The question is, are we making money or not?

The data collected from our social media channels is the raw inventory of measures we use to calculate our worth & viability.

Atkinson & Court argued 14 years ago that corporate valuation is increasingly related to intangible assets, such as employee talent & knowledge, & that a greater share of tangible capital is based on intangible inputs. They suggested that this trend is demonstrated by the fact that the economic output of the US economy, as measured in tons, is roughly equivalent to a century ago, yet its real economic value is 20 times greater today.

Social media is one of the engines through which these intangibles are produced. . Training is another. .

At Say It Social, we believe in management by objectives.  And, we believe that training is a “relationship”, an ongoing process of honing skills through sharing knowledge & repeated testing ’til the mind instantly recognizes & produces superior response. This is how you build intelligence in your people & develop your voice. A corporate voice is so distinctive not because it is a writing “style” but because employees have bought into the values & beliefs of the organization & are trained expertly in their respective systems of knowledge, so that the emotional tone of relayed insight rings in a consistent style to the reader’s inner ear. This is how you build business.

Monitoring, analyzing & integrating the intelligence we draw from social media impacts on every level of the company, from human resources & employee rights & infringements and legal trademark issues & federal regulatory compliance to finance, marketing, customer service, IT, new product development…

Corporate social media training is not just teaching an optimal position to place links in our tweets so that we maximize the number of click-throughs; it’s the transfer & honing of knowledge management skills. Listening to external & community signals, training for cultural competence, exception-based alerting, online reputation management: It is an investment in your relationship capital. And, today, no matter what your business, relationship is what it’s all about.

Training is the sieve through which big data insights filter down through our intelligence & inform our voice. The trained voice is what we want to inform our thought & what we want our customers & clients to hear.

Spirit Airlines Airbus A319 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve never had a problem with Spirit Air. In fact, I always used to think of them as the cheap solution to getting back home to see family in Boston, MA when I was living in Myrtle Beach, SC; among other places I have flown successfully to and from using Spirit Air. I was irritated by the new baggage costs added onto tickets but figured they had to find a loophole eventually to their insanely cheap ticket prices.

Just as I was trying to convince my friend in Boston that she needs to hurry up and book her ticket before the Spirit Air sale was finished, she responded “I have to Boycott Spirit Air.” After asking her why, I quickly realized all I had to do was look at the recent news. The first headline I saw was a Fox News article reading: Spirit Airlines’ final answer to dying Vietnam vet seeking ticket refund: No.

Fox News reported:
The update from company spokeswoman Misty Pinson, when asked Monday if the company had reconsidered, appears to have grounded any hope that Jerry Meekins, 76, of Clearwater, Fla., might get his money back. Meekins bought the ticket to Atlantic City last month so he could see his daughter before she had surgery of her own. But when his esophageal cancer left his immune system too ravaged for travel, all the airline offered him was another ticket.

“What are they going to do?” Meekins asked the Tampa Bay Times. “Fly my casket up to Atlantic City?”

The “Boycott Spirit Airlines” Facebook Page which was initially created in 2010 when Spirit Air started charging for checked baggage, went from a mere 700 fans before the incident to over 41,000 today. Outraged military personnel, war veterans and sympathetic civilians alike have come out to support this dying man, who simply wanted a refund for the purpose of donating it towards Wounded Warriors.

The whole blunder is a classic example of how fast word spreads through social media and the importance of making the right decision at the right time, especially with today’s technology available for everyone to share their thoughts instantly about a situation. “The spirit airlines debacle is a learning opportunity for other companies struggling with social media,” said John Souza, Social Media Marketing founder.

Marketwatch.com reported:
“Social media requires brands to act quickly and decisively or risk losing money and customers,” said John Souza, founder of Social Media Marketing University (SMMU). “Your brand can be severely tarnished in a matter of hours, and without timely action, it can be difficult to undo the damage.”

About a week after the whole situation took place, Spirit Airlines CEO grew a heart and decided to go against their ‘strict no-refund policy’ in attempts to clean up the now tarnished reputation the airline has created for itself in a matter of days. On Friday, Spirit Airline’s CEO, Ben Baldanza, pledged to personally refund Meekins, the former Marine, his $197 airfare. In addition, Spirit Air donated $5,000 towards Wounded Warriors.

Is the effort ‘too little too late’ though? Scanning over the recent posts on the Facebook Page you can find dozens of articles about Spirit Air saying ‘no’ to a terminally ill Vietnam Veteran, his photo and videos plastered on the wall of the page. One person even reported on the Nasdaq decline throughout the day one day, which was continually worsening.

The publicity of Spirit Airline’s CEO changing his mind about refunding the ticket  isn’t nearly as widespread as the brutal decision they made in the first place. Companies large and small alike should take this as a lesson of how fast word spreads.

Marketwatch.com reported:
“Incidents like these are learning opportunities for other companies that are still struggling to adapt to the growth and speed of social media and the impact its having on brands’ reputations,” said Souza. “Social media isn’t just a platform for consumers to vocalize their concerns. It’s a vital tool for businesses to use to control how they are perceived, build relationships with customers, increase awareness and listen proactively.”

