Google Plus Resources For Beginners

You’ve certainly been hearing Google Plus buzz, maybe reading about the growing network and its unique features and impressive benefits for business. If so, you’re probably not only intrigued but also ready to get started.  You may have decided this is your year for Google Plus. Are you ready to join some communities, figure out how to hangout, and circle up? Great!
How do you get started? Well, beyond the obvious, filling out your profile, setting up your cover photo, finding people you know and people you don’t, what else can you do? It doesn’t hurt to have a few go-to resources to learn the basics of Google Plus and its most popular features.
Here are 3 great resources to get your started:

GOOGLE TIPS

Google Tips has developed a site to help you learn more about Google products and features. They describe it as:  “A bunch of stuff you can do with Google when you’re on the go, at home or at the office.” This includes, of course, Google Plus. Google Tips features information on Google Hangouts, Google plus photo: storage, editing and backup, and Google+ Circles.

GOOGLE HELP YOUTUBE CHANNEL

The Google Help YouTube channel features animated videos, designed for newer users, to help illustrate helpful how-tos for best use of Google products and services, including Google Plus. Recently, Google Help featured three new videos on Google Hangouts, covering how hangouts keep you connected, notifications, and Google Hangout availability.

GOOGLE+ HELP PAGE

It only makes sense that Google+ would have a Google+ Help Page on the Google+ platform, right? Of course! Google Plus has an active page that shares news, announcements and tips on all things Google Plus, including: photos, hangouts, custom URLs and more.
While there are many unofficial pages, communities and websites dedicated to Google Plus and other products, these are some official sites that are designed with you, the new user in mind. The more familiar you are with Google Plus, the more helpful resources you’ll find within the Google Plus community.
Beyond these resources, you absolutely want to learn from experience. Get started by logging in regularly. Find interesting people, brands and businesses to follow. Scroll your newsfeed and check out the content. Share content of your own and content you find.  Join a few communities. See how people interact and share on Google Plus. The culture is unique, much like every social media platform. Finding the things that interest you, the people that share those interests, and having conversations is an awesome way to learn.

Your Content isn’t Going Viral Because it Sucks

It’s the million dollar question every marketer wants to know. How do I get my content to go viral? Who Is Hosting This put out a helpful infographic that helps marketers check their content against their defined formula for success. The infographic does a good job of providing some basic guidelines, however it sparked a whole different line of thought in my brain.

Your Content Sucks

Instead of measuring the success of your content based upon its virality, start measuring content based on the quality of what you put out. It’s like a broken record we’ve been hearing scratching in our ears for too long, but it is so true. The majority of content that is put out from brands is so self-serving and boring that there is absolutely no reason anyone would want to share it. Try to start with making your content about serving the needs, wants, and desires of your audience instead of about the brand and you’ll do much better than you are today. It may not go viral, but you’ll be one step closer. Seriously, if you think that boring video talking about all of your products is going viral it’s time for an intervention. Get creative. Your customers don’t care about your products.

You Can’t Design Content to Go Viral, But You Can Design it to Be Great

If you think that following any formula for virality is going to work, you are setting yourself up for failure. This infographic gives you a lot of tips on how to make content much better, but it isn’t going to be a guarantee of virality. Think of going viral as a free upgrade to first class, not the destination. Design your content to be compelling first. It is near impossible to predict which chords you will strike until they’ve actually been struck. You can try, but realize that a very minute percentage of content ever goes viral. There is a lot of amazing content out there that never achieves virality, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t work. On the flipside there is a lot of content that goes viral that is a complete surprise to those who created it. Recognize that sometimes we don’t know if something is going to work until we are looking at it through the rear-view mirror.

