To follow up on my last post, Being pretty isn’t enough for social media success, I wanted to discuss what I like to call Social Media Isolationism or Social Media Agoraphobia.

And there are two forms of this sort of isolationism: invitational and exclusionary. They both mean you don’t venture outside your own four social media walls; however, the first is welcoming and the other is dismissive.

The welcoming pineapple

Jay Gatsby was a welcoming pineapple. He desperately wanted to woo his beloved Daisy and opened his grand home hoping he just might, one night, find her at one of his lavish parties. Or, at the very least, create enough buzz so that his lost love might hear of him and ask about him.

Not always the direct result of a grand romantic gesture, the welcoming pineapple is often associated with the feeling that one is so appealing, so compelling a brand, product, or service that your friends and neighbors should very well come a-calling. You host awesome dinner parties, right? You have the biggest television, have your own pool and tennis court, and have several guest rooms. Why would you ever want to leave your own social media home?

Why wouldn’t everyone want to take advantage of your generosity and party favor to want to go anywhere else, to say nothing of staying home in their pallid, beige, one-bedroom apartments? This generosity often comes with the stink of superiority or ego that eventually turns people off.

And if the proffered goodies are so compelling as to compel, this commitment might very well be contingent only upon the bounty, the booty, the swag lavished. In other words, your friends are bought and paid for and are your friends forever (or until you run out of cookies and candies and a subscription to cable).

In terms of a country, this open-border country would be glad to allow anyone in but since this country is obviously so awesome, offering everything and anything you could very well ever want in the first place, people just visit, nobody really ever leaves and a majority don’t even possess a passport.

Good fences make good neighbors

There are other social media isolationists who treat their following like a gardener maintains a Bonsai tree: letting it grow then pruning it back. Limiting its natural growth patterns with the goal of cultivating something elegant, controllable, exceptional, and beautiful — and planned. The operative word here is control.

There is a strong desire among the good fences variety of social media isolationists to want to maintain a semblance of control over brand perception, brand response, and brand buzz. This social media isolationist would surely turn off (or moderate) comments if at all possible.

This form of social media agoraphobic never lowers himself to engaging with riffraff and never suffers fools gladly. In many cases, he blocks competitors, rarely follows anyone back, and limits real engagement to the worthy and the notable. Only A-listers need apply.

This is the sort of social media expert who most likely has a pristine living room with white couches and chairs neatly enshrined in a clear vinyl cover. This is the sort of person who collects beautiful heritage silver and china, never to see the copious staining gravies and beet juice of a holiday dinner.

It doesn’t matter that social media is, by its very nature, chaotic, organic, anonymous, spontaneous, unpredictable, and crazy; it means nothing that the life of something beautiful can readily be strangled out of it when the collar’s too tight; and it means nothing that your detailed business plan and marketing strategy may be too macro, too myopic — that what you’ve made exclusively for one use may well be adopted “off prescription” for something completely different and more profitable — something this sort of isolationist would very well never be able to see.

And, if he could, he wouldn’t want it that way because that’s not the right way and it shouldn’t be done this way. Social media’s just not cricket.

In terms of a country, this walled-up land would be glad to exclude everyone; but, more realistically, it’s willing to limit visas and green cards to only the pedigreed: money, power, influence, esteem, connections, or education. Full funding for controlled borders and everyone had better carry their papers with them. I mean, why allow anyone in, since this country is obviously so awesome.

A majority possess passports; however, why leave? Too much chaos, uncertainty, and people who don’t look like the sort of people they’re used to.

Social media globalists unite

Neither the welcoming pineapple nor the good fences are effective in social media marketing because there are innately no borders in the Internet. Yes, maybe there is are language and cultural barriers, but these are as meaningless as the lines that separate nation states.

The Internet has rendered the world flat. Facebook is expected to reach a billion members in April.

And that’s to say nothing of the bloggers, the tweeters, the pinsters, the borders, the messengers, the redditers, the diggers, the flickrers, the tumblrs, the googlers, and, yes, even the spacers — they’re global, they curious, they’re ambitious, and they have as much right to your attention as anyone else.

Whether you’re an exclusionary or inclusive isolationist, you’re still unwilling to leave your social media homeland. You’re unwilling to go out there and meet your future real best friends. Instead, you either having to buy them or remain too afraid and afeard to make friends at all–or at least the wrong type of friends.

To be sure, you’ll never know where your next windfall will come from. You also don’t know who that fairy godmother is or what she looks like. It’s essential to get out there and spend some of your time and energy going exploring, finding new lands and new faces, and expanding your natural core, your natural base.

While there may well be zero barriers to you because the Internet has flattened the business world for you, there are also zero barriers between you and your best future customers! So, go git ‘em Tiger!

Via Marketing Conversation via Socialmedia.biz via Biznology

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I always tell clients that it is no longer enough to be beautiful when it comes to marketing online. The Internet has become more like an Oscar after-party than it is like the airport Ramada.

