I was chatting with a fellow business owner recently. In actual fact I was try to entice him to attend our new online networking sessions, Coffee and Tech. He was pretty enthusiastic, until he realised he would need a webcam to attend as it is essentially a free video-conference for up to 10 people.

The lack of a webcam on his PC took me a little by surprise, as the ubiquity of Skype and other video-calling services, allied to the growing market share of laptops (which all come with built-in webcams these days) over destop PCs means that it’s quite unusual for someone not to have easy access to a webcam on demand.

An Internet Identity

Interestingly, during the first Coffee and Tech session, part of the discussion touched on how people’s behaviour during a Hangout (the free Google+ video-conference facility) doesn’t always match their behaviour in text-based interactions, such as Twitter.

Is it fair to say that many people amend their behaviour when communicating via a keyboard? Do mild-mannered accountants become raging megalomaniacs when the worst possible comeback is a line of characters on the screen?

Being honest, I have written things online that I would not have said if face-to-face with the other person. I’m sure many others can say the same thing. Certainly, having the opportunity to take a little time to formulate your next sentence, paragraph or email allows us to organise out thoughts, and gives those who may be less quick-witted but no less intelligent a chance to hold their own in a discussion.

But often it goes beyond that, particularly if the identity is truly anonymous and you are only known by a fairly random ‘User ID’ within an online community. In these places it is far-too-easy for someone to completely change their identity, so that their online persona more matches the person they want to be rather than the person they are. That may be older or younger, fitter or fatter, even the opposite sex at times.

The desire to be someone else on the internet can also arise for reasons that go beyond the simple desire to try a different persona. In this case, though, the behavioural change is frequently less marked, or it may even be that the online persona is closer to the ‘real’ person.

The Socialisation of the Internet

The world that fostered and embraced such anonymity is now changing, and those changes are being driven by Facebook, Twitter, Google and everyone else trying to jump on the social network bandwagon. No longer is it OK by all and sundry for you to be known as ‘bubba123′, a Jedi Knight from Atlantis. Nope, that simply won’t do any more.

Why? It’s pretty simple really, and all to do with advertising. Think back to when Mark Zuckerberg was actually as young as he looks now, and ‘The Facebook’ was a means of American college students keeping in touch with each other. He may not have realised it then, but the decision to try to grow the user base as much as possible and worry about how to make money out of it later was, pretty obviously in hindsight, a masterstroke.

It’s all about the data

The point at which Facebook started making serious money was not long after its user base became attractive to advertisers. Never before did they have access to a single database of hundreds of millions of people, where significant amounts of personal information was known, without having to spend a *lot* of money purchasing the data in the first place.

“Want to sell your lipstick to females aged between 18 and 40, living in the UK? Sure, no problem, here’s half a million people in front of whom you can place your ad.”

Often that’s far better than hoping that some of your target market go searching for lipstick, so you can place an ad in the search results. It’s like the difference between going to Boots to buy lipstick, and going to Boots to buy lunch, and noticing some lipstick while you’re there.

No more Ms Anonymous

So Facebook found a way to gather more personal information from vast numbers of people than anyone before. It’s now a proven model. So others are trying to do the same thing…most obviously and successfully, Google. There are many parallels between Google+ and Facebook, simply because Google are trying to glean the same information from you that Facebook has.

As a result, the pressure on the people with the money (that’s you and me spending our hard-earned) to provide more and more information continues. But in return, we get access to more and more services. Facebook is a great way of keeping in touch with friends and relatives without having to send out the clichéd Christmas missive detailing what’s happened in the past year. Want Aunt Mabel in Melbourne to see little Jonny’s first rugby match? Upload it to Facebook and wait for the ‘like’.

Similarly, the sheer range of online services offered to consumers and small businesses for free by Google (Gmail, Google Docs, Youtube, Analytics, Google+, etc, etc, etc) is rather staggering when you take the time to absorb it all.

Of course some people object to opening their souls to enormous American organisations. I can understand their reluctance, and they are not forced to have a Facebook, Twitter or Google account. But I also think it’s perfectly acceptable for those companies to restrict their ‘free’ services to those who offer up some personal information.

It’s an old saying, but perfectly true even today…

Nothing in life is free

The coffee part is mainly because I find it almost impossible to function if I haven’t had a couple of cups by then. The Tech aspect describes what I will be able to bring to the party – a rough working knowledge of a few tech-related areas.

