Why Google+ is Hot While Facebook is Cold

The pundits, journos and others all seem to focus on the “numbers” of Facebook vs. Google which, in reality, means shite. Really. Right? Obviously Facebook has seriously superior numbers. But that actually means nothing. In fact it is just a quantitative number and has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on anything of actual value. While a newspaper may have 3 million subscribers that number is pointless if only 500 people actually read the newspaper.

The Real Perspective Is Engagement
So we set out to look at activity between Facebook and Google+ and we found something very, very interesting. Of the 15,000 profiles we compared, only 24% of the Facebook profiles posted more than twice per week, while 72% of Google+ users posted more than three times per week. In other words, those that use Google+ are far more active than Facebook users.

Activity Equates to Reach
For advertisers of course, you need people to see your ad right? If they see it, they may click on it. Problem for Facebook users is…they aren’t on Facebook very much in a given week, whereas Google+ users are.

Then It’s About Demographics
But when it comes to Google+, we’ve also found that these folks are generally quite active with technology. They’re hip to new technologies and they adopt new services. But they prefer the “easier” engagement of Google+ over Facebook. With Facebook there is more “friction” involved in finding and connecting with people and there are  more restrictions on how to connect and engage. With Google+, the advantage of Circles is actually reduced friction. For advertisers this may mean more truly viable opportunities for potential click-throughs on advertising messages when Google introduces them.

The Locality of It All
The upside of Facebook is that they can, truly, get very “local” or hyper-local, with their ads. This is a bit elusive for Google+ in terms of hyper-local advertising. But what matters is those that actually click through to an ad and can be converted and this is where things equal out a little bit. But the real issue for ROI is the advertiser – just how good are they at converting a “click-through” to a purchase or whatever their goal is? That is neither the fault nor issue of Google or Facebook.

Overall
Our conclusion is that Google+ is a better platform for finding those that are actually active and engaged on a regular basis, while Facebook is a far more “latent” platform that equates to patience.

Of course, we have a lot more data behind this research, but we are a business so if you want to find out more, just give us a holler! If you’re a Halifax search marketing firm or an SEO consultant agency, this is insight to help with your SEO strategy. Firms like Norex, FreshEgg and Alpha Search would well be served by looking into data such as this.

Facebook Dangers for Global Marketers

You’re a global company, or maybe a small to midsize business and your marketing your products around the world. For your social media marketing efforts the first natural assumption would be, of course, Facebook. You’d be partially right. But focusing all your efforts on Facebook may mean you’ll miss between 30% and 50% of your target market. While Facebook is certainly the world’s largest, there are hundreds of other social networks like it and they service cultural, special interest and country or region-specific peoples. Here’s what you need to think about;

Orkut - This is the choice for people in Latin America – majority in Brazil. While it has people from other countries, it is a superb channel to reach Hispanics and Latin Americans. Note that Orkut is owned by Google. They are building tight integration with Google+ and it is working.

Google+ - Our research here has found an increasing engagement by Eastern Europeans, Asian countries and the Middle East. In the Middle East it is seen as having more privacy controls than Facebook and being more “trustworthy”.

India: You’ll want to look more closely at Fropper and Ibibo (Ibibo is more games focused) for the top social networks in those countries. Especially amongst youth. In India, Facebook is more often used for international business, students and family members (diaspora) living/working/studying abroad.

hi5 - Yes, it still exists and it’s thriving in Jamaica, Romania, Latin America (the most), Thailand, a bit in India, Mongolia and Central African countries like the DRC. It has also begun to shift more towards games for youth. A trend we see in some of these sites that have no doubt lost some traffic to Facebook.

iWiW – Pretty much exclusive to Hungarians with some Latvians thrown in for good measure.

Nasza-Klasa or NK: Very popular with Polish youth and some Polish diaspora, especially those that study in other countries. Average age is about 25.

Renren – Pretty much China, with the added enjoyment of government overseers so you’ll want to be sure you tout the party line in your marketing efforts here. Remember, Facebook is banned in China, though there are indicators of workarounds and spotty reports you can access Facebook in Shanghai.