Online, you’re never the lone beauty in the hotel lounge. Online, you’re surrounded by equal or greater beauties. What’s more, the most successful online social media barflies are aggressive in addition to gorgeous. Too many companies that have invested vast resources in social have Pretty Boy/Girl Syndrome. A symptom of this disease is an expectation that others will go out of their way to pursue you.

No matter how much money you spend on a graphic designer, a social media expert, and a community manager, you may very well not find the kind of success you want and expect from your investment in social media and social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and Pinterest.

Being beautiful, friendly, clever, generous, and charming is no longer good enough when you’re not just competing with the student body for Prom King and Queen, you’re now competing with potentially every other beautiful, friendly, clever, generous, and charming person on planet earth. The Internet has flattened the market, allowing anyone to eat your lunch, so just ringing the dinner bell after you launch your social media presence is not going to work as well as you expect.

Mind you, there are exceptions. If there are holes in the market–a vacuum–then filling that need will result in amazing success. Another exception is celebrity. If you already have an undeniable fan-base, it will translate perfectly into success online. Unfortunately, for the rest of us, we have neither.

In order to compete on a world stage, it is essential to aggressively recruit new members. Not just new members, but passionate, enthusiastic, members who will do what you expected Facebook, Google+, and Twitter to do for you in the first place: create firestorms of buzz and word-of-mouth influence. To become a channel of primary, secondary, and tertiary influence that result in your members sharing your content on their walls, resulting on an organic growth, ultimately snowballing into massive conversions and stellar online sales.

Do some research and you’ll find out, to your astonishment, that a majority of those viral videos with over a million views were not “upload it to YouTube and they will come.” Most of them skyrocketed as the direct result of some form of publicity campaign, be it grass roots or from an agency.

Be the catalyst of your natural social media success. Take your fate into your own hands and get off of that bar stool and walk over and start some conversations with all the folks you want to meet. This can include a long-tail blogger outreach campaign, it should include an A-list influencer outreach, be they on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, or wherever.

Membership in your community is a later stage of the hearts-and-minds campaign in which you need to engage. Just collecting Likes or Follows doesn’t often result in engagement. If you spend any time on your Facebook Page Insights, which you do, you’ll understand how important performance is to the success of your social media campaign. You need both quantity and quality of Likes. I won’t kid you: more is better; however, if you have hundreds of thousands of Likes on your Facebook Page but have negligible engagement in your posts in the form of likes and comments, then you will not earn the sort of gravity and popularity to elbow on your members’ Facebook Wall.

If you’re able to prospect passionate followers by going out there–to where they live on their own blogs, forums, Listservs, social networks, and communities–to find them, recruit them, convert them, and win them over, then you’ll start seeing the true power of world-of-mouth marketing.

Via Marketing Conversation via Socialmedia.biz via Biznology.

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Abraham Harrison’s new client, Nymgo, has now completely re-developed its networking infrastructure and is accordingly re-launching its product, website and brand with a completely new look and set of functions that pushes the envelope of mass consumer VoIP technology in 2012 — and, to celebrate that launch, they’re also offering 5 tickets to anywhere to a lucky 5 folks.

This contest is called the “Nymgo, fly me to visit someone” contest and it takes place on its regional Facebook pages for Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan — one round-trip ticket to anywhere in the world will be available to  each Facebook Page by simply choosing a friend they would like to visit. The contestant simply uploads a picture along with a required caption (maximum 500 words) explaining why they should win the trip to see that person.

Here’s some more information from the Social Media News Release that we produced for Nymgo:

Thanks to an investment from Intel Capital (USA) and Abraaj Capital (UAE) in 2010 and 2011, respectively, Nymgo has now completely re-developed its networking infrastructure and is accordingly re-launching its product, website and brand with a completely new look and set of functions that pushes the envelope of mass consumer VoIP technology in 2012.

With an established user base around the world and fast-growing multi-national workforce, Nymgo is definitely a start-up that you’ll want to pay closer attention to soon.

Nymgo is heating up its social media efforts by celebrating and honoring the hard work of expats and all kinds people living all over the globe by launching the “Nymgo, fly me to visit someone” contest on its regional Facebook pages – Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan. A total of 5 competitions and 5 round trip airplane tickets , Nymgo is awarding one person on each of these Facebook pages the chance to fly anywhere in the world, by simply choosing a friend they would like to visit. The contestant simply uploads a picture along with a required caption (maximum 500 words) explaining why they should win the trip to see that person.

In early 2012, Nymgo will be the first known VoIP software company to bring its extreme pricing to international calls on its native iOS and Android apps.

While both smartphones and VoIP technology have been around for years, Nymgo has married these two concepts together to bring crystal clear mobile-to-anywhere calling at the same rates we have come to expect from PC’s.

