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I doubt you could have missed it by now, but just in case; Tuesday evening the story broke that  the Susan G Komen fund pulled support  from Planned Parenthood across the US. Rumors abound as to why they did it.Some say it was politically motivated. Komen says it was because their policies changed and because Planned Parenthood is under investigation.

After a couple of days of sticking their head in the sand and hoping it would all blow over, Nancy Brinker, the founder of Susan G. Komen made this announcement:

“We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities”

Supporters of Planned parenthood were excited. A  South Florida office of Planned Parenthood posted this on their Facebook wall:

“Thanks to YOU and people who care about women’s health, the Komen Foundation has reversed its decision…”

That post was later removed.

Although people applauded the apparent reversal of the decision, the fact remains that Komen only changed the qualifications for the next round of grants. That doesn’t necessarily mean they will continue to fund Planned parenthood. 

What about the social backlash?
For me, it started with a flood of requests to join causes on Facebook like “Komen can kiss my mammogram“, started by Alison Fine. supporting Planned Parenthood to replace the lost funding.

Then, as news spread, people started producing graphics representing how they felt about it and this collaborative Pinboard  was created by Beth Kanter allowing others to add “pins” to the board about the issue as well.

Donations flooded into Planned Parenthood to the tune of over $650,000 in 24 hours, effectively replacing what Komen’s grant would have been.

New York Mayor Bloomberg plans to match up to $250,000 in donations to planned parenthood in his own response to the decision.

Petitions started circulating from Moveon, the Breast Cancer Action Network, MomsRising and others to protest the change in policy.

3 of Komen’s top executives quit in protest.

In this screenshot of a report by analytics firm Attensity the sentiment about Susan G Komen is pretty darn clear. While up to now it was largely neutral according to this post on the Attensity blog, things have changed dramatically. Read the post there for Attensity’s take on the matter.

click to enlarge

Oh let’s just move on shall we?
In the official statement Brinker also said she hoped people would now move on. I’ll just bet she does.

“We urge everyone who has participated in this conversation across the country over the last few days to help us move past this issue. We do not want our mission marred or affected by politics — anyone’s politics.”

Um, yeah, let’s not. 
Whatever your politics, or how you feel about hot button topics like abortion, this is not about abortion. Abortion makes up only 3% of what Planned Parenthood does.  This is about the right for a woman to get screening services that could save her life. It’s about making donations to an organization and knowing where your money is going. It’s also about showing organizations who do not believe in transparency that WE DO.

While millions of people are watching the superbowl on Sunday, @KomenfortheCurehas plans to use the tag #Supercure on Twitter during the event. (The NFL is/was a major sponsor of Komen). Please help spread the word about the counter-campaign. Here’s a link to share ways to take action. Please share it with your friends. bit.ly/takebackthepink

Share these links in your #takebackthepink tweets:
http://plannedparenthoodsavedme.tumblr.com/
www.causes.com/causes/650458-komen-kan-kiss-my-mammogram
http://pinterest.com/kanter/komen-can-kiss-my-mammagram/ Use these hashtags to show your support when you tweet

#takebackthePINK #SuperCure #Cancer Let’s show Susan G Komen that they need to LISTEN instead of making vague gestures and sticking their heads in the sand.

After the Super Bowl
This doesn’t end after Sunday. In addition to this effort, take a look at what the Breast Cancer Action has to say about the whole pink phenomenon. I haven’t bought pink ribbons for years. I donate to BCA and the Avon Foundation for Women because I can see where the money goes. Please. Think before you buy pink again. Think about how you can help support women (and men) who need these services through other channels.

I speak a lot about Google+ as a tool for business. In fact I’ve just written a book called “Google+ for Business Tweet” and I’m presenting a second  Focus.com Roundtable  in February. So you might think my position would be that Google+ is the be-all end-all social media network for business and people should be pitching their blogs and Facebook pages out the window in favor of Google+.  And there you’d be mistaken.

Here’s the thing. Google+ is a social network with huge potential for businesses, but it’s best value is as an individual user, not a business page. If it had any of the following features it might be a contender, but as it is today? No way.

• A “vanity URL so you can direct customers to your page in print material or verbally. “Find me on Google+ at Google.com/SocialMediaCoach” would be one thing. But wh’s going to remember “https://plus.google.com/b/113284144259635347526/“???
• User interface editing abilities. If you’re good with using only the wall on your Facebook page, this might still work for you, but one of the ways Facebook has Google+ totally beat is the many ways you can interact with your followers. Custom landing pages, polling, events, insights into traffic and performance, now that would make a difference.
• Notifications. Managing a Google+ page is a bit easier now that you can add multiple admins, but getting an email or text alert that someone has reacted to a post , followed the page, or tried to contact you would be great.
• Integrated profiles. Currently there’s no way to know who is managing a Google+ page,  and precious little on the “About” page. Give us a place for a call to action, a link to our Google Voice number please.

Now there’s more, but after all Google+ is still in beta, I’m cutting it some slack. They’re working on it and it keeps getting better and better. For now though, here’s how you CAN use it for your business.

