MackCollier.com

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The Fan-Damn-Tastic Marketing Show Episode 14: Segmenting Your Fans to Better Engage Them

Welcome to the 14th episode of #FanDamnShow! Today’s episode is how to stabilize or build your social media engagement by segmenting your fans online to better engage with them. If you enjoy this episode then please subscribe on iTunes!

Show Notes

0:50 How engagement around social media content seems to be falling

3:00 Our behavior has shifted from engaging with content to simply creating and sharing content

3:50 If your engagement is falling, then most engagement will come from the people that know you and have an existing relationship with you

6:00 How to segment your fans and easily stay engaged with them on Twitter and Google Plus

12:45 Results of my January goal for total downloads and whether I hit that number

14:05 The two things I learned from doing #FanDamnShow in January

 

Here’s where you can download this episode directly.

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How Much Should Your Company Pay For Social Media?

cost of social media

I am obsessed with the Real-Time feature that Google Analytics added a few months ago, and am constantly checking it throughout the day.  It shows you how many visitors are active on your site at any moment, as well as what page they are viewing, and how they arrived at your blog.

At almost any time during the day when I check who is currently on this blog, the odds are at least one person is here because they were sent here from Google after searching for something related to the cost of social media.  These three posts I wrote on How Much Social Media Costs Companies in 2010, 2011 and 2012 are by far the 3 most popular posts on this blog.

What’s been interesting to me is that I’ve received two main forms of feedback on these posts, and the prices quoted:

1 – Small business owners and those that are self-employed think the prices are way too high.

2 – People that work for large companies think the prices are way too low.

So this feedback, coupled with the fact that many people are searching for information on pricing, tells me that many companies and business owners are in the dark as to how much basic social media marketing services will cost them.  And as much as we would like to believe that most companies in 2012 ‘get’ the importance of Social Media, from what I’m seeing, there’s no shortage of companies that are just now starting to investigate if social media marketing is for them.

So if your company is trying to decide how much it will cost to begin using social media, here’s what to consider:

1 – Think about WHAT you want to accomplish with social media.  Here’s a post I wrote on Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Creating a Social Media Strategy (But Were Afraid to Ask!).  No, you don’t have to create an elaborate 50-page document on how your family-owned seafood restaurant should be using social media, but the point here is to have you put some thought into why you want to use social media.  The quickest way to waste money on social media is to invest in using tools that won’t help you accomplish your goals.  Otherwise, most companies could simply launch a blog, and start accounts on Twitter and Facebook and be done with it.

2 – Start small, grow as you better understand the tools.  Let’s be honest, doing social media effectively takes a serious time commitment.  The companies that we today laud as wonderful social media case studies are frequently large companies that have had a dedicated social media team in place for years.  So if your company’s social media team is comprised of YOU, and you are new to social media, suddenly diving in and trying to launch 5 different social media accounts for your business is probably the fastest way to go no where.

Instead, as you begin to flesh out why you want to start using social media, think about the goals you have, and then prioritize the tools that will help you reach those goals.  For example, if your tech company wants to build awareness and you believe that a blog, presence on Google Plus and Twitter will best help you, the prioritize those tools in order of importance.  So instead of launching all three presences at once, maybe it makes more sense to first start on creating and growing your blog.  Then after a few weeks, you can begin to spend more time with Google Plus, using it first as a tool to get better research, then as a way to promote your new posts.  You may start interacting with some customers there, and you can follow them to Twitter and do the same there.  Just remember this, it is far easier to build and audience and move it to a new location than it is to try to build two new audiences at the same time.

3 – Avoid the shiny, follow the value.  Invariably, the social media space creates a new ‘darling’ tool every 6-12 months.  This time last year, everyone was in love with Quora.  Earlier this year, everyone was on the Pinterest bandwagon, and even now that’s starting to die down.  For whatever reason, this space loves to overhype newish tools, and you’ll suddenly see all manner of posts and articles devoted to why every business MUST now be on Quora/Plus/Pinterest.

Don’t believe the hype.  You shouldn’t ignore these new tools, but you should research them to make a thoughtful decision on whether or not your business should adopt its usage.  Let value created determine if you jump on the Flavor of the Month, not hype.

