Google is in the process of launching their new attempt at challenging Facebook, let’s hope that they have learned from their first two attempts, Wave and Buzz, which were both terrible launches and complete disasters for users.

So a client asked me what makes this one different from the rest of Google’s social media attempts? Well they are allowing you to essentially divide up your social groups, which could either be really good or a terrible idea, time will tell.

So what do I mean by divide up the social group? Google calls this “Circles”.

Just think of all the times you’ve heard people say “my mums just joined facebook and wants to be added to my friends list” who knows what stuff you don’t want your mum to see or comments from other friends she’s never meant that show the wrong side of you. Sometimes there needs to be boundaries and this is essentially what Google thinks will make them different from the rest.

In theory this is a good idea for cases like that, but will it work in the real world? Only by getting enough people on the system and actually using it will we know if it’s a hit or not.

They bring a few other things to the table that are of interest like “Hangouts”.

So a few of you are online at the same time, wouldn’t it just be easier to set up video chat with everyone, but that’s usually a one to one affair, not with Google Huddle apparently you can do more than 2, how many more? well apparently up to ten, which is quite impressive, but will it work or kill broadband connections all over the place, guess we’ll find out soon.

So what else do they bring to the table well something called “Huddle”.

Have you ever been trying to arrange a night out with 4 or more people and had trouble with everyone knowing what’s going on then plans change and you have to do the round robin nightmare again to make sure everyone knows what’s happening. Well Huddle is apparently the saviour by letting you group everyone together in one big chat room. Problem solved, everyone now gets the same information as everyone else and can contribute to the chat without messing up your profile with useless chatter. This could be very useful to many people.

Maybe not as social right away “Sparks” is the next thing on the list.

This is basically a way for Google+ to suggest things you might be interested in from your searches. either it will work really well and you’ll discover lots of great new things or it will very quickly become spam and peeve you off.

They actually have a whole load of other things like privacy settings that are both easy to set and in your control, the ability to download all your photos and Google+ profile data so that if the service ever got canned you would have all your information – this is a nice touch, but something Facebook will probably be able to add easily enough.

Google+ will also be on pretty much every smart phone out there so it won’t matter if you have Android, iOS, Win 7 Mobile, Blackberry or Nokia Symbian.

So lot’s to take in and consider there for Google+, but do we need another social network?

I think it can’t do any harm to make Facebook take notice that maybe their position isn’t fixed at number 1. They will ultimately improve themselves as a result and maybe even simplify things like their privacy policy when they see how others approach it.

The consumers always lose out when there is only one of any service, so I would say try out Google+ and see if it is a worthy alternative for your life and business, if not, Facebook aren’t exactly going to kick you out!

1. A good description is key as it tells everyone in a very short time what you do or who you are so it should include the keywords you want to be found for. Here’s my twitter description: Website Design Glasgow, Websites, Content Management Systems, Search Engine Optimisation & Social Media Marketing, Branding, Flash & Mobile Applications.
2. The first 25-40 characters should contain your keywords to be effective in Google searches but make sure it still reads well for your audience.
3. Link to your own twitter profile where you can. For example if you are getting new business cards made put it in the contact details part, but only if you intend to keep it up. Otherwise a dead page won’t look good to your prospect.
4. Tweet often, but please make sure it’s relevant, don’t tweet for tweets sake, also try to be as current as possible, think daily news of your industry, client issues or resources for your prospects, not what you had for breakfast, well unless you are a celebraty and your promoting something like healthy eating.
5. The more followers you have the bigger the boost to your ranking in Google for your Twitter account, but beware of following people, you know you don’t have to follow them because they followed you. Make sure you keep the quality high on who you essentially are giving a “I like this person”. Just in case you are interested you can find my twitter account here for Alan Fair Web Design Glasgow.
6. Use a URL that’s been shortened like www.bit.ly, http://goo.gl/ or http://tinyurl.com/ this basically takes a long URL that you have and gives it a code to make it as short as possible. It also ensures you have more characters to type on your tweet with so it’s worth the extra effort.
7. Don’t spend more than 1-2 hours a week maximum. If you have a clear Twitter strategy it should only take a few minutes each tweet, so even if you do a lot it shouldn’t take a bite out your week to get on with business.
8. Here’s a secret one most people don’t know about, make sure that the image on your profile has its filename edited to include your most important keyword or two, but don’t make it too long Google probably won’t like that. For example I have web-design-glasgow-alan-fair.jpg I would say that’s about as long as it should be. Don’t foget it needs to at least be descriptive of the image, so think very carefully about what you call it and what image you put up there.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

If you need help setting up or creating a twitter strategy give us a call on 07793 544 852 or 0141 246 5743 or email us info@cmmc.co.uk

ComScore reports Facebook’s 7.5 million unique mobile users spent 2.5 billion minutes on its site in December. The next closest competitor was Google with 9.5 million users spending a relatively paltry 702 minutes on its sites.

Read the rest here

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Hackers have flooded the Internet with virus-tainted spam that targets Facebook’s estimated 400 million users in an effort to steal banking passwords and gather other sensitive information.

for the rest of the article go here http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100317/ttc-uk-facebook-virus-fe50bdd.html

Alan

So what do you get if you pay for twitter? Well you’ll get access to statistics, trend data and marketing tools. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if it’s worth it or not.

If you want to read more here is the article I came across

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/16/20091113/ttc-twitter-to-launch-a-paid-for-service-6315470.html

Alan

What if the information I put up on there wasn’t saved anywhere else, what would I do if twitter closed it’s doors, how valuable is that information and what would it cost to replace?

FEAR NOT – Just go to the site below and let it back up for you – Genius!

http://www.tweetbackup.com

Imagine my surprise when I came across this site that has over 340 websites you can check in one go!

So without any further delay here is the link http://knowem.com

For your tweets to appear in google is a crazy idea given how much rubbish is on twitter, but I guess if there is any company out there with the resources to make it work it’s Google.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/rt-google-tweets-and-updates-and-search.html

So you ask what does this mean for me and how can I take advantage of this new marketing opportunity when it comes?

I’ll be writing a blog post once there is more details, but for now just think of the possibilities:

1. You own a hotel and a guest who is really happy with the service and tweets to that affect.
2. Someone online is looking for a hotel to stay in and searches in google.
3. You show up because you’ve been doing lot’s of good Search Engine Optimisation and have worked on the conversion rates of your website, but you’re maybe only 5th or 6th on the google listing, but hold on you have a tweet testimonial that no one else has and it’s a good one, it’s very likely that the person searching for a hotel to stay at is going to click on your link instead of the one above it.
4. Job done, you just got a click that other hotels didn’t. They might also have tweets, but they won’t be able to control them either.

Of course this can work the other way, so a bad tweet can cause you to lose business, but let’s assume that you are customer focused so that will never happen.

What this effectively means is that small businesses are probably going to have even more cost effective option to go up against the bigger companies, all you need to do is leverage the technology.

If you aren’t sure or just don’t have the time to be doing all of that (and it will suck up a lot of time at the begining to find your way around everything) then get in touch with us, we’re doing a free 20 min consultation with anyone wanting to look into social media or search engine optimisation.