Research and outreach
Needless to say, Google profiles are a huge resource for business. Who’s interested in your industry? Where are the influencers and groundbreaking technologists? Follow the best of the best and learn about what interests them. Take a look at the Ripples of some conversations to find even more influential Google+ users.

Building the brand of your company through the intelligence of your staff
YOu hire the best and the brightest right? Let them shine on Google+ and help build the brand identity of your company through your fabulous employees and their ideas. This includes the CEO, the marketing team and your engineers. Nothing proprietary of course, but perhaps there is a collaborative opportunity out there waiting to be discovered.

Customer support
YOu don’t have to have a business page to support your customers. Search Google+ for people talking about your business and reach out to them as a human person who wants to help. Now that’s something they will remember. Be genuine about it though, no Trojan horses allowed.

Hangouts
Schedule some hangouts with your staff to talk to real live customers and potential customers. .Show them who you are and what you’re thinking about.  A relaxed environment like this can bring out the best questions and show you’re truly interested in the needs of your customers. Hanging out in somebody else’s hangout is also great. Don’t steal the show but be pleasant and useful. Add to the conversation and support the owner of the hangout.

Micro-blog
Really Google+ might be a good replacement for your micro-blog. Post URLs here with a short comment or two. Got a quick thought but not the time to write an entire blog post? No problem, on Google+ you can shout out and ask others for their input.

Collaborative meetings
Another way to use Chat and Hangouts is to share docs and screens within a Hangout with your team. If you work with a team spread out all over  the world, this is a great way to inspire unity.

SEO
Last, but certainly not least, is the HUGE SEO value of a Google+ profile for individuals. If your CXOs set up profiles with links to your business with the right keywords it may really be one of the best traffic drivers you have. We’re still testing this theory, but it only makes sense that these profiles will be SEO gold.

So, what do you you think? Are you ditching your Facebook page for a Google+ business page yet? Will you? Why or why not?

 

On January 18 websites all over the net will go dark from 8AM to 8 PM, and this will be one of them. Why? Well for one, because I still can. One of the most powerful things about the internet is that it is largely not controlled by government. Sure, I’m against piracy, but not if it means DNS filtering that could actually penalize lawful businesses. Not if it means messing with the Domain Name System and push users towards unreliable, less secure DNS servers just to avoid frivolous lawsuits, block “suspicions Foreign websites”, and squash the entrepreneurial spirit of the internet. Especially not if it gives companies who get your site taken down because of supposed IP violations without due process and even if you can later get it re-instated you have no recourse.

Want to know more about SOPA and PIPA?

• Here’s the anti-SOPA protest site.
• Here’s what President Obama said about it.
• Rupert Murdoch and Chris Dodd think it’s a good idea (what does THAT tell you?)
• Here’s the full text of the SOPA bill on the Wall St Journal site
• Here’s the text of the PIPA bill

I’m giving you two perspectives. Now go decide on your own, because that’s the best thing about the internet, you get to gather your own data and make your own choices. Isn’t it grand?

Maddie Grant threw down a glove challenging a number of people to participate in a meme answering the question “How are you going to change the world in 2012?” It’s a great question.

I love the chaos theory metaphor called the butterfly effect. The idea is that a small, relatively insignificant act can created marked and sometimes unexpected change. The flap of a butterfly’s wing can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world.

Small business that we are at Tatu Digital Media, we have been fortunate to impact corporations and individuals and show them how to be more effective and efficient in how they do business online. Hopefully the effect of our small efforts can help to change the world in ways we can’t begin to predict.

We are already working with a number of non-profits to help them understand social media tools and techniques. In fact, it’s part of Tatu Digital’s mission for a minimum of 25% of our work to be with non-profits. in 2012 we plan to increase our pro-bono work through interactive training for nonprofits, particularly in inbound marketing practices and of course, using social media.

Through our work with corporate client we’ve amassed a pile of content on these topics that will be useful to non-profits who want to expand their outreach to volunteers, donors, evangelists and potential team members through inbound marketing. We’ll be adding social media training webinars or live sessions for non-profits throughout 2012.

The first of these trainings will be a webinar for Vivanista on January 12, 2012 at 9 AM on using Google+. Come join us, it’s free, you just need to sign up.

Stay tuned for more of these free training sessions for non-profits, and if you work with non-profits and would like to talk about setting up training on social media or inbound marketing, talk to me.

 

Now, what are YOU going to do to change the world in 2012?? Add your thoughts in the comments!

I follow almost 4,000 people on Twitter, over 1500 on Linkedin, and more on Facebook, Google+, blogs, forums, a zillion social networks, wikis and more. I get around 800 emails a day (half of them are alerts, newsletters and feed reports for my clients). I’m not bragging, there are plenty of people with more, it’s just a fact of my life. How do I manage to do all that every day and still run a full time business? Great question. I don’t. Nobody else does either, at least not by themselves and definitely not every day.

Here’s the big deep dark secret about using social media for business; you’ve got to have discipline. If you get derailed by Farmville for an hour every time you go into Facebook your business may have a problem. If it’s open all day in your browser while you “work” then you may need an intervention.