4 – Don’t start using Social Media due to fear of being left behind.  This ties in with the above point, but you need to adopt social media based on sound business value, not on fear that ‘everyone’s doing it and we’ll be left behind if we don’t start’.  I had a company contact me once and say that they were ready to start using social media ‘the sooner, the better!’.  I started asking some questions, and it turns out that they hadn’t even considered using social media until an industry newsletter they were subscribed to came out with its latest issue proclaiming that every business owner in that space had to start using social media right now!

I’ll say again, from my experience and in my opinion, most businesses are NOT using social media, and most of the ones that are, aren’t doing so very effectively.  So the idea that all your competitors are using social media and doing exceptionally well with it, is most likely a myth.  Granted, you shouldn’t ignore social media, but you have plenty of time to do some research and decide if social media is right for you.  Again, let your decision to adopt social media be dictated by the value it can create for you, not the fear of being left behind.

 

Now, I raised these points because time is the most common currency companies will spend when it comes to social media.  These points were mentioned to help keep you from spending more time on your social media efforts than is necessary.

But let’s talk more specifically about costs.  Let’s start with an example of a mid-sized company that has one person in charge of social media, and one person that helps her on a part-time basis.  Both of these people are eager to learn, but have limited knowledge of social media.  This company has decided to launch a blog.  There’s three ways they can go about this:

1 – Do it themselves.  The advantage to this approach is that obviously, they won’t have to directly pay for the blog.  But since the two employees will be literally learning as they go, there will be a big time commitment involved, and when you consider their salaries, that’s a real expense.

2 – Hire an agency to ghost-write the blog for them.  This will be the most expensive option, but it also frees up the two employees to not worry about the content creation process.  Still, if the employees aren’t actively monitoring the blog and responding to issues raised by customers on (and off) the blog, it can cause more trouble than its worth.

3 – Do the blog themselves, but hire a consultant or agency to train/mentor them.  Unless I am extremely confident in the company’s ability to handle the blog themselves, I typically encourage them to go this route.  And yes, I offer Social Media and Blog Training.  A big reason why I like this option for the company is because you can customize the level of training you think you need or can afford.  For example, if you hire an agency to create and write your blog for you, you will incur setup fees as well as likely several thousand dollars a month in ongoing costs.  But by doing the blog yourself with ongoing training, you can spend less plus typically tier the training costs so they decrease as you become better at developing your blog.

 

So if you want to spend as little as possible on social media marketing, remember these tips:

1 – Do your research and build a plan.  Figure out exactly what you want to accomplish with social media.  This will save you a ton of time down the road.  And for smaller companies especially, time is money.

2 – Start small, then grow.  Unless you have a 10-person social media team and a 6-figure budget, it’s probably best to start with one or two social media tools, then build others out as you can.

3 – Comparison shop.  Get quotes from multiple consultants/agencies for the services you think you will need.

 

If your company is using social media, what pricing advice would you give other companies?  Did you do it yourself, or pay someone to help?

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Should Marketers Use Social Media Personally Before They Use it Professionally?

social media, companies, marketing, ceoI recently read an emarketer article on a study BRANDfog did into how employees viewed their CEO, if the CEO tweeted.

The study found that 51% of employees were more likely to trust a CEO that tweeted, while another 31% were much more likely to trust their CEO, if they tweeted.  The study also found that 82% of respondents said they trust a company more when its C-Suite is using social media.

Does this hold true for you?  Are you more likely to trust and view a brand favorably, if its CEO is active on Twitter?  I tend to agree with this, because it makes me feel that the CEO is at least familiar with the tool, and is likely encouraging their employees to be active in social media as well.

So to flip this around, instead of companies cutting off access to Facebook and other popular social media sites at work, should they instead be encouraging employees, and especially executives to use social media?

A big problem I see with how many companies use social media is that they view it as a marketing tool, instead of a communications tool. They learn about how popular Facebook and Twitter are, and think ‘Ohhh….shiny new marketing channel!’  When of course, we are using these tools to CONNECT with each other, not to market to each other!

What if a company was wanting to start using social media, and the CEO called her executive team in and told them to start a Facebook and Twitter personal account, and pick one other account.  It could be a blog, Plus, Pinterest, whatever.   Let’s say the CEO just told her team to use the tools for a month, and then everyone would report back with their thoughts on the tools, and their experiences.

If a company took this approach and FIRST used the tools personally, would that make their efforts in using the tools professionally more or less effective?  What do you think?

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Subscribe to My Social Media Marketing Newsletter!

