social network – Small Business Odyssey

January 21, 2012February 9, 2012

Google Plus: A Lesson in Persistence for Small Business Marketing

Google’s persistence in developing its new social network, Google Plus, provides a key lesson for small business marketing. Google obviously sees Google Plus as an evolution, not an end point. You only have to see the frequency of updates and changes to Google +, to realize that Google’s persistence in developing a state-of-the-art social network is contributing to its continuous refinement.

[Photo Credit: rikkis_refuge]

The value of persistence for small business marketing

In an earlier article on Ezinearticles.com, I wrote about the value of persistence in relation to affiliate programs and described the benefits in terms of the 4 R’s – resources, realization, relationships and rewards.

These benefits also apply to small business marketing in the following way:

Resources – you get to know what is available and how to access it for free or at a reasonable price; you also identify resource people who can help you with your small business marketing
Realization – this is a central benefit and represents the core learning outcome from persistence. You get to know what works best for your small business in terms of marketing ( e.g. you may learn that marketing your services are best achieved by combining social media marketing with word of mouth). Realization comes with focus, persistence and experimentation
Relationships – you develop relationships with other small business marketers, your customers and key resource people who can work with you through collaborative marketing (as I do with my colleagues, Anne Corcino of SEOPraxis.com and Chef Keem).
Rewards – the rewards for your persistence as a small business owner include the consolidation of your personal profile and brand which in turn can lead to increased customers, free access to resources and free publicity as others promote and share your content and write positive reviews about your products and services.

I want to concentrate here on the realization benefits that accrued to Google through its persistence in the development of its social network.

Google Plus and the’realization’ benefits of persistence

The precursors to Google+, Google Wave and Google Buzz, were effectively learning laboratories for Google as it came to grips with the difference between running a search engine and guiding a social network.

Google realized three key aspects through its persistence in developing Google Plus:

The value of the scarcity principle – Google Plus was offered initially as ‘invitation only’ and people were falling over themselves to get an invitation from someone already in the Google+ network (this also worked to build Google+ circles rapidly)
The importance of participation and flexibility – where you have a monopoly you can afford to be autocratic and prescriptive (as Google is in relation to search, Google Adwords and Google Adsense) but where you are offering an entirely new service, outside your normal experience, you need to be participative and flexible
The difference between a search engine and a social network – a search engine can operate through coercion and forced compliance; a vibrant social network requires winning minds and hearts.

The evolution of Google Plus illustrates the realization benefits that can accrue from persistence. Other writers have expanded on the value of persistence for small business marketing. One writer suggests that persistence makes the difference between success and failure in small business marketing:

Persistence: The Difference Maker

Google has been able to develop Google Plus as an effective social network through its persistence in pursuing this corporate marketing strategy (despite early failures) – a key lesson for small business marketing.

January 1, 2012

Grow Your Google Plus Circles to Build Your Profile Online

Circles are a core element of Google Plus. They enable you to place people in different groupings depending on your level of association with them, e.g. friends, acquaintances, family. Circles enable the unique privacy approach of Google Plus to operate. You can specify which circles will have access to what information. As I explained in my previous post, one simple example of this is the ability to specify who has access to the links that you include in your Google Plus profile. [Image Credit: mrnilspeters]

You can access your circles by clicking on the ‘circles’ button at the top of your Google Plus page as illustrated below:

Adding “friends” into your Google Plus Circles

The first thing to be aware of is that you can add as many circles as you want and specify their names, e.g. work colleagues, Squidoo contacts, customers. If you add too many circles, your circles and privacy settings will become unmanageable. However, the circle facility enables you to effectively categorise your contacts and manage your communications with them – you don’t have to lump them all into one large group of ‘friends’.

You can add people to your circles by using the drag-and-drop facility provided when you click on the Circles button. The avatars of people will be displayed depending on the choices you make from the menu provided (illustrated below):

For example , if you click on “people who have added you”, you will see the avatars of all the people who have added you to a circle on their Google Plus account. However, you will not be able to see what specific circle you have been placed in by these people. If you hover over the avatars you will see whether they are already in one of your circles or how many people you have in common in your respective circles. The following image shows an example of the avatars as they will be displayed. The ones with the symbol in the top right hand corner are those who you have also added to your circles. You can work your way through the others and add people to your different circles as desired.

As I mentioned in my introductory post about Google Plus, you will also receive notifications of people who have added you to their circles. If you click on the notifications button on the Google Plus toolbar (right-hand side), you will see thumbnail images of people who have added you to a Google Plus circle and you will have the facility to easily add any of these to one of your circles (click the ‘arrow’ beside the thumbnails and you will have access to a drop-down menu).