Because Nymgo specializes in paid VoIP long distance calling, it is able to focus on giving consumers the first real alternative to that which is offered by the mobile network operators. You always know where you stand with Nymgo. You get a great quality of service, backed by our Fair Pricing and Every Day Low Pricing policies.

We don’t offer you fancy promotions that promise the earth but in reality deliver nothing. Nymgo prices remain to be the lowest in the market of VOIP calls coupled with the best voice quality and customer service. No calling credit expiry dates with our Pay As You Go service.

We give it to you straight, including some great value adds – such as the ability to record your conversations, low cost texting and access the same phone book from wherever you happen to be at the time; at home, around the corner or on the other side of the world.

You pay the advertised Pay As You Go price with Nymgo. And that’s all you pay.

We don’t tie you up in long term contracts either. You can cancel either service at any time, without incurring any penalty charges.

Simply use up your credits and don’t top up again, or cancel your direct debit or credit card payment. We hope you don’t, of course. But you’re free to do exactly that, if you so decide.

I had my television début on Washington Business Report this morning on WJLA ABC7. I was invited on by Rebecca Cooper because she stumbled upon the Abraham Harrison website and liked our humor and our business.  So, here’s the video of the segment for you to check out:

Thank you very much to Market Wire, Sysomos, CommPRO.biz, and SmartWomanGuides.com for including me in their Top 10 Picks for the Leading Social Media Influencers of 2011 list:

• Top 10 Picks for the Leading Social Media Influencers of 2011 (slideshare.net)
• Understand the ROI of Social Media (dcincome.com)
• Who Are The Top 10 Women Social Media Influencers? (forbes.com)
• Social media is ruining our minds and we have the proof [Infographic] (inquisitr.com)
• 19 Huge Social Media Moments of 2011 (mashable.com)
• 21 Captivating Social Media Stats: How People Interact With Brands [INFOGRAPHIC] (hubspot.com)
• Heatmaps Reveal Where People Look on Social Media Sites [Research] (hubspot.com)
• Social media analytics tools – tested and rated (usefulsocialmedia.com)
• 5 healthcare social media tips that break the mold for pharma, med tech (medcitynews.com)
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In response to How to make an awesome Social Media News Release, Jonathan Rick asked me, “Isn’t this essentially the same thing that Pitch Engine offers?” Jason Kintzler then added, “Yes Jonathan, exactly! Did I mention you can do it all for free?!” (See Socialmedia.biz‘s earlier writeup on PitchEngine: A social PR platform for the new era.)

Well, my response is the topic of this post today: “The article is only about the what and why of the Social Media News Release and not the how. Pitch Engine is a how!” I then added, “Pitch Engine doesn’t take away the work: writing/collecting compelling copy and assets. You do that work” and then “Our SMNR is just a platform and structure. 90% of one’s time should be spent writing amazing content” and then, finally, “Installing WordPress, an amazing platform, does not an amazing blog make; Pitch Engine is amazing but content is king”

So, let me explain. Pitch Engine and WordPress are best-of-breed application platforms that make creating a Social Media Release and Blog seamless, removing the technology hurdle from the process. Those are good things, to be sure. However, after re-reading my SMNR post, I was reminded that it wasn’t about technology at all, it was about the collecting and presenting of relevant assets, copy, images, and videos; it was about organizing and branding an ease-of-use “steal all this content, blogger, and please post on your blog” microsite.

In fact, I made a point of showing how one doesn’t even need to spend all your time installing WordPress or some other database-backed website or web app — one can hack together a very valuable SMNR with just the most basic HTML, an inexpensive hosting plan, and a $12/year domain from a domain name registrar.

Why humanity trumps technology

It’s not about the technology, people! Hire and train people based on their ability to write and their ability to connect and engage people — who like people and care about personal, human, relationships. Signing up for Pitch Engine won’t write your SMNR for you, creating a profile on Twitter doesn’t make you an influencer, and installing WordPress doesn’t put you in the AdAge Power 150 or Technorati’s Top 100. These are all essential steps, but they’re no panacea.

If you’re spending more money on tech than talent, don’t. If you’re intimidated by technology, don’t be. If you think that Social Networking and Social Media is about apps and sites and smart phones and Twitter and Facebook and Google+, then you need to get past that and remember that it’s about people. Real fleash-and-blood folks who hunger to connect and relate. Yes, with each other, but also with you and your brand, products, and services.

Pitch Engine’s job is to make Social Media Release-making as easy-as-possible, tech-free, as possible. And they do an amazing job of it. The same goes for WordPress and Facebook and Twitter. If an app doesn’t make it easier for you to connect with other people, the app doesn’t work. At the end of the day, all these web applications are top-drawer, but they just make it easier — effortless — to do your job. They do not do your job for you and they often make folks lazier, more careless, and less concise. They tend to be enablers, enabling bad grammar, poor spelling, and just good enough editing. People should always write as though going to press and being printed on paper instead of just assuming you can always edit it later.

