It’s no secret that Google has had a poor track record with social technology. Their first experiment, Google Wave, was a combination of email, instant messaging, and wiki-style collaboration. The service failed to become widely adopted, and was rebranded and soon forgotten. Google Buzz launched shortly after, and was designed to serve as a microblog that shared info from other areas of the social web. Buzz found itself in hot water with privacy groups soon after launch, due to it’s automatic opt-in for gmail users and a flaw that made active contacts visible to the public.

Google learned from their mistakes with the launch of plus, with a closed invitation system for early adopters, and gradual integration into other Google branded services. t Google+ had reached 10 million users just two weeks after the launch of a “limited” trial phase. After four weeks in operation, it had reached 25 million unique visitors. According to Larry Page, by the end of the year Google+ had 90 million users.

One of the most raved about features of G+ is the “circles” feature, which requires users to classify connections immediately for easier sharing and communication. Shortly after the positive press from critics, Facebook went out and immediately added two similar features – sharing with specific lists per update, and subscriptions to follow people without being “friends.

Currently, G+’s best standalone feature is “Hangouts” – the video conferencing feature that allows for chatting, webcasting, and live streaming. The most well known hangout to date was with President Obama in January.

It’s very likely that a hangouts style video chat feature could be added to Facebook – their current relationship with Skype would make that easy. Given the climate of Facebook and the inevitable backlash they are likely to face after a lukewarm IPO, I don’t see this as a killer app.

The Post-IPO  Facebook will look to Mobile devices as their next big move. Even with the acquisition of Instagram, Google has the advantage in Mobile. Their deal to purchase Motorola Mobility was just finalized this week, and sales and patents from that division will be more profitable that user data from a the instagram userbase.

Web icon Guy Kawasaki recently came out in strong support of Google Plus with this powerful testimonial:

“I noticed something very parallel between Macintosh and Google+, which is I thought Macintosh is a better computer, it was used by far fewer people, and the experts -– I use experts in quotation marks euphemistically and sarcastically -– the experts were saying that Macintosh would die. Fast-forward 25 or 30 years, I saw Google+, thought it was better, fewer people were using it, and the experts were saying it would die.”

So yes – Google Plus is mostly for tech geeks. They are not attracting brands the way Facebook is, and it can get pretty quiet in there at times. In the end, it’s just a small piece of the puzzle for Google. It serves as a complement to an already organized internet – not as a one stop social network.

It’s not just web businesses either, real-world businesses such as hotels, restaurants, or doctors can suffer from stains on their reputation through local social networks like Yelp, TripAdvisor, and AngiesList. By not monitoring and maintaining your online reputation on the social web, your brand name can be stigmatized with a scarlet letter that can and will hurt future business. Here are our tips:

• Don’t Wait for it to “Blow Over” -The sooner you address a problem, the faster it will be resolved. Most customers, when handled carefully and respectfully, will appreciate the response and share their positive experience. With minimal effort, you’ve turned a bad situation into an example of fine service. By ignoring customer requests on your social networks, you are disappointing the customer, and everyone can see how you blew it.

• Always be Monitoring – Not every issue will come across the official social account or contact form for your business. Most likely, a person will post something negative using your brand name to their main account, putting it front and center in the feeds of their connections. By using saved searches, page tagging, and Google alerts, you can see brand or name mentions in posts even if people are not fans or followers.

• Go to the Source – Don’t underestimate the people who reach out to you. With social media, you have the ability to peek into their social network, and discover how your brand fits in their life. You can also reach out to them in an offline capacity, such as a direct phone call to resolve the problem that they are having.

• Don’t Feed the Trolls – There are people out there that have nothing more to do than harass others. If you find comments or posts that seem like they were designed purely to make you angry, they probably are. Don’t waste time with frivolous comments that bring down the level of discourse.

As potential customers become more empowered to vet their product and service providers, online reputations become just as important as personal reputations. Unsatisfied customers should always be expected, and a system to put them at ease can pay in spades if they share their positive experience. If you try to ignore the problem, or get defensive, the wrath of the internet can be unleashed – take a look at what happened to Cooks Source Magazine or Paul Christoforo.

If you find yourself overwhelmed with negative publicity and unsure about what to do, you can turn to an online reputation management service to help control the situation. Reputation management services use proven methods to make negative content less visible in search engines, and create fresh content to establish your brand name as an authority in your market.