Stop Blowing Smoke and Start With Holy Smokes

I believe one of the reasons there is so much sub-par content out there is because we don’t start with the intended emotion in mind. At SME Digital, we use the Holy Smokes test that Jason Falls created as a starting point for any content that is developed. Before the piece is written, we must define the Holy Smokes factor, which is filling in the blank in the statement “Holy Smokes! That’s _____!” We think about what we want the audience to say after they read or see the content and then we create the content to elicit that emotion. At the end, we check and see if it was able to deliver. If it wasn’t we fix it. Perhaps this will help you start to create your content with the emotional response in mind.
Here are some examples of Holy Smokes factors we’ve used:

• Holy Smokes! That’s Hilarious!
• Holy Smokes! That’s Incredibly Useful!
• Holy Smokes! That’s Amazing!
• Holy Smokes! That’s Shocking!
• Holy Smokes! That’s Mind Blowing!
• Holy Smokes! That’s Smart!
• Holy Smokes! That’s Exactly What I Needed!

At the end of the day if you create a great piece of content that your audience responds to, is it a win? I say yes. If it goes viral that’s even better.
Take a look at the infographic to see the tips. Do you agree? Disagree? How important is virality in the grand scheme of content? How do you make sure your content is stellar? Leave a comment and join the discussion. 

When Less Is More

[This originally ran as a column in The Guardian.]

Tweet this. Share that. Like us. Big data. Content marketing. Information overload.

You’ve likely seen every one of these phrases. Indeed, it’s like a daily barrage of some technological assembly line, as we mindlessly pick up our devices - driven more by instinct than need - thumb through the screens and tap out replies, comments or digital grunts in response to the digital visual stimuli put before us.

Our Pavlovian behaviour has become so pervasive that there is a pscyhological term for the fear of being without one’s smartphone: nomophobia. It’s not without basis, as 61% of 27-34 year olds report that they are afraid of missing something if they don’t check their mobile devices frequently - otherwise known as “fear of missing out,” or FOMO.

As brands and platforms try to determine just what it is that consumers want from them, we’re faced with more choices and barraged with more messages than ever before. Facebook is hovering around 1.2 billion users globally; Twitter and Google+ report 500 million each; LinkedIn nearly 250 million. When will it plateau? And does it even matter at this point?

And with recent questions over how private our data actually are, as well as how much we’re willing to give up voluntarily and the friend-adding binges we treated ourselves to in the ever-expanding social networks, it’s not too difficult to imagine that some people may back off a bit on their digital lives.

The flip side of FOMO is JOMO, or “joy of missing out.” We’ve covered this and 9 other trends in Ford’s 2014 Trend Report. After having experienced a period during the holiday season of unplugging quite a bit each day, I came to the personal realization that this dedication to a mobile device - as useful as it is - has its limits. Taking the time to soak in my physical surroundings, enjoy the atmosphere of the holidays - this was done without the aid of an app.

I don’t mean to imply that we should simply drop our devices entirely; they certainly have utility. But the degree to which we depend on them means that we shield ourselves from human interaction, miss out on nature’s beauty, or even forget specific details of events. And that’s not the most enjoyable way to experience life.

As humans, we want to share our experiences, connect with others and make a difference in the world. And much of that is done through online interaction and visual storytelling. The real question is: how much digital flotsam and jetsam is too much?

Again, I turn to the ancients to guide our human nature: Cleobulus, the Greek philosopher from the 6th century B.C. put it best: “Moderation in all things.”


Image credit: major_clanger (Flickr)
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Social Media and Security: Protecting Your Nonprofit

Social media has revolutionized the way people communicate and has become a central player in the nonprofit field. With the help of social media, nonprofits can easily organize events, raise money and find new supporters, all with just a few clicks.


Unfortunately, like anything else that carries power, social media also carries inherent risk. Just as you can easily improve your nonprofit’s reputation with a few clicks, you can just as easily damage it.


