Mark Zuckerberg wore a hoodie this week, everyone seems to be talking about it.  In other news Facebook is still rolling out new features left right and centre and Pinterest is still the topic grabbing all the headlines.  This week I look at that self driving car from Google, how the ad breaks are becoming better than the TV shows, and a great article on using Google+.

Google and the self driving car

It sounds like something out of a science fiction novel but it looks like the driverless car is well and truly on it’s way.  This week saw the new Google car that drives itself get the go ahead for real life road tests in Nevada, although it still needs to be accompanied by a responsible adult.  This is Knight Rider, Total Recall and more all rolled into one.  Unfortunately the car doesn’t look quite as cool as KITT.  Many of my Facebook friends are wondering if you can drink and sit in one of these as it drives you home.  More on the driverless car from PC Mag.

Facebook launches document sharing

I’m a big fan of Dropbox, for those of you who aren’t aware of it Dropbox is a cloud based system that allows you to save and share documents. It’s easy to use and means you can access your documents from any PC or Smart-Phone.  A couple of weeks ago Google launched Google Drive, a similar application that some called the Dropbox killer.  Yesterday Facebook announced that tit was going to be rolling out it’s own document sharing to all Facebook groups.  As a heavy Facebook group user I’m going to find this really handy, although I don’t seem to have it yet.  Instead of using Google docs or the limited document creation that Facebook has previously allowed I will now be able to share stuff directly to a group instead of linking off site.  There seems to be some concern within the online community that Facebook may be gearing up to take on Dropbox and Google Drive but I see no evidence this so far.  I also feel trust levels about Facebook aren’t high enough for people to share sensitive documents the way they might on Dropbox.  For more on the new document sharing feature check out this article from Mashable.

The power of an Obama Tweet

Obama has to be partly responsible for the clamour of politicians using social media.  He set the standard during his last election campaign, utilising social media across the board.  Many have tried to imitate him, some successfully some woefully.  Can anyone forget Gordon Brown’s YouTube videos, even his fans felt slightly uncomfortable watching his cheezy performance on screen.  This week shows that Obama has lost none of his power, a Tweet from his account endorsing gay marriage received almost 60,000 Re-tweets, and counting.  Read more here and follow the live RT score here.

Shazam advertising and Britain’s got Talent

You may be familiar with Shazam, it’s possibly the first iPhone app I ever heard of. The original application helped you identify music that was playing, so if you were in a shop or a club you no longer had to ask a member of staff what was playing, you could let your phone tell you.  Since then they have expanded and this weekend sees the first TV advertising using Shazam.  During Britain’s Got Talent on Saturday night advertisements from Pepsi Max and Cadbury will display tags, prompting Shazam users to check in, those who do might win something cool.  At the moment I have no concept how this will work but I am downloading the app and will tune in to the ad breaks to see what happens.  More here.

Is Google+ a ghost town?

I’m really beginning to like Google+, it takes a while but once you realise it really isn’t Facebook and understand how to discover stuff and interact it really is a great network. It’s still new but I’m finding myself getting more and more immersed in it.  This article is full of great tips on how to make the most of Google+, I won’t be implementing all the suggestions but it’s a great reminder of some of the features that we may have forgotten about.  If you read this and follow the advice I guarantee you will find G+ more fun.  A big hat tip to FIR podcast for alerting me to this article.

Social gifting – what’s that?

Social gifting is a trend I will be keeping an eye on.  Already consumers are getting used to doing their gift shopping online and sites like Groupon show that their is an appetite for online voucher buying. Now there are applications springing up that allow you to send gift vouchers to friends phones.  More here.  Although I love the simplicity of this idea I’d hope that people would use it for spontaneous gifting, I think the process of choosing, buying and wrapping a gift for your loved ones is important and I’d hate to see a future where exchanging Christmas gifts would just be a series of beeping phones.

A marketers guide to Pinterest

This is a really clever video that turns infographic into infovideo.  A great guide to Pinterest it’s filled with stats and hints presented in animated infographic form.  It certainly holds your attention.  I’m imagining we’re going to see a lot more of these in the future, maybe they will become as viral as infographics.

