Google+ really has a lot to offer for a social network that is still technically beta. The features already on the site are fully usable, and surprisingly, there are already great apps available for both the iPhone and the Android. Both apps are pretty solid, although the iPhone app did have some conflicts when Apple released the latest software update, and it shows a real effort on Google’s part to have the network absolutely ready upon public release so that it could gain as large a market share as possible right out of the gate.

Google+ also has a few innate features that help to set it apart from other social networks. The circles feature makes separating contacts into specific groups and sharing only with the groups you want second nature, which is great, and the network also makes it surprisingly easy to hide just the posts you don’t want to see without the need to block the poster. Also notably absent, at least for now, are the notorious character limits that tend to make it difficult for more descriptive individuals to get a good rant into a single post.

More Features Are On the Way
Google+ is already shaping up to offer the best features of Facebook and Twitter by the time it is fully live and public, and there have already been more features announced. Google recently stated that there will definitely be a Games feature implemented into the social network, much to the delight of Facebook game players worried that Plus might actually serve to kill their beloved network. No word yet on whether this means that we are doomed to yet another round of blocking farm and mafia invites from everyone we know, but given the way they have seamlessly improved all of the other current complaints from Facebook users, we think Google just may have a better solution for this as well.

The Bottom Line
Google+ really seems to be working hard to give users an experience that is at once familiar and yet entirely new. In a sense, it is as though they have taken Facebook and removed the most loathed features while adding those that users have been begging for. Yet, in another sense, it is something completely new and something that is decidedly and characteristically Google.
What’s your thoughts on Google+?

Photo by Bruce Clay, Inc

Admit it. You have a Facebook account you’re just dying to get back to right? I don’t blame you. Where else can the common man get the exposure he needs without having to deal with criticism from ‘concerned’ friends and family members? However, not everyone has the time and leisure to sit back and add friends all day long, but wouldn’t you like to? Knowing how to maximize your Facebook time can help you create a vast network of friends who will be available to you almost any time you wish to parlay.

The good news is that you can do just that by applying some simple techniques that can teach you how to maximize your Facebook time:

Photo by topgold

Etiquette is the type of broadly interpreted social science that can inspire an entire book worth of tips, understandings and precedents. However, we only have time to provide the basics of social media etiquette in this feature. There are multiple disciplines of proper etiquette, including behavior concerning social media websites and portable devices in the office, as well as how to generally “type” to people online. The main focus of this article is to share how one goes about presenting himself or herself as a professional company.

Being a Friend First, a Company Second

While there are various instances of impoliteness on social media, the one golden rule everyone must abide by is that social media doesn’t tolerate spam. If you spam a person’s page or post a comment advertising your services, you will probably find your comments deleted and your ID blocked as a friend forever. Unfortunately, many people misunderstand the word spam and think that if they personally post an advertisement for a product rather than relying on a robot, they are not spamming.

Wrong! Spamming refers to any untargeted solicitation. Why, the term spamming could even be used to refer to a “sales pitch” that you give to someone else in casual conversation. Social media is a walled paradise away from the “hard sell” business world outside and the last thing anyone wants to hear is an unsolicited advertisement.

How then do you go about “advertising” without advertising? Usually by way of (1) sharing helpful and objective information about your industry; (2) posting about incentives, discounts or gifts to your customers; (3) company news, local shows, new directions, new campaigns; (4) multimedia content; (5) sharing links to third party sites that fit in with your message and objective.

You can also subtly advertise by showing yourself to be an expert in your field, one that doesn’t need to advertise or beg for attention. You focus on establishing credibility and in creating brand awareness—not on making promises or bragging about your accomplishments.

Social Media Interaction Etiquette

When it comes time to make friends and to spread goodwill throughout cyberspace, make sure you approach your pages and their pages professionally and respectfully. This not only requires a positive and dignified manner of speaking, but also requires some tact when it comes to talking with the community.