Social Media Marketing Newsletter

Starting next Wednesday, I’ll be running a weekly newsletter in addition to (almost) daily posts here.  The content focus will be slightly different, however.

Here, I cover Social Media primarily, but a blend of content that can benefit the individual, as well as those that are using Social Media for their company.  But this newsletter will be aimed solely at marketers and anyone using Social Media within their company or organization.  Each week the newsletter will feature original content that’s designed to do 3 things:

1 – Help you solve an existing Social Media Marketing issue you are having.  One week we might talk about building a better blogger outreach program, the next look at getting a better handle on our blog’s analytics to increase leads.  A case study here and there will be examined.

2 – Give you tips and advice for improving your day-to-day tasks and routines as well as managing your workflow.

3 – Keep you up-to-date on where I will be speaking/appearing, and giving you information on how we can work together.

I cannot stress this enough, the content in this newsletter will be original content.  Some of it may eventually make its way here to the blog, but it won’t be that often.

So if you’re working for a company or organization that wants to learn more about how to better use Social Media to connect with your customers and/or activate your brand advocates, please do subscribe to my newletter by filling out the quick form below.  You’ll input your email address then be sent an email to confirm your subscription.

Thank you so much, see you next Wednesday!


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Social Media is About Building Relationships

Social media, networking, relationships

I spend a LOT of time on Twitter.  For me, Twitter is an amazing tool to connect and network with other people.  I know a lot of you like to use Facebook and Plus for the same reasons.

Often, we will hear that we shouldn’t be ‘wasting time’ on social media sites all day, and that we should be busy ‘getting things done’.  What these people don’t understand is that being successful in using Social Media is all about building human relationships.

As I said in my previous post, last week I got to visit Bazaarvoice and present Think Like a Rockstar to approximately 75 of their employees.  Additionally, this was the first time I’d presented Rockstar to a company, so I was excited about that as well.  But I think it’s interesting to consider how I got to the point where I could call Bazaarvoice a client.  You say it actually has taken 5 years.

In 2007, I wrote a Company Blog Checkup for Dell’s Direct2Dell blog.  I gave it pretty high marks, and in the comments, both Richard Binhammer, and John Pope (who was with Dell at the time) from Dell jumped in and offered feedback, and proved that they were listening.  Those comments by Dell got a relationship started with the company, and 3 years later, I was moderating the first #DellCAP event for the company!

The event lasted two days, and on the second day, Dell’s CMO joined us in the morning, who at the time was Erin Nelson, who would later accept the same position at Bazaarvoice!  So that’s the connection, right?  Well last week when I arrived at Bazaarvoice, Erin was telling her assistant about following me on Twitter and she said she loved my tweets because I was always tweeting about college football and giving her updates on games!  So it’s not my insights into brand advocacy that Erin wanted, but the score of the Texas – Oklahoma game in the 3rd quarter 😉

But that makes a wonderful point: Social Media is about CONNECTING with people and ESTABLISHING RELATIONSHIPS.  It doesn’t matter how that is done, for example with the college football tweets, Erin is literally one of dozens of people that have told me over the last couple of years that the love my tweets about college football.  Others have told me they love to watch BURN NOTICE or that they also love Dr Pepper 😉

All of those conversations might seem like a waste of time to some people, but they are leading to real business for me, and I bet they have for many of you as well.  And no, it doesn’t always happen overnight, and it often doesn’t happen when you try to ‘force’ it.  It usually happens when you try to connect with other people and share with them what you have learned, and try to learn from and get to know them as well.  Because Social Media is About Building Relationships.

Just like most areas of life, right?

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How Much Does Social Media Cost Companies in 2012?

Social Media Marketing, Social Media Consulting, Social Media Marketing Fees, Twitter, Facebook, Blog, Google Plus, YouTube, Pinterest

Two years ago I wrote a post entitled So How Much Will a Social Media Strategy Cost, which was designed to give businesses and organizations an idea of how much they should expect to pay consultants and agencies for basic social media marketing services.  As you might expect, that post was insanely popular, so I followed it up with How Much Does Social Media Cost Companies in 2011 last year, and now this year those prices are being updated again with this post.  For all three, these prices are taken from published rates found online, as well as what other agencies and consultants have told me they charge for these services.