Vkontakte – This is Russia’s Facebook and if you really want to reach Russians, this is the channel. Recent reports however, indicate that government may be monitoring this channel. With the upcoming federal elections and protests being organised, we may see a shift to Google+ and Facebook.

Xing – This is the choice mostly of Germans, Austrians and Swiss with a smattering from other European countries. It has also changed its consumer focus to become more targeted to businesses competing with eCademy in Europe.

Zoo.gr - A more game oriented site, but targeting Greek youth and young adults.

NetLog – Another European centric social network. Like Bebo in the UK, NetLog is now targeting youth more and more. Still it is a platform worth looking at if you’re targeting youth in Europe. For some reason it has a good number of Canadians – likely diaspora.

SkyRock - Mostly the French speaking community. France-centric but Skyrock has French and English speakers around the world. It is also popular with former French colonies in Africa.

CaribShout - Want to connect to Caribbeans? This is their social network. Very popular with young adults up to 35 and for dating.

These are the “mainstream” social networks around the world. There are many others, over 200 in fact. Other social networks become increasingly “niche” such as hobbies, sports and special interest (as noted in a previous blog post.) There are a few business focused social networks as well, like LinkedIn and we’ll review those in a future post.

If you’re focus is international, do your research first. Find out where the best opportunity may rest and develop a strategy accordingly. Also consider that many social media monitoring tools don’t access these services and so you’ll need to do that more manually.

Why Small Business Fails in Social Media

We were curious as to why small businesses fail in social media. More fail from their attempt than succeed. At least, that’s what our research showed. And there is one leading reason; fear of commitment. We looked at 2,500 businesses in the U.S. and 1,500 in Canada that we considered small businesses (see our methodology below.) What we found was one overall reason businesses just plain flopped in social media engagement. Committment.

It’s a Huge Challenge
Any small business owners out there will probably agree; there’s just not enough time in a day to run the business and pay attention to all the added challenges of engaging in social media. There’s sales to keep the business open, then operating costs like payroll, rent, inventory or delivery of the service/product, taxes, accountants, client follow-ups and, well, so on.

Major Irony: It’s The Best Bang for your Buck.
While at the same time, the small businesses who do succeed with social media will tell you – it’s the most cost effective marketing tool. But patience and commitment is necessary. For a small business, social media provides two critical things to growth: 1) Trust building and 2) Evidence.

1. Trust: By using social media tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, FastPitch, Plaxo and so on, you can establish trust with prospective clients over time. You can show “who” you and your team are – short videos, photo’s of work done, video testimonials (from real people not fake “J. Jones, South Dakota” names that anyone with a keyboard can type in!) and links to referring clients.

2. Evidence: Proof of your work. References and images/video of jobs completed, innovations and helpful blogs and related content are all evidence that you are an expert, that you know your stuff.

The Reasons for Failure:

1. Commitment: This the piece on the pie graph above labeled as “time/commitment” – we analysed comments from small business owners in channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Identi.ca who made comments on why the found it difficult to find value in social media. In large part text analytics only goes so far and some human “coding” has to take place. We also looked at comments in blog posts and news media stories across primary news channels like the Globe & Mail and several U.S. state and localized news media sites. What it really came down to is that small business owners find it takes a long time to find a direct (perceived?) time to an ROI. Unfortunately, this is true. Expecting overnight success or even within a week or two, is unrealistic. This is true of marketing in general. We suspect that marketing/advertising in traditional channels would actually take twice as long.

2. Resources: The second most popular reason cited was available resources – i.e. the humans needed to engage. For a small business, every employee must have a direct and measurable impact on revenues. Small business owners, because they are small, often (and rightly) feel that if they hire an employee, that person must have a positive impact on revenues either through customer satisfaction or sales. It is a major stress point for a small business owner to hire someone. Unfortunately, as social media engagement can take time, many small business owners are (wrongly) tempted to think the required engagement time is a poor investment. This comes down to an equation of being able to carry such a marketing resource until the beginning of a return period. Sadly, what many small business owners also fail to realise is that it takes 6-9 months for a new sales person to become profitable to a company, yet for a lower cost overall, a social media resource can produce similar revenues. Economics here, are failing the small business owner.