• Be Yourself - Honesty goes a long way in on the social web. A person who takes the time to genuinely engage other users gives the appearance of being easily accessible, which naturally leads to being discovered by other users. Additionally,  not all your content has to do with your product or business. By posting about news stories, personal experiences, or general observations about your day, you avoid the risk of being pigeonholed as a one-topic user.
• Stay Consistent – The time you dedicate to your presence on the social web is always well spent if it leads to new opportunities. Don’t focus on imaginary benchmarks that “experts” claim will bring you success (i.e. following 50 people per day, posting 3 links per day). Consider how someone who discovers your profile for the first time, and the impression that they will get about working with you.
• Approach Each Tool Separately – All social networks have basic ground rules, and some level of integration. Saving time is important, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of your reputation. Don’t over-automate your content – otherwise readers see hashtags on facebook (which do nothing), or tweets with cut off text (with a link back to facebook that will be ignored).

The Professional Brand Strategy: Many businesses have a presence on social media, but the successful ones are using these general guidelines.

• Find Your Customers – Depending on the target audience for your product or service, you may find that a specific social network has a more active community of users for your efforts. If you work with professionals or people with specific credentials, Linkedin is ideal for your goals. This is just one example, but finding a primary source for your relationships to develop is ideal.
• Research Everything – The amount of data that can be collected from the social web is worth billions, and the barrier to entry for analyzing it is incredibly low. Using pre-programmed plugins and customizable reports from tools like Hootsuite and Google Analytics gives your instant insights as to how people are interacting with your content on the social web. Use this data to develop better marketing strategies, or even develop new products.
• Integrate Social Sharing Logically – Many brands think that just being on the social web is enough. For some, it is, but the real power comes from having your customers share their experience with your brand to THEIR social network. If you have a sign up form, or commenting on your site, integrate with Facebook Connect for users to share their activity automatically. If people are buying from your site, add an option for a post about the purchase to be automatically tweeted or added to their timeline.

The Corporate Brand Strategy: Big brands have been slow to adopt social media, often playing “follow the leader” to rivals, or finding themselves forced to jump in to resolve bad PR. Large organizations have the resources to dedicate to campaigns of a larger scale, and can see success with the following points:

• Divide and Conquer – For companies that sell many different products, it makes perfect sense to create different social hubs for different target audiences. Amazon is a perfect example of this strategy, as they have multiple twitter feeds for updates on books, music, movies, and other specialized topics. Additionally, a specific account for customer service will allow for more direct communication with customers in need.
• Develop Policy – For brands with different levels of management and a top down decision making culture, before you even create an account, you need to have a clear chain of internal communication as to what your responses will be, who is authorized to post and where to direct opportunities for business development.  In social media flexibility and speed are expected – on the social web, you’re judged by how fast a question is answered.
• Empower Employees – This aspect ties in to the social media policy point, but by encouraging your staff to share their experiences with the company, and acting as a contact point for the public to approach them with questions is a powerful way to be recognized as an innovator. The most well-known example of a company with an open social media platform for employees is Zappos, the shoe retailer who was purchased by Amazon for $1 billion in 2009.

This week, Twitter announced on their official blog that they have filed a lawsuit against software providers who’s programs are used to aggressively abuse the service’s features through automation.  Software providers named in the suit include TweetAttacks, TweetAdder, and TweetBuddy.

These tools work in a variety of ways. They allow for the creation of multiple accounts with minor variations, which are designed to appeal to people interested in different topics. They also allow for a list of users to be created and auto-followed in bulk, and to be unfollowed after a certain time frame. These programs also monitor specific tweets to be sent to users who mention specific keywords, usually with no context in the hope of picking up traffic to the linked site.

All of the tools are reliant on Twitter’s API, and skirt the user terms of service. Users must pay for a license to activate the software on their computers. Twitter seems more interested in shutting down the tools and sending a message to would-be spam tool providers, but will be seeking damages as well.

Earlier in the year, Twitter acquired the security firm Dasient to lead the charge in their efforts to reduce malicious links that are shared on the service. Twitter’s built in link-shortening service (t.co) automatically scans links to ensure the caliber of the site linked to, and to flag suspicious links and the accounts that sent them.