In general, both posts in 2010 and 2011 were designed to give companies basic price information around the most common services, such as setup and execution of a blog, Twitter and Facebook page, as well as basic Social Media Training.  In the comments of both posts, many of you mentioned that there were additional areas that you would like to see addressed in the future.

With that in mind, I reached out specifically to some friends and fellow consultants that offer Social Media Marketing services to their clients either as independents, or as part of an agency (their own, or someone else’s).  I would like to thank the following experts for helping me by giving me their rates for these services so I could have the most accurate price information(And on short-notice during the Holidays!):

Jason Falls, Tom Martin, Jay Baer, Tamar Weinberg, Nick Westergaard, Mitch Canter, Lisa Petrilli, David Griner, Drew McLellan, Bobby Rettew, DJ Waldow, Jennifer Kane and Kary Delaria.  If you have any questions about these services or need to hire a consultant or agency to help you with your Social Media Marketing efforts, please email me and I will be happy to work with you, or refer you to one or more of these fine people.  Also, please click their names to visit their blog/site and learn more about their services.

Before I get to the prices, I wanted to talk a bit about how the area of Social Media Consulting has changed over the last few years.  In 2008 and 2009, Social Media Consultants were in fairly high demand, especially the more well-known and established ones.  Companies were realizing that they needed to start using Social Media as a way to listen to and connect with their customers, yet they had little to no idea how to do so. Enter the Social Media Consultant.  A shift in marketing philosophy by many companies created a real demand for professionals that could create and execute social media strategies for companies.

By 2010 and 2011, most companies began to understand that Social Media wasn’t simply a fad, and it was a business necessity that they needed to address via hiring.  Many companies, especially larger brands, hired Social Media Managers, and then entire Social Media Marketing teams.  This shift had a profound impact on the area of Social Media Consulting in two ways:

1 – Many of these companies hired existing Social Media Consultants to be their Social Media Managers and fill their Social Media Marketing teams.  Companies like Radian 6 and Edelman PR aggressively hired independent consultants as well as professionals at other agencies to build and compliment their own Social Media Marketing teams.

2 – Many of these companies stopped (or slowed in) hiring Social Media Consultants for execution work, instead giving that to their in-house team.  The successful consultants and agencies today are usually the ones that adapted the quickest to this change.

As a result, the average Social Media Consultant today is doing less execution work, and is spending more time actually consulting with and training companies on how to use Social Media properly.  Diversification is a good thing.

Now, on with the prices.  As with last year’s post, for every service I am providing a range, as well as a Most Charge distinction.  In general, the fees associated with setup of basic social media tools like a company blog, Twitter or Facebook page have gone down.  On the other hand, rates for comprehensive Social Media Strategy auditing, creation and training services have generally increased.

In general, smaller businesses and non-profits can expect to pay prices that are closer to the low end of the price range, while large companies and organizations will probably see their quoted rates closer to the top end of the range.

Also, when looking at rates for monthly content curation and management of individual social media tools, remember that the more content the consultant/agency has to curate and create/edit for you, the higher the rates.  Likewise, if you can handle the content creation and just need training and some light editing, then your rates will usually be lower.

Here’s the prices:

Blog

Custom design and template creation – $1,000 – $5,000

Most Charge – $1,000-$3,000 

Writing/Editing Content for the blog plus ongoing training – $500-$4,000 a month (Assume 1-2 posts a week at this rate)

Most Charge – $1,000-$3,000

Ghostwriting blog posts – $50-$500 per

Most Charge – $75-$200 per

 

Twitter

Account Setup – $500-$2,000

Most Charge – $500-$1,000 

Ongoing Account Management and Training – $500-$3,000 a month (For this service, the more content you need provided for you, the higher the fees)

Most Charge – $500-$1,500 a month

 

Facebook

Initial Page Setup – $500-$2,500

Most Charge – $500-$1,500

Monthly Content Management and Curation – $500-$3,000 a month 

Most Charge – $1,000-$2,000 a month

Facebook Promotion Creation

Short-Term (1-3 months) Contest, including branding for the app, limited promotion on other channels such as Facebook and Twitter to promote the contest.  Fee doesn’t include prize and Facebook Ads to promote – $1,500-$20,000

Long-Term (3-6 months) Contest, including above, more elaborate promotion based on client’s needs – $25,000-$75,000

Note: These are the ‘Big Three’ tools when it comes to Social Media for business, and many consultants and agencies will offer companies a package deal on setting up and maintaining all three.  For other tools such as Google Plus, Pinterest, MySpace (yes many entertainment and music-related businesses especially still use it) and others, assume that rates in general will be consistent for what you could expect to pay for similar services with Facebook or Twitter.