Make the effort to fill out your profile page completely, if for no other reason, than to link people back to your sales website. Explain the type of person you want to befriend on your profile so that there are no misunderstandings. It is similarly impolite to befriend people randomly without any introduction or explanation as to who you are. While you can take a chance and “add” a person based on just his/her likable profile, never start selling your business immediately after adding, because this will forever associate you as a spammer.

Make sure that all posts are dignified, relevant and politically correct. Not only should you reflect honor and discretion in your posts, but you should also make sure that you are not forwarding too many messages to your friends or sending out time-wasting requests based on your daily actions. If you have a social media manager ensure they follow your rules for engaging your tribe.

Finally, post your work in a word processor first so that you can catch any spelling or grammatical errors before you share them with the world. A misspelling that goes months without a correction reflects poorly on a professional organization.

Following these tips can help build your brand awareness over time, and more importantly, build your brand trust amongst the community. What tips would you like to suggest?

Photo by hanspoldoja

Just a few years back, you would have been surprised with the mention of social media marketing. In today’s world, they are the buzz words. Initially social media was not meant for marketing but it went through a transition in which it was able to market various services and products.

This was plausible because social media is all about interaction. It gives us easy access to potential and existing customers and isn’t that what an entrepreneur desires? Moreover, social media is a cost-effective means to combine the aspects of both social interaction and technology.

Define Your Customer

So, lets say you are a small business and planning to use social media as a launching pad.  You successfully created your company’s Facebook page and your own Twitter Account, but then you ask what’s next? You need to have a well defined target market you can’t expect customers to flow right in. This is where it’s important to define your customers just like with any other form of marketing. Who is your ideal client?

Define A Focused Strategy

It’s imperative to have a focused strategy in place. Don’t expect social media to end all your marketing woes like a silver bullet. It’s a media that can work well with your other forms of  marketing strategies. Implement a few different social media strategies to grow your reputation online.

Use Social Media strengths to Your Advantage

The biggest strength of social media is being able to share which then gives you an opportunity to communicate with people around the word. Some organizations use this strength to their benefit by allowing a direct two-way communication between the organization and its customers. In most cases, we focus on keeping our  customers well informed about our products and services and how they may benefit them in the future. This two-way communication also involves feedback from customers which is priceless.

Social media is a great way to find your influential brand ambassadors, these ambassadors will then spread the word to potential customers about how great their experience was with your small business.  This is free word of mouth marketing! A referral from any customer is easier to work with then looking for new customers yourself.

photo credit: yanec

You will agree that in spite of some strange features, Facebook is still an addiction. Having crossed the benchmark of 500 million users from across the world, there is still no stopping. The number of users creeps in everyday and why it shouldn’t, Facebook provides some extraordinary features to keep its users glued to this particular social networking site.

One such feature of great acclaim these days is that of friendship pages. The friendship pages allow you to view conversations between your friends or find out how flirting between any two of your friends led to their marriage or how their fights led to breakup. All in all it’s allows you to see what your friends are posting on each others walls.

It’s not like your conversation leaks out in public, for viewing someone’s history, you must be friends. So for those scared of privacy issues, friendship pages don’t have this problem. For instance you met someone at a party via some mutual friend. And now you wish to know more about them. All you have to do is look through their history or wall posts to learn more about them.

It sounds creepy! But if it wasn’t everyone’s desire then why would Facebook stalking catch so much fame. Before Farmville became the major thing, going through your friends’ profile page, like buttons or status updates were the biggest pastimes. Friendship pages have given a new meaning to social interaction.

As for those who are not comfortable sharing their personal stuff with everyone including some friends then they can make use of standard disclaimer rules. Reset your privacy settings if you don’t want to become a part of the show.

So this in-depth glance at relationships can not proceed without mutual consent. What’s more interesting is the fact that now you are spared from a lot of Facebook browsing. Because previously, you would have had to sift through profiles to determine relationships between any two of your friends. However, now you don’t have to go through all that trouble.

With friendship pages, significant ease has been brought to browsing. All RSVPs, comments, events can be viewed from your wall. There hasn’t been a better way to remain updated with your friends’ activities.