People tell me 5-6 times a day that they can’t make time for social media. I agree it’s hard, but when you look at how much time it takes to cold-call a customer, visit their office, buy them lunch, walk their dog and take out their trash to get their business it’s nothing.

Think about the literal time it took to get one client to return your calls. Break it down. How many times did you have to contact them before you could talk business? How much aggregate time did it take? Now multiply that by how many individuals you want at the top of your sales funnel this week.

Now look at social media where you can break the ice and get that initial conversation10, 20,100 or thousands at a time. Then you continue to add value to their day every single day with the click of a mouse and a few carefully chosen mentions. To top that off the very people you reach will share your message and value with their own connections and act as your agents to attract new business to you without you even lifting a finger.

So don’t talk to me about how social media takes too much time when it’s really that you aren’t focused in how you’re using it. By this I don’t mean you are constantly pushing out your marketing messaging and talking about business. You know as well as I do that you don’t approach a new client, stick your hand and say “HI, I’m Janet, buy my stuff!”. No, you have to get to know them first. Listen to what matters to them and what they care about, then you can help solve their problem with what you have.

Turn off Twitter
Leaving Twitter open in your browser all day is distracting. Set your mentions and direct messages to send you an alert. I use TweetBot on my phone and it lets me know when I get a message and I can then respond. I open Twitter up 3-4 times a day, scan for new things to share and decide if I’m going to send them now or later. I shoot off a few pertinent Tweets, bookmark some links for later reading and get off.

Scheduling is your friend
I use a combination of tools to schedule my updates and they almost all have a browser bookmarklet so as I surf I can add items to the scheduling tools on the fly. Sure some posts are timely but a lot of them can wait a little while and if you use an app like Buffer you can send that tweet when your network is most likely to be paying attention too. I also use Hootsuite which is good for scheduling a series of tweets for when you may be traveling or getting close to an event you want people to know about.

On Facebook I use a combination of Hootsuite and MediaFeedia. Both tools allow me to monitor and update multiple accounts which is great. Mediafeedia also allows you to send out special offers to your fans and like Hootsuite pro, delegate to others on your team as needed.

Check the mirror
Is your messaging getting derailed by cool cats and hip conversation? Use a tool like NutshellMail to see a summary of your conversations on a regular basis.What do you talk about most? Who are you talking to a lot and who is talking about you? Use what you learn to fine tune your messaging and reach out to connect with people on a deeper level.

Delegate
You don’t have to do it all yourself. There are lots of task that can be handed to a virtual admin. Moderating forums, replying to basic questions on your social networks, finding new topics for your to comment on or RSS feeds to add to your reader, research on industry information for your blog posts, updating your blog software or finding the right plugins.All of these things and much more can be done by a talented assistant. Heck, you can deliver a pile of information and have an admin split it up into items you can share on your social networks and schedule them for you. These are all things you can outsource and leave the focused personal interaction to you.

Turn off email
I tell my clients to contact me by direct tweets, text, phone and email and in that order. According to many recent surveys email is dead. I won’t go that far but honestly I just don’t read it as often anymore. I only hit my email box 3-4 times per day. I scan for spam and delete it, filter all of my alerts into mailboxes relative to the topics so I can scan and use or delete, and filter all of my clients into boxes so I can scan the boxes quickly and see which businesses are sending me mail and reply quickly.

Get a plan
An organized plan can be a huge help. If you blog create an editorial calendar. If you use microblogs think of a theme for what you want to talk about and schedule some conversation starters. Then fill in the gaps with real-time post to specific people. If you are blogging set aside some time once a month to brainstorm new ideas and if you can, write 2-3 or even more blog posts, then schedule them for release. Better yet, send them to your admin and have him format and schedule them for you.

Stay focused
If you love the games on Facebook, surfing for videos of cute cats or save them for after hours. Your goal is to create relationships and raise the visibility of your business. Keep your eye on the ball and think of never making a cold call again.

Choose your friends
Be thoughtful about who you connect with. The idea of automatically following anybody who follows you on any social media network is a recipe for a clogged private message box full of spam. Even more important, people judge you by who you follow to decide if I want to be associated with you. Set aside a few minutes each week to look at those new followers. Are they truly interesting or after you as a notch on their social media bedpost?

If it’s not working, quit
You don’t have to be on every social media network in the universe. Keep your networks limited to what is truly useful. If a network just doesn’t work for you just move on. Maybe the crowd you want isn’t there or maybe you just hate the interface. Don’t worry, there are plenty more where that came from. I tell clients to pick one network you like. learn it and let your followers tell you where the next network you need to use is. Go where the potential is not where the social media gurus tell you you “gotta be”.

Follow through
Social networks are a tool for business but they do not replace actual conversation. Once you break the ice with social media reach out to the people you’ve connected with. Give them a call. Meet face to face. I can’t tell you how many out of the blue conversations have become fruitful business this way. Go ahead, give it a try! Here’s my number 408.216.7423.

