Social networking is the #1 activity online. Even though Google gets the most visitors, Facebook is where most of us are spending our time. And it’s not just about Facebook anymore. We are spending a lot of time on LinkedIn, YouTube, Tumblr and Twitter. While there are some clear major players in the social space, the social media universe continues to expand and 2011 was a banner year for the idea of an “Interest Graph.”

In 2011, we saw Google launching Google+ and Pinterest grewing at an astounding rate. Facebook launched “Timeline” and “frictionless sharing” with partners like the much anticipated Spotify. Facebook also acquired design companies and the team behind Gowalla, showing the company’s intent to provide a consistent experience across devices and becoming a more prominent player in the mobile space.

2011 was also a big year for social IPOs: From LinkedIn to Groupon and Zynga, small tech startups are becoming public companies. There is much speculation around the existence of a bubble, and some say growth cannot continue because social networks are running out of users. However, Facebook is not yet public and we still don’t see a clear exit for Twitter.

There might be saturation, but social media has changed the way we live. And this means social media is no longer a question for marketers. Companies of all sizes have accepted and even embraced the importance of social media. Investments are starting to increase and companies are now building teams to tackle the new risks and opportunities that social media has created. While Facebook and Twitter ad spending is expected to grow only at a decreasing rate, advanced brands are leveraging more digital dollars for their social media marketing strategies and tactics. “Social” has been an afterthought for many years, but marketing campaigns and programs are finally starting to feel inherently social.

This presentation is about the state of social media and social media marketing on January 1st, 2012:

Chris Brogan is a blogger, speaker, consultant, bestselling author and President and CEO of Human Business Works. Chris was one of the very first people I ever “met” on Twitter and I’ve been reading his blog www.chrisbrogan.com ever since.

Below is an interview with Chris about his upcoming book, examples of brands on Google+, Black Friday marketing in 2011, content curation tools, and more.

1. Congratulations on your upcoming book “Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything.” The book description says “This is a business book, not a technology book.” Can you share more about how this book can help businesspeople?

[CB] Business people tend to get a bit twitchy when a new technology comes along. But what I’m saying with this book is that this is a book about how to use the telephone to sell, or how to use business cards as part of your selling, or what to talk about at the cocktail party to sell. The tech of it all isn’t the worry. The problem is, for some unknown reason, humans get really weird when they start trying to use social media to sell. They forget the niceties and the human nature sometimes.

2. Google+ Pages have been around for a few weeks now. What are some examples of companies and organizations making good use of them?

[CB] I love what Samsung USA is doing (and no, not because you work there). I love what Dell has done. I think that Pepsi is already getting great engagement on their site. For a small business, check out Allure Home Improvements. I think people can really learn from places like these. Oh, and Kodak! Great work, Jennifer Cisney and team.

3. Social media is becoming an important part of how brands do marketing. What did you think of Black Friday efforts this year? You know who I saw doing something interesting for Black Friday?

[CB] Cali Lewis. Not a company, a person. Someone who works for a brand of her own, but who used Amazon associate links to point people towards products she endorsed, with a cut for herself. Did I see any brands doing something amazing with Black Friday? Well, at the risk of really seeming like I’m sucking up (I’m willing to risk this), I *did* like that Samsung had a nice summary on the Google+ page. Beyond that? Not as much on Twitter as I’d had expected, and I’m no longer qualified to talk about Facebook. I don’t go there anymore.

(more…)

The A Case for Social Depth

+Dan Reimold has 44 followers at the time that I write this. He wrote an “article” called “Google+: Social Media Upstart ‘Worse Than a Ghost Town.”

Dan‘s article basically says “Google+ is not good because no one follows me.”

Now, Dan has some “evidence” for this. Of course he does.

Except his evidence consists of Rainbow Rowell’s article on Omaha.com. +Rainbow Rowell has 33 followers on G+ and she has posted a handful of times. Rainbow’s opinionated column basically comes down to this: “My Google+ home page is worse than a ghost town. It doesn’t even feel haunted. Meanwhile, down the road,in a much less desirable neighborhood, Facebook is teeming with life.” So apparently Google+ is dead because Facebook, which is over half a decade older has more users poking each other (I’m not disagreeing necessarily, just paraphrasing).

And her “sequel” is well… “The fact that I think Google+ is useless might be one of the best possible indicators that it’s going to succeed. Get yourself a Google+ account. This thing’s going to be huge.”I’m not sure what it is. Insurance? Change of heart? Sarcasm? Live journal emotional flashback?

But that’s not all. The “best” evidence comes from the one and only Forbes: +Paul Tassi, the person who called the “eulogy” for Google+ and celebrated when others talked about it on G+.

Apparently Google+ has become appealing to Mr. Tassi, who ironically also wrote a follow-up article only hours after the first one. No one remembers that one. Now, when I first saw Tassi’s profile on Aug 15th, he had few followers and aprox 5 public posts. Today he’s a happy Google Pluser with 1200+ followers. He almost raves about it without having to rave about it. Paul has converted and has amassed a following.

But wasn’t G+ dead? Hmmm… I’m confused now. I thought the word “EULOGY” was a strong one but apparently I’ve been reading the wrong dictionary. (more…)

Hugh Macleod, the cartoonist who blogs at gapingvoid.com, recently announced that he was “giving up” Twitter and Facebook to “reclaim” blogging.

