Author Archives: Lindsay Renwick
Google’s highly anticipated foray into social media networking, Google+, debuted to the broader public last week as invitations began leaking out to those participating in its limited trial. Given the high-profile failure of Google Wave, and last year’s rumors of declining innovation after of a rash of executive defections to Facebook, we felt justified in greeting Google’s entry into game with some misgivings. After a week of exploring the network’s landmark features and mercifully simple interface design, we are pleased to report that there is quite a lot Google has done right. That said, it may not be enough to kill the elephant network in the room. It may be most interesting to watch them continue to compete toe-to-toe and find a way to co-exist.
With the web full of hyperbole like “Facebook-killer!” and “game-changer!” we thought there might be room for a reasoned look at the network’s features, benefits and the opportunities they present for private users and brands.
*Because we’ll be referencing Google+ features throughout the post, feel free to reference our friendly Glossary of Features at the end.
In the Beginning…
It’s still in the invite-only beta phase of rollout, and users are coming online in a steady stream. Google hasn’t released usage stats yet, but a list has already surfaced of the top 100 Google+ users by followers, with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg topping the chart at nearly 45,000 followers at the time of this writing. If we make the thoroughly unscientific assumption that half the population of Google+ has Mark in their “Following” Circle, then Facebook can probably rest easy for the time being.
In the past week, the competitive nature of Google and Facebook’s relationship devolved to a place at which many modern social media and PR practitioners openly condemned one party. The short version, which you can read more about here, is that Facebook hired PR firm Burson-Marsteller to seed a story about Google related to their Social Circle program’s implications on user privacy. A selection of words has been commonly associated with the situation: smear, debacle, and slander.
Previous to this, Google and Facebook have been strategically maneuvering around each other since each has reached a place in their road map to make a play for something that the other has. Google wants a “social” and Facebook wants to get its average time on site up to 23.5 hours. Read More
We’ve gotten beyond the idea that brands using social media is more than just a trend. This year, social media has reached a critical mass at which we must handle the audience playing in that space with intelligence and strategy – It is not a “B” platform to follow your “A” platforms.
A recent Emarketer piece reinforced this. The article titled US Social Network Usage: 2011 Demographic and Behavior Trends outlined the slowing, and projected continued slowing growth of unique new social network users. With the knowledge that growth is slowing and the assumption that less new users mean more seasoned or savvy users, does this mean that consumers will start to tune out attempts to market to them in social media? If we’re in this stage of saturation and tune-out, what is the next chapter in community management? I’m going to focus the remainder of this post on Facebook and Twitter, but a future post will detail other opportunities to evolve social media marketing for your brand.
“I went to a talk that really inspired me today” was the sentence heard around Austin for the duration of the SxSW Interactive conference. Conversations overheard offered glimpses into the emotional rollercoaster of inspiration taking place. Dialogues turn philosophical when privacy or the implications of the great WWW on children are discussed and career paths are questioned. Outside of the philosophical, excitement is built in this really cool way when sentences start with, “What if I …” and end with a new idea.
I went to a talk that really inspired me the other day. The brains behind the3Six5, 6 Items or Less and Victors and Spoils held a panel on crowd-sourced projects that ask a community to be creative, but within the project’s parameters. I’ve been rolling a project like this over in my brain for about 5 months and came out feeling energized and excited. Inspiration is personal and can feel like you’re being pinged by the universe to do something awesome. The voices of the inspired rang throughout the conference locations, so I know I’m not alone.
On the way back to wherever we all came from, moving from inspiration into action is the tough part. My father, always quick on the draw with his words of wisdom, used to say, “It’s really easy to do nothing,” but why waste this kinetic conference energy on taking the easy road? Harness what’s making you tick, whether at SxSW or not, to help you get over the action-hump with a couple of intuitive, but useful tips.
1. Do something to put whatever it is you’re dreaming about into action immediately.
If your creative juices are flowing and nothing is there to catch them, you’ll likely lose your momentum. Do anything to move towards your goal and you’ll be closer than where you were before you were inspired. If you’re going to start a Web site that compiles Twitter photos with the same hashtag, buy the domain name. If you’re going to start a blog, register your Tumblr or Posterous. (By the way, is it P-oe-ster-us or P-ah-ster-us?) Make some sort of commitment to yourself via the Internet that you’re going to follow through.
Before:
The recycled air on this SouthWest Airlines flight to SXSW– or Austin, TX as the city is usually known – is filled with an excitement similar to what I remember of the bus-ride to summer camp. The parallels are unmistakable. Rows in front of me, I hear two people becoming fast-friends and exchanging stories from years past. Two dudes in the row behind me are engaging in what I can only term a game of “who knows more about what happened in social media and tech in the past three hours,” often peppering the conversation with, “Oh yeah I saw that” and “That happened like three days ago, dude.” To my left, in the window seat, an Austin native just sold me on his friend’s start-up, Tabbed Out and I’m already ready to evangelize the brand.
I can almost guarantee the 80 percent of us are attending the conference have started a conversation with, “I’m so excited.” These “kids” are going crazy and I expect them to break into song at any moment. Maybe that just happened at my camp.
Singing or no singing, as a SXSW newbie, I feel wide-eyed. I think the guy from Austin sees it on my face. He keeps asking me about the conference in that 30-minutes-before-a-first-date way a roommate asks about a guy.
I’m on board with these excited, laptop-filled rows of professionals sent away to camp for the weekend by our bosses. I am so excited, but when I’m excited, my attention span gets shorter and I flit around like a hummingbird, so I’ve set some objectives for myself. Further down, you can see how well I did in meeting them.
Extraordinary experiences come in a variety of forms, from the awe-inspiring Web site to a reminder of why you love your job. As a community moderator, my latest brush with an extraordinary social media experience was the latter. I was moved from blind-rage to placid-graciousness by one man and a Twitter handle. The story is one of Twitter customer service; at the end of the day, a well-served customer will shout your name from a mountain.
Flashback to Wednesday, Jan 12:
It all started with a call from an anonymous 800 number during my evening commute. It’s always jarring for anyone to get a call from a collections agency, but for someone who was taught to guard her credit with the same force as her purity, it’s especially disheartening. I was told that I owed $33 for a $25 modem that had been returned my senior year of college. Senior year: a lifetime ago, or 2.5 years, depending on how long your life is. Something felt off about this.
Flash forward through 2 hours of cell phone minutes later:
Feeling myself turn into an unpleasant person–and that’s generous–I removed myself from helpline purgatory and turned to Social Media. I had an “oh yeah!” moment on the consumer side of the Twitter customer service equation. Just when I needed someone to cut the crap, the 140-character limit came to my rescue.
One bitter tweet later:
Thinking I could get a reaction with the following tweet
“Oh hey UW grads, remember how terrible @Charter was? Still are. 2.5 years later – they decided that I lost a modem & billed me for it.”
I waited. Along came a Charter Communications representative, who used four Twitter consumer-relations tactics to neutralize the brand hater (i.e. me).