Google Plus makes it very easy to add people to your circles. As indicated in one of the above images, when you click on the circles button, one of the options displayed is “Find People’. Google Plus explains how the resultant list of avatars is generated for you:

Find People – Our best guess for people who you may want to add to a circle. Get more suggestions by importing your contacts from your email account.

As indicated, you can actually import contacts from your email accounts – Yahoo, Hotmail or by uploading your email address book (see image below):

So Google gives you multiple options for adding people to your Google Plus circles, encourages you to expand your social network and to effectively manage your communications with your circles. You can even tailor your perosnal profile information for different circles (e.g. making personal information only available to your “family” circle). On top of this, you can specify which of your circles you want to hear from. The following YouTube video from Google Plus gives you more information on how to create and use circles:

Google Plus circles gives you a very effective way to manage your contacts, increase your online exposure and develop new sets of relationships, including those with existing and potential customers.

December 29, 2011December 29, 2011

Google+: Why Small Business Must Get Involved with Google Plus

Google Plus is Google’s new social network launched in June 2011. Google+ will be an integral element in small business marketing into the future. It will not only enable you to build your personal profile but also build your business brand online. Google Plus membership has already reached 62 Million and is growing at the rate of 625, 000 new users per day.

Why bother with Google Plus?

Google views Google Plus as extending its capability (and value) beyond its traditional search engine focus to social networking. However, these two major arenas of Google’s activity should not be seen as separate. Google has already made it clear by its own words and actions that the Google + social network will feed search engine results. It has also shown the intention to rapidly integrate other Google applications into Google Plus, its new social network.

Google has already integrated Google+ into its toolbar as shown in the images below:

This icon. ‘+Ron’ , provides a direct link to my Google+ account. In the following toolbar image, you can see how Google integrates ‘notifications’, ‘sharing’, ‘profile” (thumbnail photo) and ‘settings/help’ icons for ease of access:

As we progress through my blog posts about Google Plus, you will see that Google is deadly serious about this new social network – it is not just a new ‘plaything’. Wherever you go on Google, including the search results, you will see increasing integration of Google+. Google played around with its early social network, Google Buzz, but has since canned it to build Google Plus – all the time using Buzz as a learning laboratory. If you have any doubts about Google’s long-term commitment to Google Plus, just check out Google’s own announcements re its ongoing Google + updates.

Integrating Google Plus into your small business marketing will no longer be a nice option (initially, Google+ was invitation-only), it will be an essential element. Otherwise, you will see your online marketing progressively vanish into the background as Google takes over the foreground with its Google Plus social network.

As mentioned in my earlier post on the major changes for small business marketing in 2011, Google+ is one of Google’s strategies designed to wrest back the Number One web traffic position from Facebook. The similarities between Facebook and Google Plus will hit you immediately, so this new social network represents head-on competition with Facebook. As a small business owner, you can stand on the sidelines and watch the battle or you can engage with both these giant networks and ensure that you have a sound footing online – this is where the action is and where the people (your customers) are.

What is significant about Google Plus?

Google Plus has already been lauded for its ease of use and flexible privacy settings (addressing one of the key problem areas of Facebook). As Google+ is in its early stages, it is also possible to get access to people you would not normally be able to link to.

So here is a list of key things you can do (explained in detail in later posts):

create a comprehensive personal profile
build ‘circles’ (add people to different circles/groupings and control the access and distribution of your information via your circles)
share photos and videos
develop your ‘stream’ (similar to Facebook’s ‘News Feed’ – integrating ‘status updates’ and content such as photos or videos)
private message other people in your circles
create a hangout (an evolving facility to engage others in live conversation via video and text chat – considered by many to be the real technological breakthrough for Google Plus)
create ‘sparks’ – recommendations
build business pages (sound familiar?).

Some commentators are suggesting that with these features and the growing integration with Google’s own applications, Google Plus represents a combination of Facebook, Twitter and Flickr rolled up into one state-of-the art social network.

How to Join Google Plus

You can join Google+ via a link on the blog/website of a Google+ member. You will see the image displayed at the top of this post and the sign-up box as shown in the following screenshot:

Alternatively, you can go directly to Google Plus and click on the following image and this will take you to the signup page indicated in the above image:

Note: You will need a Google account to join Google Plus (with either sign-up option).

With each advancing day as we move into 2012, Google Plus will become more critical to small business marketing and this will be progressively explained in succeeding blog posts (which symbolically will take us into the New Year).