His reasoning seems to be partly philosophical (content ownership) and partly strategic (less tweeting about meals means more time to blog about, well, the important stuff).

Philosophically, Hugh says he doesn’t appreciate the fact that social media sites own what is supposed to be his content. There’s no WordPress-like utopian open source self-hosted social network (and I haven’t heard about Diaspora since Mark Zuckerberg sent his $10 donation).

The cause may be a noble one, but I’m skeptical of this alleged ownership argument though. Hugh and others who have shunned Twitter before him (ie. Seth Godin) don’t seem to be opposed to others sharing their content on Facebook and Twitter. The “Tweet” and “Like” buttons that appear at the bottom of each of their blog posts are evidence that they approve of content sharing and traffic building. It’s ironic that the “Decide” call to action on Hugh’s blog post is only a few pixels above the word “Tweet.”

Strategically… Hugh has a point. Focusing on one thing, instead of aimlessly trying to be active all over the web, makes a lot of sense. However, Hugh is in a unique position. He’s a published author and you could say he’s a bit of a quotable celebrity in the tech startup scene. Whether Hugh will be able to maintain the interest that his recent blog post generated (111 comments and counting) is yet to be seen, but there’s a chance he’ll be ok even if he never tweets ever again. (more…)

I first spoke with Erik Ober, CEO of Booshaka, in 2010 because his startup, which started as a search engine for Facebook, had caught my interest. I expressed that while it was great to find out about what people were publicly saying about Samsung on Facebook, it would be great to also know specifics about the engagement in our Samsung USA Facebook page. I really wanted to discover who Samsung USA’s “top fans” were.

Today, Booshaka ranks Facebook pages based on engagement and, as I had hoped, Booshaka identifies your “top fans” and ranks them in a nice leaderboard. You can see Samsung USA’s “Top Fans” on a tab on our Facebook page, and find more details on the Booshaka page for Samsung USA.
Read my interview with Erik below to learn more about the startup, how “Top Fans” works, and where his team is headed.

1. Who is behind Booshaka and what does your “Do the Impossible” tagline mean?

Booshaka is backed by a proven leadership and advisory team with 100+ collective years in social applications, data analysis, algorithms and advertising. Our mission is to help brands and businesses drive engagement and advocacy on Facebook.

From the start, we wanted to create big, meaningful company.  ”Do the impossible” is more of a motto than a tagline and its derived from the Urban dictionary meaning of “Booshaka.” Since naming the company, we’ve been told that all the biggest internet domains have two “O”s in them — Facebook, Google, and Yahoo :)

2. While the site initially started as a way to search on Facebook pages, it is now focused on Facebook Leaderboards based on engagement. Tell me more about this evolution.

The first few iterations of the product were experimental and designed to test how the market would respond to innovations built on Facebook’s Graph APIs.  In August 2010, we launched a version of the site which showed what was trending in different topical categories (ie Sports, Movies, Politics, etc) on Facebook.  We received some great organic press for the app and hundreds of developers and companies reached out to see how they might be able to leverage our technology.

After several months of customer development, we learned two things:

a. Marketers were overwhelmed with the amount of social data and interactions on Facebook and didn’t know how to take advantage of it.

b. Everyone was measuring the success of their Facebook Page(s) in terms of total number of fans / likes.

From our perspective, social media is all about how active your community is, how engaged your customers are, and how much they talk about your brand or business. At that point, we set out to develop technology solutions for the next frontier of social marketing — customer engagement and advocacy.

I’ve recently been advising the social media marketing efforts of Cucupons, a Guatemalan daily deals site that launched today. When I first met with the team I asked them if they had considered creating a video, such as the “How it Works” video by Groupon.

I quickly discovered that Groupon has inspired not only tons of daily group deal companies, but also lots of marketing videos in all kinds of languages from all over the world.

Alas, Cucupons launched without a video of its own, focusing on more cost-effective and differentiating tactics based on how Guatemalans actually shop offline and online.

You can find 100 Groupon “clone” videos that I’ve curated at www.curated.by/socialnerdia/groupon-clones.

When I was in High School, Napster was the coolest “computer application” on Earth. Sharing and downloading music, for free, had changed the world. From pillow fights with Metallica to the rise and fall of copycats like Limewire, Napster disrupted the web, the music industry, and the tech industry. Today, the Napster logo still represents music, but it doesn’t represent what it used to represent back then: Freedom.

Fast forward to today.

Spotify, the mythological creature of music streaming, is allegedly coming to the U.S. tomorrow, and rumor is it will be integrated into Facebook soon after.

Pandora, a public company (let me repeat: a public company) birthed out of the “Music Genome Project,” just recently redesigned its site to allow you to go “back” on your browser and provide a deeper social experience inspired by good ol’ photo social network Instagram, among other changes.

(And in related news, I haven’t bought a CD in three years. If I’ve paid for any songs online, it can’t be more than a dozen or two.)

So what does this mean? Spotify coming to the U.S. after what seemed like decades of waiting and Pandora going public and adding a social layer of its own are clear signs that the days of music ownership, at least in the traditional way, are numbered. Music streaming means you can’t download, but it also means you no longer have to. (more…)