With a service like Twitter where there are countless opportunities for interaction, it’s natural for users to report something they don’t like or didn’t ask for as “spam” even if it was not. In order to avoid being labeled as a spammer, you should NEVER do any of the following:

Massive Adding/Deleting of Followers – This strategy of following others with the hope that they will follow you back is one of the biggest myths of success with Twitter. The number of followers you have is not a reputable measurement, and it never was. Smart marketers know that the real metric of importance is engagement.

Keyword spamming – This strategy involves sending an automatic reply to anyone who is posting a specific keyword or phrase. To the average user, there is nothing more annoying than posting a tweet about anything (i.e., iPad, news story, celebrity, sports team), and then getting an avalanche of responses trying to get you to click on a link to “learn more about (whatever you posted).” This is especially annoying to newer users who are looking for true conversation, and can be turned off from using Twitter from it.

Link Stuffing – If your Twitter stream is nothing but links back to your main site (or worse, an affiliate product that you are using pre-written content for), no one is going to follow you. Make your tweets worth reading and go beyond the bare minimum.

Of course, the most successful Twitter users are active, involved with their followers, and engage them daily. When used ethically, the following automated strategies can help marketers be successful on Twitter.

Scheduled posts – Pre-scheduling content to promote an upcoming event, promotion, or sale is a powerful way to constantly have your followers notified of what you are offering. Be sure to change the language and writing of the tweets to maximize effectiveness. Scheduling is a standard feature in Hootsuite – my social dashboard of choice.

Other Service Integration – Set up your Twitter stream to automatically post when you make certain actions, such as posting on Facebook, uploading a video to your Youtube Channel, or publishing a new blog post. Also be sure to monitor your Twitter account regularly to review the services you have authorized to post on your behalf, and disable any that you don’t want to have permissions.

Welcome messages to new users – Again, this is a strategy that can do more harm than good if abused. Use a tool like SocialOomph and create a message that is sent privately to new followers. Make sure the message is genuine and include a link to have people contact you or learn more. Don’t pitch special deals or offers, but sell yourself and how people can work with you going forward.

The biggest mistake a marketer or brand can make with social media is to get involved with no goal or vision of what they want to get out of the use of their accounts. Companies who create a page just because they “need to be on Facebook” and then ignore it miss out on a golden opportunity to connect and communicate with their biggest advocates. On the other hand, companies with no focus that go anywhere and everywhere on the social web, but lack a vision of success, are just wasting their time.

Before embarking on any social media promotion or marketing campaign, a proven way to close business should be developed. For most marketers, it will involve a direct sales form that leads to a direct download. While this is the most direct way to increase revenue, other options of building business can be reached through social media marketing. Providing a free report, consultation, or phone conversation in exchange for a name/email address through a sign up form is ideal, and can lead to long-term marketing opportunities. The bottom line is, your method of closing needs to be finalized before dedicating any time to social media marketing.

Many old-school marketers still are insistent on relying on micromanaging every possible aspect of their campaigns manually. This results in folders of endless spreadsheets with shorthand code that is nearly impossible to analyze and learn from. There is no shortage of tools that can automatically track stats of all kinds, and provide ad-hoc reports that are completely customizable. Here’s a few that we recommend:

• Google Analytics – Essential for measuring website traffic and user interests. You can also review the specific keyword phrases that people used to find your site, and also measure social actions that people take with your site content (e.g. facebook likes, click-to-tweet)
• 1ShoppingCart – An all-in-one sales management suite that allows you to deliver digital products, process orders for physical products, and track sales specifically from social media services.
• Hootsuite – A social media “command center” that allows users to update multiple social media accounts and view activity from all connections from a central location. You can also schedule content to post, import RSS feeds for automated distribution, and create saved searches to monitor keywords. It’s custom reporting module allows for hundreds of detailed reports of social activity, such as growth, interactions, and influence.

Although these tools allow for some automation, social media marketing is not  “set-it-forget-it.” You will still have to dedicate time to researching what content fits best with your connections,  as well as changes and features offered by the networks you use. If you are tracking your results close enough, you may even discover what specific times of the day are more likely to get you closer to your results.

Busy marketers who want to outsource these kinds of activities really have an open field to choose from. Unfortunately for them, they commonly look for an intern or college student to pass off social management. Social media is not just a toy for teens, nor should a brand be trusted to someone with barley any professional PR or marketing experience. When outsourcing social media management, the best option is to go with someone who has a background in PR, can understand the goals of the brand, and has a track record of quantifiable results from social media marketing.