And from Spiderworking.com this week

Preview links on Twitter before you click with Embedly

I really love this tool for Twitter, it’s a browser add on that allows you to preview links from Tweets the same way you preview images and videos. In fact it’s so useful that I’ve been using it a week and I can’t remember life without it.

Awards, Awards, Awards

This is the story of how I happen to be running the Blog Awards Ireland this year and why I’m so happy to be nominated in the Social Media Awards.

Have a great weekend and don’t forget to share any cool links you find on our Facebook page or in the comments below.

As you read this I am on my way to SMWF (social media world forum) in London.  As you might be aware the highlight of the conference for me is Chris Brogan.  I’ve got his latest book ‘Google+ for Business’ on my Kindle and I’m looking forward to his presentation on the subject.  That’s why this week I thought we’d take a look at a pretty cool tool for use with Google+.

Google+Timing can tell you the best time to post updates to Google+.  As far as I can work out it only does this for personal profiles at the moment but it’s still pretty cool.

Just sign up with your Google+ account and it will pull some data and give you some pretty cool graphs outlining the best time of day to post to reach your followers.  It also ranks days and times in order of importance.  So although Wednesday between 8pm and 9pm is my optimum time there are countless other options.

On Wednesday I’ll be putting together a short summery of what I learnt from Chris Brogan about Google+ so do drop by.

Still Facebook’s new business pages dominate my feeds, however there’s been an abundance of interesting and amusing stories this week.  Last week I brought news of the big Simply Zesty acquisition, this week it looks like Mashable is being scooped up too.  There’s concern about Twitter data being released to the authorities in NYC, a fascinating article from an ex-Google employee and something to get you in the mood for St. Patrick’s day.

Mashable acquired by CNN?

I’ve always been a massive fan of Mashable, it is THE social media blog to read and even though I may have whinged about a fall in quality of posts over the last year or so it’s still a fantastic resource.  It was when this news broke that I discovered that Pete Cashmore, the man behind Mashable was a born and bred Scot.  Looks like the celtic nations are leading the way in social media blogging!  Read more about the alleged acquisition here.

Twitter Data & Occupy Wall Street

One of the greatest achievements of Twitter has been bringing together people and telling the story of revolutions.  Much of the Arab Spring has been reported via Twitter and other social networks and it’s one of the things we boast about.  However the rise of the Occupy movement has begged the question about whether our own (or US) authorities are happy with these freedoms. Not for the first time Twitter has been subpoenaed to release data about some Occupy Wall Street protesters.  It’s also a stark reminder that we are never anonymous on the Internet, comments can always be traced back to us.  More here on Read Write Web.

Will Google+ be the undoing of Google?

I’m still a fence sitter as far as Google+ goes.  However I do believe (maybe wrongly) that the network was set up as a Facebook killer.  In my head it isn’t a rival to Facebook, it’s another social network, a wonderfully constructed tool but it lacks activity.  Even when Facebook users annoyed by yet another change threatened to leave for Google+ en masse it didn’t happen.  What is frightening is that Google seem to be banking everything on G+, they are changing their search algorithms to make them more social, although this really means to prioritise G+ results, in fact everything they do now seems connected to the social network.  Google do one thing wonderfully, better than anyone else and that is search, Google is the best search engine in the world and it’s my worry that Google+ could ruin this.  It’s always good to know there’s someone out there with the same opinion and that’s why I found this article by ex- Google employee James Whittaker fascinating. Definitely worth a read.

What we like and don’t like on Twitter

I love this crowd sourced post from Sian Phillips on Tweak Your Biz (formerly Bloggertone). She has collected tips directly from Twitter users who tell us what they do and don’t like.  Two of my favourites are :

@elainerogers I dislike when people mistake lack of rapport for disagreement, and immediately react negatively

And

@ballymountaccs Like the immediate reaction to a question, comment or conversation

This really is everything you need to know about Timeline for Business pages

Mari Smith has to be the undisputed queen of Facebook.  And this wonderfully helpful article means she’s in no danger of loosing her crown.  Full of brilliant easy to follow information, when I shared this on my Facebook page people were asking why Facebook couldn’t explain it this well!