One of the fantastic things about the growth of social media is how it has widened our window on the world. We live in amazing times where we can create deep friendships with people we may never meet face to face, or meet people whom we’ve known through social media networks for the first time face-to-face and it’s as if we’ve lived next door to each other for years.

As I wrap up the year I want to take a moment to share with you 15 amazing women bloggers I’ve gotten to know, respect and learn from on a daily basis. Some of them I know in person, but many I know through their blogs and Twitter personas. You should probably get to know some of them too. By the way, instead of just linking to their blogs I linked to some of my favorite posts, so make sure you visit those links! So, without further ado, a few of the many women I’ve learned from this year in no particular order at all. Am I missing someone? Help us find new great women bloggers and add your favs to the list.

Amber Naslund

@Ambercadabra Amber co-wrote The Now Revolution with Jay Baer, they really get what makes new media work for business. She’s smart, she says it like it is, and her insights on business and marketing are spot on. Amber’s recently left her role leading the social media charge at Radian6 to go out on her own with HiddenStartup and it will be fun to watch her grow her business.

Naomi Dunford

@Naomidunford Naomi is one smart marketer. She calls herself a “micro business marketing consultant”meaning she loves to help small companies get the most out of their marketing without spending a ton of money doing it. She’s salty, irreverent and I always learn something from her newsletters I can apply to my own business.

CJ Brasiel

@CJBrasiel CJ is one of the most sincere and generous people I know. She blogs about real estate at TalktoCj where she shares everything from Silicon Valley market info and tips on marketing a home to local events and politics. If you’ve got a question about real estate, San Jose or cat rescue, ask CJ and if she doesn’t know it she’ll find out.

Liza Sabater

@BlogDiva Liza blogs on culture, tech and online communications. She’s outspoken and often outrageous in Spanish and/or English and a delightfully refreshing voice among the usual culture and political pundits out there. Read Daily Gotham for her insight into New York politics and culture.

Shelly Kramer

@ShellyKramer Has been named one of the 200 most fearless women in social media and the top 30 women entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter by Forbes Woman. She’s smart, sassy and never afraid to say what she thinks. Shelly owns marketing and branding agency V3 Integrated Marketing.

Maddie Grant

@MaddieGrant Another fearless woman entrepreneur, Maddie is a co-author of “Humanize, How people-centric organizations succeed in a social world”. She co-funded Social Fish, working with non-profits and association to show them how to make the best use of social media.

Liz Strauss

@LizStrauss Liz is the founder of SOB Con, dedicated to connecting the great thinkers around the internet to get together and brainstorm, share best practices and insights and get to know each other one on one. She’s also a leadership and marketing mentor and is on more top 100 social media, blogging and women in business lists than you can shake a stick at. At the same time she’s down to earth and generous with her knowledge on all of the many platforms she participates on.

Corvida Raven

@Corvida SheGeeks is the name of her blog and Corvida delivers all that us girl geeks love. Wanna learn about tech, social media, mobile? Corvida delivers it all up with her characteristic sense of humor and she makes the geeky technical details approachable and helps keep me on top of the latest gadgets, gizmos and software I just gotta have.

Sarah Perez

@SarahinTampa Another amazing tech blogger, Sarah brings her experience in the financial, retail and software industry to TechCrunch where she is always on top of the latest news, gadgets and mobile apps. I first started reading Sarah’s work when she was at ReadWriteWeb and now
she’s at TechCrunch turning out all you need to know about tech.

Nina Kaufman

@NinaKaufman An award winning speaker and business lawyer, Nina blogs about legal tips and best practices for business on everything from Trademark law to the risks of letting your employees blog. Scan through her posts and you’re sure to find something you wish you’d known about before.

Lisa Hammond

@thebarefootceo Founder of the Barefoot CEO and author of “Dream Big, Finding the courage to follow your dreams and laugh at your nightmares” and several other books dedicated to empowering and inspiring women to live the life they want to live.

Beth Kanter

@Kanter Speaking of non-profits, Beth is the queen of all things social media in the not for profit world and she shares more generously than anyone I know. Her book, “The Networked Nonprofit”is a must read for anyone wanting to understand how social media fits into their business model. Her Slideshare, blog and wiki are treasure troves of information for small business and non-profit alike.

Sonia Simone

@SoniaSimone blogs at Remarkable Communication where she writes about effective content marketing, among other things. She’s also co-founder of CopyBlogger Media and also ThirdTribe, spreading the word of how to do Internet marketing the smart way.

Catherine Friend

Catherine is the author or “Hit by a Farm–How I stopped worrying and learned to love the farm”. With my own history of growing up in rural Wisconsin her stories regularly leave me rolling on the floor with tears in my eyes. Really. This is how life really is out of the city.

Nilofer Merchant

@Nilofer is a Ted speaker and cultural change agent. She’s worked with humongous corps like Apple, Autodesk and inspires innovation in businesses of all sizes and types. If you’re looking for someone to disrupt your normal way of thinking about your business you should know more about Nilofer.

Let’s say you’re not looking for a job. You’re happy in your company, so why build a personal brand through social media? Why expand your Linkedin profile beyond an out-dated online resume? Here are just a few reasons building your personal brand can support the goals of your company in any industry.