In the ‘Spirit’ of Spirit Air (or lack of…), the importance of social media continues to reign throughout case study upon case study of not only ultimate failure, but overwhelming success as well. Next time a corporation does wrong by its consumers (or right), they should be well aware that the tools of destruction (or improvement) are at their fingertips. How the business chooses to respond can be the deciding factor of a company’s potential growth spurt or downward spiral.

These opinions are my own and not representative of SayItSocial.

From its unquestioned 30-day money back guarantees in 1987, industry-firsts that garnered it a reputation as exceptionally consumer friendly, accolades from the world’s top CEOs, calling it an industry-model-changer unlike any other since Ford, & hailed as an e-commerce pioneer, here’s one account of one company’s experiences & transformation in the world of social media…Dell.

The power to do more: Getting Dell’d 2012

Recently, Dell announced the launch of a new social media page, giving their PartnerDirect Certified Channel Partners access to social media tools & courses that will allow them to leverage Dell’s social media best practices, to invigorate their own business strategies.

 Dell Storage Forum   .   Laura P. Thomas

Through this portal, Dell will monthly host live virtual training through a real-time online meeting that promotes interactive discussion and will also offer on-demand digital training courses in the use of social media, designed to help them boost their marketing campaigns & overall exposure. You can register to become a Dell PartnerDirect & gain access to Dell’s social media page, here or here.

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The Evolution Of Corporate Social  Media Training

Back in 2005

•  the first YouTube video—only 18 secs long—was uploaded,
• social media existed primarily as message boards & blogs (“corporate social media” as a standard corporate enterprise didn’t really exist at all), and
• the second ever corporate social media gaffe became a marker in social media history.

Dell Hell: Getting Dell’d 2005

It was in June 2005 that noted blogger, author & journalist Jeff Jarvis (www.buzzmachine.com) posted a lousy customer service experience he had with his new Dell laptop, famously entitled “Dell lies. Dell sucks.“.

The incident for months escalated without resolution. In response, Fast Company blogger Brian Oberkirch on August 9, 2005, trumpeted a corporate call to action:

“With tools like Technorati & del.icio.us, these do-it-yourself media creations find their own audience. And quickly.

source: NYC Educator

“Silence is not a sound strategy.”

The title of the post? Dude, You’re Getting Dell’d.

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On August 17, 2005, Jarvis posted an open letter to CEO Michael Dell, on his BuzzMachine blog, & admonished him to follow Dell citings on all of the major technical blogs, read all of the bad press, talk to his customers, & communicate with them, regularly & directly.

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The influence of Jarvis & Oberkirch was not small: There was an explosion of negative sentiment from consumers about their experiences. And their dialogue with Jarvis & each other were posted everywhere and went on & on & on.

This was not the first time that it was noted how widely might be the reverberations should someone  raise their voice using a media as ubiquitous as the Internet. During 1997, some 70 million of the world’s population (1.7%) were on the Internet, which caused even the Supreme Court to observe, “Through the use of chat rooms, any person with a phone line can become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox.”

Tangentially, by contrast today, some 2.285 billion people, or 32.7%, of the world’s population use the Internet.

If you want to get the whole early history of Dell & its founder, Michael, take a look at Kim Williams’ case history of Dell on Norbert Elliot’s Web-Page. Forget about selling drugs, Michael Dell was reportedly making $80,000 a month in 1983, re-selling computer components from his dorm room at the University of Texas!

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Dell’s Hell: Getting Dell’d 2006

Midyear 2006, Gizmodo published a photo showing a Dell laptop exploding into flames on a table during a conference in Japan.

A month later, Dell launched Direct2Dell, its first corporate social media blog.

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Nowhere But UP! Getting Dell’d 2007

In 2007, Dell launched www.ideastorm.com, to capture sentiment & new product ideas from its customers. Dell began to score & rank these ideas, based on the number of times they were suggested & today maintains the page, listing the ideas & how they are being acted upon.

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To date, nearly 16,000 ideas have been submitted; more than 400 ideas have been implemented.

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In June, Dell launched & @DellOutlet, which by mid-2009 had earned more than $3 million & by year’s end, all of the Dell online “outlets” had generated more than $6.5 million.

In December 2007, Dell was among the founding members (with Microsoft, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Nokia, General Motors, & Wells Fargo, among others) of the Blog Council dot org. In an open letter (scroll down to Dec. 9) to this newly formed corporate constituency, Jarvis pointed out that the Council’s purpose appeared to be more about hierarchy & control & traditional marketing goals to manipulate consumer behavior, than connecting with their customers & reminded them that the point of social media was conversation & listening to & learning about your customers.

Paranthetically, the Blog Council in 2009 became the Social Media Business Council, a for-profit, brands-only community that is run by GasPedal, a professional community management organization, whose slogan is “We teach businesses to be nicer to you.”

The Social Media Business Council offers collaborative opportunities & information exchange (brand & social media case studies, information networking opportunities, training in how to build successful corporate social media programs) for 180 leaders of the world’s largest brands. You can find its Social Media Disclosure Best Practices Kit, which helps companies create their own social media policies, here.

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Getting Dell’d 2008

• Dell launches its PartnerDIRECT page on LinkedIN.
• Dell launches its @DellChannel on Twitter
• Dell wins the first (& perhaps only) ever Rheingold Award

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“Social Media is becoming part of who we are, in terms of the company & how we work overall. We don’t just want to dump content. Conversations are important to us.“ ~Bob Pearson, VP, Communities & Conversations at Dell.