If you’re intimidated by technology, that’s OK. Social Media News Releases and Blogger Pitch Emails are more about the quality, simplicity, efficiency, and targeting of the writing, structure, and presentation of the page. Some of the most popular blogs online are Blogger and MySpace blogs, even though there are more sophisticated platforms. Why? Because what it is to be a blogger is to be a writer and not a technologist or programer. The same thing with digital PR and social media marketing. The most effective marketing campaigns combine the ability to write clear, compelling copy; understanding the target audience and their associated wants, needs, desires, and hunger; and knowing where the sweet spot in the market is — it is not about the technology. The tech is a necessary evil that must be transcended in order to ensure that the messaging is able to seamlessly reach the market without barrier.

Reporters don’t need to know how to run a printing press, news anchors don’t need to understand how a picture makes its way, as if my magic, to my LCD HDTV, and radio hosts surely don’t need to go out to get their Ham Radio License. And you don’t need to become an iOS developer, a web application developer, or a CSS guru, either.

Too many people in this space get stuck behind the technology barrier. They spend all their budgets on building the perfect web application, the best Facebook App, and on graphic design and architecture, leaving very little if anything on the best writers and the best marketers. Don’t get stuck in that trap.

Your social media presence, digital PR strategy, and social media marketing campaigns are only as good as your writers, marketers, PR professionals, community managers, designers, and creatives — the artisans — and not on the technologies — the tools. When I teach young college marketing and PR students in their communication schools, I remind them every day that all the things they’re learning in class, though possibly dated and old school, are still relevant because human nature is human nature and people are people and technological platforms are ephemeral and fleeting.

Learn the tools, surely, but don’t become obsessed with them. Shine the spotlight where it matters: people. Via Marketing Conversation via Socialmedia.biz via Biznology.

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In order to keep on the cutting edge of social media I tend to play a lot. Experimenting keeps Abraham Harrison au courant. Several months ago I received a Twitter DM from Shel Holtz asking if I would help him promote FIR for him via my social networks. The link popped off to a companycalled GaggleAMP.

I joined up. One of the options is called AutoAMP which allows me to set up my Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts so that anything that Shel Holtz allows to feed into his Gaggle would pass through into my Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn streams, unfettered. Shel is one of my idols and all of his content is amazing; plus, I admire his For Immediate Release podcast.

I set it up. Why? Well, I would always retweet anything from Facebook I saw coming from either Neville Hobson or Shel Holtz so why not remove the middle man and just allow their good message to pass through to my followers, as I would have done anyway, if there were enough hours in the day.

This is very cool, I thought, I really need to speak to the dude behind this. That man is Glenn Gaudet. I was able to secure my own account, and I have been checking it out. And I like what I see. Why? Well, it is 100% opt-in and rewards everyone: the publisher who wants his message to be conveyed far and wide as efficiently as possible–especially through fans, friends, and family; the consumer, who feels attached, connected, and committed to the success of the publisher; and to the community of consumers, who can then compete for prestige and prizes through an optional “air miles” points system that can easily be used to incentivize group cohesion and might competition.

What I like about the founder, Glenn, is that his heart is in the right place. This is not a Ponzi scheme or some bait-and-switch affiliate network. It is all opt-in, it is all join-in, and your success is directly proportionate to your ability to have fans who trust you and who are willing to amplify your brand on your behalf gladly–willfully! And, the more they trust you and your content–like I do anything by Shel Holtz–the more likely they’ll AutoAMP and really act as an extenti0n of your own Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn followers.

Long story short, I am trying it out and there’s a lot of cool stuff going on here. I am frustrated because building a Gaggle takes a long time. Because of Twitter limits, you can only invite, via DM, 200 of your followers-per-day so in order to invite all of my 39,553 followers, I will need another 197 days — to say nothing of the other three accounts I have connected in addition to @chrisabraham: @marcon, @harrisonmarkw, @abrahamharrison.

And, because I don’t have a cool podcast to promote like Shel Holtz’s FIR, I decided to make this experiment all about my very best asset: Marketing Conversation, Abraham Harrison’s corporate blog. All the content on MC is both stellar and moderate, which is to say it isn’t my stream or the streams of the other, personal, accounts, that are more chatty and less focused on producing simple, retweet-worthy, beautifully-curated content, both trustworthy and consistent — no floods of inconsistent or off-topic BS that could possibly hurt the web of trust both Abraham Harrison and I have developed over the years.

As it goes now, I have 63 folks in my Gaggle, including me. Even now, with so few, this surely amplifies like crazy. My total member reach is up to 144,234 followers and the total message reach is up to 3,452,474! It’s sort of like compound interest: I don’t really know what it is but compound interest has made quite a few savers millionaires over the years (it’s always the way time-travelers and vampires become billionaires, isn’t it?)

