Even in a superb economy, having a face-to-face with online employees is an expenditure nightmare.

FBWebinars

As Facebook continues to step up their game in many areas, FBWebinars has added another element to the social networking giant that can provide business owners with a system that incorporates automated and recurring presentations, videos, webinars, and VSLs. Utilizing all of the viral aspects of Facebook, list building features make creating a FBWebinar a snap.

Currently still in their Pre-Launch phase, FBWebinars has an Alexa ranking of #61,602 with the larger part of its visitors coming in from the United States at 76% with a local traffic ranking of #15,661. Most users are males over the age of 35 with mid-level incomes.

What Can Users do with FBWebinars’ System?

With the FBWebinars system, users can promote any service, product, training or other webinar needs, as well as the products of any others, with their permission of course, or even create your own to promote many affiliate products or services.

Users on the basic account can add five custom webinars for their own products or services, and using pre-screened options do not count against your basic five.

The Future of Business and Educational Communications

Harnessing the educational or selling power of a webinar, with the mass marketing capabilities of Facebook certainly adds a few elements of ease to Webinar creation. Many users have already become loyal fans in just the short time FBWebinars has been in open beta. If your business or institution regularly relies on Webinars for communications, you may want to have a look at a review or two, do some research, and see if your webinar needs can be more efficiently met on the FBWebinar system.

With new updates popping off left and right, FBWebinar.com seems to be continually improving, at a rather fast rate. New methods such as the Viral Traffic Generation method and incentive programs are offering users innovations in Webinar technology previously unseen. You will not know until you investigate, but even without the impending updates, the current platform may be the perfect tool for your organization to launch products or services, create educational and training presentations, and improve your online marketing campaigns.

FBWebinar Updates

FBWebinars has already implemented a few new upgrades.

FBWebinars Incentives – This program will offer users a gift when they invite a designated number of friends to attend their webinar.

FBWebinars ‘Done for You’ – FBWebinars’ goal is to provide its users with a consistent stream of the newest and most profitable webinars with the highest conversion rates. Let FBWebinars help you to turn your webinars into sales, traffic, and a powerful tool for list building.

Click Here to get your account now!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkpJdmxTX-g]

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Facebook buys Push Pop Press: Facebooks?

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Facebook has announced this week the purchase of Push Pop Press, a fact that raised eyebrows and posed questions about where is the company going next.

Push Pop Press, started by two former Apple employees, Mike Matas and Kinon Tsubteris, aimed to change how the future books will be read. They presented their innovation at a TED conference in  Sept. 2009  by using their first published book, Al Gore’s “Our Choice”. The book provides an interactive experience that has not yet been seen. You can read the book like a traditional book, flip pages in real time. You can tap on the pictures and they will enfold to a full screen, and pinch them down to size. You can watch the pictures turn into videos about what you read, photographed in the actual locations, and you can see statistical information. Not only that,  you can play interactive games with the book, by blowing on the screen to see how fast the wind turbines move in the picture. AND you can do it all instantaneously without waiting for it to download. The book, readable on iPad and iPhone won Apple’s Design Awards.

Now people are wondering what is up Facebook’s sleeve? Are they branching out to new business that is not social media? Are they planning to start making and publishing books? Selling them through their site and competing with Apple, Amazon and Google?

On Push Pop Press’s website it says: “Although Facebook isn’t planning to start publishing digital books, the ideas and technology behind Push Pop Press will be integrated with Facebook, giving people even richer ways to share their stories. With millions of people publishing to Facebook each day, we think it’s going to be a great home for Push Pop Press.”

Some experts say the move to buy the company’s technology might be linked to Facebook’s entertainment platform. After all, for years Facebook has been saying they are not only a social network but an entertainment distributor. Facebook has a very robust gaming platform with hundred of million of users playing video games. Earlier this year, Facebook has started testing streaming movies in partnership with WB.

Or it might be that the purchase was to swoop up the talented engineers behind the company who clearly understand the tablet market better than Facebook.