3. Content: As many small business owners feel they must “control” all aspects of their business (this may be so until you reach employee number 2) they must control what happens and what is done. It is very hard for an entrepreneur to “let go” of certain aspects of their business because they are (rightly) very passionate about their business. But delegating and letting people do what they are good at it and then letting them do it is often the sign of entrepreneurs who win in the long run. This goes to producing the “content” needed in social media; from blog posts to quick videos.

4. Knowledge: This relates again to staff, but also to the small business owner. On the one hand we mean the “knowledge” of the entrepreneur of the tools that are available. On the other this relates to the entrepreneur feeling no employee can have as much knowledge about the business as they do. Again, that relates to a fear of letting people do what they are good at.

5. Assumptions: This was directly related to the assumptions that business owners make about social media because they don’t use it themselves and is incredibly dangerous. While it may rank as low for what entrepreneurs or small business owners say, it is incredibly important in and of itself. Small business owners will tend to think social media services are used by kids when they service an older demographic. This is potentially lethal and perhaps, the most damaging assumption a small business can make. It’s the +25 demographic that uses social media to talk about products and services more than youth. So much so that a small business may not even realize they’ve been targeted with negative social media.

So…what do you think about why small businesses fail with their social media engagement?

Methodology:
We sampled content from blogs, Twitter, Identi.ca, Plurk.com, Facebook, Plaxo, FastPitch, 100 forum groups, GoogleGroups and other channels. We pulled in the text and ran our Artificial Intelligence engine and then set loose a human analyst on a coding matrix. We then compared results and ran a validation. From there we measured against per capita populations and FTC data in the U.S. on the small business market in targeted regions and Statistics Canada for Canadian businesses and based on the overall findings produced our results. From our overall sample size the margin of error is +/-7% on a per capita, moving average basis.

The Collateral Damage to Business From a Social Media Crisis

Most discussions and case studies around social media crises faced by companies is focused on consumer reaction – and direct loss of sales or brand impact. While these are critical, a non-consumer focused company may think they are more immune to these issues and a consumer product company may think the damage is relagated to the consumer segment, not their business to business side. This can be a dangerous assumption. We look at some of the collateral, perhaps harder to measure, damage that can occur.

Mistake Number One: Many companies who only sell business-to-business (B2B) assume that social media is all about consumers and that they are immune to damage. This is a fatal error. Many industries have niche social networks, forums, blogs, Twitter accounts, where industry news is discussed. Failure to understand this can cause significant problems.

Risk From Government Contracts
If a business also sells to governments, contracts may be lost. Depending on the severity of the issue, such as legal actions being talked about or happening, government agencies may be reluctant to buy products or services from a business they feel may be distracted from a contract or unable to fulfil it. It is hard to know if this happens. Some indicators may help determine the risk however.

Competitor Leverage
The bigger the story via social media (whether general sites or industry-focused channels) the more a competitor can cause harm. Employees can quickly and easily share information, this means relying on stories only being in major news media is dangerous. Competitors can shape perceptions with existing clients of yours and use it to foster perceptions of inability to complete work and more.

Every Industry Has Social Media Channels
We’ve conducted research and analysis on many industries. There is always some engagement by people in the industry in specialized niche networks, Facebook groups, LinkedIn discussions, FastPitch, eCademy, forums and newsgroups. Whether or not a CEO or senior executive is aware or participating in them doesn’t matter – employees are. Including from competitors. And they share information. A lot.

Board Perceptions & Risks
If it is a public company or just has a board and a smaller set of investors, once word trickles out, problems of governance come into play. A board or set of shareholders, may feel management has lost control of the company or are nervous of the management teams ability to contain and deal with the issue. If it is a major shareholder or board officer who raises awareness of an issue to management, they may feel management is not suitably aware of industry issues. There is then the possibility of a fractious board, a senior management battle and so on…

Investment Challenges
Companies looking to raise capital from equity sources or even debt, may find themselves in a challenging place if a negative story has reached the ears of those in the financial sector whom they are courting. If financiers perceive problem or potential escalation, they may either require more security or stall on a deal.