I was going to go through the reports and the metrics and the contests and all the other things that GaggleAMP offers but I think this is good enough for now — I will follow up with a step-by-step walk through the service next time. Right now I am working on building my Gaggle, I am seeing how well it converts to reach, retweets, clicks, and so forth.

All I can say is that, at the very least, it makes me happy that I don’t have to pay too much attention to posting my own great content from my collaborative marketing blog, Marketing Conversation, because I know that all the new posts are automagically posted to my @chrisabraham Twitter stream without my having to remember to do it all the time — and, even better, there’s a setting that allows me to preface each post that I AutoAMP from @marcon with “RT @marcon:” which is what I would do manually anyway. And since I am so busy, I like to automate as much as possible that I can as long as it’s an exact replica of would I would do anyway.

Another thing I like is that I can tweet something over on @chrisabraham and if I really intentionally and explicitly desire that tweet to go out amongst the members of my Gaggle as-is, then I can affix a simple #ga hash tag to the end of that tweet and it will be added to either my Gaggle members’ message queue or it will be automatically queued up to go out automatically via AutoAMP.

• Amplify your good message with GaggleAmp (socialmedia.biz)
• Amplify your good message with GaggleAmp (biznology.com)
• FIR Interview: Glenn Gaudet, President and Founder, GaggleAmp (nevillehobson.com)
• FIR Interview: Glenn Gaudet, President and Founder, GaggleAmp (holtz.com)
• GaggleAMP Offers Social Message Distribution For Companies (socialmediaexplorer.com)
• Join the FIR GaggleAmp experiment (nevillehobson.com)
• The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #616: September 12, 2011 (nevillehobson.com)
• FIR Speakers and Speeches: Shel Holtz on Content Curation (nevillehobson.com)
• FIR Speakers and Speeches: October 2011 – Shel Holtz on Content Curation (holtz.com)
• 3 Ways to Improve Internal Content Sharing (hubspot.com)

Last week, I wrote Max SEO with 8 simple Google+ steps before Google opened up G+ Brand Pages, so first go read what I wrote in the previous post (because all of the advice still applies).

In this post, we’ll work on setting up your brand page right away in the right way. If you follow these steps, you’ll be as well-placed as possible.

First, did you notice that there’s a new button on your Google+ profile? Go ahead and click “Create a Google+ page” and we’ll get started…

I chose “Arts, Entertainment, or Sports” because it offered “blog” as a choice. Since I am creating a G+ Brand Page for my blog, Because the Medium is the Message at chrisabraham.com, it was obvious to me, but I did poke around a lot just to be sure. Then you’ll have a few things to fill out, including your tagline, a branded photo (I didn’t have one so I just used a funny photo of my big nose with a nude Breathe Right Nasal Strip.

The next step, after uploading my photo, as seen above, is an opportunity to crop the photo — so feel free to upload any photo you want as you’ll be easily able to crop however you like — just like on Facebook.

When you click “Continue” after cropping and all that, you’ll get the below dialogue, asking you to send out a post onto your own personal Google+ profile wall.

So, follow my advice in Max SEO on G+ in 8 steps and make sure you make the announcement publicly and consider including emailing as well.

Now the tricky part: In order to post as a brand page you need to become the brand page. When you are the brand page, you post as the brand page. It might get confusing–it is for me. It is a little like the new Facebook Pages where you can re-identify you as your brand. So, how do you swap? It isn’t 100% obvious, especially if you’re used to how it is done on Facebook. See below:

The menu is subtle, grayed out, and right next to your profile picture. The profile picture is also a clue as to who you currently are: Chris+ or Abraham Harrison+ or Because the Medium is the Message+… see the pull down below. The good thing is that there are some visual clues and the profile icon does changes when you’re a different brand and a different person:

Then you’re “done”–which isn’t to say we’re done. Why not try posting your first post–and I will show you why you have some work ahead of you:

See? You have no friends! You can only, by default, post it like you do on your first day tweeting or blogging–nobody’s there except only the hungry eyes of the Google Real-Time Web and Google Real-Time Search.

OK, so how are you going to sex all of this up? Well, continue emailing your friends, blogging, and posting on your Facebook and announcing your new Google+ brand page on your Facebook Page or Pages, and tweet the heck out of it on Twitter. If you look below, you can check to see how many people add you to their circles and follow your new brand page over time:

OK, now while you’re doing a loud Olly Olly Oxen Free to collect your new followers, you need to take the next step, which Google doesn’t make so obvious: you have lots of opportunity to add some more information about you and the page. It’s hidden under “About” and “Edit Profile” as you can see below:

If you click on the text after “Introduction” and “Contact Info” an editable box will pop up and you can write up an introductory about me/about us with a bonus: the introduction accepts rich text and HTML and links and whatnot–so there is a lot you can do with this About: Introduction information. I pasted a very long tract of text over on the Abraham Harrison+ page and there were no limits to links, etc. Maybe you can even paste in graphics and photos–I have not tested it yet.