A new kind of networking?

This has come about mainly because I find it difficult to get to many of the available networking events. Being a father of school-age kids, most of the networking events available are ruled out simply because they take place in the morning or evening.

Thus, I find myself attending 3 or 4 lunches per month on average. This isn’t a problem at that level, as the benefit of attending these events (raising my profile and having human contact) far outweigh the downside (a significant chunk out of an already foreshortened working day). However, that downside would become pretty onerous pretty quickly were I to try and increase my networking efforts.

So the solution is to try a new kind of networking. I say new, but the facilities have been available in the past in the form of video-conferencing systems (think GoToMeeting or Skype premium at the lower end of the market). But the issue with these solutions is that they have had an associated cost. Not a huge cost, but enough to make people think twice about signing up.

Why Google+ Hangouts change the game

What make G+ Hangouts so different, I hear you ask? Well, none of the technical features are particularly groundbreaking, but the combination of all them at a great price point (i.e. FREE!) changes the game. A lot. What do you get with Hangouts?

• Group video chat for up to 10 simultaneous participants
• Pretty good audio and video compression, so huge bandwidth isn’t needed
• Screen sharing
• Document sharing (using Google Docs)
• Whiteboard facility

In addition, the sheer number of people who already have Google+ accounts, 90m at the latest count, means that there are plenty of other people out there for you to connect with. Google are also making is as easy as possible for new people to sign up.

Will it kill other forms of networking? Actually, I don’t think so. I suspect some people like me will be able to network more, and others will be enticed to try for the first time. It might even boost attendance at other “real life” networking events once people discover how good it can be.

A happy marriage

Given my desire to network more, and the great features available in G+ Hangouts, putting the two together is obvious. Would it be possible to charge for access in the way traditional networking events do? Probably, yes, given that the Hangouts can be restricted to a named circle of people. But I don’t want to do that for a few reasons:

• There are no costs involved.
• It will be pretty informal, more a bunch of friends having a chat over coffee that a formal, BNI-type, networking event.
• I plan to take a back seat as much as possible and just facilitate the discussion.
• If it becomes too difficult to keep going then it can just fade away quietly. If you charge up front then there is more of an obligation to keep it running.

On your marks…

So it’s all ready to go. I’ve publicised the event to business contacts and others, and interest levels have been gratifyingly high. Monday morning I’ll be smarter than usual, and the office will be tidier than usual. I’ll also be a bit more nervous than usual!

Maybe I’ll hold off on that second coffee until it’s done.

What exactly is a cookie?

There is a rather long description of cookies over at Wikipedia, but in essence a cookie can be described as follows:

A cookie is a small text file placed on your computer by a web browser that allow a website to identify your computer every time is access the site.

Good old Aunty Beeb has a nice page on the subject.

Do cookies hold personal information?

Very rarely. The typical data held in a cookie is a unique ID (normally a random sequence of letters and numbers), the address of the website to which it pertains, and an expiry date after which the browser will normally delete the cookie. That information is then used to hold relevant information on the website’s back-end database.

Why are they used?

All sorts of reasons, but frequent uses include:

• Website analytics, so that, for example, all pages viewed during a single visit to the site can be grouped as a single visitor’s ‘session’.
• On shopping sites, the contents of a shopping cart are normally managed using cookies so that your basket isn’t suddenly emptied when you leave a page.
• Maintaining user preferences (e.g. language) from one visit to the next.

There have also been some uses that have been considered less than above board. Facebook, we’re looking at you.

So what’s changed now?

The EU have decreed that member countries need to introduce legislation obliging all website owners to ensure that their websites obtain consent from users to add cookies to their PCs. There are exceptions for cookies that are essential to the functionality of the website (such as shopping basket cookies), but otherwise nothing should be stored if consent hasn’t been gained.

Consent cannot be implied through the use of such as a privacy policy, as you cannot guarantee that the policy will be read before cookies are set. Neither can you assume that the user will have ensured their browser cookie settings have been reviewed, and thus imply acceptance from that.

The ICO have recently issued a guidance document to try to clarify matters.

It’s important, right now, to realise that the UK are currently within a 12-month grace period as far as applying the necessary changes to their website. So you have until 25th May to ensure your websites are compliant.

What should I do?