 

Video

Total to shoot, produce and edit video – $500 – $30,000 (Note:  Obviously, the complexity and length of the video plays a huge role in the final cost.  If you want custom animation, several scenes and a 30-minute video, obviously that’s going to cost far more than a simple, 2-minute one-on-one video.  One expert told me that they charge $1,000 per minute of finished product.)

 

Social Media Strategy 

Social Media Monitoring (Note – Number of keywords/phrases tracked here has a big impact on fees.  More costs more.):

Setup – $500-$5,000

Most Charge – $1,000-$2,000

Ongoing Reports and Advisement – $500-$7,500 a month

Most Charge – $1,000-$2,000

Social Media Strategy Audit (Examine existing Social Media Strategy and give detailed recommendations on what strategy should look like moving forward, with instructions on how to measure results) – $2,000-$25,000

Most Charge – $5,000-$10,000

Social Media Strategy Creation and Integration with Existing Marketing Efforts (Note – Most consultants and agencies will require that this service be married to a Social Media Strategy Audit, as they will then create the strategy recommended in the audit) – $10,000-$30,000

Most Charge – $10,000-$15,000

 

Social Media Training and Consulting

Hourly Training/Consulting – $50-$500 an hour

Most Charge – $100-$250 an hour

Note: These rates are for 1 hour of work.  If you can commit to a certain number of hours a month, for example, consultants and agencies will almost always give you a discount.

Social Media Workshops(All fees exclude travel and are for ON-SITE Workshops, not online):

Half-Day (Up to 4 hours): $500-$7,500

Most Charge – $2,000-$3,500

Full-Day (6-8 hours): $1,000-$15,000

Most Charge – $4,000-$6,000

Note: Keep in mind that these rates represent a significant amount of training and content creation time.  So if you pay a consultant $5,000 for a day-long workshop, that consultant might have spent 20 or 30 hours creating that workshop.  So the prep time has to be considered in addition to the actual time delivering the workshop when looking at fees.

 

Rates to Hire a Social Media Speaker

Individual session (Up to 90 minutes, usually 1 hour): $1,000-$5,000

Most Charge: $2,000-$3,000

Keynote: $1,000-$15,000

Most Charge: $5,000-$10,000

All rates exclude travel.

Finally, I wanted to close with some advice on choosing a Social Media Consultant.  First, before you begin the process of hiring a Social Media Consultant, you need to address a few areas:

  • Figure out what you want to accomplish via Social Media.  Do you want to generate sales?  Increase brand awareness?  Establish thought leadership for your CEO or company?  Connect with donors?  Giving some thought to what you want to accomplish via your social media efforts will make the rest of the process smoother.
  • What are your human resources?  How many people can work on your social media efforts?  If you have a team of 10 at the ready, then the amount of assistance you will need is far less than if you are the only person for your company that will be handling your social media efforts.  Know how many people can work on your social media efforts and how much time they can devote, because if you plan on executing a Social Media Strategy that will require a team of 5, and you only have 2, that shortcoming will have to be addressed either through hiring, or outsourcing to the agency/consultant.  Either way, it costs you money.
  • How long is your project going to be?  You probably can’t pin this down exactly without talking to the consultant first, but it helps to give some thought to this.

When you contact a consultant or agency, they should be asking you questions as well.  They should want to know why you want to use social media, what are you trying to accomplish.  If they try to give you prices or push you toward using a particular tool without asking you questions, that is a red flag.  They really can’t give you prices until they know more about your company, your resources, and what you are wanting to accomplish.  Even if you contact them and tell them you need prices on creating and launching a blog, they should still ask you some questions to determine if you do need a blog to reach your intended business goals for your social media strategy.

As always, I hope this helps you in creating your Social Media budgets for 2012.  If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment.

