The Pros & Cons of Google+ for Small Business

For big brands, Google+ is probably a good investment — but is Google+ an efficient use of time for small businesses?

Google unveiled Google+ brand pages in November, enabling businesses and brands to join its social network. Since then, big brands — including Pepsi, Macy’s and Toyota — have jumped on the Google+ bandwagon, creating yet another hub page for their content-hungry fans.

We reached out to our community to better understand how (and if) small businesses are using Google+. We received more than 50 responses detailing the merits and downfalls of using Google’s social network as a small business.

Below are some of the top thoughts on the pros and cons of using Google+ as a small business. Read on and add your thoughts in the comments below.

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7 Reasons to Use Google+

A bulk of the small businesses we spoke with said they feel Google+ is an important social platform because it was developed by Google, one of the Internet’s favorite brands and one of the most influential websites when it comes to site referrals. But small business owners gave a plethora of reasons for being early adopters of the platform. Here are some of the top reasons we heard for using Google+.

1. Get an SEO Boost: Bob Shirilla, director of marketing at Simply Bags, says that his business joined Google+ because he relies on Google search referrals for sales conversions. “Google+ influences search for all the people who have included my business in their circle,” he says. “We have also put a +1 button on each product page. This is a great way to get free promotion from people who like the product to people with similar interests.”

2. Host a Hangout: “Hangouts offer an amazing opportunity for businesses to engage in a highly personal way with clients, customers and industry thought leaders,” says Roger Friedensen, president and CEO of Forge Communications. “Plus, employees in remote locations can hold team meetings to brainstorm with one another from an interface that affords them immediate and easy access to share and collaborate on most of the information materials they might need, such as documents and spreadsheets.”

3. Expand Content Distribution: Phyllis Khare, the social media editorial director of iPhone Life magazine, says that Google+ is a great platform for expanding the publication’s content distribution. “It took us almost a year to get 1,000 Likes on our Facebook Page, and three days on G+ to get that number to Circle us,” she says. “We are gearing up for Hangouts with some of our writers in 2012 to answer iOS questions and a few other fun things with contests and giveaways.”

4. Connect with Early Adopters: If your business falls in the Internet or technology industries, Google+ could be a great place to connect a tech-savvy audience. “The people that are on Google+ already are most likely going to be early adopters of other technologies and marketing channels,” says Jason Pinto, CMO at interlinkONE. “When we look at what defines an ‘ideal customer’ for our products, that criteria is certainly high on our list.”

5. Segment Your Audience: “The obvious benefit of Google+ is that it allows us to share select content with specific audiences,” says Chad Udell, managing director of Float Mobile Learning. Google+ makes it easy for businesses to segment their audiences and share content directly with those certain groups of followers.

6. Use Google+ to Network: David Greenberg, president of Parliament Tutors, says that his business does not have a Google+ page, but that he uses his personal Google+ page to network and gather contact data and research the “personal side” of relevant contacts, such as journalists and potential clients, so that he can better create a connection with them. He adds that the “About” section of a contact’s Google+ profile is usually a great start.

7. Just Explore: Netronic Managing Director Martin Karlowitsch says, “We currently use Google+ for exploratory purposes. It is still a niche platform, but quickly growing and with a platform giant behind it. Knowing the impact that Google has on the way people find relevant information on the web, Google+ soon can become significant by combining social and search. I want to start early using this platform to be prepared when this inflection point arises.”

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5 Downfalls of Using Google+

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While most of the small business owners we spoke with had a very positive outlook for Google+, we also spoke to a number of skeptics who identified numerous flaws in the social platform. Here are the top five reasons that small business owners gave for limiting their engagement on Google+.

1. Administration is Difficult: “The pages need to be created from an individual’s Google+ account, and you cannot add admins or any other users to manage the account,” says Jason Donaldson, an account executive at Formic Media. “Depending on the size of the business, this may not be an issue. For example, if you only have one or two employees, there probably isn’t an issue accessing the page from a personal Google account. The problem becomes more exaggerated with businesses that don’t have a dedicated social media manager (unlikely with small businesses), because of the need to give out personal account information for users to post on the business page.”

2. Facebook and Twitter Reign: Many of the small businesses we spoke with pointed out that they maintain engaged audiences on Twitter and Facebook, but most of their customers and clients don’t use Google+. So, the platform isn’t much of a priority for their business. In the words of TwiloPR President Chris Heuwetter, “The true value is in Facebook, where we see a nice return on our efforts. Google+ seems like a ghost town [for many small businesses].”

3. Social Dashboards Don’t Integrate Google+ Yet: While more progressive social media dashboards, like Hootsuite, have integrated Google+ into their products, many social dashboard services on the market do not enable users to post to Google+. For businesses that manage their social presences from one central location, the lack of Google+ integration is a huge barrier to Google+ usage.

4. Google Side Projects are Unreliable: James Beswick manages online marketing for a bar in San Antonio called Drink. He looked into creating a Google+ page for the bar, but decided against it, since he’s not certain that the social network will pan out. “Google keeps starting and shutting down products — Buzz, Wave and Hotpot, to name a few — and I’m not entirely convinced the same thing won’t happen with Plus,” he says. “Given the time and cost of engaging followers, I think the effort is better spent on Facebook.”