That really depends on your website. If you do not use cookies then you do not have to do anything. If you only use ‘essential’ cookies then again you are OK, apart from needing to ensure that your website contains details of those cookies somewhere accessible – preferably a separate page.

The biggest dilemma is what to do if you use a website analytics service that relies on cookies to be set, such as the ever popular Google Analytics. At the moment the ICO Guidance document linked to above states that analytics are not ‘essential’ and so consent must be gained.

Unfortunately that is likely to completely negate the effectiveness of the anaytic data gathered.

To illustrate, the ICO themselves released information on the impact of gaining consent on their website analytics. The visitor figures, which were very consistent leading up to the implementation, subsequently dropped by 90%! That doesn’t mean that visitors numbers actually decreased, simply that only 10% of visitors agreed to implement cookies. Suddenly, the ICO have a lot less data about their website visitors with which to inform their marketing.

As a developer I know that many businesses live or die by the effectiveness of their website, and use analytic data as the means of measuring the effectiveness of various online (and offline) marketing efforts. However, I cannot recommend that a legal requirement be ignored, especially when the ICO have explicitly stated that consent should be gained for analytic cookies.

What I would instead recommend is:

1. Determine which cookies your website creates. The simplest way would be to look at your browser’s cookies having visited the site and carried out all the relevant tasks possible on the site. It would probably be sensible to use a separate browser install (e.g. use IE for the test if normally you use Chrome for browsing) so that you can clear all cookies first and ensure the browser settings don’t block any cookies.
2. Don’t rush into changes. Nothing will happen before 25th May, so you should plan any changes for implementation before then. Since there is likely to be an impact on the effectiveness of your website, its best to make the change as late as possible. Don’t assume, though, that your web developer will be free in the run up to that date…best to book their time early.
3. Form your own view. Become familiar with the legislation and make sure you’re comfortable with the chosen course of action. Ultimately, its your website, so you carry the can if its deemed to be non-compliant.
4. Question your analytic provider’s efforts. Analytics stand to be hard hit by this legislation, so it would be sensible for them to change the product so that it does not require cookies. Google’s Analytics Blog has yet to confirm or deny rumours that they will alter their product, but the smart money is on them doing so, or putting pressure on the EU to exempt analytics cookies.

Here at Four Lakes we are keeping a close eye on the legislation and also on solutions that may minimise the impact on analytics, particularly for WordPress-based websites.

But to dismiss this particular change as mere window dressing would be wrong. Actually, ‘wrong’ is not nearly strong enough! Let me re-state it, in big, bold letters.

The latest Google search change could make or break your business!

There, that’s about right.

Big statement, are you sure?

Absolutely! Lets look at the change. Rather than try to describe the detail here, you should read Google’s announcement in the link above. The video (below) illustrates the change very well, so watch that below even if you don’t read the announcement. Although given the enormity of the change, why wouldn’t you?

OK, so you should now know a bit about what’s changing. Let’s explore the implications.

Being ‘top of Google’

If I had a pound for every customer that asked me what they had to do to be top of Google search rankings….

The fact is, for some time now, Google have been personalising results. Therefore, two people both searching for, say, ‘italian restaurant’ would get different results depending on what Google knows about them (location, previous searches, etc). This has made it difficult to definitively be ‘on the first page’.

Now that will be completely blown out of the water!

Social Search+

Why? Well the essence of the latest change is the integration of Google+. Therefore, if you’re logged in (and somewhere in the region of 50m+ people already have Google+ accounts) then you can view search results that are tailored by what your Google+ contacts have done.

Consider our example search term ‘Italian Restaurants’. What are you most likely to use, the one that comes top of search results based on the way they have optimised their website, or the one that comes top because it is local, and your contacts have been there (using Google checkin), and have rated it highly (using Google Places), and have posted on Google+ about their experience, and have uploaded photos of the food and decor?

No contest really, you’ll trust your contacts’ real-life experiences over some SEO jiggery-pokey. Every time!

Not everyone uses G+

True, not everyone does. You can also argue that not everyone uses Facebook, so why should you have a Facebook page. That kind of misses the point, though. More than enough people use Facebook to make it a potentially valuable source of traffic and enquiries. Not some many use G+ yet, and maybe never will, but it’s growing rapidly and you can be sure Google will be doing everything it can to persuade people to sign up.