Professional development and networking with peers
What industry is your company in? You’ll find a community of other people working in that very same space participating in social media somewhere. Do a search on Social Mention to find blogs, forums, discussions on Twitter or other micro-blogs. Once you find out where the people you want to talk to are you can create a strategy to build your brand.

Make your company look good
Your company has the best and brightest in the industry right? Why hide your lights under a bushel? Build a brand–along with your co-workers–that makes the company a magnet for other great thinkers and/or customers. Show the world your company is forward thinking and supports it’s staff in their own personal development.

Recruiting
Get to know peers who might want to join your team. Who is the smartest in your community of practice? If they’re not looking for a new position they probably know someone who is. The more your network grows the more valuable it is to your company.

Research and Development
Keep an eye out for questions around your industry for 3 main reasons.

• Learn about issues with your own products or the products of a competitor and put the fires out before they get big
• Look for questions about features your customer base would like to see and be the first to bring it to market
• Be the go-to person for answers in your area of expertise. Search out questions you can help with
• Locate peers to talk about innovations in your sphere of interest, build a community of practice around those interests

About your brand
This is about building your personal brand, but if you mention your company in your social stream then you are representing the company. Look to your corporate social media guidelines to see how best to proceed. Be transparent about your relationship with the company, and in particular do not pretend you don’t work for a company and then talk up it’s products or services. At best it’s misleading and at worst it’s fraud.

Also be professional, friendly and helpful. If you can help somebody in a bind that reflects well on you as a person and on the company by extension. Same goes true if you are mean, hateful or just post that picture of yourself at a toga party. If you wouldn’t show it to your boss, don’t put it out there.

Common Sense
Be careful of course about disclosing information that is not already public. If you’re working on a super secret project that you wouldn’t mention on TV don’t put it out on social media either. If your company has a social media policy, understand it before you start. If they don’t have one, get proactive and help them complete one. Here’s a great resource at Social Media Governance with tons of them you can riff off of to develop something for your own company.

All my clients are asking and it’s a tough question for many. For most small businesses I’m saying no, wait a bit. Why? There are so many things business page can’t do yet. For example:

• A page can’t follow you until you follow it first or mention it in a post.
• A page doesn’t get notifications by email, text or in the Google+ bar, so it’s hard to keep on top of your discussions
• Hangouts don’t work on a mobile device for pages
• You can’t manage your page from a mobile device
• The only way to know if your page has new comments is to browse the feed for the page
• Unless you’re a big brand with Google Direct Connect you don’t own the page name
• Pages can’t +1 other pages or web sites
• Pages can’t comment or even +1 a conversation unless that person is following the page
• The creator of the page is the only administrator. If that person leaves the company they still “own” the page
• There is no facility to add admins to a page (like Facebook) so you either create an account just for this purpose or share your user name and password with other admins.
• If someone unfollows your page then your page automatically unfollows them
• Pages have to be administered from the page directly. Currently few social media management tools offer Google+ support, though Hootsuite will be soon. Apply here.

If you can’t grow your network on Google+ easily what’s the point? I understand Google is trying to protect people from getting spammed by millions of businesses, but in effect they’re making business pages quite useless and painful to use.

So why do all the big brands have Google+ pages then?

Because it’s easier for them. They actually get to reserve the name of their company on Google+using Google+ Direct Connect. Go to the Google search engine and type in Toyota+ to see what I mean. Good. Great. But what about a smaller brand? You’re outta luck for the moment. Google says they’ll be verifying more pages in future and I’m sure they will, but until then you’re just another page with the same name as anybody else who uses that name. Heck, there are several pages already called “Social Media Coach”! Maybe I was the first but I won’t be the last and it’s up for grabs for the first person who can get it verified.

There is a process called page verification. Here’s that works, but notice that you can’t apply for verification, they’ll let you know when you’ve been verified. Warning. If you change a character in the name of your page it will un-verify it and you’ll have to do it again. It also doesn’t seem to accelerate your entry into the Direct Connect pages so although it’s nice to be verified, it’s just the first step towards really being able to find your page.

What are the big brands doing with their Google+ pages?

That’s the really sad part. They participated in the land rush to get their Google+ pages defined and then many of them went right back to traditional marketing methods. Look at H&M for example. It’s a long stream of ads pushed out to anyone who follows them.

Just when the business pages feature launched people collected the big brands into a circle and started sharing it around. I dutifully added the circle to my feed and now the feed is clogged up with an incredible amount of direct advertisements. Is this really what we want Google+ to be for business? Here’s a short list of just a few. Some are great, some are just ads, you make the call whether they’re doing a good job or not.

• Zagat
• Macy’s
• Ford Motor Co.
• Dell
• Pepsi
• Nasa
• Citibank
• Save the Children UK
• BMW
• General Electric
• Social Media Coach!

How about you? Are there brands doing a good job on Google+? Add them in the comments and give us some hope. Have you created a Google+ page for your business that is working for you? Share some best practices here. We’d love to hear about it.

