A Social Discourse: Google Plus and the VIP Delusion

The world of social media is still dominated by powerhouse platforms and many competitors are attempting to replicate those sites’ successes. Despite the apparent monopoly, hundreds have popped up over the years and many of them carry enough weight to be considered valid for the social media marketer. However, judging this multitude of sites is difficult, if for no other reason than determining variables that can easily apply to the full gamut of social platforms. Regardless, I have tackled the challenge and come up with general criteria that should define any social site from the marketer’s point of view.

In the interest of full disclosure, I feel that it is my responsibility to intro this blog with some relevant information. I love everything Google does. I am a Google Groupie, a junkie, a willing consumer of everything the Google giant sends down the pipeline. I purchase only Android phones, I do all of my personal browsing in Chrome, and stare in naked confusion when co-workers suggest that SEO on Bing is worth considering.

That being said, this blog will not be all that similar to most of those written on the subject. Many of the marketing-industry blogs I have read regarding G+ are very insistent that we have a simply fantastic product on our hands. These writers stress that – while they are not available yet – the soon-to-arrive business pages will be a Mecca of integrated social marketing and SEO. I’m not going to consider all of that. The simple fact is that technology (especially in the social media space) changes too rapidly and too drastically to make that kind of prediction this early. I have the utmost confidence that Google + will do everything Google says it will do, but I can’t help but think that people are perhaps building up their expectations a tiny bit.

Indulge me in resorting to a metaphor for a moment.

Mission Hill, a phenomenally underrated animated comedy, has an episode perfectly suited for this kind of discussion. In it, the three main characters find themselves frustrated and on the street after another weekend of being rejected from the lines of the city’s most popular nightclubs. As revenge, the group sets up some velvet ropes outside of their apartment building’s meter room, and stand outside of it with a clipboard. Soon, dozens of elitist hipsters stand outside in the cold, desperate to enter the hippest and most exclusive club in town. “No one has gotten in!” they pass along. After hours of temptation, the main characters get bored with their plan, and set off a smoke bomb, claiming a freak electrical accident has destroyed the club. The Meter Room passes into legend, forever remembered as the most heavenly experience in the city.

Mission Hill, "The Meter Room"

Until recently, Google Plus was an exclusive club. Beta invites were scarce and coveted, and those of us that received them were all too happy to lord it over our pitiable friends and followers. On the inside, however, we found an experience that was sleek, modern, and shockingly empty. During the beta period, it was somewhat difficult to track down people worth following. Few people had truly completed their profiles, so circles became a sea of gray anonymous faces. Those that were contributing content were usually no more than news aggregators, which are technically not allowed on the platform. Mashable.com was (and apparently still is) largely guilty of this. Based solely on those profiles, a lot of discussion was taking place, but people that were willing to comment on these posts rarely contributed anything of their own.

This all comes back to one of the largest flaws that I see in Google’s plan. As pointed out in this blog post, G+’s circles are not organic groups. On Facebook, I can go to a friend’s page, see all of their friends, all of their groups, and all of the people in those groups. It is an invasion of privacy, yes, but it is also an incredibly simple way to find other people to network with. G+ presents you with a general list of whom a given person is following, but it provides no information as to the relationship between those people. This seems like a silly point to harp on, but it makes a significant difference.

Let’s assume that I have created a circle for dubstep artists (I have. It is very small). No one viewing my G+ profile would have any way of knowing that this circle exists, or that any of the people linked to my profile are part of that circle. This means that any interested parties must sift through everyone I am following, to draw their own conclusions as to why I am following them. Facebook’s groups and fan pages solved this problem by making both instances a public entity. When I create a dubstep fan page on Facebook, hundreds of people instantly see that group, and are free to join it and share it amongst their friends as well. The groups grow organically, as more and more networks connect to them. Circles are completely private and personal. It makes it easy to talk behind someone’s back, but not particularly easy to grow a community.