Be it as it may, the Push Pop Press team will cease publishing books but the Al Gore book is still available for sale on their site with the proceeding going to charity.

People are lamenting the loss of such an innovative idea, but I have a feeling we haven’t seen the end of it yet. Facebook, which was started in college and for college students, might have a plan to revolutionize future education, by working on the future of school textbooks. Electronic books which can be updated and improved without having to print any single copy.

And all the books a student needs, from kindergarten to post graduate, can be seen on one, easily carried, tablet.

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XY Do: Facebook buys e-book maker Push Pop Press Plans to Integrate its Tech

Google AdWords: Call Metrics & Click to Call

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Since Dec. 2010, Google has allowed placement of phone numbers in AdWords text body.  Their rational was that most people seeing the ad know they are one click away from the advertiser’s site, where they can find all the information without bothering anyone. They thought people would be unlikely to call instead of clicking the mouse.

Others thought that displaying a local phone number, especially if it is  for location based services such as a dentist, have their own benefits.

Google realized they might be losing money, if people do call instead of clicking on the ad, so they’ve added Call Extensions. Those are types of ad extensions that allow advertisers to include additional information about their businesses and specials in their text ads. Call extensions works differently whether or not you’ve enabled Call Metrics.

Call metrics allows advertisers to track phone calls that come from the ad. This is done by generating a specific phone number for this specific ad. With the popularity of mobile gadgets there’s a growing benefit for advertisers to receive calls from mobile users. In this platform, calls generated, duration of the call and the area codes of the callers are noted so advertisers will have information about the location of the calls. The Call Metrics is free to use, but by setting it up the advertiser started paying for the calls as they did for the clicks.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIJ36uUxJBw]

There are metrics available to see how effective it is and how many people call instead of clicking. If you did enable Call Metrics, Google assigned a custom phone number to the ad and displays it on both desktop and mobile devices. Vanity numbers (which include letters and numbers) are also allowed.

But In July 2011, Google announced click-to-call enhancement in AdWords ads which will affect charges for the ad. All non-clickable numbers in the ads will be converted to a click-to-call numbers, and they will start to incur extra charges when the number is clicked.

If you didn’t enable Call Metrics, your phone number will appear as a clickable phone number for users of smartphones using Google search, voice search, Google mobile apps or Google maps.

If you are using Call Metrics, and you have a phone number in your ad text, only the newly clickable phone number in you ad text will show. That is done to reduce confusion for users not knowing which number to click.

If you would like your Call Extension number to display, you need to delete your phone number from your ad. You will receive an additional line of ad text. The phone number will still be displayed without the need to take up text space.

If you didn’t use Call Extension and you have a phone number in your ad, it will convert to click-to-call automatically. You don’t have to edit your ad to make the phone number clickable. But, if you want to maximize your ad space, you should consider using Call Extension  to free up more space. You will be charged for the calls either way.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88VTa0GfBiE]

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Google Plus (G+): Business Review

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After months of rumors, speculations, analysis and fear, Google finally unveiled its social media platform  Google +, now what has that meant for business?

They’ve decided to roll it out slowly, by invitation only, and the response was overwhelming. So much so that they had to issue an apology for taking so long to register new users. It seems that one request or recommendation to connect is not enough. To get invited to this new party you need invitations from different sources.

As the platform came out and was evaluated by business people, it became obvious that Google+ system has a few advantages for business: Dell CEO, for example, started talking about it becoming an alternative to the traditional customer service call. He posted the following question on his Google + page: “I am thinking about hangouts for business. Would you like to be able to connect with your Dell service and sale teams via video directly from Dell.com?

Other businesses saw the potential as well. Mashable.com, Ford, Sesame Street, Search Engine Land an others managed to get invited and immediately opened a brand page. Mashable.com, the technology site, had 103,000 followers by the time Google+ put a stop to businesses on their platform and removed all those pages.

At the end of June, after a few rocky weeks for brands on Google+, Google announced that business pages would be coming soon and asked brands to stop making new accounts. They eventually invited some businesses to apply to be part of a test program.