Sure Google+ can be a powerful tool to share your message with, but this network is in it’s infancy, and  with millions of users your message can be left largely unheard unless you have created circles who care about what you have to say and will share it with their own circles and help you get the word out. What you need to do is dig for people who are sharing a lot, get re-shared often and maintain a level of interest in what you want to talk about.

Even though this is a Google product and we know they must have a lot of data and information collected on the conversations on Google+ that data is still pretty hard for users to find. So how can you measure how effective your Google+ engagement is? How can you find the influencers on topics you want to discuss and get them to share your message with their network?

There’s not much out there to give you real information on statistics yet, but here are a couple of ways to find people interested in what you want to talk about and who frequently share information with their own circles and are re-shared too.

Ripples
A couple of weeks ago Google added a new feature to Google Plus called “Ripples“. The idea is to give you an idea of how posts are being shared and what the effect of that post is on your network or the network of the person who posted it. Here’s a quick video to show you how it works.

What can we learn from how Ripples work? You can see how being in that “What’s Hot” category can quickly build your visibility, but does it really do you any good if the post being shared isn’t on point with your messaging? A few people may go look to see what you’re all about and it’ it’s all photos of cats and videos about Lady Gaga it’s probably not going to help your business so much. It’s really not much of a strategy to try to make the most ripples possible unless you have something deeper to share that will really attract people for more than a quick hit.

Dig through the ripples in your area of interest. Look for people who are getting shared a lot and see if there is an affinity. Do those people RE-share a lot too? They might be someone to connect to and share with.

Pay attention to your own ripples. Who is re-sharing you? Go give them some love by sharing their relevant content too. Social media is all about reciprocity and never more so than here.

CircleCount
Another tool to look at is CircleCount.com. The initial screens are all about who is most popular and it’s the usual suspects found on most of the social media networks. Guy Kawasaki, Britney Spears, the Dalai Lama are some of the most re-shared and commented people on Google +. Big deal! While those are people who get frequently shared and do actually re share a bit, unless you are a pop idol or a news maker it’s not likely they will re-share your message about your nonprofit or business now is it?

It’s still about the content
Of course none of this means a thing if you don’t carefully craft your messages for the audience you want to hear them. Titles are important and they don’t have to be the title of the a link you are sharing. Darren Rowse has some great tips on writing great titles for log posts and the same carries true here. Use a great title. Make it applicable to the people you share with. locate the best sharers in your network and create a message they will want to share because it’s valuable, fun and fresh to them.

Popular gets you shared, but is it your message?
A quick review of the what’s hot tab on the lower left of your Google+ profile reveals the truth of Google+ popularity. Just like other social networks, what gets shared the most is still videos photos and jokes. That may get re shared but what does it do for your business? Sending one of these once in a while can get your profile viewed, but please make sure your real message is strong when they get there!

What about my Google+ page?
Now if you’ve got a Google+ page as well as your profile you are even more challenged. Currently pages can’t circle people who aren’t following them. That makes it hard to get your message out there at all. One tactic I’ve seen is to share from your page to your own personal account and then that account re-shares with a carefully crafted circle you want to attract to your page. This can work if done consistently and not so often as to drive people crazy.

On your web site
Make it easy for the fans you’ve already got on your web site or blog to share your posts directly to Google+. You can put a Google+ badge on your blog for your Google+ page here. Add a +1 button to your web site to make it easy for people to share your content right to Google+.

You might have seen my post last week when Google+ launched business pages or attended my webinar to help people get started with Google+. Since then I’ve had a lot of questions from readers and clients about Google’s newest network, so two things are in the works I thought you’d like to know about. I’ve just launched an e-learning course about Google + on Udemy. Right now it’s just 4 segments, but I think you’ll find it’s pretty useful and I will be adding more videos to the series as time goes by and Google+ adds more features. I’ve embedded the course below and it’s all free, so have fun. If you like this course you might want to head over to Udemy to see some of their other offerings. Google+ for Business

The other big news is, my publisher at has asked me to write another “Think Aha!” book on Google+ for business, so look for a new book with quick tips written in easy-to-digest tweets all about how to use Google+! I expect the book to go to the publisher before the month is out. Stay tuned for more on this and sign up for my newsletter to be the first to be able to get that e-book or in print. In the meantime, if you have questions I’m here for you. Click the support button on the right of this page to talk to me directly, if it shows me ofline you can email me or find me on Twitter!

Everybody’s been arguing over the value of Google Plus lately. Some say it’s only for geeks and others say it’s a waste of time. Well, Google just changed the conversation in a big way and just in time.

The announcement of Google pages for business came just in time to turn the whole argument on it’s head. Why? Because this is clearly a direct assault on Facebook pages. As I scanned my Google Plus stream it quickly became clear that it was way more than that. People are creating topic pages where they will share information that they used to share with circles.