Here are a few ways you can operate safely on social media, while still using it to help your nonprofit thrive:
Be careful about who has access. Do not allow every employee or volunteer to access your organization’s social media accounts. A well-meaning intern, for instance, could inadvertently cause damage with a careless tweet or Facebook post. Even posts that are not malicious could still tarnish your organization’s reputation. For example, a Facebook post that contains poor spelling and grammar might convey that your organization is careless or neglectful.
Create strong passwords. Creating strong passwords is an important and easy way to drastically improve your organization’s cyber security. It is a good idea to create a different password for each of your nonprofit’s social media accounts. This way, if a hacker gains access to one of your passwords, he or she will not then be able to wreak havoc on all of your accounts.
Do not post updates that could compromise physical security. Believe it or not, your social media posts could potentially compromise your organization’s physical security. If your nonprofit operates within four walls, you may want to use discretion when choosing to disclose its location. You should also be careful about publicly posting what equipment and resources are available in your office. For instance, if your nonprofit has just received a generous donation of expensive equipment, such as a number of laptops, it may not be smart to tweet this information for the entire world (including potential burglars) to read.
Require approval for posts before they are made visible. Many social media sites will allow you to approve posts, comments or pictures before they are visible on your organization’s page. Because you cannot control what other people might post on your Facebook wall, for example, it is a good idea to opt for this approval setting. An inappropriate post on your organization’s page can still hurt your reputation, even if it was not posted by someone associated with your nonprofit. (Facebook also gives you the option of reviewing tags.) This security setting will also give you the chance to reject spam links or even links to viruses. If a supporter detects that your page is unsafe or littered with spam, he or she is not likely to visit again.

2014: The Year Social Media Hits Puberty

It's nothing short of amazing how businesses have expanded, new industries have been created, and cottage industries have become multi-million (or billion) dollar integrations into the larger Borg-like entities of Google, Yahoo, and the like under the banner of social media. What makes it amazing is the fact that the segment is still defining itself, even as it grows beyond niche networking into an all-encompassing, integral piece of digital life. And it's just out of its diapers.

It's been both wonderful and frustrating to watch the evolution from the first implementation of MySpace to the current space of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+, just to name the biggies. But in the last year or so things have started to gel, to coalesce, to become more integrated. Instagram  and Pinterest gave way to picture sharing being integrated on every network. Then came Vine, and video sharing spread. Hashtags made the jump from Twitter to the socialverse at large. And then there's SnapChat, a whole new can of worms.

There's momentum now. The floundering is all but over, and the future will come quickly. So what can we look forward to in 2014? How should I know? I'm no psychic. I can make some educated guesses though, based on the trends and progressions of the past year (and insight from some thought leaders - hey, we all need input).

Facebook Will Slow Down

It's not rocket science, just normal business cycles and generational differences. Facebook has been on top of the social scene for years, but they're becoming mom and dad's social network. A recent article mentioned that in Europe teens won't even admit to having a Facebook profile, it's so uncool. Facebook surely will remain a top player, but watch for major growth from other sites to give competition in numbers. As a business, that means you can't keep clinging to Facebook as you only online presence. Time to branch out.

On the flip side, Twitter will grow this year. In the wake of a successful IPO and with revenues now urgent for shareholders' sake, look for new opportunities on the site.

Images and Videos Will Dominate

No, I didn't steal that headline from last year's article. I realize that pictures and videos are already the hottest thing on the web, but this year they won't lose any steam. The question is, will sites that are image-centric (Tumblr, Path, SlideShare) continue to grow, or will their functionality become obsolete as the Facebooks and Twitters of the web integrate images more and in new ways? If you haven't leveraged Vine or Instagram for video promotions in your company, this is the time to do it.

SnapChat will Shake Things Up

SnapChat may have inadvertently started a revolution this year. Even if the company were to go belly-up today, their model is one that is already sending reverberations of fear and hope throughout the internet. In the face of the most intrusive breach of personal privacy ever known in our country, if not the world (the NSA scandal, of course), SnapChat created the unthinkable, at least to a digital marketer: an erasable internet.

Unless they get squashed before the general public knows what they are and embraces the idea, it could spread like a virus in 2014. A good virus for you as a person, a deadly one for marketing a business online. Imagine no data to crunch in determining who does what online. Shooting in the dark, to put it mildly. Watch this development closely, because regardless of how it shakes out, I predict a big change coming in this area.