But even if they don’t succeed in becoming as big as Facebook, it’s already a niche waiting to be targetted. Just think, 50m users getting personalised search results. If your business has an active Google+ presence, chances are you’ll have stolen a march on your rivals. If G+ grows, then even better.

Personally, I believe Google has invested too much effort reorganising the rest of their business around G+ to give up on it. It’s here to stay. After all, Facebook are expected to introduce a search component to their platform. A development that once had the capability to render Google search irrelevant at a stroke, although not now.

Plan of action

So what do you need to do?

1. Get yourself a Google+ profile (if you haven’t already done so).
2. Immerse yourself in G+ to familiarise yourself with it – its capabilities, its protocols, etc.
3. Create a G+ page for your business, and use G+ as your business when appropriate:
1. Contribute to discussions, add photos
2. Use the +1 button – lots
3. Engage!
4. Stay signed in to G+ when using other Google products
5. Add the +1 button to your blog posts
6. Add your G+ profile badge to your website

If you already have a Facebook page for your business, then the activities you carry out there are pretty much equivalent. But right now, G+ is more important for most as it will directly affect your business presence in Google’s search results far more than any Facebook activity. For most businesses, Google still provides more traffic than Facebook.

Do it now!

If, as I expect, G+ continues to grow and challenges Facebook’s popularity, your business stands to benefit hugely from this work. If you wait, others will jump in first and you’ll end up playing catch-up.

I hear from many people that they just don’t like social media and can’t get on with it. If you want to stay in business, I’m afraid that’s just not good enough. Many company owners said the same thing about websites 10 or so years ago, and how many of them have survived to today with a web presence? How many have thrived?

Do it now, or you’ll regret it.

Most of us have something else in common too, New Year’s Resolutions! I’ve gone for the fairly typical personal stuff – shift a bit of weight, exercise more, drink less, etc. Work-wise, I want to make sure my website is doing its job as well as possible, namely attracting potential new customers. So here are 3 areas I plan to revisit to achieve that goal:

1. Fresh Content
   Sometimes people come to your website ready to make a purchasing decision. That’s not always the case, though. Sometimes they happen across your site because of an interesting topic, or a link from elsewhere. They may not purchase at that point, but they are now aware that you exist. So you need to give them reasons to come back.
   One reason might be that you often add content that is of interest to them. It can be articles, offers or whatever, but if you stay fresh in their minds then, come the point when they do want your product or service, they are much more likely to consider what you have to offer.
   For me that will mean frequent blogging (once a week at the moment) and a review of more static content at least twice a year. OK, it’s a little cheat as I started blogging back in December, but my resolution is to continue come rain, hail or shine.
2. Smooth User Experience
   Ever wonder how often a person gives up on your website because they can’t find what they are looking for? Difficult to know for sure, but when you consider that the attention span of someone visiting your site lasts mere seconds, you realise that overly wordy copy and a lack of ‘calls to action’ can really hurt you. That’s before you even consider how long pages take to load, and if your navigation structure makes sense!
   So very shortly I will be reviewing my website structure and content and asking myself – Is it obvious what each page is for? Is there a clear call to action? Can the visitor get to other parts of the site quickly and easily? Are links off site opening in new windows (never assume they’ll come back of their own accord)? and so on. You should do the same.
3. Analytics
   Your site does have analytics, right? If not, stop reading NOW and get it sorted. If you don’t know how many people are looking at your site, what path they are taking and where they have some from then there is no way you can measure how effective any changes are. It doesn’t even cost any money to use Google Analytics, although I can heartily recommend a customer of mine, A1WebStats, if you want a bit extra.
   What I will be doing is looking a some key metrics, both as a baseline before I make any changes, and as a means of setting some achievable goals for later on this year. Those metrics will include – Unique Visitors, Pages per Visit, % New Visits, Bounce Rate, Search Terms and Referring Sites. I think these are core for most sites, then depending on your line of business you might also want to check where your visitors are located and other metrics.
   I will also keep an eye on the browsers and operating systems of the visitors, as if there is a surge with a new browser I will want to make sure that it sees everything as indented. Operating systems metrics will show me if lots of smartphone or tablet users are starting to browse the site. I can then drill down to their particular browsing stats to make sure they are not experiencing any issues unique to them.

So there you have it, my resolutions for my website. I’d love to hear what yours are?