For example:

• Friend Mike Elgin created a page where he and his wife plan to share their new diet called The Spartan Diet and he says he’ll be sharing on this page instead of to the circles of foodies he had created.
• CJ Brasiel created a page for questions about San Jose real estate and she plans to use it as a Q&A channel as well as a place to post news and information about real estate in the south bay.
• Save the Children UK launched their nonprofit page and did a great job setting off their profile with moving photos (hmm, just like Facebook pages eh?)
• The online social media magazine Social Media Examiner didn’t waste any time creating a page, and neither did most of the regular users of Google Plus. How could we resist?
• As for me, I’ll be sharing as, guess what, Social Media Coach and post tips and tricks, starting of course with a series of video tutorials to show you how to make use of these new pages.

There is a avalanche of new pages being created at the moment as everyone starts the land rush to save their favorite names and protect their brands, and just like with “fan” pages i expect there will be some tussles over who owns the rights to what. It’s Probably not a good idea to create a fan page that uses a brand name for example. Google says “Google reserves the right to restrict the content on your Google+ Page at its discretion.” and I expect they won’t stand for copyright violations like using a Brand’s name in your page, and any contests or promotions must fit within the Google + Pages Contest and Promotion Guidelines.

As many cool new features as there are with the new Google+ pages there are an equal number of questions popping up from my clients. I’ll cover the most frequently asked ones here and then if you want help, just post your questions to my new Google+ page!

How do I create a page?

How do I find my pages again after I build them?
See that little teeny arrow next to your avatar? It’s a drop down list of all the pages you own. Select one and you are now using Google plus as your page.

Can I make someone else an admin of my page?
Nope. Not yet. According to reports from the Google engineers they’re working on this.

Can I share content between myself and my page?
Here’s a trick for that. Create a circle called “Me” or something creative. Add only yourself and your pages to this circle. Now you can simply share your information between your pages and yourself by sharing only with that “Me” circle.

Do I really have to use that silly long numeric user name?
Nah. You can use a URL shortener to get you a nice tidy URL to share with your friends. Here’s a quick video showing one option for a shortcut URL to your Google business page.

Is there a way to connect my pages with my web site?
You can grab the G+ Widget from the right side of the page when you create your page or create your own with your Gplus avatar and a link to your new page. Once you leave this page, just click “Get Started” under your avatar and you’ll find a place to create a custom badge for your website as well as some good advice from Google about making the most of your page.

How do I find business pages?
If you know the brand you want, say, Toyota or Angry Birds, just type a + before the name in the search bar on Google’s home page and it takes you right to their Google Plus business page! . This is part of Google “Direct Connect”, and for the moment is in beta, so it only works with Particular brands. Give it a try. Go to Google’s search page and type on +Toyota and see what happens.

Do I have to create a whole new set of circles?
Sort of. I feel like this is just a glitch, but for the moment you can’t share a circle with your own business page. Your profile settings overide the page and if you already have people in circles the page will not let you create one there too. You’ll have to find somebody else with a similar circle and ask them to share it with your page. Note that once the circle is moved it doesn’t automatically update, you only get the people that are in the circle at the time you move it.

There is a particularly amazing spreadsheet maintained by Google that lists all of the publicly shared circles, from A-Z right here.

If you’re one of those people who insist on being followed back OR ELSE don’t bother reading this. You’re not going to be pleased.

I woke up this morning and reviewed some of my clients’ Twitter streams to find a few posts like this one. “FOLLOW BACK please!!!”. Now naturally I went to look at the person’s profile to see why the follow back was so urgent. After all, sometimes it’s a colleague trying to DM something important or someone who really wants to converse. Yeah, not this time.

Instead I see a timeline full of tweets about Britney Spears, broadcasting about their morning coffee, favorite TV show and several “Hey! You gonna follow me back??” posts.

Now why in the name of all that’s right with the world should we follow you?
Oh right, it’s all about the numbers. The users makes it very clear in their profile.

“I FOLLOW BACK EVERYONE. Follow me; I’ll follow you. Un follow me; get un followed. ”

Geez. Really?
People, please. Sure you want to feel like you’re popular and you’ve got lots of Twitter followers. Maybe you even want to have some legitimate conversations. But bullying new users into following you isn’t the path to real engagement. It’s silly.

If  you want more followers on Twitter
Make your content rich and interesting. If you want a particular user to follow you then reach out to them on a one-on-one level, not with a demand, but with a question about what they do, a response to something they posted, a compliment about something they have achieved or a great blog post. Share good information that is valuable and people will follow you back.

This is hard medicine when you’re a new Twitter user and you feel like you talking to the air all the time. So if you just absolutely have to get some users right now, then go ahead and use some of the many apps that help you find relevant people to connect with on Twitter. Some of these sites allow you to pay a small amount to be featured on the site so people can find you and follow you on their own. (Note, this is NOT paying for follows, those tend to be random, are often loaded with dead accounts or spammers, avoid, avoid, avoid.)

If you do decide to get featured on a Twitter listing site, don’t feel like you have to follow back all your new followers. Instead pay special attention to your new followers and reach out to the ones that are really interesting. Strike up a conversation and follow back. Don’t worry about hurting feelings, if you are only a number to them it’s not worth adding their junk to your Twitter stream.

If they try to bully you into following them back, they are not your friends. Yes, just like high school.