Finally, Google+

I've been saying it for at least two years, but this will be the year that Google+ goes mainstream. They've already quietly climbed to the number two spot behind Facebook for number of users, and they stand to gain from Facebook's likely losses this year. If you haven't read my reasonings for G+ domination before, here's the nutshell version.

G+ is simply an arm of Google search, which is the central piece of a gigantic empire. Google Docs, Maps, Drive, Gmail, Calendar, YouTube, and Android, just to name a few. They're all integrated, and they're all tied to the primary activity on the web: search (through Google). No other network can come close to even thinking about the reach Google has in the big picture. Your self-driving car will come from them. We'll all be wearing Google Glass in a few years. G+ will be our hub for all things online eventually. Wait and see. 

Bye-bye, Foursquare

The company may still be around for a while, but their usefulness has been expended now that location-based services have become ubiquitous across social networks and apps. Does anyone really check-in with Foursquare anymore? I thought everyone had already moved their check-in rituals to Facebook or G+, but I could be wrong.

The Free Lunch Ends

Perhaps the biggest impact to businesses when it comes to social media in 2014 will be money. Social media has long been considered the "free" way to market, although the good marketers have known for some time that budgets are necessary to have maximum impact. And why would you want less?

All of the top 100 non-celebrity Twitter accounts use targeted marketing to reach their audience according to one study, and that involves spending money. The same findings also revealed a fact that is almost sacrilegious to the social marketing gurus: targeted educational content distribution is more effective than conversations for building a following. So there.

In your social media marketing budget (because we already established that you need one, remember?), the top three considerations should be hiring a social media manager, purchasing advertising, and getting the right tools for the job. The best tool you can use is top-notch social media management software that will simplify much of the required work into generating some reports and making some tweaks in your system. It's like hiring three assistants for your manager, only much less expensive. 

How to Create a Social Media Listening Dashboard

When you’re actively sharing content to social media, a good social dashboard is essential in helping you find excellent content to share.

Here is a step-by-step guide to creating an awesome social listening dashboard.

1. Start with Google Alerts

Start by adding alerts for: major keywords, your brand name, and competitors.  Once you have them all in the Google Alerts Dashboard, you’ll be ready for the next step.

2.  Add your RSS feeds to Feedly

Feedly is an RSS reader that has grown in prominence after Google Reader bit the dust.  It’s a great, easy to use platform that has great mobile and desktop integration.  Feedly can quickly get out of hand, so it’s important that you structure your feeds appropriately.  Use category names on Feedly, so you know the source of the feeds.  At this point we’ve only gotten Google Alerts RSS, so create a Feedly category called “Google Alerts” and add all of your keyword, competitor, and brand name feeds to this alert.  You also may want to add “Popular” feed sources to your Feedly, including Technorait, Gawker, WeheartIt, and more.  Finally, you can also do a keyword search on social mention, grab the RSS, and include that RSS on Feedly so you can find mentions across the web.  Consider using both your brand, competitors and keywords for these alerts.

3.  Surf the web looking for Authority Relevant Industry Blogs

Spend time looking for a few authority blogs to add to your “seed set”.  Add each of them to Feedly.  Once you have a great seed set in Feedly, monitor articles that have more than 100 shares.  Here’s an example:

Even if they don’t have a large number of shares, keep an eye out for great, relevant articles that can be shared.

4. Identify Influencers

Based on some of your research finding authority blogs, find influencers in your field.  Create a spreadsheet with all of these influencers, and add their Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, Plus and Pinterest profiles.  Stay very relevant, and only add people who are genuine authorities and whose content you know you can trust.  Keep this list highly updated as it’ll determine much of what you do next.  Try to find at least 100 influencers.  You’ll start by seeding your list during a research phase, but once you are actively curating content, you can add new influencers as you discover them.  Once you’ve compiled your list, then visit each social profile that your influencers are active in, and follow them everywhere.  You don’t want to miss their conversations in any of the channels they’re active in.