10 must have WordPress Plugins

From Jeff Bullas’s blog this is an up to date list of great WordPress plugins.  Some of them I’m not mad about, the ‘Hello Bar’ for example, I’m not sure if it’s a knew jerk reaction but I wouldn’t want something that ugly at the top of my website, and ‘Sexy Bookmarks’ refuses to work with many templates. However there are some brilliant ones, I’m not sure how I lived without All in One SEO and W3 Total Cache is a must have now that Google seems to place importance on page load speed.

Social media and the Irish language

Because it’s nearly St Patrick’s day, I’m giving you two links for my final story.  The first from The Sociable looks at how Irish is being used in social media.  An interview with Niamh O’Sullivan, projects executive  with Comhdháil Náisiúnta na Gaeilge discusses how people are using it and how the Irish language can be promoted via Facebook, Twitter etc.

And finally here’s a short video from Star Translation Services that tells you how to ask for a pint in Irish this St. Patrick’s Day.  Hopefully the bar man will understand you!

And from Spideworking.com this week

We’ve been away on holiday so just one blog post for you this week.  I’m working on a mammoth post on how to get more Likes on Facebook but you’ll have to wait a little longer for that!

Beat Facebookers Block with Post Planner (But I didn’t try, here’s why)

Would you be happy giving your credit card details to a Facebook app?  I wasn’t but was disappointed as it looked like such a handy tool. Read more here.

My news feed has been totally overcome with Timeline this week.  And of course it’s only to be expected.  I think I’ve only managed one non-timeline related piece of content myself.  I’m not going to ignore it entirely this week but there have been other things happening.  So here are my top seven reads this week, there’s news from Google, a great post about images and I’ve even found a couple of tips on using Google+.

If there’s a story you think I should have included do leave your links below.  I might squeeze it in to next weeks roundup.

Irish social media agency Simply Zesty acquired by UTV

Fantastic news for Simply Zesty this week as it was acquired by UTV.  It’s been great to see an Irish business grow so quickly and do so well, I’ve always been a fan of their blog and have been entertained by both Niall and Lauren’s tweets.  It seems hard to believe they’ve only been around since 2009.  They’ve definitely been a shining light in the social media world both here in Ireland and overseas.  So a massive congratulations to all, I’ll look forward to seeing the business evolve.  Here’s how they announced it on their blog.

Google launch ‘Google Play’

Google Play looks like a lot of fun, it makes sense, it’s clever.  What is it?  It takes all your music, movies, e-books & apps and stores them in the cloud, this isn’t particularly new but what makes it brilliant is that it stores information about them, it will bookmark your ebook so that even if you pick it up on a different device it will know exactly what page you were on, like Netfilx it will store how far through a movie you are and play it directly from the point you last viewed it from.  This could be a killer application that will push those who are ready to make the jump from iPhone/iPad over to Android devices.

Most of all, the video they created to promote it is brilliant.  Find out more, and see the video here.

Change the name of your Facebook page

Great news!  I’ve encountered many companies that have wanted to change the name of their Facebook page.  Some set up a page with a geographical location in the name and then changed location, others specified a year.  Until now pages with over 100 Likes were not able to change that name.  The only solution was to start from scratch with a new page.

Now it seems Facebook will let you change the name.  Here’s how to do it via the Imactiv8 blog.  It’s also worth taking a look at the new Facebook page guidelines that tell you what page names are eligable to be changed.

Web graphics, images & conversions

Whether we like it or not Images are more powerful than words, they attract attention and can tell a story instantly.  Images in blog posts and on web sites are essential but do they work for you?  Is a pretty website going to encourage more customers? I found this article fascinating, not only does it talk about how beautiful websites can simply not work but it also has good traditional advice about positioning images and even tips including how captions below pictures get more readers than the main body of text.

Google+ pros & cons for small business

If you are a reader of this blog you will know that I have been sitting on the fence about Google+ since it was launched.  Yes it’s a beautifully put together social network, it’s intuitive and uncomplicated, it takes the best parts of Facebook and Twitter and merges them but will it ever get enough interaction to really take off?  Since it’s inception there has been talk of it failing, it seems there are some people out there just waiting for it to fail so they can say ‘told you so!’.  However as reports come in of the slump of interaction on the network it’s worth taking another look at why we should (or should not) be using it.  And that’s exactly what this article from Viral Blog does.  Worth a read if just to re-asses your presence there.