Then you can really go to town with the contact info: you can keep on adding and adding and adding–I added just about the kitchen sink, as you’ll see below:

Et voilà!

That should be good for now. And, if you need to figure out what to do now, why don’t you follow my 8 simple Google+ steps to max SEO.

Via Marketing Conversation via Socialmedia.biz via Biznology.

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Let me boil my last post, Here’s why it make sense to use Google Plus, down to practical pieces. Part of what makes a technology premature is that you have to be careful how you use it, because it isn’t mature enough to just work no matter what you do with it. To help you carefully handle Google+ for maximum advantage, I’ve assembled eight steps that help you get the best search visibility from your Google+ posts. These tips ares simple, but some are easy to overlook. I hacked this awful-looking graphic as an example:

Here’s a list of things that you need to consider before you invest your time and energy in Google+:

1. Make sure all your posts are Public. You can add more circles in order to spur interest amongst your friends, but be sure you explicitly tell Google, through your willingness to share publicly, that they can index your content in their public search engine. Check this every time because sometimes Public isn’t always selected, depending on the situation. Here’s my Google+ public profile.
2. Use a clean URL when you add your content to Google+. Google+ hasn’t been translating URL shorteners well, so use a link from the source. This will not only allow Google to better populate the content as you see above, including the Title, Blog Name, Description, and an Image from the post, but it will also allow that content to be cross-referenced to any Google +1 “likes” from others within Google+ and the rest of the Googlephere. Site URLs are translated the way they are on Facebook. You need to paste the URL into the “Share what’s new…” text box.
3. Prefixing names with a plus sign links that name to the person’s profile on Google+. You can include your friends and people you’re connected to on G+ in a similar way you do in Facebook, but Google+ has a gimmick that you may know or not. In the graphic above, you’ll see a blue box around Arsh S and Jenna Levy — I did that by adding a plus symbol (+) before each name while I am writing the article. G+ then populates a pull-down, offering pre-populated names of people I am connected to. I just need to select and go. Sometimes the profile’s privacy setting prohibits the link reference to persist after posting. Linking to people is a good way to engage, inform, and initiate conversation.
4. Even though Public should cover your inclusion in Search, you still need friends, circles, engagement, and sharing. In the same way that increased engagement levels and shares result in a higher placement, a greater “bubbling up,” and a longer life on the Facebook Walls of the friends and Fans/Likers on Facebook, the same goes for Google+ — and with both G+ and Facebook, the greater Social Graph is much broader than just shares, likes, comments and +1s on their respective platforms, it also includes +1s and Likes and comments that from the polling on websites, blogs, newspapers, and magazines Internet-wide.
5. Always make sure you populate every single page of your your blogs, corporate sites, personal sites, and e-commerce sites with the Google +1 button. The simplest way is by embedding code directly from the Google +1 widget embed page. For WordPress, I like to use the Google +1 Button by Alex Moss. If you use Drupal, check out Google Plus One +1. If you use Blogger or Tumblr, you’ll need to hack the template, in which case you’ll need to hack in Google’s widget yourself.
6. Spend all the time needed to fill out your Google Profile as completely as you’re comfortable. The Google Profile self-creates based on a lot of little choices you have made over time. But you can always add to it and even curate and help it grow and get it right. So, check out your Profile and make it as good as you can. I recommend you give ’til it hurts because in this economy of information, Google rewards authenticity and relinquished privacy very well, historically. Here’s my Google Profile and I have surely given ’til it hurts.
7. Optionally, consider checking the “Also email X people not yet using Google+” check box. Consider including the people who you’re connected to via other Google apps like Gmail in the post as a way of calling “olly olly oxen free” — a form of clanging the chow bell. However, this advice comes with a caveat: only do it on your best posts and only rarely; otherwise, you’re going to elicited a negative response. I made this error and regretted the simple click made too breezily and too often, so heed my warning.
8. Finally, commit to participating in Google+ by becoming an authentic part of the community. This is what Google Search wants more than anything, and it will reward accordingly by ranking your relevance in a similar way that Klout does: the number of people you influence, both within your immediate network and across their extended networks; amplification of how much you influence people; and your network impact of your influence on your network.

In short, Google juice and yummy organic SEO on Google Search. And quality rules. All Google cares about is relevance and its entire search algorithm revolves around this principal.

And, it all depends on how many people read, click, share, +1, and comment — and the more the better, resulting in higher real time web search ranking results over in Google Search, optimizing your SEO.