The Partner Program has been around since 2007, but was previously exclusive to the service’s most popular and active content creators. Partner revenue has been reported to double every four years, with a total of millions paid out to tens of thousands of partners.

The opening of the program to a wider base of users will change the function of Youtube for most marketers. First and foremost, monetization will no longer be a long-term goal that creators have to reach for. Users can create content of any quality and let it slowly collect views and ad impressions. Additionally, many existing channel owners will sign up for the program out of curiosity, which means more ads on videos with low views (which is what Youtube is secretly crossing it’s fingers for).

Despite the inevitability of new partners simply looking for a quick cash in, Youtube is stressing quality through it’s suite of tools and features. There are resources available to encourage high-caliber video content, including a “scholarship” called NextVlogger, meetup groups to network with other creators, and built-in editing tools to add effects and production value. There are some features that Youtube is still reserving for it’s Power Users – custom thumbnails, banner images, and longer video times are not available to new partners at this time.

Online video has a very low barrier to entry. With most mobile phones and a free account, you can broadcast your message to the world instantly on Youtube or any other video sharing site. With the amount of people watching online video now out pacing the traditional television audience, your guaranteed to find viewers if you tag your video with the right keywords.

The key to success with online video is creating something so interesting that people will want to share it to all of their friends. These friends also share it with their friends, the cycle continues, and then you have a viral hit on your hands. Sounds simple right?

A great example of a video that fits this bill is the Bionic Burger:

In short, the video describes a short story of a man who buys a fast food burger, forgets about it for a year later, and is amazed that it looks exactly the same. While the burger story is what got people’s attention, the real purpose of the video was to drive attention to TheBestDayEver.com, a health and wellness membership site. The video continues to receive thousands of views, with many converting to the paid membership site.

Here are the key takeaways:

• Video has the ability to spread quickly - Most viral videos gain thousands of views in a short period of time. Youtube even has a built in statistics feature that will show you where your views are coming from, and who is passing your video along
• Engaging content is sure to get a response - It may be comments left stating that your video was hilarious, that viewers sent it to all their friends, or even something negative, but your biggest win will come from audience interaction.
• Viral content does not have to be your own - You don’t need to be a natural actor or have top-of-the-line video equipment for Youtube success. The guy who made the Bionic Burger simply created a video based on a funny story he heard. Tools within Youtube and services like Animoto allow you to make a video out of pictures or text

A successful viral video does not have to turn you into the next overnight celebrity. Success with social media is what you make of it, so if your goal is to drive new traffic to your website or store, get more people to sign up for your newsletter, or even break 100 views, your videos can serve as a means to an end, and also make money along the way!

First  – the Insights platform has been expanded with new analytical data that can help Facebook brands understand the impact of their posts and content to their social network. Friends of Fans are exactly what it sounds like – an approximate total of the number of friends that your fans have. As your page gets new fans, this will grow, allowing you a potential new audience to be introduced to when fans engage your content. Virality is a closely related metric that measures people who shared or passed on your content; knowing what clicks with your fan base is essential to determining what is of value, and what future content should consist of.

The moderation blocklist is a great feature for pages that often find themselves targeted by spammers, competitors, or bad PR. Page owners can set up specific terms that won’t be published by visitors to the page, and set a profanity filter as well. This is a smart tool to help keep upset posters from feeling censored or discriminated if a post they make is deleted by a moderator.

My favorite new feature is the activity log. As the name suggests, this feature lists updates that the page makes (including comments and questions) in chronological order. For brands that often find themselves promoting the same products and features regularly, they can review the exact copy they’ve used for each update, and see how the fan base reacted.

It’s a great start to encouraging more genuine engagement for Facebook brands, and seems to specifically target pages that are just there because they feel that they need to be. As it stands now, there are better management tools for a full scale social presence, and Facebook needs to implement the following to compete:

• Allow for team management and tracking - Many brands and companies have a staff or assistance updating and maintaining their Facebook page.  A “manager mode” allowing stats for what staff is posting specific content, as well as segmenting engagement per staff member would help bigger brands use Facebook as an enterprise solution
• Make the Twitter Integration less spammy – Currently, the integration tool allows for one-way posts from Facebook à Twitter. Brands with a big social strategy are already using tools that allow for posting to both. This feature should be as robust as others like Spotify and Foursquare that take advantage of timeline.
• Allow deeper demographic targeting – I don’t expect Facebook to ever include the targeting tools that are available to advertisers, but anything beyond Country and Language would be useful. Ideally, age would be the best first start.