There is an obvious counter-argument, brought up by Chris Brogan:

It’s funny how many people are lamenting the temporary shutdown of brands on Google+. Meanwhile, I’m seeing lots of smart business people connecting with people, making relationships, sharing a mix of personal and business materials, and building relationships that will transcend the vagueness of following an official stream.

Business is about humans connecting with humans. This new platform is the top shelf of potential for doing a great job of doing that. Keep doing what you’re doing as a brand of one, and just be sure your ABOUT page represents your organization well.

Go forth. Be the brand. Just be you as the brand.

Google Plus is a beautiful piece of technology, and it presents a list of features that will make any social platform jealous. At the end of the day, however, a social network is only as good as the discussions taking place on it, and for that, for now, G+ is little more than an empty white room. There are a handful of “celebrity” accounts belonging to high-profile bloggers or industry news aggregators, and almost all of the platform’s content is coming from those people. Unless something changes, G+ will not likely see many Facebook converts.

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Tim Howell created 14 circles, and is a content manager for Make Me Social. He studied fine art, psychology, and international pop culture at Bowling Green State University. In his spare time, he is a blogger, bartender, and social activist with a passion for cooking.

Social Media ROI Calculator Q & A

By now, you’ve probably heard all about our ground breaking Social Media ROI formula that allows businesses to accurately calculate the Return on Investment of their social media efforts. If you haven’t heard about it yet, you’re in luck – we’re hosting another webinar on the topic (and at the time of this posting, there are still a handful of open registration spots left). So go sign up and then come back to finish reading this 100% all-natural, hand-crafted blog!

Over the course of our first few webinars on this topic, we have been getting some great questions from the audience. Some of the questions dealt with the application of the formula to specific industries, while others were a bit more broad in scope. Below you will find a compilation of some of the more general questions. Hopefully this will help you gain a deeper understanding of how the #MMSROI formula allows us to benchmark campaigns and create stronger, focused, and measured social media strategies.

Q1:
How well do these formulas scale down for companies that are just getting started and have few followers and little posting activity?

A1:
There’s always a page out there starting with a fan base of zero, and sometimes pages at 50,000 plus fans are really starting from the same place. Either way, it’s important to look at industry averages when you choose the level of response and activity that you want to achieve over time, and set clear goals.

If you think of the social media campaign like any other startup or initial investment, you’re going to spend more than you make upfront. Over time, as you build it up, you will start to achieve your ROI. At Make Me Social, we take snapshots on a monthly basis in order to track activity, but look for quarterly and long term trends to determine the true ROI. Anyone can have an up or down month and the key is to learn from that month and identify why the impressions and engagement numbers were low or high, and then make the necessary adjustments based on the results of that analysis to keep the social funnel healthy.

You can look at your spend over time and say that based on industry averages, here is what you should expect given your efforts over that time period, and then start feeding that against the results from your channels.

Q2:
Where do these numbers come from and how difficult are they to track?

A2:
This comes back to utilizing the standard industry platforms and measurement management tools that exist. We, as an agency, have a battery of them that we pick-and-choose from, based on the goals of the client. The tools range in scope from the simplicity of Hootsuite all the way up to the level of depth that you get from the page through Buddy Media. The technology and the leaps being made inside of the platforms help you gather the data needed to calculate some of these numbers. With Facebook, the Insights Analytic tool continues to improve and provide some very specific data points. So today, I can log into Facebook, and Insights will give a fairly deep view of the existing fan base, the number of post impressions, and some of the basic counts and information necessary to help me calculate my returns. The magic happens when you make the commitment to put the energy and effort into pulling the data and running it through the formula.

Our formula corresponds a click, share, retweet, or any other clickable engagement to a social post, similar to the engagement or interaction that takes place when someone clicks on a Pay Per Click (PPC) ad. As such, we place a value on the social interaction equal to the cost of a Pay Per Click ad. Make Me Social has done a significant amount of research online and in meetings with media buyers to determine the value several different industries are paying for PPC ads. The average online PPC rate depends on the size of a business as well as what industry the business is in, so you can see a range from $2.85 all the way up to $10. If you’re a smaller business, chances are that you’re not spending the $10, you’re spending the $2.85. A larger business is more likely to spend the $10. For simplicity across the board, a business may just want to use the average industry rate. It’s important to understand what you would be paying for each click given your business’s size and industry.