How to verify your Google+ page

If the last link has persuaded you to stay on Google+ you might find this video useful.  Apparently using this process to link your G+ page and your website will help your website rank on Google.  It’s on my todo list for this week!

Not forgetting Timeline!

I’m not going to totally ignore Timeline, in fact if you scroll down you’ll find three links from me about it.  If you’re still wondering if you should make the change to Timeline business pages but don’t know where to start this article from Christina at CG Online Marketing will help you get started.

And from Spiderworking.com this week

If you’re in preview mode or simply taken the big step and converted to Timeline on your business page here’s my video tutorial on changing your featured tabs and how to change the images that accompany them.

I also wrote a post on the demise of the welcome tab on new Timeline pages for Bloggertone.  Is customisation a thing of the past?

Timeline is very image heavy, there’s a cover photo, an avatar, custom images for tabs.  I’ve collected all the info on these different types of image and included them in a blog post.  I’ve also added three free tools that can help you create great images to use on Timeline.

And finally… nothing to do with timeline.  This Monday’s cool tool is an application that helps you hide specific #tags or people from our feeds! Great way to hide Britain’s Got Talent or the Euro Soccer Championship.

*UPDATE* The Google+ Directory has now moved to it’s own site. You can register directly on www.gplusireland.com I’ve closed comments on this post to avoid confusion.

On Monday Google+ finally released the long awaited business and brand pages. It seems to have given the network a much needed boosts with general activity on the site growing significantly amongst my circles.

To create your page click here and follow the instructions. We’ll be making a video or two over the next week or so to help you get started and share tips on how to make the most of it.

Here are some of the Irish business pages we have found so far, if you’d like to be added to this list please leave your page link in the comments section. For now it’s just a list but I’m looking into some tools to make it a stand alone directory.

Write on Track

Write On Track offers a blog coaching and mentoring service. Not sure of where to start with your blog and like a couple of training sessions? Or perhaps you would prefer a couple of months of mentoring until you are confident? We offer blogging services tailored to your needs.

You can also outsource your blog writing to us.

Lorna and Marie have both reached the finals of Blog and Social Media awards in previous years.

Greenside Up

Greenside Up shows people how to grow their own food, whether it’s at community gardens, allotments, private gardens or schools we can come to you.

Garrendenny Lane Interiors

Garrendenny Lane Interiors is an Irish online home, gift and lifestyle store.

Purchase wallpapers for your home, buy your Christmas gifts here, we will giftwrap for free and can send them abroad for you too.

We source from various European companies that are not readily available elsewhere in Ireland and we also stock many new Irish designers too.

Eco Evolution

Eco Evolution is a highly professional renewable energy company specialising in the consultancy, design, supply and installation of renewable energy technologies such as Wind Turbines, Hydro Turbines, Solar Photovoltaic (PV), Solar Thermal (Hot Water Supply & Space Heating), Heat Pumps, Heat Recovery Ventilation and high efficiency Ecorad aluminium radiators for the domestic, commercial, industrial and agricultural markets in Ireland.

CG Online Marketing

CG Online Marketing customises all services to maximise your online endeavours and produce targeted results.

We cover:

• SEO and SEM
• Online marketing strategies + consultation
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• *NEW* Marketing outsourcing

Wedding Singer Cork Siobhan Oliver

Wedding & function singer based in Ballincollig, Cork. It has been my privilege to study with renowned Irish sopranos Cara O’Sullivan and Mary Hegarty. I have a B.Mus Hon in Vocal Performance from the Cork School of Music.

Puddleducks

PuddleDucks.ie is Ireland’s leading online specialist for ourdoor clothing for children. Our range includes waterproof jackets, dungarees, trousers, hats, gloves and much more. We also sell a fab range of cosy and fun fleeces. In fact everything that is needed to allow kids to have fun and stay warm and dry in the great outdoors – whatever the weather has in store.

The Secret Garden Centre

The Secret Garden is tucked away in the beautiful countryside of North Cork. Stocking a wide range of plants, trees, shrubs, perennials and gardening sundries, it’s the perfect place to come and find something different for your garden.