For some users, friendship pages are the means to commemorate some cherish-able moments between friends, while there are some who take delight in pouring through insults or some long history comprising of snarks.

Though it appears creepy just be aware that people can see conversations you’ve had with friends. Just like some other features, friendship pages on Facebook have been a huge hit. The high user retention rate on this social network are tied to a human desire to stay in touch.

Building a business on any type of social media service takes a light touch and an experienced mindset. Unfortunately not everyone can boast having both of these attributes. If a small time businessman includes himself/herself in the equation than that usually turns out to be a recipe for disaster. No one can think of managing a social media business presence without the aid of relevant management skills. You can opt to hire a social media manager to do the job for you which helps lesson the learning curve and saves you tons of hours.

One thing you must understand is that hiring a social media manager is not the be all and end all of online business management. You can’t just pay one off, sit back and dream of the oodles of cash just waiting to be tipped into your bank account. Before even thinking of hiring one, it’s always best to learn the ropes of social media management yourself. So, how should you go about it?

Get to know the lay of the land

The first thing you must do is to map out the online terrain and get to know the lay of the land. In layman’s terms that means you have to familiarize yourself with the best social networking and bookmarking sites and direct a large portion of your activities there.

Choose your tools wisely

Keep tabs on your most frequently visited sites and choose the most suitable tools to make your social management easier to manage. You can do that by regularly posting your progress online. Take Twitter for instance. If you have an account on that social media network along with a large following you can automate your tweeting with tools which will aid you in updating regularly.

Strategy is Key

Every website needs regular maintenance to keep it afloat. The same applies to business sites which need more than usual tune ups. The key to doing this is through website traffic analyzers like Google analytics which will provide you with detailed reports regarding where your traffic is coming from as well as the most used or popular keyword searches to your site.

The geographical diversity and density of your users can also be found out through the use of these analyzers making. This continuous update will allow you to strategize your business website accordingly.

Importance of Market potential

Be sure to check out the popularity of any good websites and blogs. When you find them try and have your advertisement campaign displayed on it especially if it is related to your products or services.

Don’t be the Needle in the virtual Haystack

The World Wide Web has been perceived as a potential business venture by billions of users around the world. Making your presence known in this dense corporate jungle can prove to be the key to many successful business ventures world wide. It’s therefore essential that you make yourself as visible as you can amidst the immense cluster of other business websites.  You can do that by ensuring that you get listed in the top search results to help your enterprise.

They say behind every successful man you can usually find a woman. This age old adage is especially applicable to the budding entrepreneur and the social media manager. Many smart business owners swear by them. Business moguls don’t make decisions without consulting them first. Why? That’s because a good social media manager can create a highly targeted marketing campaign for you and your business faster than any print media.

What is a Marketing Campaign?

A social media campaign by one of these talented individuals can go a long way in establishing your business status both online and offline. Not only is it more effective than television and radio advertisements but having one made need not cost the earth. A reliable and strong social media campaign will have the correct amount of keywords to attract as much online traffic as it can.

Why use Online Marketing Campaigns?

The internet has been the source of much satisfaction for millions of users worldwide. According to studies an average Facebook user uses the site for 4 hours and 39 minutes while Twitter users can log on for an average of 31 minutes a day. What’s the point of this diatribe you ask? Many of these users at one time or another search for services or products they’re in need of. Social media websites are usually their prime search mediums which can spell good news for the potential businessman.

Social Media Managers

Unfortunately many social media entrepreneurs face a time crunch when it comes to maintaining their online presence. Even though they realize the immense profit they can generate with them, many entrepreneurs face both technical and monetary difficulty when they try to glue themselves to the computer screen.

This is where the immense usefulness of a social media manager comes in. This technically talented individual aids a business owner by maintaining and updating their social network for them. This can be anything from a business blog, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn account. Other services also include customer reviews, video casting, pod casting and even social bookmarking. They can even maintain an active presence on message boards and forums.