5. Create Social Media Lists of your Influencers

Having identified your influencers, the next step is to add them to a social listening dashboard.  Hootsuite is ideal for this task.  You can Add a Stream for Influencers on each social media channel.  For Twitter, you can add a pre-existing list, or create a new one through Hootsuite.   You cannot create Facebook lists on Hootsuite, so this is one step that you may want to do separately, and here’s how.   On Google Plus, you can create a Circle called “influencers”, which effectively adds those people into a “list”.  When you click on that Circle, their content is the only content that shows, agreggated into one visual list.  Now you have 3 different content sources of influencers.

6.  Set up Social Media Alerts

There are a few tools you’ll need for this: nutshellmail, Twilert, HyperAlerts, and Pinalerts.  For each of these, you want to set up alerts for your keywords, competitors, and brand.  This way you will be notified in your emails for relevant content.  Set all of these up to email you once / day, so you can review content that you may have missed during your social media “rounds”.  Mention.net is another tool that will monitor the web for your keywords, and send you alerts in your email.

7.  Content Curation Tools

Scoop.it, Trap.it and Paper.li are excellent sources for content discovery.  They’re great sources for new information that you may not have come across around the web.

Daily Social Curation Routine:

1. Visit Feedly to identify interesting news articles from your blogs and feeds
2. Visit Hootsuite to search your social streams plus your Twitter Influencers lists – reshare and engage.
3. Go to your Facebook lists and see what your influencers are talking about on Facebook.  If you are active in relevant industry FB groups, stop while you’re there.
4. Visit Plus and surf your “Influencers” stream.  +1, share, and mention relevant articles.  You should also be a member of a couple of authoritative communities – stop in, say him, and search for interesting new content.
5. Check your email for tool alerts notifications, summarizing social activity for the day.  You’ll receive content notifications from mention.net, twiltert, nuttshellmail, hyperalerts and pinalerts.
6. Visit content curation sources like scoop.it and socialmention to discover and share new content.

By following this routine on a daily basis you should be fully engaged in your brand’s social presence, while achieving sources for content curation and engagement.

How to Use Twitter Ads for More Exposure, Leads and Sales

Are you interested in learning more about advertising on Twitter?

Have you followed the latest on Twitter ads?

Twitter has many paid options to help you gain more exposure.

Keep reading to discover three ways to use Twitter ads to grow your business.
Why Twitter Advertising?

When Twitter released their advertising platforms, there was a huge lack of functionality when it came to targeting your ads toward specific audiences.

While it’s still not as detailed as Facebook or LinkedIn advertising, Twitter has come a long way in making sure your advertising reaches the right audience.

In this post, we’re going to look at how to create a high-performance Twitter ad campaign for your business.
#1: Gain Visibility With Promoted Tweets

One of the most popular uses of Twitter advertising is to promote a specific message (tweet) on Twitter. For example, if you search Twitter for a particular keyword, you’re likely to see a promoted tweet at the top of search results.



Example of a promoted tweet from Buffer.



This can be a great way to get a specific message about your products and services at the top of your potential customers’ Twitter feed. It can also be used to promote engaging content created by your business to boost authority in your industry.

To promote a tweet, you need to go to the Twitter advertising section and sign in with your usual Twitter username and password. If it’s your first time there, you’ll be asked to select your country and time zone.

Twitter advertising is currently available in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Ireland. For those who have used Twitter advertising before, you can click the New Campaign button to start a new advertising campaign.

National brands and advertising agencies in 18 other countries including Australia, Brazil, France and Italy can fill out a form to speak with an advertising specialist.

Next, choose New Promoted Tweets Campaign. Then you’ll answer a series of setup questions about your campaign, starting with the campaign name and duration.



Give your campaign a name and duration.