With tea, cake and birdsong we are well worth discovering

iamhandmade.com

Luxury Irish Artisan Handmade Bath & Body Products from Dublin, Ireland

Sligo Genealogy Research Services

I provide a friendly and reasonably priced research service specialising in genealogy, local history research, and related photography in County Sligo, Ireland.
I can undertake searches in the Flax Growers Index, Tithe Applotment Books, Griffith’s Valuation of Tenements, Parish Records, Gravestone and Memorial Inscriptions, 1901 and 1911 Census for County Sligo and I can also obtain Birth, Marriage and Death Certificates for County Sligo.
I hope I shall be of help to you in tracing your ancestors. Meticulous research is assured.

And don’t forget us!

Spiderworking.com

At Spiderworking.com we love social media. We help small business with social media using big business knowledge.

Leave your link below to be added

At some moment on Monday night I flipped.  I follow Chris Brogan on Twitter and Google+ and a tweet sprung onto my newsfeed.

“Starting to really dislike the 140 character limit after years of advocating it. Conversations are so choppy here.”

Before I give you my reaction a bit of background

I have to admit one of the things I’ve enjoyed about Google+ is watching it evolve, watching early adopters whose opinions I respect discussing the new network, and discovering how it works.  Chris Brogan for one hung up his keys at Facebook and moved lock stock and barrel over to G+.  These people were finding new ways that Google+ would work and sharing them with their followers.

After a while it became apparent that Google+ was not just a potential Facebook rival but also a Twitter rival, the stream was reminiscent of Twitter and you have the ability of following people who don’t follow you back.  There was nothing amazingly different about Google+ but it was taking the best bits of other social networks and improving them.  And therein lies G+’s strength.

With a massive user base that grew at a rate that must have struck panic into the heart of Mark Zukerberg I was beginning to think that perhaps it could eclipse Facebook and do so much faster than I’d originally anticipated. However this has yet to happen.  There are members all right but few are active and my feed is still dominated by a few power users.

When G+ was launched I avidly created content specifically for it, I routed out my best photos, made specific videos and found links just for sharing there.  To me if I was going to be a success with Google+  I’d have to discover what to post and how to differentiate what I was doing there to what I did on other networks.  My community and potential target market are very much ensconced on Facebook and Twitter so leaving them like Chris Brogan did wouldn’t work for me.

As time has passed I have posted less and less. I dip in everyday to have a look at what’s going on and sadly I now break my golden rule. “thou shalt not post the same content to Facebook and Google+”.

There are some people on there whose streams I find entertaining.  There are some great photographers and seeing photos in the timeline is definitely one thing that G+ has over Twitter.  There are also the social media peeps. Chris Brogan, Mari Smith.  They post great stuff and I love reading it but I hesitate before commenting.  Why?  Well firstly the volume of notifications.  Yes I can mute a post but really my trips to G+ are swift and stopping to mute stuff on the way seems unnecessary.  The notifications that someone else has responded to the post would be fine if there was a conversation going on but each commentator seems to act individually, they are communicating with the original poster but not me and not the others who have left comments.  This is how it works on Twitter but surely G+ gives us the platform to converse.  I myself am guilty of this.  I leave a comment based on the original post and the first few comments I see.  Real conversation can spring up on G+ but usually it’s on the content posted by less influential users.  I’ve participated in small scale conversations on both my own and other users posts.

I guess part of the reason for this is the curse of celebrity, Twitter has given us unpresidented access to celebrity and this has carried forward to Google+.  The problem being that Twitter is filtered so we don’t all see @replies of adoration aimed at high profile users, sadly on Google+ we do.

So with all those users I still see my feed dominated by celebrities or power users, I see some of my contacts struggling with G+ or like me just throwing the odd link up here and there.  It’s partly my fault, I’m not leading my community over to G+, I’m not encouraging them the way others there are and unless I, and people like me, make a better effort Google+ can not succeed.

So my reaction to Chris Brogans Tweet was

“@chrisbrogan G+ isn’t ready for the masses yet.. us with smaller communities are finding it harder.”

to which he responded

“@spiderworking – how so?”

As if to endorse the sentiment of his original tweet I’ve had to post over 800 words to explain my thoughts.