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Getting Dell’d 2009

In the still-infant state of corporate use of social media, by the end of 2009, accolades for Dell were ringing once again,

“Very few examples come to mind when one is talking about successfully leveraging Social Media for Business,” said Harish Kotadia, now a consulting lead in big data/social CRM predictive analytics & knowledge services at Infosys Ltd.

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Gaining Momentum, 5 Years Later: Getting Dell’d 2010

In May 2010, Dell launched @DellCares & @DellCaresPro, Twitter accounts to centralize what were still complaints dispersed widely across online channels.

The open, friendly voice is pervasive on those sites today. @DellCaresPros is dedicated not only to problem-solving but sharing information & has made itself a “source” for its followers.

In December 2010, Dell launched its Social Media Listening Command Center

• 84 team members
• 11 languages
• 98% resolution rate
• 34% conversion rate, turning ‘ranters’ into ‘ravers’

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& its Social Media & Communities University

• 8,000 employees have been trained
• 3,000 employees have completed 8 hrs of coursework & are ‘certified’

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Getting Dell’d Today

No longer foundering in a cacophonous, dystopian abyss, Dell has emerged as a leader, setting the standard for other enterprise-level organizations & sharing its knowledge & expertise to improve the world.

A longtime supporter of the American Red Cross, Dell in March launched the American Red Cross Digital Operations Center devoted to humanitarian relief efforts, Washington, DC.

2012: Did You Know?

• 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
• only 14% trust advertisements

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• 82% of SMEs fail within the first 10 years

• 1 in 4 staff have been in their job for less than a year
• more than half have been there for less than 5 years
• 50% of all staff have less than 2 years of customer service experience
• 68% of lost customers don’t return, due to poor customer service
• 90% of them won’t even tell you about it, they simply won’t return

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Corporate shift away from dictatorial & hierarchical models in marketing & acknowledgment that training is tantamount to corporate survival are now central to how business is conducted by global brands. Mid-market corporations, just beginning to travel this path, do not have to suffer the rocky road experienced by global brand leaders just seven years ago. There is content, research-based models, experience, a growing coterie of corporate social media training & marketing experts & professionals, & mentor foundations that didn’t exist ‘back then’.

Smart mid-market leaders are already “there”, like real estate conglomerate Century21, who has canceled all advertising, & RE/MAX, who had streamed 2,599,901 videos by April of 2011, generating 6.5 billion consumer impressions & welcoming 28 million visitors in 2010, who viewed 295 million properties. The path isn’t scary anymore. There is a preponderance of the evidence.

Tangentially, Rheingold talks about the evolution of the ecology of “techno-hipsters” in his book, SmartMobs, & describes witnessing Japan’s Net Gen & Gen Y’ers communicating at 60 words per minute, using only one thumb (he calls them “the thumbsters”).

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Rheingold, who coined the phrase “virtual communities”, describes smart mobs as the newest form of social organization, which, through texting & communicating via mobile devices & cellphones, allows instant human self-organization & emergent behavior similar to hive-style animals. Think ‘flash’ crowds. Think NFC (near field communication) to pull passers-by into your store at lunchtime (Think 15% of Guess Inc.‘s online sales comes from mobile devices). Think roughly 1 in 7 searches are mobile searches. Industry-proportions for those searches:

• 29.6% restaurants
• 16.8% automotive
• 15.5% consumer electronics
• 15.4% finance & insurances
• 14.9% beauty & personal

45% of mobile users respond to mobile ads. Of those,

42% click on the mobile ad and, of those,

• 35 percent visit the advertiser’s site
• 32 percent search for more information on their phone
• 49 percent make a purchase, and
• 27 percent call the business

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And, while, in places like Japan, 47% of mobile subscribers access the web primarily through mobile devices &, in the U.S., 22% of all web searches emanate from mobile devices (StatCounter reports only 9% of U.S. web searches emanate from mobile subscribers, so far in 2012), fewer than 30% of global brands have a mobile web presence, according to research reported by in November by eConsultancy. Digiday in February reported that 19 of the world’s 50 top brands (an extrapolated, 38%) currently do no feature smartphone-optimized content. These brands include Apple, Microsoft, GE, Nokia, Nintendo, Mercedes, BMW & Kelloggs. Instead, they simply drive smartphone users to the desktop versions of their sites.

So, even with the recent more sophisticated advance of global brands into the social media dimension, they are still behind, in terms of the rapid change in the way humans are accessing information & communicating online.

But, to win, to get your brand out there, to understand what prospective customers want & how your customers are experiencing your products & services or brand, you have to join in the conversation.

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Online posts about Dell each day

2006: 4,000
2012: 25,000

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Today’s success is often sparked by yesterday’s missteps & failures. Dell turned literal disaster into success and has become a leader in social media.

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“Social media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.”

Karl Fisch & Scott McLeod , 2010

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#FAIL: The 50 Greatest Social Media Screw-Ups & How to Avoid Being the Next One

Dell’s Global Social Media Policy

Dell’s “listening” page, complete with a simple survey to help you determine “how your company stacks up” & a link to a Dell-commissioned Forrester report, Listening & Engaging in the Digital Marketing Age.