So how does that apply to the use of social networks for your business? Well, in Part One and Part Two of this series I outlined just some of the options available, and then outlined which were best for particular scenarios. What hasn’t ben discussed yet is how best to use those networks on a day to day basis.

The problem

Promoting your business can be a full time job in itself. In addition to tradition methods you may be using such as print advertising, radio, TV, and so on, you have probably invested time and money in online promotion too – centered on your website. And that is as it should be.

On top of the money, effort and, most importantly, time spend on these, you are now been asked to spend more time updating social media…possibly across multiple networks.  Surely its too much? But many other business owners manage to use social media to effectively promote their business. Are they giving up on other methods?

How to make it easy

There are very few businesses that will succeed by transferring all their promotional efforts over to social media. The solution is to make it as easy and time efficient as possible to use social media in addition to other channels. How? Let’s look at a couple of ways you can do this.

1. Create once, publish many times

One of the most effective uses of social media is to attract readers to your website, and in particular to blog posts like this. If, like me, you have a website based on the WordPress content management system, then you can extend the functionality of your website in a very effective way. In WordPress, you can add extra features to your site by installing ‘plugins’, which are a bit like the apps on one of Steve Jobs iconic telephony devices.

There are plugins for many uses, but for now we’re interested in pushing new blog/news posts to the various social media channels. These will work by linking to yoru account on a social network, and then publishing a new update/tweet/etc. when you create new content on your website.

One which I use on a regular basis is called Wordbooker. As stated above, this connects to your social network, Facebook in this case, and allows you to automatically have new blog posts pushed to your Facebook wall, or more pertinently to your business page’s wall.

Another plugin, Twitter Tools, will let you link your site to Twitter in a similar manner. In fact, pretty much every social network will have a WordPress plugin that will allow you to automatically promote you new content. The one exception at the moment is Google Plus, and this is simply because Google are rolling out the API (Application Programming Interface) on a gradual basis, and there is currently no means of creating new G+ posts programatically. You can be very sure that a plugin will surface as soon as the API is extended.

Of course, not all websites use WordPress, but the principle applies across many of the popular content management systems such as Drupal and Joomla.

2. Social dashboard

Of course there are times when you want to use social media to promote something other than the latest blog post on your website. For instance, you might want to make a series of updates across Twitter and Facebook promoting a special offer or a competition. Whilst you might have a single blog post setting this up, your blog probably isn’t the best place to continue making updates to drum up as much interest as possible.

As with the publishing of blog posts, there are a number of ways in which you can automate this process. One which I use to good effect is Hootsuite, which is an online service that allows you to connect to most of the major social networks. Hootsuite then allows you to post updates to one or many of the connected services.

Beyond the basic functionality, Hootsuite will also allow you to schedule updates in advance. In addition, you can use it to monitor blogs, posting updates when new content appears. In this way you can get around websites that don’t allow you to automatically push new content out usign plugins.

Hootsuite has other features, some of which require a paid-for Pro account. But it’s feasible for someone needing relatively basic features across a limited number of accounts to use the free service to very good effect.

Make it happen

I hope you have found the information in all three posts in this series useful. If there is one item of advice I could offer, though, it would be to get started. Don’t wait until you understand absolutely every aspect of all the social networks you choose to use, and the tools you employ to make life easier. The nature of social media changes constantly, and if you wait for full understanding then it will have moved on by the time you get there.

Social media is quite ephemeral in nature. To paraphrase, today’s tweet is tomorrow’s recycled bytes. So mistakes tend not to hang around to haunt you in the way that, say, blog posts might. So get started, connect with lots of people, engage with them in a personal way as well as promoting your business, and find your voice.

That sets the scene for the big questions, namely

• Which social networks should I use?
• How should I use them?

I can’t tell you the answers to those questions, only you can do that. But I do have a few pointers that I think can help you make the right decision.

Which networks?

OK, so the first decision is which of the networks to use. Part one outlined four that I think everyone should consider, namely Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. Choosing which ones to expend time and effort on is important, and depends on a number of factors:

1. What you are selling
   Are you selling products and/or services?
2. How much you need to sell
   Does your business need to sell in bulk, or are your products/services high cost & value?
3. Who you’re trying to reach
   Is your business trying to sell to other businesses or to the general public?
4. Your preferred style of communication
   Are you happy bashing out lots on copy on a keyboard, or do you prefer short, sharp, pithy interactions. Are you more comfortable behind the scenes, or do you like to meet your potential customers face-to-face?