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#Blogchat LIVE video plus info on my Social Media and Blog Strategy Audits

One of the ‘problems’ I am running into when I talk to event organizers and potential sponsors about doing a LIVE #Blogchat is that it’s sometimes difficult for them to understand what a LIVE version of a Twitter chat would look like.  I try telling them that a buncha smart people get in a room and talk to each other, but somehow that still doesn’t get the point across very well 😉  Thankfully, Chris and his team from Huddle Productions created a short video with footage from the LIVE #Blogchat that Dell sponsored last week prior to the start of its #DellCAP event.  This should give you a better idea of what a LIVE #Blogchat is like (Hint: Smartitude galore!):

If you are interested in learning more information about adding a live #Blogchat to your existing event, or in sponsoring one, click here.

The second area I wanted to point your attention to is an update I am making to my consulting services.  For a couple of years now, I have been offering Social Media Strategy Audits to clients.  This service has proven to be very popular so I’ve decided to begin offering Blog Strategy Audits to clients as well.  For many companies, a blog is the only social media tool they are using, so for these companies, a Blog Strategy Audit makes more sense.  Both of these audits will analyze what the company’s competition is doing, as well as assess how the client is currently using blogging/social media, and give them a blueprint and recommendations on what they should do moving forward.  And perhaps most importantly, both audits will include a section on how to measure the results of your strategy.  So I’m not only going to tell you exactly what your strategy should look like, but I’m also going to show you exactly how to measure your efforts.  This is a key area that’s often missing from most blogging/social media strategies.

Both the Social Media Strategy Audit and the Blog Strategy Audit are two-month projects.  For each, you’ll make three payments: You will be billed for the first payment when you agree to purchase the audit, and I must have this payment before I can begin work on your audit.  At the end of the first month, you will be billed for the second payment, and I must have this payment before I can deliver the finished audit.  At the end of the second month, the finished audit will be delivered, along with a bill for the third and final payment.

The price and billing schedule for each audit is:

Social Media Strategy Audit – Price is $7,500.00.  You will be billed in three equal payments of $2,500.00.

Blog Strategy Audit – Price is $5,000.00.  You will be billed in three payments of $1,600.00, $1,700.00 and $1,700.00.

Now, the big change I am making to these services is that as of now, I am adding a guarantee to both of these audits.  Note that above it states that you will be billed for three payments, and that for each audit, you will receive the finished audit, along with a bill for the final payment.  When you receive the finished audit and if you are not satisfied with the audit, then you do not have to make the third and final payment.  I *only* want you to make that third and final payment if you are thrilled with the audit.

I often ask my close friends to give me advice on my work, and to be honest, when I told them that I was thinking of adding this guarantee to these audits, most of them did not think it was a good idea.  As they correctly pointed out, if the client is under no obligation to make the final payment, then why would they?  But I am ok with that.  Because I want companies to understand that I am willing to take that risk because I believe in the quality of the work I will produce for them.

So if your company is interested in either service, please click here for more information on the Social Media Strategy Audit, and click here for more information on the Blog Strategy Audit.  And if you have any additional questions about either audit, or about Live #Blogchat, please do email me.

PS: If you want your blog to be considered for one of the three review slots for this Sunday’s #Blogchat, please leave a comment on this post!

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How to Add Google +1 Button to Your WordPress Blog and Track Social Media Engagement With Google Analytics

Now that everyone is rushing to get into Google Plus, you are going to see a lot more sites and blogs adding the +1 button.  I added it here last week, and the process is easy as pie.  It’s done via a plugin, here is the page for the one I used.  You can either go to that page and download the plugin then upload it manually, or go to the Plugins area of your WordPress dashboard, and search for it Google +1 Button and that should bring it up.  Pretty sure this is for WordPress.org only.

Something else that got kinda lost in the shuffle with everyone rushing to get onto Plus was that Google Analytics is now tracking social media engagement levels!  If you are already set up with a Google Analytics account, you’ll need to make sure you are using the New version, look at the top of your screen and there should be a link to Switch to the New Version.  You want to click that, because the new version of GA has some extra functionality, including measuring social media engagement.

