5 things to note for Google+ corporate profiles
August 31, 2011 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
Google has not officially enabled corporate accounts in its social networking platform but social media and marketing professionals note that there are some promising Google+ features companies can leverage to take their digital branding and marketing to the next level.
Scott Monty, global head of social media at Ford Motor Company, advised that individual members of the digital marketing team should “get on board now” while waiting for Google+ to officially roll out business profiles. “This will let them understand how the system works and what the community’s expectations are around engagement, content sharing and transparency,” he said in an e-mail.
The Internet giant noted in July that it expects to have an “initial version” of Google+ business profiles publicly available within the “next few months”. In the meantime, Ford is one of the few brands that own a test account in Google+.
Ben Israel, digital strategist at Edelman Singapore, noted in an e-mail that Google+ has had “a solid start so far and received mostly positive comments all-round from early adopters”. There are also hints of areas where Google+ may be better than Facebook, he added.
However, “it is still unclear what the final product will look like and whether it will offer users a compelling reason to migrate from their current social networks”, Israel pointed out.
To help companies better plan and execute their Google+ corporate profile, Israel and other marketing experts shared five things organizations should note, based on existing features available to individual account users.
1. Group audience into Circles
One unique proposition of Google+ is that it allows users to break down their audiences into Circles, and select the circles of persons with whom they want to share posts, Chris Tang, director of Bain Mercer, said in an e-mail.
For instance, a company may wish to create a circle for active bloggers to engage these influencers or form informal feedback channel by enabling a circle for active, vocal “netizens”, Tan suggested.
“For businesses this could potentially be a feature that allows brands to have multiple types of conversation through the same platform,” Edelman’s Israel added. “An example would be sharing content for consumers and enterprise customers through the same brand profile just by organizing them into separate circles.”
Carolyn Camoens, Waggener Edstrom Singapore’s deputy general manager and digital lead, also pointed out that if Google replicates the Circles feature for corporate profiles, it will allow for more targeted engagements between brands and their communities.
“Brands with multiple product lines will be able to keep their fans in one place but also segment their community and offer more specific information,” she said in an e-mail.
2. Go private if necessary
Besides sharing of information, Israel noted that organizations can also initiate private conversations with another person.
“This could be a useful feature for branded conversations that need to be taken offline, for example, customer service queries or conversations that require sharing of private information,” he explained. Facebook currently only allows page administrators to send private messages to fans, and not from the brand profile.”
3. Weigh role search plays
According to Israel, with Google cornering 65 percent of the global search market it will be interesting to observe how the company uses their search might to build out Google+ and integrate Google+ data into search results.
To that end, it is not just about providing a search feature within Google+ or pouring Google+ data into search results, but more to weave Google+ as a social layer across the entire Web ecosystem, he said.
“If Google is successful in developing Google+ as the backbone of its social ecosystem, the opportunities for real-time search and with that, targeted content serving even outside of the social network will be immense,” he noted.
4. Use analytics for data
Google’s measurement tools, Google Analytics and DoubleClick will provide corporate users with detailed and actionable data, Israel added. On the other hand, Facebook has constantly been upgrading its page analytics feature, Insights, but it still lacks meaningful data and does not integrate across multiple channels and campaigns.
“There are third-party companies that offer more intelligent and elaborated reports for Facebook page manager but the built-in tool is terribly lacking,” he said. “Integrating Google Analytics and DoubleClick with Google+ will surely prove to be valuable to marketers.”
5. Stick to good old branding rules
The rules of engagement will not be very different unless Google+ corporate profile feature offers something radically different from the other social networks, Waggener Edstrom’s Camoens said. What’s important is that organizations have the ability to offer rich content and honor expectations of transparency and authenticity, she noted.
Companies, she advised, must have a clear sense of purpose before investing in yet another channel to engage their community, especially if they–like many other brands–are already present on Facebook and other social networks.
“They’ll need to ask themselves how Google+ will help them engage better or differently with their customers,” said Camoens. “Then they’ll need to put in place a long-term engagement strategy, as opposed to a campaign-centric approach.”
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Roost Launches Analytics for its Social Marketing Platform
August 31, 2011 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
San Francisco, California (PRESS RELEASE – August 31, 2011) – Social marketers experiment with Facebook and Twitter content every day with hopes to create active, engaged online communities. The challenge lies in measuring the effectiveness of posts and tweets, which is why Roost, (@roost), a technology company committed to helping small businesses go social, announced its new analytics offering, providing engagement scores for each social interaction.
Roost developed a proprietary algorithim that creates unique engagement scores based on the number of times the user’s audience interacts with a post or tweet. For Twitter users, engagement is defined as retweets and for Facebook, it includes likes, shares, comments, and impressions. Link conversions and hides will be coming soon. Roost provides an engagement score between 1 and 5 on each post. It also breaks down the number of views and the type (likes, shares, or comments) of interactions across each network, giving users an easy to read, recorded view of their post’s performance.
Roost takes the analysis beyond existing metrics built into Facebook by considering engagement relative to the user’s audience size. For example, a small business that has a Facebook page with 50 Likes and receives 5 comments on a post is going to result in a fairly high engagement score. Whereas, 5 comments on an SMB page with 10,000 Likes will not fair as well. Roost programmed this benchmarking into its analytics to give users a clear, actionable evaluation of their post performance no matter what their audience size.
“Businesses grapple every day with how to measure the effectiveness of their social marketing efforts, which is why Roost aims to provide all of the necessary tools to create, run, measure and optimize social campaigns,” said Alex Chang, CEO of Roost. “We are excited about our new analytics engine that gives users a consolidated view of their social activities and performance.”
All existing and new Roost users will have immediate access to the new analytics. Roost’s free social marketing tool helps local businesses and professionals easily plan and execute their social marketing activities in less than 20 minutes per week across Facebook and Twitter, with other networks coming soon. Additionally, any business or professional can run a free Roost Local Scorecard evaluation on their Facebook fanbase to determine how local their audience is relative to their place of business.
About Roost
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Roost is a unique social marketing platform entirely focused on helping small businesses and independent professionals manage their social presence and engage with their customers across key social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. Roost has more than 30,000 people across over 50 industries using its social products. Roost’s executive team is comprised of small business and social media experts from Walmart.com, Merchant Circle, Flixter and Social Gaming Network. The company is venture capital funded by Shasta Ventures and General Catalyst.