Additionally the business owner will be privy to the latest and most successful advertising venues without having to do much. A social media manager will be able to be where you can’t afford to be. Think of them as proxy individuals or virtual clones if you will. Your manager will be able to take care of your business’ reputation by keeping a steady flow of relevant content on your business website. They will also clean up any problems, technical or otherwise, that may crop up.

A good social media manager will also make sure that all your customers remain satisfied with your services or products. This includes making sure that every client is provided with his/her specific requirements and to keep them up to date regarding any updates or new products. This will have the added benefit of creating a loyal online following, a must have for any big or small business owner.

photo credit: webtreats

2010 has been one revolutionary year. We saw the rise of tablet computers, blu-ray, robotics, and so on. But, what we didn’t notice is that there have been noticeable changes in the trends of the World Wide Web as well. Till last year, Google was supposed to be the leader but today things have changed. It seems like social media websites like Facebook and Twitter have already declared war on Google and for sure there has been a tremendous change in the mindsets of online marketers. Think of it – there was a time when marketers completely concentrated on Google to promote their online businesses but now social media has become the number one preference.

Honestly speaking, that is actually a good thing because through social media people can now find potential customers more easily. There are numerous other advantages of social media as well and numerous changes that have occurred in 2010 which have made us think that social media websites are the next big thing. Here are some of those changes which have changed the way online businesses work:

Introduction of business apps and features:
Right from the start of 2010 we heard news pertaining to twitter, Facebook, and the others and their plans of making their platforms much more alluring for businesses. And, yes they all actually did it. Facebook introduced features like Q&A and business pages, Twitter announced a completely new user friendly layout and LinkedIn had its special feedback feature. All of them were basically targeted towards businesses and for their ease.

Communication made easier:
Why do you think all of these social media websites introduced features which made communication much easier than ever before? For instance, Facebook introduced the feature of joint strings. If 3 of your friends posted the same link you will get it as a thread instead of getting them separately. This way, not only your time is saved but all of your friends with the same interest on that particular topic can communicate about it. This is especially advantageous for businesses as they can get to know how exactly people feel about their brands.

Communicate with real people:
Possibly the biggest advantage of the revolution of social media is that businesses can really get to know who their customers are. Twitter introduced a feature some weeks back of having mini profiles. When you roll your mouse over to the person’s name, a short profile of the person will appear. This way, if you want to find potential customers you will know who exactly you are following or connecting with. Previously, this was not possible because Twitter showed you limited profiles.

Crowdsourcing is in!
Probably the major feature which was integrated by almost all social media websites is of Crowdsourcing. What we mean by Crowdsourcing is that most of the social media websites now have the feature of having open Q&A sessions in which numerous people can contribute and so on.

These were some major changes in social media which made the social media websites more lucrative for businesses.

photo credit: Marc_Smith

Facebook, probably the most famous social media website today, has recently added some new features to its platform. Many have not noticed these features yet, but they are extremely important to use, especially if you use Facebook for business purposes. So without wasting any time, let’s get onto what these features are…

Advertisement accounts can now be accessed by multiple users:
Previously it was quite frustrating for advertisers to know that their advertising accounts can only be accessed by one person at a time. However, this restriction has now been removed. Of course, if you are a small brand, this feature won’t be of high importance to you; but for bigger brands, it sure is. With this change, you can now give admin access to your teams as well. They can monitor results and share the information with others as well. That is a really good feature that can help advertising teams on Facebook to garner better results!

The all-new rating system:
This is another important feature Facebook has recently announced. This is a valuable function to those running retail businesses on Facebook.  Previously, your friends or people in your list were only able to ‘Like’ your brand page, but now they can even rate it. They can also add reviews so that others can view it. Facebook has integrated a five-star rating framework that allows your friends to rate your page. This means that you can now get to know whether all the people in your list are actually the ones who like your brand or not.