I’m not sure I disagree with Chris Brogan’s point of view as such I’m just not there yet and neither is my community.  It’s almost as if due to his loyal community base he’s been able to take the express train to Google+ adoption where as I’m still on the steam train, we stop more often on the way though and hopefully we’ll pick up passengers on route.

What are your thoughts on Google+?  Will you pledge like me to try harder? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Ruairí Browne is the Managing Director of Kro IT Solutions Limited; a software development company in Dublin. He has over 12 years’ experience working in web technologies and he counts some very well-known companies as his clients. In this guest blog post for Spiderworking,com he examines the part a traditional website has to play in the age of social media.

I have noticed an increasing number of businesses operating from social media only and eschewing a traditional website. It is not something I am against in principle – actually I think a good social media presence is a lot more useful and cost effective than a bad website. It is also technically very feasible – you can sell products directly from Facebook now with no major setup costs. However for serious business owners here are some reasons why I believe you should keep a website as the central hub of your online activity.

1) Watch the T&Cs

Facebook, Google Plus, and Twitter all have seemingly daft rules about competitions, promotion, and other aspects of being a respectable user of their site. If you break these rules you will often be banned without warning or any right to state your case. By using social media as a channel to send users back to your website where they can then enter competitions or purchase deals you are ensuring that you do not fall foul of these rules. You may also consider that some websites such as those related to breast feeding or alcohol may fall foul of American prudence on those subjects that would not be applicable in Ireland.

2) Fashions Change

A well-known Irish band that I worked with spent a lot of money on a social media campaign to launch themselves on MySpace and Bebo. They also had a website which could be maintained, managed, and edited by the band themselves. However they never really took to the website and decided to run all their promotions and competitions exclusively through social media. At one point they had a major fan base of over 100,000. I asked them once if they had email addresses for all these fans and they laughed at me and told me email was old school (man). That was all very well until all their fans moved to Facebook and they had to start again back at zero. If they had driven even a proportion of their traffic back to their website they could have captured their fans contact details there and when the band moved to Facebook they would at least have been able to inform people. As it happens the change in fashion more or less finished the band because the second time around they had all left their jobs and could not sustain a second long campaign back to popularity. I am not sure that Facebook is about to follow Bebo down the drain, but if it does (and let’s face it Google Plus would like it to) then are you ready to move with it? Also imagine that one day you wake up and all your followers are gone from your Facebook page due to some glitch. It could happen and if it does Facebook will issue a brief statement saying that some customers were affected and there is nothing we can do about it.

3)     Information is Powerful

Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Google Plus are all great places to interact with your customers. However your website is owned by you and therefore a “hit” to your website is of great value to you. For starters you are on message right across the screen – you are not sharing your screen space with messages from the social media website or advertisements or anything else. Secondly you are capturing user data such as where they came from, what country they are in, what keywords they used to find you, etc. You essentially have control of the customer and it is up to you to lose them or make the sale. The same cannot be said with Facebook (or similar) where your customer is really Facebook’s customer and you have to compete for their attention. People picture Facebook as like a big shopping mall that attracts millions of visitors and allows you the privilege of selling to them. However remember that reality is that we are attracting millions of visitors to Facebook and then they are the ones that are trying to sell to those visitors. Think of the Arab guy in the market in Morocco. He comes out into the street with a monkey on his shoulder to attract attention and he tries to make you feel special by telling you he is Irish and his wife is Irish and his dog is Irish. All the time he is pushing you into his store. He knows that the market is a dangerous and fickle place where everyone wants a bit of you. If he can get you into his shop he has your undivided attention to try and make a sale. Facebook is like that market and you need to get people back to your website where you can get their undivided attention.

4)     Credibility

Users are not stupid. They know a Facebook page takes 3 minutes to create and that you can get 100 fans just by asking your friends. A website shows much more commitment. A website says that if I have a problem this person will still be here in a few months. This may not be accurate but it is going to be a factor in your customers mind. When e-commerce first took off the most successful shops were those with a brick and mortar presence backing them. Nowadays people expect that a social media presence will at least be backed by a website and if that in turn is backed up by a bricks and mortar operation then all the better.