Once you’ve answered those questions then you will be in a much better position to decide which network(s) will suit you best.

Engagement

Before we look at each network in turn, I must take one moment to emphasis the need for businesses using social media not to ignore the ‘social’ aspect of the medium. If you do not engage with people using one of your social media channels then you are bound to fail. People expect personalised responses, and if you can’t do that then it’s best not to use social media in the first place.

Decision time

Taking each network in turn we can evaluate them against the criteria above:

Facebook

• Consumer-oriented, with business pages
• Product/service agnostic
• Huge potential market
• Business people use it, but often for personal reasons
• Recently allowed long status updates, but they are still rare

Facebook is pretty agnostic as far as products v services goes. However, the sheer number of subscribers make it a better choice than other networks if your goal is to pull in lots of interested parties. They have also removed restrictions on status update size, although it remains difficult to introduce any serious formatting to aid readability.

Whilst making inroads into the B2B sphere, Facebook remains highly focussed on consumers and so is more suited to marketing to them. Of course you can argue that many Facebook subscribers are business people, but I remain to be convinced that they view Facebook as a business tool.

In short, Facebook is the go-to network for B2C, especially if you are looking to attract large numbers. Small independent high street shops are seeing Facebook as a viable alternative to their own website, for instance.

If you do want to give Facebook a go for B2B marketing, though, then here are some useful B2B tips.

Twitter

• No particular orientation for business v consumer or service v product
• Good reach…particularly amongst celebrities etc.
• Short status updates, so mostly used for signposting and pithy comments

The one defining feature of twitter is the strict character limit for posts (or ‘tweets’). This means that anything longer needs to be created elsewhere and then a link to it in a tweet. Whilst this is accepted behaviour on twitter, it is usual for there to be a good mix between tweets containing links and those that don’t. So if you really prefer being verbose rather than pithy, then perhaps twitter is not the best tool for you.

Twitter is a funny beast in social networking terms, as at first glance it would not appear to have the tools to allow you to easily reach out to potential customers. This is certainly true if you look to grow your network organically and only target your ‘followers’. However, the use of the RT (retweet – where someone re-posts your tweet to their followers) can allow you to shortcut that process, if you can persuade someone with a big following to oblige.

Even if you don’t actively use twitter for marketing purposes, it is worth keeping an eye on it for mentions of your company. Twitter is very much an ‘of the moment’ tool, and can be a good way to catch dissatisfied customers and quickly address their concerns before they are lost for good.

LinkedIn

• Very business oriented
• More suitable to services than products
• Good discussion areas with little ‘trolling’

LinkedIn is the definitive B2B tool, and seems happy to restrict itself to that arena. It’s a good way of connecting to individuals, if you can find a relatively natural way of persuading them to link to you (e.g. a common contact). They also use groups as a means of enabling conversations with link-minded individuals.

Whilst LinkedIn is fairly even in terms of promoting products or services, the importance placed on the linking process means that it is more suited to low volume/high value sales rather than the opposite.

Google+

• Relatively small but growing quickly
• Business/consumer agnostic
• Rich content and good engagement with topic groups

Google’s new social network is an interesting beast, and is still evolving. Connecting to others is as easy as on twitter, but the ability to share rich content is better than on Facebook. In addition, the video ‘Hangout’ feature adds a new twist, one that has yet to be fully exploited by businesses. My experience with G+ to date also suggests that it lends itself to more in depth discussions than Facebook or Twitter, given that there has been no size limit to posts or comments from day 1.

However, above all these, its the likely impact a Google+ presence will have on SEO that makes it difficult for me to advise companies to ignore it. Google is still the major player in the search engine world, and have been indexing G+ content from day 1 – and presumably ranking it higher than the same content on Facebook, Twitter, etc. More recently, they have also enhanced search results to show which of your G+ contacts have shared articles, thus suggesting that these results might be more pertinent to you.

The end result is that, perhaps more so than any other social network, a presence on Google+ can bring a significant benefit to your business even if none of your target market use G+!