Supplier Fears
Suppliers of services or materials to a company who are tuned into the industry networks (often, they are more connected into online channels than the buyer of their product) may be concerned with the company’s ability to surface from a crisis. If they have extended credit, they may retract that credit or require new terms or demand outstanding payment to mitigate increased fears of risk.

Perception Can Rule The Day
The reality of these challenges are ones that businesses are just beginning to grasp.  Since these issues are  beyond just reputation management and are not as quantifiable being more qualitative in nature. It is not as easy as seeing immediate sales losses or a series of negative “tweets” on Twitter. Often, senior management is unaware of the social media tools being used in their industry. Monitoring tools rarely, if ever, pick these up because they are focused a) on mainstream social media channels for consumers, b) more business-to-consumer than B2B and c) perform poorly with smaller data sets to display.

We live in a world where perception can quickly become the reality. And that can spread across far more than just the consumer market and into supplier networks, financial sector and shareholders.

A Whole New Set of Headaches
All of this to say, the CEO and executive management of a company today have a whole new set of risks to manage. In some cases, they may not even realise an issue escalated as the result of a forum discussion or blog posting. Some research into these deep Web sources (where social media monitoring or reputation management tools simply do not go) can help a) understand the issue and b) help address the issue and give management the opportunity to mitigate risks and deflect the damage quickly.

Why Social Media Really Works in Civil Actions

Issues for protest or causing some form of unrest aside, the real reason social media tools have been a key technology in driving significant societal changes comes down to one reason we propose – lowered individual risk and group comfort. One person protesting in front of city hall is unlikely to cause a change. You need a lot of people. Our research into Keystone XL and the use of social media by civil society groups showed how now even groups can connect with other groups to take action on issues.

Herd Mentality
The truth is that we as humans prefer to act in groups. We have to. One person alone cannot build an office tower. When we see others gathering, we are more likely to join in when we share that groups values, ideas, opinions or vision.

Social Media Shows Commitment
Look at a Facebook group page on an issue of society, a celebrity or brand. If one group has thousands of followers we assume that group is generally more popular. A group page with just a few members isn’t as compelling. We’ll go for the group with more people – in general. An individual will go where there’s the perception of others with similar views. As social media tools thrive on high volumes of users, require little to know technical skills and are available through mobile devices as well, a person can quickly see when something is becoming popular. When we see others are committed, we’re more likely to commit.

Digital Mob Mentality
When an issue takes off, like #Occupy, Egyptian revolution or the London riots of 2011, people go into what we term Digital Mob Mentality. They are fast to comment and quick to share with their peer networks. This becomes a feeding frenzy of information. Coordination is quick, communication is essentially at zero cost and there is no friction. To those that suggest “slacktivism” takes place, yes, to some degree. But as the above events and many others show, the slacktivists are far less than those who can and do actively participate in the issue.

Hyper-Momentum & Networks
Because of the significant increases in the use of mobile data devices (SmartPhones and Tablets) and the easy access to social media technologies over increasingly higher bandwidth networks, an issue gains what we call hyper-momentum. The story spreads fast and furious. Far faster than ever before in human history. No one has to wait for mail to arrive or has to be at home to take the phone call. And every one of us has social networks of friends, family, co-workers etc. And we trust news and actions of friends very quickly. More so than official government communications. In several research projects we’ve done for governments around the use of social media in both natural and man-made disasters, we see a greater reliance on information passed through social networks or the social graph than that coming from government (including policing and fire services.)

In Summary
When we see other people taking part in something we are curious. Whenever we see a crowd, we are curious as to what has drawn other peoples attention. These behaviours are simply translated to online services through social media. The more we see others with a similar view are committed to an action, the more likely we are to participate. It’s as simple as that. And we have plenty of evidence.