5)     Value

Finally a web based business is worth money and can be sold. For all the reasons above and many more a business based solely on social media is of no value to an investor, bank manager, or buyer. Social media is also perceived [appropriately] to be about people. It is very rare that a small business has an effective social media presence that is not in reality based on one or two key personalities. Having a website behind your social media presence gives it a focus and a focal point that will make it easier for other personalities to take your place and continue to run your business.

You don’t have to look too far to see an example of a business run in the way I recommend. Spiderworking.com is a strong brand tied together by a good website. However Amanda is herself a brand on social media but she tends to filter most of her potential customers back to the Spiderworking.com website (after all where are you reading this blog post?). She is embracing social media fully but she is using it to strengthen and nourish her core business rather than as an end in itself.

I always picture a website as the trunk of a big solid oak tree. Social media is like a part of the root and branch system – it brings nourishment to the website and it allows the website to express itself. If a tree loses a branch or a root it will not die, but without many of them it will not live. There are many other roots and branches such as email, cold calling, marketing, advertising, and networking. They are all important but I suspect that right now social media is for a lot of businesses the one to concentrate on. Just don’t forget the basics – you need a good solid place to call home.

At the end of last week Google launched it’s brand new shiny social network Google+.  I was cynical, after Google Wave and Google Buzz would G+ be good?  From the outside I wasn’t impressed.  It seemed to be just another Facebook but then I started using it.

When I started looking at what I liked about it I realised that I could learn from G+ .  That in some ways I had forgotten the beauty of social networks and I should refresh the way I use Facebook accordingly.

So firstly what did I like?

1. It’s less complex than Facebook – Facebook has some great features but I think they confuse people. When I’m teaching people how to use it it seems like I could run a week long course on the topic and still not get through it all.

2. Content is good – Because it’s new and membership is still limited the content is really good. Mostly self generated and a lot less automated stuff… and even better NO FARMVILLE!

3. Excitement – It’s new and most people are finding their way around and sharing tips. There is huge positivity from the people who are posting and it makes you want to join in.

4. The people - G+ is similar to Twitter, you can follow who you want and they don’t have to follow you back. This means you can follow some of the top people in your industry on G+. For me that’s easy as I’m in social media so my industry influencers were some of the first there.

5. Choose who to share with – At first I couldn’t see how ‘Circles’ differed from ‘Facebook friend lists’.  The difference is that you are required to enter who you want to share with on every post. Some posts are public and Twitter style, some you want to keep for friends, family or even individual users.  This should stop news-feeds getting cluttered.

So how will this change the way I use Facebook?

1. Keep it simple - Facebook is complex and it’s easy to assume that everyone knows how everything works.  Keeping updates simple and showing people exactly how to communicate with you – whether it be telling them exactly what to do to ‘Like’ a page or join a group is important.  Never assume someone knows something, don’t use complicated jargon, make it easy to participate.  Of course there is a fine line to tread between keeping it simple and being patronising so make sure you are also adding value, be careful not to talk down to people.

2. Provide compelling content –  All of us at one time or another post something we may not have thought about properly. Whether it’s talking about having a cup of coffee or a digest of our daily activity we really need to wonder if people are really interested. Since I’ve been using Google+ I’ve gone out of the way to find compelling content to share.  I’m carrying my camera with me everywhere again and only posting the best stuff I find on the net to my profile. With this in mind I’m going to be more selective on what I post to my Facebook profile – although I’m sure I’ll still post a bit of nonsense there.

3. Excitment - How can I make what I’m doing with my Facebook pages more exciting and innovative.  I for one have fallen into a pretty tight Facebook schedule for Spiderworking.com and I sometimes forget to think of myself as a client.  What clever and innovative ideas would I suggest to a client to get the most from their page and how can I make mine more enticing? I feel I also need to be more impulsive with my posting.

4. Am I connected to all the right people? – I have a lot of friends on Facebook but my stream moves so fast I don’t communicate with them as much as I should.  I’m going to start using Friend lists again to make sure I’m not missing important posts from great people.  I haven’t actively sought out friends on Facebook for ages and this is something I should be doing, who out there is providing great content through their personal or business pages that I should never miss?  I need to find these people and pages and make sure I’m connected.

5. Be selective with sharing – Facebook friend lists serve the same purpose as Google circles.  With new lists created I’m going to stop clogging peoples news streams and only send relevant content to relevant groups.