When you get in, then click Visitors, and you’ll see a few new options, including Social.  When you click it, then you’ll see options to track Engagement, Action and Pages.  Now if you have installed the Google +1 plugin above, then GA will automagically start showing you how many clicks your Google +1 buttons are getting, how many page views, time spent on site, etc.  When you click on Engagement, it will show you your traffic for the last month, then the amount of traffic that was Not Socially Engaged, and Socially Engaged.  Here’s a screenshot of what mine looks like now:

Yeah I know, nothing to write home about yet 😉  But as I get a lot more data in, I can see how the usage of people that click the Google +1 button compares to other site users.  And the great thing about this report is that it can also track engagement levels with Tweets, Facebook Likes, Facebook Shares, and I believe even when posts are Stumbled!  The bad news is, that can’t be done via a plugin (yet), those can only be added via coding that I do NOT want to touch yet.  If you are adventureous, here’s some tutorials on how you can add this functionality.  I did note that Google is asking plugin developers to start updating their plugins so that it will add tracking functionality automagically, similar to how the Google +1 Button works.  So my guess is that these plugins that we are now using to add ReTweet and Facebook Like buttons to our blogs will soon offer this, so I’m going to wait a bit before I try to add it myself and break my blog 😉

So there you go!  If you were wanting to add Google +1 buttons to your blog, the above plugin will do it for you, then once you have it installed, you can start tracking how many clicks you’re getting and other forms of engagement with the new version of Google Analytics.  Let me know what you think!

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I am officially a social media packrat

And two events clearly illustrated this for me yesterday:

1 – I went to ManageFlitter.com to see how many people I am following that aren’t following me.  I was following almost 3,000 people that were NOT following me.  This really worried me because the main reason I use Twitter is as a way to connect with others and have conversations with them.  By following those 3,000 people that have no interest in seeing my tweets, it’s making it far more difficult for me to connect with the people that DO want to chat with me.  I don’t like that.

2 – I have about 600 people in my Circles in Google Plus.  I started looking at the people I have in my circles and realized that half of them I didn’t have the faintest idea who they were.  I’ve already lost control of my network on Plus after less than a week!

One of the things I have constantly wrestled with was how to scale as the size of my networks grow on these social media sites.  I have always been really strict about who I follow on Facebook, and even now I only have about 600 friends and have been there about 3 years.  But on Twitter I follow over 16K people.  I’ve always wondered in a rush to expand our networks, if we aren’t really stifling our ability to actually connect with people.

So I’ve decided to do a bit of an experiment.  On Plus I am going to be super-picky who I follow, and only follow people that are close friends and/or people I know and have met in real life.  Complete contrast to how I manage followers on Twitter.

The idea is to test two different approaches: Is it better to try to have mostly platonic connections with thousands of people like I do on Twitter (with the hope that some might develop into deeper connections), or have deeper connections with only a few people, and let your network grow only by bringing in closer connections, like I have on Plus.

Man this social media stuff can get complicated!  How do y’all manage your online networks?  Do you have different approaches for different sites?  Am really fascinated in how we scale (or attempt to scale!) our ability to communicate online.

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Should Your Business Be On Google Plus? Here’s the Quick and Easy Way to Decide

If you actively use social media, then you’ve probably seen a lot of people chattering about Google Plus over the last week or so.  A ton of invites went out, and a lot of people got their first look at Google’s newest social networking site.  After playing around with it for a few days, I can definitely see why a lot of Facebook users may want to migrate over.

However, does this mean that YOUR BUSINESS should be on Google Plus?  As always, there are two basic questions you need to ask yourself in order to decide:

1 – Will being on Google Plus help me better connect with my customers?

2 – Will being on Google Plus help my employees better connect with each other?

Those are the two main questions you need to ask.  If you can’t answer a ‘yes’ to either of those questions, then your business probably shouldn’t make the jump to Google Plus.  At least not yet.

You should also remember that the current buzz around Google Plus is being driven almost entirely by social media early adopters.  We are the geeky types that always want to try out the newest and the shiniest.  Remember a few months ago when you were suddenly hearing all this buzz about Quora and Empire Avenue?  Yep, that was us as well.

Now this is NOT to say that you should dismiss Google Plus.  I think you should absolutely familiarize yourself with the site and the available functionality.  For one, the ability to do Hangouts would be a great way for employees to connect, especially if they are working virtually.  And you need to understand that this product is NOT available to everyone.  Because it still has a lot of bugs that are being worked out, and new functionality will be implemented.  And we still aren’t sure exactly what impact content created there will have on search results.  There’s still a lot that’s up in the air at this point on many fronts.

So don’t think you need to do a cannonball into Google Plus just yet.  My advice would be to read up on the site and what it offers users, then when you get an invite, play with it a bit and see what you think.  I will be doing a more in-depth review of Plus once I’ve spent enough time with it to better understand what it offers.

If you are using Google Plus now, what potential impact do you see for businesses there?