Yes, it’s all hallow’s eve, and while the kiddies are thinking about candy and costumes and spooky houses they’ll visit tonight, business people have a different idea of what’s truly scary. Especially PR and marketing professionals who are watching social media speed up the reaction time of their customers to light speed. How can we keep up? For your reading pleasure a few horror stories and near misses from businesses around the world. There is a lesson in every single one, so pay attention!

Citibank
Social Media is no new medium to Frank Eliason, SVP for Citibank, so when Occupy Wall St protesters heard that Citibank staff had called 911 when protesters entered a branch in New York and the word went out on multiple social media channels that people were being arrested, he didn’t sit on his hands hoping it would all blow over. He didn’t waste any time gathering as much data and content as he could so people could get a better picture.

Sure, there was the video of protesters being arrested, prevented from leaving the building, but there was also video from inside the building during the protest which basically showed the protesters disrupting business, not canceling accounts, but asking for support from the staff.

Now Frank was on his way to speak at PivotCom, where he could have expected a lot of tough questions about leaving his office at a critical time to attend a conference. He opened his talk with the video of the arrests followed by the video of what was going on inside which prompted the staff to call 911.

The lesson?
By doing this, Frank reached thousands of people through Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook and several blogs, possibly many more than the Occupy Wall St folks simply because of his own network combined with the powerful networks who were at Pivotcom. Basically leveraging social media to show the whole story and showing at the same time that transparency is ALWAYS best.

Ragu
Ragu sauces thought they could take a poke at Dads’ apparent ineptitude at cooking dinner for the kids fairly safely, and many years ago mebbe so, but with today’s social media savvy dads, many of whom make the choice stay at home to care for the family and/or work at home– it just wasn’t so smart to launch their “Dad Cooks Dinner” video channel. Needless to say Dads didn’t think it was funny.

Then somebody at Ragu got the bright idea of reaching out to some Dads on Twitter, notably CC Chapman, a blogger and social media celeb who is also known as a “Digital Dad”.

CC went on a pretty good rant on the subject and of course other social media people picked up the flag and ran with it, although not all of them took his side in the discussion, including the mommy bloggers who gave their opinions in the video. In fact I brought it up in a panel on Social media for brands at OMMA Social in San Francisco last week.

In the end CC decided to make his own sauce, showing that yes, Dads CAN cook too. He even offered a little social media advice for Ragu, just in case they were paying attention. It’s good advice too. Click the link and go read it. It doesn’t look like Ragu did though.

What did Ragu do? Eventually they called CC to talk to him, but their initial reaction was to stick their head in the sand and ignore it. The videos are still up, showing they either decided to ignore the whole mess, or they really just don’t care, but not before it got a little out of hand.

The lesson?
After being dissected in social media circles for weeks, in the end Ragu leaves a bad taste in some people’s mouths. Why? Because they didn’t do their homework and they didn’t engage their target market in a genuine way. Rather than offering the videos up as a sauce in your face slap, they might have posted a contest that pitted both Moms and Dads against each other for the most innovative recipes and put a positive spin on Dads in the kitchen instead. They could have reached out to Dads and asked them for their secret ways to use the sauce to spice up meals instead of pitting Mommy bloggers against Daddy bloggers. Lastly they should have researched who they were reaching out to sop they would have a clue as to how it would be received.

Chapstick
As you’ve seen above not all of these social media nightmares are huge worldwide disasters, and if responded to in some way that engages the people involved things can settle down and people can be reasonable. But if you don’t talk to them, or try to muffle their voices it’s going to get ugly. Take Chapstick for example. They posted a pretty silly add of a woman up-ended over her couch, hair flying, apparently looking for her long-lost tube of Chapstick on their Facebook page above the catchy title “Where do lost Chapsticks go?”. Apparently the image needed to be explained, and they wanted to invite people to share their thoughts on this riveting topic on their Facebook page.

OK, silly image right? No big deal right? Well, some people posted comments on the Facebook page complaining about the ad and blogger Margot Magowan didn’t think it was funny. She blogged about it and then posted on the wall of the Chapstick Facebook page. Chapstick admins deleted the comment. Others posted their thoughts on the subject and Chapstick deleted those too. Then they took down the ad and replaced the picture of the girl with one of some tubes of Chapstick. Problem solved right? Oh no, this opened a Pandora’s box of complaints and user launched “Butt seriously, Chapstick” a page on Facebook all about the whole mess where people could complain to their heart’s content. Golly, we can hardly wait to see response to the new campaign featuring Australia’s top model with the tag line “Never let your lips go naked”….

Had they not pulled the comments down it might have all blown over with a simple heart felt apology for any offense.

The lesson?
Seriously. It wasn’t the ad itself, it was how it was handled. Chapstick had a great opportunity here to reach out to the consumer and say something like “Gee, we’re sorry you don’t like the ad, we didn’t mean any harm”. and call it a day. They could have made a series of images with people in equally silly situations searching desperately for lost tubes in odd places. Really, their only mistake was trying to cover it up by deleting comments. Negative comments are an opportunity to learn from your users and to let them know you are listening. To correct a negative assumption.