And, in case you didn’t get the memo, the Social Graph (be it the Facebook Like embed you can put on your site or the Google +1) are part of the new generation of Link Juice. The more sites, shares, and comments that happen even outside of Google + are all part of that — even the little +1 buttons that are all over every search result you see in both organic results as well as in the current crop of Google AdWords/AdSense contextual ads.

And it could all start with jumping in, feet first, into Google+ and committing time, passion, and resources to it over the long term. And, when Google+ Brand Pages are finally launched for public consumption, you can use the gravity you’ve already built up in your private profile for your company also.

That’s all I have for now. Before we end, I want to remind you that Google is working hard to make sure you can’t just call it in to Google+ the way you can on Facebook and Twitter. And, we all know that calling it in, cross-posting, and aggregating strategies are only a smart part of a good social media strategy.

Please let me know if I missed anything. As I have learned over time, all the best tips and tricks are generally always revealed in the comments of the readers.

Via Marketing Conversation via Socialmedia.biz via Biznology

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Google+ launched prematurely — so take advantage!

There is unnecessary unrest that has been buffeting the launch of Google’s newest online social network, Google Plus, and the reason for that is simple: Google was forced to launch G+ because Twitter blocked Google’s real-time and direct access to Twitter updates. This is now becoming old news but it explains everything. This is why Google+ didn’t have a brand page similar to Facebook Pages, built-in upon launch, resulting in either a transparent and compliant real name membership or deletion, with the exception of Ford Motor Companyand a few others that are the only brands that are in a testing phase, the sort of testing that happens in limited and private beta.

What has been happening even before the real names scandal is the scandal that any and all Google Plus profiles that were not simply real users with real names were deleted en masse. Most of the very early adopters who did not read the explicit terms of service (ToS) took the opportunity to not only create a G+ account for themselves but also set up Google Plus profiles for their brands and companies as well.

Within a day of being allowed in via viral invite or connections, there were thousands of connected, fleshed-out and promoted ad hoc corporate and nonprofit brand pages popping up everywhere.

This is a pretty common behavior in any new system as the tech-savvy flood in and test boundaries and limitations even if they have read the ToS closely. The truly unique and impressive (or tyrannical) response was in Google enforcement, which was immediate, insidious, terrifying and often sloppy when it came to brands. Brands were deleted that were, in fact, true names run by true people, often celebrities.

I remember adding Vin Diesel to my circles. He was removed, though I never discovered if real Vin or brand Vin or fake Vin fell under Google’s sword. Another was Captain Kirk (William Shatner), who was deleted but who really was who he said he was.

I won’t get political here and talk about whether it is OK or not to demand and enforce real names or if anonymity for safety’s sake is what should be allowed — except to say that if you’re not savvy enough to effectively fool Google, then you’re not savvy enough to escape detection and maintain the integrity of your privacy and anonymity. So you need to make sure any privacy and anonymity processes you adopt needs to be foolproof. If not, you’re really deceiving yourself as to how protected you are behind your nom de guerre if someone really wants to identify or harm you. OK, enough of that.

Why did Google give birth to a preemie?

The meat of this article is why Google would give birth to a preemie when there really was no reason to release until everything was perfect. Well, there surely was an intense flame under Google’s seat that made them roll something out that was bound to be more trouble than it was worth, and that’s the real-time web.

Until Google Plus, there was only one true source for real-time news and real-time trends: Twitter. While Facebook speaks about its Social Graph and is privy to real-time trend data, only Twitter shares with the world by default. A microblog instead of an online social network. By default, Facebook profiles tend to be walled gardens, sharing only with explicitly-approved-of friends. Facebook Pages are much more open and search engine optimized, but still suffer from being very proprietary and more difficult to directly hitch onto in the same unfettered way that Twitter has been known for — until now.

Back on July 3, Twitter cut Google off. The details are murky (and if you do know details, please help me out in the comments), but before that happened, Google was able to build an entire new product: real-time search results. If I searched for “Chris Abraham“ or “chrisabraham,” I would see a short, scrolling, section towards the top of the search results that would cycle through my latest tweets as well as tweets that were related, such as mentions of me or retweets.

This real-time search that tapped Twitter’s real-time web become one of most exciting and interesting Google killer apps–something that Yahoo! and Bing couldn’t match, matched only by Twitter’s own search.twitter.com. Real-time web results also amplified the value of Google’s old reliable Google Alerts service, allowing it to become one of the most valuable early-warning reputation management tools in marketing — and all for free, at least $600 less than professional social media monitoring dashboards such as Radian6, Sysomos and Visible Intelligence.

When Google’s full-pipe access to Twitter was mysteriously cut, for whatever reason, Google scrambled, attempting to keep up appearances by turning up its sensitivity to secondary sources like Friendfeed and Tweetmeme as well as its focus on blogs and other sources that receive nearly immediate updates, but nothing was able to surf the real-time Web the same way that Twitter does, globally, in one normalized and consistent XML feed.