This is not because Mr. Mark Zuckerberg is filing billion dollar IPO for his social networking site or you see millions of tweets flying around in the web everyday or some non-profits are flaunting their Facebook pages and tweet account on fund-raising parties.

The reason is social networking sites have established themselves as low-cost or no-cost avenue to market your product. Sites like Facebook are more effective if you are talking about a non-profit initiative dealing with public healthcare. You can draw people’s attention, engage them in your non-profit activity, ask them to volunteer and definitely raise fund. And for all these you don’t need to spend hefty money on adverts and promotional.

But what’s so special about Facebook? In fact, every networking site has its niche. Unlike LinkedIn and Twitter, on Facebook people maintain a more sociable attitude. People here try to replicate what they do or want to do for their society in real life. Non-profit healthcare initiatives, trying to improve public health, can expect more acceptances on Facebook rather than on business networking sites. So, if you have genuine cause to think about you should try FB to get people on your side. There are too many non-profit healthcare initiatives, like, ‘Stand up to Cancer’, Tyson Hunger Relief’, ‘Free the Children’ and many, out there campaigning on FB successfully.

Having said this, it is also true that people everywhere are busy with too many problems. And to draw their attention, to ask for their help you have to reach out to them. For that your non-profit needs solid marketing strategy to leverage the FB platform.

So if you are the one managing a healthcare non-profit, which is leaving no stone unturned to improve people’s life, we have a set of strategies you can follow.

Strategy

Social media marketing efforts often fail if not tuned properly. You can definitely use volunteers or provide social media training for employees to design and maintain your campaign. But that will lack the thrust these types of marketing demands. So, it is always better to go for more structured full-time social media exposure if you want to make the most out of ‘FB’.

And for that you need a finite and tangible blueprint to work on. Because once you have committed staff, tools and budget, you need foolproof accountability.

1. ‘Know your audience’

Without knowing whom to approach you can’t step a single foot forward. This is often the most important reason behind every failed marketing campaign. You start on a wrong foot if your target irrelevant audience. So, spend your hours to know who will be moved by your nonprofit’s activities.

2. Set objectives

Once you are sure on whom to approach, it is time to set finite and reachable objectives for the campaign. What are the resources you need to sustain your nonprofit? Is it volunteer stuffs? Is it free supply of medicine? Or is it purely money that you are lacking most?

Knowing your goal properly helps to design your campaign and interact with stakeholders in most clear and convincing tone. If you like to increase the number of fellow-sympathizers, campaign for more ‘likes’ on your FB page. But if you want to engage them and take them along your activity, you will need more detailed and on-your-face approach.

3. Start to design the campaign

Now you know the people you will approach and what you will ask for. It is time to act. Think on how you will design the campaign. You have to device and develop content which will present your activity before people you will follow.

People concerned with social causes understand what others are suffering from. So, don’t presume them as naïve. Besides, too much aggression from your side can spoil and turn people skeptic on your motive. After all too much of malpractices are there too.

So, you need to keep your audience engaged. They should understand what you are doing, why you are doing and how you are doing. Once they know what stopping you from achieving a socially desired healthcare goal they will come forth in your help. But you have to first carry them to that realization.

There are many tactics of course, like, compelling fans to take part in debate on provoking issues, guiding them to your other assets, releasing videos and photos periodically on your activity and many others. You have to use them with intelligence.

4. Measure EVERYTHING

Once you have laid down your plan, it is now time to keep score of the process. You will need both hard and soft metrics for regular diligence. For hard metrics you can set certain goal for number of ‘likes’ on your FB page, quarterly donation collection, ratio of expense to collection for marketing effort and so on. They will tell how you are faring on your social media marketing initiatives.

Along with hard metrics you need to take care of responses from your fans too. Often with a particular campaign we do not get much response or, even worse, negative response. That means something is wrong with the campaign itself. It could be less compelling or you are in fact disturbing people instead of drawing their attention.

Besides, you need to take care and respond to every query made from your audience. You can’t keep them engaged if you are not conversing with your audience.

5. Test test test.. Try different tactics

The last is key is flexibility. Marketing is no book of thumb rules. It is all about trials and errors. And your campaign only will show where the fault lies. Common indicators are your hard metrics and responses. Even with full commitment if any campaign is not drawing enough attention, don’t accuse people are inattentive. Try tweaking your content, re-design campaign and re-think about your audience. Because, a genuine cause never goes in vain, at least not in social media marketing.

Even after praising social media marketing and Facebook at a length, you must understand Facebook marketing hardly works alone. You need websites, tweets, emails, video-sharing and photo-sharing sites and offline interactions in tandem. A 360 degree presence never fails to engage people to your cause.

Guest post. About the author: Claudia is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on luxury and technology. She recently read an article on hybrid cars that attracted her attention. These days she is busy in writing an article on Lotus evora.

Pinterest

After enjoying the 1st set of pinterest icons, you can now go for a second set of these. These icons are available in .png file format and are transparent, rounded edges in size 75x75px. Produced by Tickle My Whimsy.

These Pinterest icons were developed by “Slice Script” and come in vector! Here is the link to the download page.