Questions on Facebook:
Facebook has announced a new feature known as Facebook Questions. Right now, this feature is not available for everyone. However, once it gets in the public’s hands, it will prove to be a revolutionary feature. Users will be capable of crowd-sourcing solutions to their concerns just like Yahoo and LinkedIn users. For instance, if you run a brand page on Facebook, you will be able to ask your members what they feel about your brand, etc. This feature will act as a survey which you can run within your Facebook profile. This will be a beneficial feature for businesses on Facebook but we have to wait for it for now.

Multiple posts can receive threaded comments:
This is particularly a very useful feature, and the good news is that it is already in effect. For instance, 20 of friends post the same link again and again on your profile, it will aggregate as one single thread and all the comments regarding the post will be summed up at once place. This means that if you are spreading the word about your brand and you are leaving posts on the walls of your friends, you won’t need to check out their comments separately. All their comments will be present at one place.

Are all these new features good?
Well, you can’t really say whether these features will be interesting for the masses or not, but they sure look promising right now.

photo credit: FindYourSearch

When you join Facebook,  your profile page is created and your given a public “wall”. This is where your friends can write things to you or about you. Whether you use it as a place for conversation – where you and your friends chat back and forth – or you use it more for a place to talk about new updates in your life, just keep in mind that your wall is viewable to everyone.

Step 1: Writing On Your Friend’s Wall
a)    Navigate to that person’s profile
b)    Write your message in the box
c)    You can attach a photo, video or other items to your comment.
d)    When you’re done, click “Share”.

If you like someones comment, click the Like or leave a comment.
You can remove a message by moving to the right of the post (comment) and a X will appear if you hover near it … it says Remove Post. Just click on it and your message will disappear.  Tips – They still get a notification with what you wrote originally.

Step 2: Replying To Comments Left On Your Wall
Under my original message you can see friends left comments, if you look below… it says “write a comment…” this is where I would add my response.

You can remove any message written on your wall all you have to do is select “remove” next to the message.

Step 3: Sharing Links, Events, Notes and Videos On Your Wall
Add a these Tabs
There are many things you can add to your wall. For quick setup, we’re going to add several tabs before we get started. To add tabs, follow these steps.
a)    Click “Profile” in the top-right corner. You should see a tab titled Wall and possibly more.
b)    Click the + sign to add a new tab
c)    Select the tab(s) you want to add
d)    You can search for more tabs using the search box

For this demonstration, we added tabs for Links, Photos, Videos and Notes as shown below.

Add Photo Album & Photos
Creating photo albums is a great way to share certain photos with your groups of friends. Here’s how to add a photo album and photos:
a)    Click the Photos tab
b)    Select to create an album, upload a photo or take a photo with your webcam
c)    Depending on your selection, follow the steps provided by Facebook.
d)    Click Share to select who to share the new item with
e)    Click Publish

Adding Video
You can record a live video or upload a video you pre-recorded and saved to your computer.
a)    Click the “Video” tab
b)    Click “Record” to record a live video using your webcam
c)    Click “Upload” to upload a video from your computer

Say you want to share a friends video on your wall so your friends can see it…. here’s how.
d)    Click the Video
e)    Click Share
f)    Choose whether to post the video to your Wall or send it by email to everyone in your address book.

This also applies to YouTube and other sites that host videos.

Adding Links
Similar to a bulletin board, you can post links to websites, articles and other items you find interesting. Here’s how to add a link:
a)    Click the “Link” tab
b)    Enter a short description (optional)
a.    If you don’t add a description, it will pull one from the site/article
c)    Enter the URL to the

Adding Notes
You can write notes about things that are happening in your life, random thoughts, a new favorite food, hobby, album or movie – anything short that you want others to see. Here’s how to add a note:
a)    Click the Notes tab
b)    Enter a title for your note
c)    Add the body content of your note
d)    Attach a photo if you’d like
e)    Click Publish

**Notice it says Tags but use them sparingly and wisely! No one likes to be tagged if the note isn’t about them.

How do you use your Facebook Wall? Leave your comments below…

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About Karriann

Karriann Graf is a Social Media Manager/Strategist for small businesses and real estate professionals. Her focus is to help you learn about the best Social Media methods to connect with your clients and customers and increase your revenue.