To learn more about the PPC rate that you should be using, call 904-824-8830 or email info@makemesocial.net to schedule a free consultation.

Q3:
Do employees who “like” a company’s page make it harder to calculate the ROI?

A3:
We don’t think so. Employees engaging on the platform factor into the formula, many of them may be some of the most engaged people on the page, especially early on. We relate this back to traditional media: if an employee of GM sees a television ad for GM, they still have the same opportunity to have an experience, engage with the brand, and more importantly, share the experience with others. So while the employee network may be interjected into overall return, it is still important because they represent the low hanging fruit, your referral base network, and an opportunity to engage with an audience that’s interested in seeing the brand expand. An engagement has value regardless of the “clicker.” There are different qualifications, factors, and weights that can be added in to the calculation to make adjustments to the overall value, but there is still value in every click.

If you’re still not sure, it’s good to engage Human Resources for their thoughts. HR knows that an engaged employee is more likely to stay employed and/or be more engaged in their job as well.

Q4:
Is it more important to increase awareness first or to focus on growing engagement on social channels?

A4:
From an ROI standpoint, the more you can engage people the better you’ll be.  But it needs to start with awareness. We use the Cost Per Thousand (CPM) to calculate awareness in the #MMSROI formula, and CPM is a pretty standard number across the board. What it comes down to is that because the PPC rate is valued at more than an impression, you can see that increasing engagement will give you more bang for your buck.

Platforms reward you for engagement, which can help you increase your return over time. If you make a post to Facebook and no one engages with it, over time Facebook will start to show your posts less and less in the Newsfeed. This will make impressions go down, and impressions are a vital component to a successful campaign. It is important to get really clear, strong messaging out the door to build engagement so that, over time, you can build a case for the platform to show your messaging, share your information, and let the network work for you. So engagement becomes a key component of the ROI calculation.

Four questions and answers are not going to be enough to give you a total understanding of the #MMSROI formula, so be sure to join us for a full explanation this Tuesday, July 26^th at 2 PM EDT. If you have any specific questions, post them in the comments below.

See you tomorrow!  

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When she’s not working as a marketing manager for Make Me Social, Mandi Frishman gets her adrenaline pumping by watching turtle races. During her time studying at The University of Florida, Mandi became convinced in the power of learning through play. She has since committed herself to playing (and learning) all day, every day.

Social Media Etiquette: Here’s A Definite No-No

There are so many social behaviors that can easily be associated with the phrase ‘good etiquette’: arriving on time, writing thank you notes, and men opening doors for women. (ok, that last one might be a lost art, but you get the idea).

What you probably haven’t thought about (as much) is the idea of Social Media Etiquette.  As online conversation and interaction become more & more a part of everyday life, it is important to think about the impact our words can have. Let’s start off easy by identifying a “Definite No-No”.

In March 2011, someone with access to the @ChryslerAutos Twitter account dropped the f-bomb when they tweeted: “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f***ing drive”.

Chrysler quickly took down the tweet and posted an apology saying that their account had been compromised. At the time, the account had 7,500 followers. Today (less than 2 months later), it has 10,000 followers. From the numbers, it looks like this could have been a publicity stunt (although unlikely). Let’s hope for social media etiquette’s sake, it wasn’t.

photo courtesy of mashable.com

What’s the takeaway? If you have access to someone else’s account information, whether that be a friend, the charity you volunteer for, or a Fortune 500 company, double check before you make a tweet! (and especially before you tweet about #gettingslizzard)

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Gerrilyn Koontz became a full time content manager for Make Me Social after graduating from Penn State in 2009. Originally from Birmingham, AL, she is happy to be back in the South living in Anderson, SC with her husband Erick and their cat Reid.