Google+

With Google launching Google+ last year, why not have your own set of Google+ social media icons? Yes, these Google plus icons are free to use and there are 13 different Google plus icons in a set with different styles and different px size. Also, these icons have their PSD files grouped and layered, so that one can copy or paste the icons easily and create their own custom icons. These free icons created by “AffordableLogoDesigner.com”.  Here is the download link.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is back!! Now download the new Stumbleupon logo and icon in different format altogether. It’s available in Vector format so that it can be edited as much as possible. Using the Photoshop format in large size – so you can now even resize it. Take a peek at all of these and download them at AnimHut.com.

More from AnimHut

100′s More FREE

Haven’t got your fill? Well below are illustrations representing hundreds of free social icons from DesignersHub.com, please visit their site here to download all you can for free.

LATE BREAKING:  Popular restaurant app Urbanspoon is releasing new data today related to its growth over the course of 2011. The company says its traffic is up by 80%, with mobile growth outpacing the web. The site is now seeing 28 million visits per month, with traffic now split roughly half and half between mobile and web. From TechCrunch.com

  You’ve got to face it, talking about PC online interactivity is already passé. Remember when laptops  were considered personal computers for mobile use? User behavior (& the market) is shifting from laptops to tablets to cell phones as the nerve centers (brains) of virtual interactivity. Motorola Atrix 4G, the Droid Bionic, &  Apple’s iPhone 4S already have dual core processors, which can be synched with your computer or laptop &, in December, Nvidia announced its first quad-core processor for tablets and smartphones, the Tegra 3.

Motorola Atrix 4G portable dock station

Mobile=Portable.

While IBM holds the first patent (1982) for “pluggable terminal architecture” & Symbol Technologies, Inc. (2009) & Apple (2010) the first patents for “docking station for hand held electronic devices”, Motorola was the first to offer a portable multi-media docking port, to which you can simply connect a keyboard & monitor. That is, your phone is now your computer (CPU)! Parenthetically, Motorola offers a car mount, so that you can use the Atrix 4G voice-enabled search & dial, get real-time traffic information, & turn-by-turn navigation from Google Maps navigation & even connect with your car stereo, safely, without your hands.

Motorola Atrix 4G car mount

Why all this smartphone/mobile talk?

Call me a couch potato, but while most people will be holiday shopping at the mall, I’ll be at home making purchases with my trusty iPhone. -Tom Kaneshige, senior online writer, CIO, in Black Friday or Smartphone Shopping?

Mobile searches have quadrupled in the last year &, for many items, 1 in 7 searches are now mobile & 1 in 3 are local.

According to IBM’s CyberMonday 2011 Coremetrics Benchmark Report: <click on Cyber Monday>

• 2011 U.S. CyberMonday online retail growth increased 33% compared to 2010
• the average order value was up 2.6%, from $193.24 to $198.26
• 10.8 percent of people used a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site, up from 3.9 percent in 2010
• mobile sales grew dramatically, reaching 6.6 percent on CyberMonday versus 2.3 percent in 2010

Compared to Black Friday, on Cyber Monday 2011:

• online sales were up 29.3 percent over Black Friday
• mobile traffic averaged 10.8 percent compared to 14.3 percent on Black Friday
• consumer sales on mobile devices reached 6.6 percent versus 9.8 percent on Black Friday
• shoppers using the iPad also continued to drive more retail purchases than any other device, with conversion rates reaching 5.2% compared to 4.6 %
• shoppers referred from Social Networks generated 0.56 percent of all online sales on CyberMonday versus 0.53 percent on Black Friday; similar to Black Friday, Facebook led the pack, accounting for 86% of all social media traffic

Only 79 percent of large online advertisers have a mobile optimized site. Yet, Google’s 70% share of the mobile search & advertising market totaled $2.5BN in 2011.

Why is this important to businesses,  SEO & SMMS professionals?

From USA Today

After looking up a local business on their smartphones, 61 percent of users call the business and 59 percent visit.Seventy-nine percent of smartphone users use their smartphones to help with shopping According to a Google/IPSOS survey of the US consumer Mobile Movement, published in April 2011, some 71 percent of smartphone users who see TV, watch the press or watch an online ad, do a mobile search for more information. Of people who react to seeing a mobile ad:

• 42% click on the mobile ad
• 35% visit the advertiser’s site
• 32 % search for more information on their phone
• 49% make a purchase, and
• 27% call the business.

How does this relate to SEO, social marketing & Google+?

Google adwords SEO (search engine optimization)—and similar programs—are only now gaining inroads as a driving force in corporate marketing consciousness, particularly small business consciousness. Yet, mobile technology, availability, & use by consumers is already 3 to 5 years ahead of corporate & small business mindsets. According to an Adobe survey of 1,200 U.S. mostly smartphone users, U.S. consumers prefer browser to apps for most mobile activities.  Accessing maps and directions (81%)  is the no. 1 mobile activity, followed by

• social networking (76%)
• accessing local information (73%)
• reading news (68%)
• music (63%) &
• taking & sharing photos, 52%.

According to Google’s Fast Facts:

• 39% use the Internet on their smartphones while going to the bathroom
• 70% have used their smartphones while shopping in-store
• 88% of people looking for local information have taken action within a day
• 82% of smartphone users notice mobile ads

Make your world:

No Mobile Site? You don’t exist.