The results were that after the direct access to real-time tweets was cut off, the latency between a tweet and when Google was able to reflect that plummeted. Compared to the world pre-Twitter, it was nearly real-time; however, it was more akin to the free stock market numbers that you can get on Google and Yahoo! Finance: there was often a 10-minute time delay–way too long to be the best, way too long to appeal to journalists, activists and businessmen to use Google as an integrated news portal instead of where you go after you see what’s going on on Twitter, where the true pulse is.

Google Plus was launched prematurely as an emergency heart transplant to save a patient that had lost his pulse because it wasn’t in possession of its own heart — it was reliant and dependent on Twitter to maintain the pulse.

Google+ was a very smart idea, but it only makes sense in its half-assed Tonka Toy sort of state when you consider the above. If Google can activate every single Gmail user on Google+, then Google will have over 220 million new users and sources of real-time updates for their real time search product, matching or bettering the number of users that Twitter has. If they make it happen — and they’re being very aggressive with their methods since they pretty much just give an account to anyone with a Gmail account.

Plus, for anyone that really cares about being part of search, anyone who cares even a little bit about Google’s search hegemony, there’s another benefit to participating in Google+:  search priority, search timeliness and search relevance. There’s a good chance that the best way to show up first on Google search is to invest your brand and your time force-feeding all your content and trends to Google products such as Plus and YouTube.

Why it make sense to use Google Plus: Reach

That’s the reason why I go out of my way to make sure I cross post to Google Plus in addition to Facebook and Twitter. I want my content to remain relevant and essential when it comes to Google’s serendipity engine. When it comes to my blog, Because the Medium is the Message, 80% of all of my traffic comes from Google and other search.

I wonder what’s going on with Twitter and why Google was cut off, but this obviously made Google not just nervous but quite irrational and more willing to play the “beta test on paying customers” game that Microsoft is well-known for. While I believe that maybe Google is post-beta and post-labs, there is no branded indication that Google+ is more than a work in progress on its way to a fully formed being.

It surely is not fully formed. It’s a chalked suit that’s in the middle of being tailored, but is far from finished. Google+ was deployed too soon to really be able to invest in down the long-tail. Luckily, Google+ is still very much the home of the technorati, the technical elite. While Google+ likes to portray itself as being modular and flexible, it is really a hodgepodge mess that is far from being intuitive.

What’s worse is that none of my iPhone, iPad, and Blackberry apps, such as FourSquare, Hipstamatic, Selective Tweets, or any of my normal cross-posting tools have yet to integrate Google Plus, so I can’t, as far as I know, add a hashtag to my SMS tweets to 40404 that cross-posts to Google Plus the same way I can do to Facebook with a #fb.

When will Google Plus Brand Pages arrive?

All in all, today, a quarter of a year after Google+ was prematurely born, there are very few solutions for sharing, cross-posting and auto-posting that don’t include grabbing code snippets, hacking JavaScript, and dancing with Chrome 3rd party ad-hoc solutions that nobody short of a coder would be able to sort out.

So, Google Plus assures us that Google+ Brand pages will be awesome, be better than Facebook and meet all our needs as social media marketers. However, Google has been reporting that Brand pages will go public “later this year” and this is later this year, at least in relationship to the July 2011 announcement. We’ll see how late in the year Google Plus Brand Pages will come to fruition; however, if I am right about the rush-opening based on panic and desperate need, then it will be closer to the tail end of the year than any time in the Fall.

That said, I spend an extra hour a day making sure everything I share and say on Facebook and Twitter is shared to Google+ as well. Why? Well, if everybody’s bailing on Google+ already, then there will be relatively little competition for the “real-time web” search results on Google. I assume that since anything I tweeted showed up immediately before the break in Google Search that everything I “Plus” will be immediately indexed and show up in real time web, real time Google search as well–as long as I always remember to select “Public” every time I post things.

So, while it might be a half-assed product with a lot of promise but very little cohesion or continuity, it is also all that Google’s got right now, so they’ll be leaning very heavily on anything and everything that is being openly and publicly shared on your wall. So it is stupid and short-sighted to roll your eyes, turn your back, give Plus that hand, and go away until Brand Pages go public.

Take the extra time, become an expert in the space, work on your Google Plus celebrity, and enjoy the added prestige you’ll enjoy as a direct reward for your taking the risk and investing in this new platform — and Google Search cannot deny that it’s nepotistic and favors and rewards early-adopters and devotees, so make sure you spend a little time becoming OG+ (Original Google+) and you might discover that you’ve discovered a secret weapon in your messaging, marketing, publicity and organic SEO campaign.

But don’t you dare try to create a Google Plus account in anything but your very own true name, because Google seems to have a hair trigger when it comes to summarily executing any members who it doesn’t deem absolutely authentic.  Via Marketing Conversation via Socialmedia.biz via Biznology

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