Making the decision

To summarise, it’s difficult to say which networks will work best for your business. Certainly, if you’re targeting consumers, then LinkedIn isn’t appropriate. I would also argue that B2B shouldn’t put all their eggs in the Facebook basket, although it’s useful to have a presence of some sort there. Twitter is great for those whose personalities are suited to that platform, but again can also be used just to signpost people to richer content on your website. G+ is likely to raise your search engine visibility more than any of the others.

In short, you should probably try the two or three networks that suit your business and your personal style the best.

Now I know that sounds like a lot of hard work, but it needn’t be. In part 3 I will have a look at some strategies that you can employ to manage your social network activities more effectively.

In the meantime, let me know below which networks you have ended up using, and how they have boosted your business (or not as the case may be).

The format of this particular networking event is very relaxed. We are always served a lovely lunch by Sarah, the host. Then everyone round the table has the opportunity to talk for a few minutes about their business and what they hope to get out of the meeting. Most often it’s leads for potential customers, but not always. For instance yesterday we had a local social enterprise, Kent Creative Arts, looking for sponsorship for their Support 365 event.

Before lunch and the more formal side of the event, there is the inevitable milling around chatting to people about anything from business issues to their plans for the Christmas period. Yesterday this evolved into a group discussion about social media, which seems to be a recurring topic at these meetings. And whilst most of the people around the table use social media to some extent, there seemed to be a lot of confusion over which ones to focus on.

During my 5 minute spiel I focussed on this rather than the more general overview of what I do, but it’s difficult to get everything across in such a short period of time, so I thought a blog post or two would be useful. Even this will need to gloss over much of the topic, but hopefully it will help put everything in context.

Which social networks can I use?

I think most people these days are aware of a few social media networks, probably Facebook and Twitter would be recognisable to most. However, in addition to those two, there are a couple more that I believe should be considered too. I tend to stick to the four below, as I think they have the biggest impact, but there are many others.

Facebook

The lumbering elephant of all social networks, with an estimated 800m users. Facebook started as a means of linking friends together, but has grown over the years to include business presence (through ‘pages’) and more recently allow ‘subscriptions’ to an individual’s updates so that you don’t need to be their friend. It has high adoption in the consumer market compared to other networks.

LinkedIn

Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn started as a means of connecting business people to colleagues, and continues to concentrate in that area. It has something in the region of 100m users. As well as allowing direct contact between individuals, it utilises groups to allow those with similar interests to connect with each other. It can also be a good way of publicising events and advertising vacancies.

Twitter

Twitter is a bit like the marmite of the social media world, many people love it (200m at the latest count), but many really don’t get it. Its model is very different to most others, unless you count SMS as a social network. The basic premise is that you can create messages up to 140 characters long, and these are visible to anyone who ‘follows’ you (i.e. connects to you as a contact). There are ways of sending a message just to one or more people, and of sending ‘private’ message to an individual too. The goal for most business people is to have their ‘tweet’ forwarded on by the people following you so that their followers see it too – And that’s about it. It tends to work best as a means of signposting people to content on your site, using a shortened URL service like bit.ly to make sure the message fits in that restrictive character limit. But there are other ways in which a creative person can use twitter too (e.g. re-tweet this message to be entered in our prize draw).

Google+

The new kid on the block, its growth rate has been very impressive, reaching 50m users in a matter of months and causing rivals, particularly Facebook, to sit up and take note. G+ is in its infancy, and it’s still difficult to know exactly what type of audience will be drawn to it. During the restricted beta phase it was mainly geeks that were interested, but since it was opened to the public Google seem to have been concentrating on particular vertical markets to gain market share. Thus the preponderance of photographers early on, highlighting Google’s efforts to make G+ a great platform for them to showcase their wares. G+ uses ‘circles’ to link people together, basically allowing you to subscribe to someone else’s feed without them having to ‘friend’ you. Another feature unique in the social media sphere is the video ‘Hangouts’ allowing up to 9 people to engage in a video chat session. Given Google’s continued dominance in the search engine arena, it’s pretty safe to assume that G+ content is going to rate quit highly in SEO terms too.

So that’s an overview of the four social networks that I would recommend every client to consider using in order to reach out to existing and potential clients. Not every client should use every network, as their particular needs and target market will drive that decision. However, it’s rare these days to find a business that will not benefit from using social media.

Coming in part 2 – How to choose the right social network for your business.

I’ll be having a closer look at it over the coming days, but if you’d like to check it out yourself it’s called WP4FB.

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