If your mobile website is not already in development, you’re going to be way behind. With 1 in 7 searches now mobile & 1 in 3 of those searches now local, YOU, your campaign, brand, and identity are not going to be accessible to the way your consumers search &, effectively, as far as the consumer is concerned, you’ll be closed for business or won’t exist (paraphrase of Jason Spero, Head of Google Mobile Apps).  .

Although Topsy is open to the public, it is actually designed for social media & marketing analysts. While traditional search engines rely upon crawling and indexing that utilize page citation and ranking methods, Topsy’ approach processes links being shared between people, ordering results based on its influence ranking algorithm.

Topsy’s APIs help identify social signals, so that analysts can extract & quantify conversations, determine what’s important & form prediction models. They identify influencers & thereby give you opportunities to influence the influencers.

Topsy’s labeling criteria are vigorous. For example, of the 250 million tweets indexed each day, only the top 0.2% most influential of all Twitter users are tagged “Highly Influential”, and “Influential” tags appear only for the top 0.5% most influential Twitter users.

SearchEngineLand’s Greg Finn reported that a search of ‘iPhone 5’ in Topsy’s Google+ Beta produced “much cleaner and more concise” results than the same search in actual Google+.

Topsy must be doing something right. Topsy told CNBC that its social sentiment scores are being used to predict stock prices with statistical significance.

And, they just hired Cisco Systems CEO Duncan Greatwood, to scale the company up.

The TechCrunch story is here.

Topsy’s Google+ beta search page is here.

Topsy on Twitter here.

You’re a busy corporate leader. Here’s ANOTHER social media platform to launch!

Google+ is the social networking arm of the Google empire. By sheer mass & universal reach, it can’t be avoided & certainly it offers the most comprehensive collection of free wikis, apps, communications tools, analytics, & APIs that can be incorporated right into your own web address.

Do you need to add Google+ to your arsenal of social networks?   YES!!!

You can’t ignore it. Google+ is big & growing fast. 

Google+ is expected to total 100 million global subscribers this month, 7 months after its launch. It took Facebook 4½ years to reach that number; Twitter, 5. Tangentially, however, it must be admitted that Facebook was the first to create the quantum change in social user behavior.

Growing at the rate of 625,000 subscribers per day, Google+ is expected to have more than 400 million users by the end of the year.

The Basic Features:

Google+ Circles (where you keep your associates & friends)

Google+ Pages (where you feature your products & interests)

Hangouts (where you meet via video)

Ripples (show who & how many you’ve touched with each post)

To get a basic overview of Google+, go here

This link gives a great visual overview of the features, including Hanging & Uploading/sharing photos & videos, but it editorializes a lot at the end, views we are not promoting & may not share.

To see how Google is going to simplify the interface for its integrated services, go here

We are mentioning Google+ here because we are most concerned with its importance as a social media marketing tool for business.

PROS

• Designed with Google’s simple, intuitive interface
• Ability to filter content streams
• Ability to finely segment target audiences (Circles)
• Ability to add the same contact to many different circles (lists/target audiences)
• Ability to add +Pages, to showcase particular brands or share specific interests (Pages)
• Provides web-conferencing platform, with many professional features, such as simultaneous multi-channeling (e.g., chatting privately to one participant while making a general presentation) (Hangouts)
• Ability to multi-task & share or enjoy simultaneous lines of entertainment, such as playing background music
• Provides a post visualization tool that shows how (& where) a post was shared & reshared (Ripples)
• Is integrated with all of Google’s products, tool, & services
• Ability to participate in the world’s largest mobile advertising market (Mobile)
• Ability to photo edit & photo share on your cell phone (Instagram)
• It’s currently ad free
• Oh, & it’s all free! (Free)

_________________________________

But, wait! What about this?

Much Ado About Search & SEO

(A little aside)

Google search in January launched SPYW—search + your world—& it’s intimately entwined with Google+.

From an SEO marketing professional’s perspective, SPYW could be the answer to a dream. SPYW analyzes Google+ & brings Google+ data that’s been privately shared (your recent photo shares, posts, profiles of others in your circles, related people & pages) to the top of your search, where you’re sure to (remember &) find them. Google says it has incorporated the personalized + element to make each search more meaningful to each user.

Say you’re looking for a vacation destination. You can of course search the web, but what if you want to learn from the experiences your friends have had on their vacations? Just as in real life, your friends’ experiences are often so much more meaningful to you than impersonal content on the web. http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/

However, Google’s SPYW aroused accusations that Google is now skewing search results in favor of Google+ over its social networking competitors, Twitter & Facebook. Preliminary search tests seemed to support this. For example, Joel Mathis of MacWorld reported that AT&T’s Google+ page appeared high in the rankings in a search for AT&T. When he clicked the ‘Don’t be evil’ bookmarklet, AT&T’s Twitter page appeared first. Read more here.

The ‘Don’t be evil’ bookmarklet was created by engineers at Facebook & Twitter, using Google’s own algorithm formula for search, to weight Google+ search results evenly with all other results.

Certainly there is competition for producing real-time social networking results. For example, Twitter feeds its activity to Topsy, a social web browser, that allows you to search specifically for real-time tweets, & has a Twitter index that goes back to 2008. You can search for tweets by subject x expert. Google can still find tweets through its regular crawling, but, compared to Topsy’s results, they may not show up in a Google search as fast.

