Get a jump start on Understanding Google+ and getting your business started?
Who Should Read This Book
This eBook is targeted primarily for the business community as consumers of web design, marketing and development solution providers. It is also of value to those same solution providers such that better understanding of these topics and the issues presented will better serve their customers.
Table of Contents - 23 pages
- Introduction
- Who Should Read This Book
- What is Social Media?
- Benefits of Social Media Marketing
- Social Media Terms and Buzz Words
- Social Media Marketing Strategies
- Developing Viral Content
- The Magic of Lists
- The Quiz
- The Video
- That Picture
- Tools
- It's a Matter of Trust
- Building a Fan Base
- Don't Sell, Attract
- Social Media Strategy Ideas - Platform Specific
- Facebook
- Sharing
- Business Page
- Advertising
- Contests
- Groups
- Google+
- Content Stream Quality
- Get in the Circle
- Getting "Plused" on What You Share
- The Stream Must Flow
- Facebook
- Other Social Media Platforms
- Squidoo
- How to use Squidoo in Your Business
- StumbleUpon
- Searching vs. Stumbling
- Combats Information Overload
- Social Media Analytic Tools
- Google Analytics Social Reporting Tool
- HootSuite
- Raven
- Other Free Tools
- Appendix A
- Technology Resource Sponsors
- About the Authors and Contributors
- John B. Moore
- Melanie Moore Bermudez
- Joanna Foley
Sample excerpt from ebook
Comparing Google+ and Facebook
Over the next year there are going to be volumes written on this topic. What I offer here is a snapshot of the how I see those differences between Google+ and Facebook AT THIS POINT. I start with the core of each and then build the features from there. In all software and business models there is a core that was the starting foundation of that model. That core defines and sometimes limits what can be done later. Early developers like Facebook can then suffer from those decisions and later developers (like Google in this case) can leverage those lessons learned.
The Facebook Core
At the core of Facebook is the Status Update with the resulting Timeline. Also part of that core is the concept of “Friends” and “Friending”. From this core Facebook builds their other features. You add Groups (which comes and goes it seems..) Pages and Fans which is their current push so as to better include businesses and therefore ramp up the monetizing of Facebook. Either way, Facebook is centered on the whole “Friends and Fans” concept.
The Google+ Core
Google, being a search engine company sees the world from the angle of connecting resources and the value of those resources (Links, images, content, videos, and etc..). The key of all of this is placing that “value” (referred to often as “pagerank”) to those resources. Given that, the core of Google+ is a way of measuring “interest” (value) and that is done by getting Google+ users to create “interest groups”, i.e. Circles, so that these groups can share, comment, and recommend resources (Links, images, content, videos, and etc..). Comments on these resources could become big part of the “valuation” and “recommendations” of these resources.
Some of the observers of Google are commenting on a patent that Google published in May of 2011 titled “Ranking User Generated Web Content” as a clear indication on where Google is wanting to go with its social media initiative. Unless you have not connected those dots, “User Generated Content” (or UGC) is the core definition of social media, so this patent directly targets that core for use by its search engine ranking services.
The bottom line with Google+ is that it is an initiative not a product. This initiative is designed to generate a more personal value to the search results allowing Google to better target search results and in the end, serve their “real” customers, Advertisers, better.
Which is a better service to focus my efforts?
Ah, you should have seen this answer coming: “It depends”.
You can't ignore Google, and by that extension if your business in ANY way leverages social concepts then you can't help but eventually get a bump in your rankings from using Google+. I don't think Google is making this a secret. On the other hand Facebook does offer a large and dedicated user base and again if your business can leverage that “groupie” tendency of many people then you can't pass that opportunity up either.
I suspect that for many businesses doing both is a given. Where to draw those lines would involve a more detailed analysis of your business, which is beyond the scope of this ebook.