Next, fill out your targeting options. You can choose to target users based on keywords that users search or tweet about, television programming they engage with (such as people who tweet about the top-tweeted show,Scandal) and interests. Interest-based targeting allows you to target people similar to the followers of any Twitter username you enter, meaning you could target ads toward your competitor’s followers.



Using the keyword targeting option.

Note that of these three options—keywords, television and interests—only keyword ad targeting allows your tweet to appear in search results when someone searches for a particular keyword. Other ad targeting options will only show on users’ timelines.

In addition to the above targeting options, you can target your ads toward people in specific locations down to a city/metro level within the United States. You can alsotarget by user device and gender.

Once your targeting is set, you can choose to manually select the tweets you want to promote or allow Twitter to choose the five most engaging recent tweets. If you are trying to achieve specific goals, such as advertising your latest product launch, it’s best to compose a custom tweet about the launch using the Promote a New Tweet option.



Manual vs. automatic tweet selection.

Finally, set your total budget, daily maximum and maximum bid amount per engagement. While you can choose to bid lower than the amount suggested by Twitter, you may lose out on exposure if someone outbids you on the same targeting options.



Budget setup for your promoted tweets campaign.

If you’re new to Twitter advertising, you’ll need to enter a method of payment. Otherwise, save your campaign, which will go live upon approval by the Twitter advertising team.
#2: Grow Followers With Promoted Accounts

The next thing you can do with Twitter advertising is grow your followers with promoted accounts. You can see promoted accounts in various areas across Twitter, such as in the Who to Follow box in the left-hand sidebar.


Example of a promoted account.

This is a great way to increase the targeted followers of your Twitter account quickly, especially if you are new to Twitter or simply want to expand your audience.

The setup for promoted accounts is similar to the process for promoted tweets. Targeting options are limited to reaching users who are similar to a particular Twitter user’s followers (such as your competitor’s) and reaching users with specific interest categories.



Promoted account targeting options.

You can also choose a tweet from your account that will be shown on mobile devices next to the suggestion to follow you. The tweet should be something that gives your potential new follower a reason to follow your account.



Share a tweet next to your promoted account on mobile.

The budgeting options are also similar—you set a total budget, daily maximum and bid per follower. Suggested bid amounts vary based on the targeting options you set, but can range from $2 to $3 per follower. This is why you have to be extremely picky about your targeting so you only pay for followers who are good for your business.
#3: Increase Leads With Lead Generation Cards

The best addition to Twitter advertising is lead generation cards. These are tweets that allow businesses to collect names and emails of potential leads for their business or mailing list subscribers directly on Twitter. You can see how it works by clicking on the cards.twitter.com link in this tweet from ExactTarget.


Tip Tuesday: 140 Mobile Marketing Tips all in 140 Characters or Less:https://t.co/O9exCPKUgG

— ExactTarget (@ExactTarget) December 17, 2013

You can find out how to set up lead generation cards in this post by John Bonini. It’s a great way to really get tangible, measurable ROI from your Twitter advertising.
Twitter Advertising Tips

To get the most out of any Twitter advertising campaign, be sure to use these three tips.
Target your ad campaigns precisely. With bid amounts between $1.50 for promoted tweet engagements and $3 per follower, it pays to have a smaller but targeted reach.
Use UTM parameters for any links shared in promoted tweets. These are tags that you add to a target URL in your tweet that will identify visitors who click on that specific link in Google Analytics using the parameters you set. With UTM parameters, you’re able to isolate traffic that clicked specifically on that promoted tweet. Use the Google Analytics URL Builder to easily craft your UTM parameters, and find the data for your campaigns under Acquisitions > Campaigns in Google Analytics.
Set up conversion tracking within the Twitter advertising dashboard as another way to measure your ROI for Twitter advertising campaigns. You can find it by clicking on the Conversion Tracking link in the menu bar of your Twitter advertising dashboard.

Over to You

As you can see, Twitter now gives you more options to reach your audience and helps you to create the Twitter ad campaigns you need for your business.

What do you think? What have your results been using the new Twitter advertising targeting and lead generation options? Please share in the comments!