Said Google Fellow Amit Singhal, who oversees the development of Google search, in an interview with SearchEngineLand.com’s Danny Sullivan:

The overall takeaway that I have in my mind is that people are judging a product and an overall direction that we have in the first two weeks of a launch, where we are producing a product for the long term …

… most people are jumping to a conclusion based on the first two weeks of the product. We’re designing a product which it will work for all individuals. It will have identities as a fundamental ingredient of search and relationships as another fundamental ingredient of search.

… if someone is not active on Google+, indeed, we shouldn’t be showing their very old posts. That’s one big lesson I’ve learned from watching this in the wild. We’re learning how we can improve the product. We’re already starting to launch some of these improvements as we speak. From http://selnd.com/x7kXHn

But, basically what you have at the moment is a new comprehensive social networking platform (Google+) that is integrated intimately with the world’s largest search engine (Google search) that yields highly personalized search results, which may give preference to Google+ social activity, along with the highly honed organic results we now assume from Google.

_________________________________

Back to Google+

Okay. Now what does Google+ mean for corporate branders?

The Google+ interface is easy, with the main editing/customizing icons—HOME, PHOTOS, PROFILE, CIRCLES & GAMES—easily accessed right from the top. In fact, Google believes it’s so easy, there is no ? or help button on the pages.

You can filter how much content floods your main stream.

Your “Stream” emanates from the people in your circles. The list of your circles appears in the sidebar. You can adjust stream flow from each circle by clicking the circle’s name in the side bar & adjusting the content flow slide (Show everything, Show most things… Show fewer things… Show nothing.)

While the streams aren’t infinitely adjustable (by person in each circle or for inclusion by keyword), this feature is better than simply “blocking” feeds from vocal contacts.

Targeted sharing is easily segmented. 

The “circle” concept makes Google+ targeted sharing very simple. Friends can live in multiple circles, so, if you’re going to develop circles for specific shares, it’s easy: your friends can be in your “Friends” circle & in your “Biz news” circle, too. By contrast, Twitter lets you create public or private “lists”, but your “followers” can be included in only one of them. If you’re using Twitter for social media networking & marketing, this means you can’t finely segment your followers for specific info & messages, but, with Google+, you can. Google+ “share” also let’s you specify to which individual friends your message/share can be sent. You can share with many individuals or only one.

Google+ Pages allow you to create separate (brand?) identities under your Profile account.

The pages are considered “entities” rather than personal “profiles” & are designed to promote communication about & traffic to particular products, services, brands, interests. Pages can have multiple administrators. You can Direct Connect with a specific Google+ page by simply inserting a “+” in front of its name in Google’s search field, for example, +Google+.

Hanging Out gives everyone the ability to video or audio conference, live. 

The faces of customer service & sales are no longer blank or anonymous. This means that for each + product page, interaction is live between you & your customers. And,it’s free! You get many of the features of live conferencing software, such as the ability to upload presentations, photos & videos for live view during the conference, the ability to IM-chat privately with any particular person, individually, during live sessions, & the ability to mute other parties. No need to be in the same room, to watch movies together, anymore. You can upload a favorite film & watch together in the hanging out space. Another nice feature,particularly  between friends, is that  the center screen view switches to each speaker as they speak, when in video-conference mode. Here’s a great, short video demonstration of  these features.

Ripples gives you a visualization of how (& where) your post was shared & reshared.

When you click on Ripples, the sharing & resharing of your posts are automatically shown on a heat map & plotted in a qualitative bubble flow graph with an animated timeline, which can be accessed by clicking Ripples in the comment widget dropdown box. This is fantastic to measure the reach, and influence in your Google+ network.

How does Mobile relate to SEO, social marketing & Google+?

Google adwords, SEO (search engine optimization)—and similar programs—are only now gaining inroads as a driving force in corporate marketing consciousness, particularly small business consciousness. Yet, mobile technology, availability, & use by consumers is already 3 to 5 years ahead of corporate & small business mindsets.

If your mobile website is not already in development, you’re going to be way behind. With 1 in 7 searches now mobile & 1 in 3 of those searches now local, your campaign, brand, and identity are not going to be accessible to the way your consumers search &, effectively, as far as the consumer is concerned, you’ll be closed for business or won’t exist (paraphrase of Jason Spero, Head of Google Mobile Apps).

PC & mobile photo-editing & sharing are easy on Google+.

Google+ uses Picasa photo album (a free Google software & virtual platform, soon to be called Google Photos). Picasa has a simple, intuitive interface that let’s you edit, crop, alter or add effects to your photos, which can be stored on your PC or virtually, online. Sharing photos with your Google+ Circles is as simple as click click click.  A great short video about the Google+ photo ‘Creative Kit’ is here.

Instagram, already available for iPhones & iPad, is being designed for Google’s Android mobile software, which now runs more than 50% of the world’s smartphones.

Will Google+ take you to new worlds? It might. Certainly the trip will be more fun with its exceptionally friendly user interface, easy-to-find menus, & it’s integrated interface with every collaborative medium or tool that you might need to communicate easily with your business associates, customers, clients, & friends.

Oh, & it’s free!

 (Post by guest contributor, Katherine Gaskins)

Please visit our page below, we’d love to connect with you on Google+ too!

