Google+: what are the marketing implications?
If you only remember one thing about this excellent overview of Google+ features and ambitions, let is be this:
With Google+ acting as the social layer across all of its products and services, and as more users turn to it as a go-to social network for sharing and discovering content, Google will gain access to a social layer of user data to help draw a more comprehensive picture of users. Google has traditionally helped brand marketers target users based on needs and intentions, but they’ve fallen behind social networks like Facebook in targeting based on interests and identities. With Google+, the search giant looks to provide brands with the ability to provide targeted advertising to users based on needs, identities, interests, and network attributes that compose user profiles. The granular, segmented data that Google will provide may allow for much more accurate targeting, but it is also sure to bring up privacy concerns among users.
So what is the most important implication for marketing professionals?
With Google+ as the foundation, Google aims to truly create a convergence point for SoLoMo (social, local, and mobile). Google has put a good bit of thought into catering its mobile version of Google+ to stay true to the inherent tenets of the mobile experience. For instance, Huddle is a feature unique to the mobile Google+ experience that allows users to group-message each other. The mobile version also provides check-in functionality (tapping into existing Google Places data), and may also suggest offers and deals by way of Google Latitude.
What's next?
Watch what Ford, MTV, Mashable and Dell will be doing on Google+. There aren't any brand pages yet, but these four brands are included in a beta group testing business solutions on top of Google+.
Tim Ferriss: stop wasting money on vanity metrics
“Listening” isn’t enough. Tracking the number of Twitter mentions tells you nothing. The bigger question is: What are we trying to build or accomplish, and how will we digest and use this data?
- YouTube Beats Yahoo — Video Will Convert
- The Full Resurrection of E-mail: e-mail addresses are a safer long-term investment than social media features
- Large Companies Will Waste Money on Vanity Metrics: impressions, page views, and undefined terms like “engagement” are at best gameable and at worst meaningless.
- Ads & Conversation Will Impact Different Conversion Rates. One good test of whether your advertising can become a conversation: Would people notice if your ads stopped running? Clickthrough rate is not going to answer that question.
Facebook is more efficient for sharing videos than Twitter
According to content distributor Goviral, Facebook is more efficient for sharing videos than twitter.
Further reading:
8 important trends for your 2011 online media plan
It's that time of the year again. Author and speaker Gini Dietrich (@ginidietrich on Twitter) has summed up her 8 communication/marketing/social media trends for next year:
- Content, content, content: all companies should become media companies, in that the content they provide is valuable, consistent, and non-salesy.
- FTC [U.S. Federal Trade Commission] rulings, e.g. disclosure on blogs, paid reviews, ethics and how we approach traditional journalists and bloggers.
- Net neutrality: if Google and Verizon are successful, the Internet will become a paid model, just like cable television.
- Customer engagement: engage them as human beings and not as people who you think want to be sold
- Social commerce
- Group buying e.g. Groupon
- Q&A sites e.g. JustAnswer
- Mobile: watch for movement toward mobile payments
Further reading: