Posts Tagged ‘facebook’

The Great Fracture

Posted on: January 24th, 2012 by Geoff Livingston 23 Comments

Petermann Glacier September 2008 [High Res]
Image by NASA

Every mature market experiences rising competition that carves off specialized pieces of the leaders’ established footprint. It’s how Southwest, JetBlue and others brought the major traditional airlines to their knees (and bankruptcy). For social networking leaders, the great fracture is upon them. Those of us on the front line are left to pick networks and tools.

Facebook has run away with the race. Twitter, LinkedIn, and a host of smaller social networks have taken their seats behind the leader. Yet as time continues, more and more niche networks like Tumblr, Instagram, shiny object du jour Pinterest, Reddit and others carve off their piece of the pie.

The phenomena of so many social media choices has moved from creating to social media fatigue for the most faithful to full-on overload. Even the most tech savvy people find themselves making tough choices.

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Why You Should Care About Twitter vs. Google+

Posted on: January 17th, 2012 by Geoff Livingston 21 Comments

Google+ Enters PageRank Algorithm

Perhaps you saw the epic war of words last week between Twitter and Google. The conflict revolves around Google’s inclusion of Plus activity into its search algorithm. Called “Search Plus Your World,” this addition of the Google+ data has far ranging implications for online marketers. It dramatically increases the value of Google+ activity in comparison to its primary competitors Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and, of course, Facebook.

Consider how prominent this change is. In the above screen capture, personalized results are featured right above the top search result for “crux.” Also one of my Google+ posts is featured as the third result.

Search Plus impacts both traditional search marketing and social media. First of all, Google still dominates search with roughly 66 percent of all web based inquiries going through its site.

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Why Marketers Should Use Native Interfaces

Posted on: December 6th, 2011 by Geoff Livingston 9 Comments

Facebook engagement ratio likes fans
Image by EdgeRankChecker.com

Recently, conversations have picked up on possible third party interfaces for Google+. Marketers in particular want to schedule updates, sift through posts using simplified search, and measure click throughs.

The proliferation of Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, and other third party API-based clients to update social networks within the marketing space is substantial. It’s not a question of if you use one, rather which one.

Rarely do you hear discussions of Twitter’s native interface. And just recently this conversation surfaced about Facebook as analysis revealed that third party interfaces dramatically drop engagement rates by as much as 80%.

That argument in its own right tells you why you should update in the native Facebook interface. Recently, head of Facebook’s Nonprofit effort Charles Porch confirmed with me that for maximum impact communicators should absolutely update within the social network.

Beyond Facebook, regardless of whether it’s easier to update or more measurable to use a third party interface, marketers should still spend some time (note: not all of their time) each week on native social network interfaces. Why? Because most stakeholders don’t use third party interfaces. Even on Twitter, 58% of people use native applications.

If you are trying to communicate with people, it’s good to know how they will receive the message. Literally. What does your update look like to your stakeholders on xxx social network? You can only know this by using native interfaces. And knowing this helps you intuitively create better updates.

If Steve Jobs could find the time to take customer service calls, online marketers can certainly make time for native interfaces.

What do you think? Should marketers use native applications?

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