5. Growth Is Small: Tara Parks, senior marketing administrator at Convergence Networks says that she sees potential in Google+, but that growth has been small for her company. “The biggest drawback to Google+ so far is that it’s hard to grow a fan base, since businesses can only add other businesses to their Circles, and not individuals, the way you can on Twitter (until they add you, that is),” she says. “It will definitely be a lot more fun once more people start using Google+.”

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The New Twitter Design Reveals Secret Crush On Video Content

Everyone's buzzing this week about Twitter's new design--actually, I should say that "everyone who cares about Twitter" is buzzing about Twitter's new design. If you don't use the service, you might not even know there's a new version. But there is. And despite the new embed function, and the new layout and categorizations... the truly big news about Twitter's new design has to do with something near and dear to most of our readers: video.

First the Basics: The New Twitter Design

Let's get the non-video stuff out of the way first. First, there's a brand new layout. It looks like this:

There are now four main ways to interact with Twitter, broken into tabs: Home, Connect, Discover, and Me. Almost all the changes are designed to help make Twitter more accessible to new users who don't know all the lingo or are unsure how to use the service best.

Here's a video they released covering the major changes in the new design:

Twitter Hearts Video

The big news, of course, from our perspective, is the ability for companies to add a video to their Twitter header. This is done through a new service called Brand Pages. Much the same way Google Plus has done recently, Twitter is creating tools for businesses, differentiating more between individuals and companies.

With Brand Pages you get:

• Customizable headers - You can make your logo bigger!
• Sticky Tweets - Brands can select a recent Tweet they'd like to stay at the top of the stream, even if it's not the most recent. And--here comes the exciting part--that Tweet can even auto-expand to reveal a photo or video.

That is absolutely huge news. And it makes perfect sense. Twitter's not dumb, after all. I'm sure they have data on how much video users are sharing on their service. The creation of Brand Pages will help businesses make their Twitter page a destination... and the ability to add video allows for the kind of engaging content we know users

Source: The New Twitter Design Reveals Secret Crush On Video Content http://www.reelseo.com/new-twitter-design-video/#ixzz1h2SPABZq

8 Video Marketing Strategies for Small Business

 

 

There are a zillion ways to use video for business, varying from stylish, high-priced ad crusade commercials to complex landing page pieces designed to pull someone into a purchase. What are the greatest types of video for Small Business owners that can be created cost-effectively and published quickly and produce leads? Here are the Elite Eight.

Introductory Clip

Well-known and regularly underused, the video Intro to the Business is a brief, 5 minute or less (2-3 works well) homepage introduction that tells who you are, what you do and why customers should care. This can be done using a narrative in a commercial replete with lots of motion shots of the shop floor, the office, and merchandise; a talking head of the CEO to a blank camera; or use the 3rd party perspective of an authentic Video interview (see below) Business FAQ.

Development costs can range from free (CEO riffing into a webcam) through a few hundred dollars to thousands for a videographer shot commercial. Google doesn’t care; either will index well given the suitable keyword tags. The question you have to answer is, what is going to be quickly informative, entertaining, and referable (as in Re-tweeted). 

Product Demonstration

Specific to demonstrable products, especially ones that move, like machines, toys, electronic devices, and, considering the medium, software. These again shouldn’t run on too long but may be longer than an introductory commercial. A software-based demo may take up to 8 minutes, but you should be able to say it in less time than that. When it comes to demos, sometimes less is more. Most often either a narrative led demo showing strictly merchandise or a spokesperson paced demo (think QVC or Home Shopping Channel) works the best. Just make sure to show the BEST features of your product and explain repeatedly (3x) how this addresses a problem for your prospects.

Professional Abilities

This is very similar to a product demo and works best for suppliers, specifically those in developed countries, trying to demonstrate their superior technology will in reality cost less money or provide better quality merchandise for a customer engaging them with a contract for ongoing services. Machine shops and laser houses love this stuff, showing programmed machinery cutting steel while a guy with a hardhat and safety specs controls the process. This can run 5-10 minutes tops. The key here is, make sure that your ability really is something unique (as in a True Competitive Advantage that others don’t have) and that your video captures its uniqueness.

Company Headlines

This is more of a tug on the heartstrings video that spotlights either what your company has achieved that is noteworthy or what your employees have done for your company. If it’s about the business, it MUST be legitimized by 3rd party reference, as in an accolade won from a prominent registrar (Best in Class, Malcolm Baldridge quality), a status obtained (ISO 9001 certification, etc.) or a cat saved from a tree on the news. When discussing employees, the old Employee of the Month style headline adds a nice human element and speaks to what your company values in its people, and that can make a big difference to prospects with the same value system. For these types of videos, keep them brief (2-4 minutes) and keep them current, particularly for the employee notoriety videos. An Employee of the Month surmises that next month, we’ll see a new one.