First  – the Insights platform has been expanded with new analytical data that can help Facebook brands understand the impact of their posts and content to their social network. Friends of Fans are exactly what it sounds like – an approximate total of the number of friends that your fans have. As your page gets new fans, this will grow, allowing you a potential new audience to be introduced to when fans engage your content. Virality is a closely related metric that measures people who shared or passed on your content; knowing what clicks with your fan base is essential to determining what is of value, and what future content should consist of.

The moderation blocklist is a great feature for pages that often find themselves targeted by spammers, competitors, or bad PR. Page owners can set up specific terms that won’t be published by visitors to the page, and set a profanity filter as well. This is a smart tool to help keep upset posters from feeling censored or discriminated if a post they make is deleted by a moderator.

My favorite new feature is the activity log. As the name suggests, this feature lists updates that the page makes (including comments and questions) in chronological order. For brands that often find themselves promoting the same products and features regularly, they can review the exact copy they’ve used for each update, and see how the fan base reacted.

It’s a great start to encouraging more genuine engagement for Facebook brands, and seems to specifically target pages that are just there because they feel that they need to be. As it stands now, there are better management tools for a full scale social presence, and Facebook needs to implement the following to compete:

• Allow for team management and tracking - Many brands and companies have a staff or assistance updating and maintaining their Facebook page.  A “manager mode” allowing stats for what staff is posting specific content, as well as segmenting engagement per staff member would help bigger brands use Facebook as an enterprise solution
• Make the Twitter Integration less spammy – Currently, the integration tool allows for one-way posts from Facebook à Twitter. Brands with a big social strategy are already using tools that allow for posting to both. This feature should be as robust as others like Spotify and Foursquare that take advantage of timeline.
• Allow deeper demographic targeting – I don’t expect Facebook to ever include the targeting tools that are available to advertisers, but anything beyond Country and Language would be useful. Ideally, age would be the best first start.

Since the book mainly focuses on core social media fundamentals, strategies and platforms, it is not a book for someone who is experienced in social media, but those those who are relatively new to social media, this is a good buy.

There is a lot of information and insights in the book and some the best points I found were:

• Social media as a viable communication platform is here to stay. It is not a passing fad. Embrace it or be left out in the cold while your competitors reap the rewards.
• Social media requires a significant investment of time and resources. If you can’t allocate each of these, then don’t get involved.
• “Begin with the end in mind,” as Eric points out. Make sure before you dive into the world of social media that you have a strategy in place and you clearly define your Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s). Measure the “metrics that matter.”
• Understand the permanency of social media. Once something is said, it can’t be taken back.
• Don’t just create content. Create awesome content that moves people to act.
• Transparency is paramount in the social media world. If you can’t adopt a transparent approach, modern culture is astute enough to figure out who you really are in about 5 seconds.

My favorite part of the book by far was the real life examples of social media successes and failures. Sometimes social media can seem abstract to new people to the space and it was great reading about successful campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIN. Also because the book is newly printed I was able to find the campaigns that the author Eric Harr was talking about to actually see them in action

You can find the book at Amazon and Barnes and Noble and is worth adding to your holiday wish list.

The study found that 61% of Fortune 500 companies had an active Twitter account, with at least one new post in the past 30 days.

Looking at previous reports from the Center for Marketing Research, this percentage is up from 35% in 2009 but about the same as 2010, which was 60%. Additionally, there hasn’t been much change when it comes to public-facing corporate blogs, with 23% of Fortune 500 companies using a blog in both 2010 and 2011.

This apparent slowing down of social media adoption is interesting, as many of the Fortune 500 companies, such as Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Levi’s, are well-known for their social outreach. However, this may be the saturation point for social media among the largest US companies. By now, if a large company with a big budget wants to be active in social, it probably already is. And those that are not may be larger holding companies or B2B brands that do not have public-facing social media as part of their communications plan.

This plateauing is also interesting when comparing the Fortune 500 to the Inc. 500, which is a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the US. Social buzz and outreach can contribute a lot to a company’s growth, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see a socially savvy company show up on the Inc. 500.

In fact, the latest Center for Marketing Research study on Inc. 500 companies, looking at 2010, found that 86% of Inc. 500 companies think social media is very or somewhat important to their business and marketing strategy. Their focus on social is something Fortune 500 companies can learn from and, possibly, grow.