A few hours later, Mashable and Ford accounts were restored, but not completely.  After talking extensively with Google, Mashable founder Pete Cashmore agreed that he will personally take over the account, which had 100,000 followers already, and wind down his personal account which had only 40,000 followers.

Immediately Christian Oestlien from Google posted the following announcement:

“With so many qualified candidates expressing intense interest in business profiles, we’ve been thinking hard about how to handle this process. Your enthusiasm obligates us to do more to get businesses involved in Google+ in the right way, and we have to do it faster. As a result, we have refocused a few priorities and we expect to have an initial version of businesses profiles up and running for EVERYONE in the next few months. There may be a tiny handful business profiles that will remain in the meantime solely for the purpose of testing how businesses interact with consumers.

In the meantime, we ask you not to create a business profile using regular profiles on Google+. The platform at the moment is not built for the business use case, and we want to help you build long-term relationships with your customers. Doing it right is worth the wait. We will continue to disable business profiles using regular profiles. We recommend you find a real person who is willing to represent your organization on Google+ using a real profile as him-or-herself.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4oafKRykUg]

What is it about Google+ that prompted businesses to jump on the bandwagon so quickly?

It is the wave of the future, experts say, and it might signify a drastic shift in social activity on the internet. Connecting to people will no longer be faceless. It addresses one of the fundamental problems of why social interactions through the internet are so risky. The one writing messages as a 17 year old girl, could turn out to be a 40 year old man looking for easy pray. No more. Now you will be able to connect and see the face behind the post.

It lifts the veil of anonymity. People can see and hear the people they interact with, can hear their tone of voice and see their demeanor. Business will become personal again?

Businesses can use circles to target their ‘tier one’ costumers with specials deals. They can provide personal attention by seeing the customer who can see them as well.  When a number of customers have the same question, one conversation with a whole group will save time on customer service.

It might also encourage personal interactions between people who see each other, who can lend a helping hand.

Companies will need to consider the intimacy of a given relationship. The first wave of social media forced businesses to become a little more transparent and compelling online, this wave of relationship relevancy will push them to take their customers more personally.

The biggest advantages Google + has against Facebook?

Google is a big company. It can offer an immediate search. It has connections to Google’s other platforms off the bat.

As of July 4 Google’s contract with Twitter expired and they did not renew it. Expert speculate that Google+ will incorporate some form of tweet possibility. If they do that, businesses will have one more reason to join them rather than the competition. It will make their life simpler.

Google has apps for business productivity as well as an apps market for third party apps.

Google can provide companies a web presence integrated with social networking. There will be very little reason for people to leave the Google platform at all.

Google has already the Checkout system and its Products search is connected to all sorts of online merchants. Google can tie those and enable e commerce through the company’s page – when those pages will become available – enabling payment service and database of products without sending shoppers off to another site. Facebook does it with the help of a third part tools which cost  anywhere from about $20 to a few thousands a month.

Google’s model of advertising and analytics is well established and most often used. AdSense and AdWords have been around since 2000. Google Analytics has a head start on traffic and advertisement performance tools, and is one most often used to check results on campaigns.

Google can, and probably will, tie-in the business pages of Google+ to Google maps and Google Places.

Google’s mobile integration includes mobile payment option, which allows users to transmit data by tapping two phone together or to a scanner. 

Facebook rushed to supply an answer to Google+ strength and announced immediately a connection with Skype to do the same. Their new video calling works by clicking on the Video Call button, being rolled out to users. It requires a plug-in to be able to use it. They are working on other means to come closer to the new things Google+ has to offer. Indeed this week Facebook unveiled a new step by step guide aimed at helping small businesses use their site. Facebook’s new business page does not come with any new features, it just puts a lot of information in one place, and serves as a reminder that Facebook encourages companies to use their services, while they can’t use Google+ yet.

Some statistics at a glance:

  • Number of users of Google+ – 20 million
  • Time it took to get those numbers – 3 weeks
  • Number of users from the US – 5 million


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