I’m currently on the plane flying home from Social Fresh East held in Tampa on April 18, 19. This is my first conference since being hired on as the Director of Client Services at Ephricon. It’s my first conference I’ve attended as an “agency guy” instead of a “consultant” or “entrepreneur”.
Jason Keath always puts on an incredible conference. I’ve worked with him quite a bit the last few years and it always amazes me how skilled he is as a content curator. He chooses great content for his blog. But his social media conferences are downright amazing. He pulls together incredibly smart people who are fantastically skilled presenters.
This year, my work with the event was mostly behind the scenes. Primarily, I had the pleasure of catching several of the speakers and interviewing them as soon as their presentations were over. This included Chris Brogan, and the key social media managers for Jet Blue and ESPN. I tried to come up with good behind-the-scenes questions for each of them.
It was very enjoyable and interesting. I’m hoping Jason shares the videos online soon. If you want to watch them, just sign up for the Social Fresh email newsletter to find out when they are available.
So, what did I learn from Social Fresh this year?
The title of this post was the teaser. Here’s the explanation… (more…)
In the never-ending battle of Google vs Apple vs Amazon vs Facebook/Microsoft, the next wave is coming soon. It’s just a matter of time before Facebook tries to make some sort of major surge toward search.
Why?
It’s not just because Google Plus is jumping into the social media game. (Which no doubt bugs them.) It’s because Facebook’s IPO will demand that they start thinking more and more about money. Search is where money is. Every marketer knows that search referrals convert better than social and therefore, they are willing to pay more money for those clicks.
On Friday, March 16 I launched a new project. It has to do with my new favorite site, Google Plus. In particular, I want to start learning how it affects Search Engine Optimization. So, to get started, I made a new website, named The Google Plus SEO Testing Network.
The response has been incredible. Over 50 people joined in just 24 hours!
Please watch this video and you’ll see how passionate I am about this.
As most of you know, I do some work for Social Fresh. Because of that, I get some great opportunities that I’m happy to pass on to my readers. This is one of those moments.
Just this morning, Jason Keath (president of Social Fresh) and I finally finished a major project. For the first time, we took an entire conference including some awesome speakers and topics and made it available online.
Google just released a “new feature” that has search marketers freaking out. Danny Sullivan explains it on his blog (Search Engine Land) here. But I’ll give you the short story and how we may use it to our benefit, especially for those involved in Social Media.
We’re kicking off Charlotte Social Fresh with one of my favorite online marketers, Christopher Penn. He is the co-founder of PodCamp and he is the co-host of the Marketing Over Coffee podcast.
Everywhere you look today, online marketers seem to be talking about the latest move by Google Plus. They announced yesterday that you’ll soon be able to play Angry Birds, Bejeweled, and other games by Zynga there.
This is something most Google Plus users were dreading. In fact, it is one of the main reasons that Facebook irritates them. They hate seeing gaming comments in their normal Facebook stream.
However, Google Plus promises to keep games in their place by having a button that will show you gaming stuff. Don’t press the button and you won’t see those annoying requests and comments in your feed. Press the button (which really acts like a tab when you think about it) and you’ll only see gaming stuff.
Thanks to TechCrunch, here’s an insightful recording of Eric Schmidt commenting on the success of Google Plus after just about one week of it being live.
The biggest takeaway for me in this is that Google is not just planning to incorporate Google Plus into all their properties. More specifically, they are planning to incorporate the Circles concept throughout.
You know me. I’m a small business owner, consultant, trainer, and entrepreneur. I’m also an Internet marketer at heart.
But I’m also a stickler for not wasting time. I feel very deeply that how you use your time is critical to the success of your business (and of your life in general).
Given this, I’m not always the first to get excited about social media. Facebook, Twitter, and other similar tools are fun and interesting. But they can very easily be a total waste of time. So it’s a constant challenge to know how much time I should spend with them. (And by extension, how much I should recommend using them to my students and clients.)
Up until now, I’ve mostly spent a little time here and there in Facebook and Twitter just to be informed, experiment, and stay in touch with those that know me. But with the new features in Facebook this week, I’m making some changes.
In case you have not heard, Facebook made some changes to the way Pages work. Most of them were no big deal and mostly cosmetic. My colleague (and Social Media Speaker) over at Social Fresh made a little video that shows you the 7 changes here.
What’s the big deal?
The one change you need to note is the last one. Namely, you can now use Facebook as a person (yourself) or as a page (brand). This means you can now follow other pages and comment on them as your company or brand.
For those that have worked in Internet marketing for some time, you know this is huge, right? For a year or two now, anyone that wants to build attention and get noticed online has realized that commenting on blogs absolutely rocks. You can now do something very similar using Facebook.
Of course, writing in your own blog is important. This is similar to creating and growing your business as a Page on Facebook. Good idea! Once you have followers, it keeps them engaged and coming back.
But if you are starting out, how do you get people to come to your blog? Advertising works. But it costs. SEO works, but it takes time and links. So the magic bullet was to go find the relevant blogs in your industry. Find the ones that already have the attention of your target audience and comment intelligently on those blogs.
Now we can do that on Facebook! We know it works, because people have already been doing it. You know who the people with the most followers and friends are on Facebook and Twitter? The most active and interesting people.
Now, businesses and brands can do the same thing.
What should you do?
Game on, people! If you don’t have a Facebook Page for your business, now’s the time to get started. (Even just building something quick and easy gets you started.)
But the real trick is to “Use Facebook as your page”. Then go “Like” the businesses that already have the attention of your target audience and start commenting intelligently on those pages.
Of course, if your page has a good call to action, you’ll get more likes too!
Today, Pew Research released some new stats about Twitter that might really make you think about how much time you spend there. Their report says that only 8% of online Americans use Twitter.
When you do the math, 8% of online Americans translates into 6% of all Americans. Then, only about 36% of Twitter users use the service with any regularity. That gets us down to about 2% of all Americans.
Of course, 2% of all Americans is about 5 million Americans.
Here’s something to think about…
If Twitter is only really being used by 2% of all Americans, how much effort should we put into it?
Then again, if there is an easy way to reach out to, and/or search the conversations of even just 2%… Well… That’s actually pretty cool, right?
Either way, it’s always good to separate the hype from the facts. Keep that 2% number in mind as you plan your next marketing mix of time and money.
I’m currently on the plane flying home from Social Fresh East held in Tampa on April 18, 19. This is my first conference since being hired on as the Director of Client Services at Ephricon. It’s my first conference I’ve attended as an “agency guy” instead of a “consultant” or “entrepreneur”.
Given this, I’m not always the first to get excited about social media. Facebook, Twitter, and other similar tools are fun and interesting. But they can very easily be a total waste of time. So it’s a constant challenge to know how much time I should spend with them. (And by extension, how much I should recommend using them to my students and clients.)
The one change you need to note is the last one. Namely, you can now use Facebook as a person (yourself) or as a page (brand). This means you can now follow other pages and comment on them as your company or brand.