Below are a few examples of killer creative Google+ pages, followed by tips on how to make animated gif Google+ scrapbook photos. If you know of a super creative Google+ brand or personal profile using animated gifs, please tell us about them, and post the link below!

Eric Cheng

By far one of the coolest personal pages we’ve seen, a moving SHARK!. Eric’s Google+ page.

Watch his scary video…(da da…da da.. da da da da da da da)

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Burberry

Awesome seasonal effect of snow falling. I wonder what they’ll do for Spring? Burberry Google+ page.

SayItSocial

We are proud of our creative director Crystal, for creating a “Fun” hello animation in different languages since we are a global agency. SayItSocial Google+ page. (P.S. Please follow & circle us while you are at it:)

Jackson Tan

He uses stop animation in this fast moving scrapbook. If you stay on the page too long, could be too much, but at least you can circle him and move on! Jackson Tan Google+ page.

Dan J

You Star Wars buffs will LOVE this Google+ scrapbook. Dan J’s Google+ page.

Giles Pettipher

Live rock, guitars, drums and strobe lights take over with this killer animation from Giles. Giles Pettipher Google+ page. (He also has a killer “how to” post on Google+ below)

Google+ Tips And Tricks

Awesome 3D effect coming at you! They use amazing animation with killer perspective! Google+ Tips And Tricks Google+ page.

 How’d They Do That?

Now, how did all of these creative people make these? Below are a few helpful resources, and tips on how to make  Google+ animated gif scrapbook images.

Nick Allain’s how to video:

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Jackson Tan’s how to video:

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Giles Pettipher

Giles extensive Google+ post on how to create these. Giles Google+ post.

Please visit our page below, we’d love to connect with you on Google+ too!

Image via Wikipedia

Since Pinterest was launched in March 2010, it has recently boomed in the social space. Mashable stated that Pinterest would be in the 10 of social networks for 2012. Besides the new factor of being in the top 10, why SHOULD YOU CARE?!

Let me guess… you are most likely fit into the role of someone who is managing several accounts for your company, and you are solely responsible for the upkeep and functionality of your “Social Media Presence” (the most overstated phase of 2012). And right now you are thinking, “Yes this is cool, but Josh (that’s me) I do. Not. Have. Time.” And believe me. I understand that is why I am writing this post, to educate about the what, why, and how (FYI, don’t forget the tips at the bottom of the post!!).

What ….is it?! Simply put, Pinterest is a platform where people post cool pictures. These “cool pictures” could be a really neat craft idea, gift, meal, outfit, etc. It is like the best magazines combined. If you are a craft person it is, Better Homes and Gardens meets Craft and Things meets Homemade and so on… Everything is sectioned into different Catagories (i.e. Architecture, Art, Design, DIY & Crafts, etc) so it makes it easier for the scanners (as I am going to lovingly call the people that browse for hours. Believe me it’s easy to do) to see all of the latest “cool” stuff. Another way that I have heard it described is a place where you can show off the neat items/pictures that you have found on the internet.

Why…. should we think business? Pinterest is a perfect place to connect on another level with your audience. If I post a picture of a nice sunset over a beach, people begin to assume that I am romantic, nice, calm, sensitive, and the list goes on. Hopefully if you new me, you would know that I am many more things as well (haha). The same goes for your business. Taking a personal touch and incorporating your business’ services with your personal interests can help add authenticity. DO NOT SPAM!!!! In case you misunderstood what I just wrote…. DO NOT SPAM!! Tapping into your business does not mean that is all you post about, or what you post about the most. To gain some traffic and let people understand what I am about I created several different boards (that is what they are called) that are specific to my company, that way my fellow scanners will know that I am not going to be spamming them within each of my boards. Ironically enough I have more subscribers to the Business boards than I do my overall account. Why? Because people are interested in the way that I have genuinely presented SayItSocial.

How… do we start? This is the Gold Nugget section of this post. Here are some quick tips that I think will really help you succeed with your pinning and will keep people “Pinterested” at all times (did you see what I did there?):

• Fill out your profile completely! There are many times that people leave the “About” section blank. This is where scanners see who you are!
• Get a username that is easy to find! Mine is “joshharcus” because I want my link to be pinterest.com/joshharcus
• Follow everyone you know! This makes your friends feel special. Also it can help you quickly boost your own personal following very quickly.
• Make clear Call-to-Actions for scanners! This is most important. In your “about” or in a Board description remind people to follow you or that individual board
• Experiment! Try new things… here is a board where I am having a conversation through pictures, “What is your path…?”
• Use the “Popular” category for inspiration and to find the best pins
• Add the “Pin It” button to your Bookmarks bar and add your own pins. From your company’s website maybe…. Hint hint…
• If you add a dollar amount in a pin’s description (i.e. $5.00) Pinterest will automatically put a Price banner across the top left corner of that picture
• Follow Josh Harcus and the SayItSocial boards on Pinterest

Biggest tip of all…. Have fun! What are your favorite things to pin about?

Related articles

• Check Out Connect Your Home Now On Tumblr and Pinterest (connectyourhome.com)
• Pinterest for Business (jakprpro.wordpress.com)
• Daily Dose Social Media Tip of the Day – Check out Pinterest (jcsocialmarketing.com)
• 10 Weird & Random Pins – Pinterest (socialalchemyuk.wordpress.com)