All of this should make me a better Facebooker, I know you’ll all be watching now to see if I fulfil my pledge!

Do you agree with these points? Have you used Google+ yet?  I’d love to hear your thoughts too – leave me a comment below or join me on Google+ to have a chat.

Today’s post is a guest post from Alan Coleman from OnlineAdvertising.ie.  Alan is the founder & CEO on OnlineAdvertising.ie, they are specialists in the areas of Google Adwords & SEO. OnlineAdvertising.ie have had numerous campaigns published by Google as Case Studies and are finalists in the upcoming DMA’s in the “Best Digital Marketing Agency” category.

Last year we asked you to submit your social media questions for us to answer,

SM Receivables asked ”what is the difference between tags and meta tags?”

We’ll hand you over to Alan for the answer:

I’m not 100% what the tweeter meant by “tags”, so I will give a give explanations for a few of the possibilities. Websites have 2 audiences, their users and the search engines. I will detail the relevance of each type of “tag” to both parties.

Title Tags

The “title tag” of your webpage is very important for SEO. It helps the search engine understand what your webpage is about. It is also generally the headline of your webpages’ listing on the Google search results so it will influence whether users visit your site or not.

Your “title tag” is also visible to your websites users at the very top of their screen. So it may influence conversions.

Meta Tags

A meta tag (which can be meta description or meta keywords among other things) is not visible to website users and has less (if any) value in SEO. Meta descriptions are important however, because the search engine will generally display the “meta description” in it’s search results. So well written copy in the “meta description” can increase clicks & conversions on your websites.

Alt Tags

An “alt tag” is the labelling of an image on a website. If you hover your icon over the image on a website it’s alt tag will appear. Search engines can’t see pictures so unless you tag them they will not know what the picture is of, and won’t be able to display them to people searching for such images, or attribute the keywords to your web page. So “alt tags” are important for SEO.

Tags

“Tags” also appear on blogs. You can tag words in a blog so if the user clicks on the tagged word they can see a list of all your posts which include this tagged word. This is great for SEO as it tells search engines you have plenty of content on this word(s) and will therefore increase your website’s value for this word(s). It is also great for users as they can easily find all your posts on their subject of choice.

If you have a social media question you would like answered leave a comment below.

This week I’m  delighted to feature a guest post written for us by Shaun Fagan of iSoft. I met Shaun earlier this year and am fascinated by the online community he has set up for his customer user groups.  I asked him to tell me more about how he set it up.  This is part one, Shaun will be back with part two soon.

A big part of my job is to manage our customer user groups. We now have quite a few across the UK and Ireland, meeting somewhere in the region of 150 times a year. The user groups serve a wide range of customers, each with their own unique requirements focusing on their own particular geographies and software solutions. We realised early on, when setting up most of the groups, that we’d have to introduce some degree of consistency of approach otherwise it’d simply be impossible to maintain.

Communication is of course, central to most of what we do (or should do) with our customers. How could we enable and facilitate the necessarily robust, open and hopefully vibrant dialogue required for the company and its multitude of user communities? Email lists? Google or Yahoo Groups? Nope. Whilst these may have been OK a few years back what we needed now was something far more sophisticated and tailored to our needs – what we required was a User Group Portal, (which was interesting, as it the time I wasn’t sure if such a thing even existed!).

We set about google and straight away we started to find examples of customised websites hosting online communities. But what exactly were our requirements and what is the purpose of user groups anyway?

• To work with customers to help drive better product development?
• To give users a feedback route to the supplier, helping improve service and support delivery?
• To nurture and forge improved communications and customer relations? or
• To act as a subtle sales mechanism?

Answer – All of the above!

But how you do you start to build a website that has the capabilities to handle this wide array of challenges? Start by identifying your core requirements. Take each high level area and in turn map the website functionality that is necessary in order to help achieve the respective goal. We ran a half day workshop (with customers and internal representatives from the departments mentioned above) and ended up with the following list as being the pre-requisite building blocks for our portal. For each user group community we would need:

• A News section
• A Calendar function
• A Document repository
• A Forum or message board facility
• A voting or rating ability (specifically on development requests)
• A Blogging ability

Next time – how we turned paper based requirements into reality!