Video Landing Page Combination

I could write pages on this one and to be truthful, I’m not a professional at it, but I am sure you’ve experienced pages that have these videos. These are designed to be easy for the vendor of a product or service, meaning, don’t call me, take the action explained on the video. That means enter your email address to get something for FREE for agreement to market to you, or sign up for the thing (whatever it is) immediately! Just like text-only sales landing pages, these are long-form videos, with Squeeze Pages (get the email address) videos stretching from 3-7 minutes, and Sales Pages running all the way up to 30 minutes (that is too long in my view, with 10-12 being enough). The most important stuff here: limit options to only this with no other on-page interruptions and make multiple calls to action to the viewer.

Vlog Posts

All about providing info this one is. It comes in the form of a training video, which is conveniently done for things like software applications using screen capture software, or talking head telling something she knows, and often is the Expert Interview (I’ve done a bunch of these in my blog, see sample). The goal is expert positioning for your company while providing real value for the view. These videos can run from 5-30 minutes or longer (think of a book author interview), but I prefer to keep them between 7 and 15 minutes (YouTube has a 15 minute max until you are a recurring video poster). Tickets to success are to limit the subject matter to prevent rambling, don’t provide fluff with a sales pitch to get more, and add some written text fore and aft of the video to set it up and summarize.

Testimonials and Case Studies

Very self-explanatory here, this is 3rd party Reliability Building 101. Take the same things that marketers value about written examples and testimonials and put them on steroids. This definitely MUST be a person unrelated to the business telling about what the company did for him or her, and it can NOT be anonymous (just like those absurd fake reviews you see, “JL from Tampa says …”). Use foresight if the person doing the talking is not good on camera. It shouldn’t make a difference but it does. He doesn’t need to be Ben Affleck, but he can’t be a stiff either. These run no more than 3 minutes in length and follow my rules for great reviews. Quality can’t be weak, but a webcam with reasonable quality can be used effectively, as the subject matter of the person’s referral is the principal piece.

Video Interview

I saved this for last and, as you probably know by now, Smart Company Growth does these in packages for the right type of clients. Video interviews work well for any company that wants to put a human face on its brand, so consider if that is you. They work extremely well when your organization has these three aspects:

1. No physical product – Right for consultants, lawyers, accountants, financial advisors, IT people and anyone else offering professional services. You sell intellectual property and that is difficult to show by showing a video shot of your report (although you can show results charts, but the people who can use this method the most, financial advisors, usually have rules stopping it).

2. Trust is the key to business – Same group, right? If you’re an attorney, how can you start to break the trust hurdle down without ever meeting someone? Show some face time with the 3rd party legitimacy that comes from being interviewed.

3. Sameness in Brand – If you look at your rivals’ websites and they look like yours does – competent yet non-distinguishable – you’re a good prospect for a video interview to set yourself apart. Once more, this is why professional service companies fall so nicely into video interview candidates.

For marketing purposes the longest video interview (we call them SmartVu) we do is about 12 minutes. That’s pretty in-depth. The shortest you can sensibly do with any bona fide dialog is about 2-3 minutes. The vital success variables here are that the interviewer is good and that the structure of the content is planned ahead of time. An unconvincing interviewer will cause an unpersuasive interview and weak video. A sound interviewer with planned content will lead to genuine questions that portray you in the very best light. Although I cannot convince all of my clients of this, Do Not Read From A Script! If you’re a category expert on your product or topic, a good interviewer’s questions will lead to natural responses with you looking right into the camera. Script readers have their eyes turned away to wherever the script is located and come across as stiff, with only the skilled few able to fool people into believing they are responding ad hoc.

Online Video Offers Low-Cost Marketing For Your Company

Ed Davis, center, president of Ceilume, a maker of plastic ceiling tiles, discusses a marketing video with his creative team in Graton, Calif.

Ed Davis wanted to have a word with his customers.

He was shepherding his small California manufacturing company,Ceilume, through a transition from a custom job shop to a maker of vinyl ceiling tiles, and he needed to begin selling directly to consumers. That raised a perception problem: many people associate ceiling tiles with the ugly, dusty and stained mineral-fiber tiles that have loomed over offices for generations. Mr. Davis, Ceilume’s president, wanted to tell consumers his company’s vinyl products were different. He decided to try online video.

Over the last several years, Ceilume has produced dozens ofYouTube videos for product demonstrations, advertisements and how-to instruction. These videos are embedded in the company Web site or show up in results when customers search for keywords. As a result, Ceilume has reached tens of thousands of customers at a very low cost.

Online video is becoming a first stop for many customers. It is akin to what the Web page was a decade ago — something that can give early adopters an edge over competitors. It gives them a channel to talk directly to customers in ways previously accessible only to large companies that could afford TV advertisements.

This guide to using online video focuses on YouTube, which is by far the dominant player with two billion views per day — but many of the principles also apply to the other hosting services, including Vimeo, MetaCafe, Facebook, Viddler, Brightcove and Blip.tv.

SHOW YOUR PRODUCTS Short of getting a customer in the door or sending a salesperson on the road, online video may be the best way to demonstrate a product. According to Mr. Davis, more Ceilume customers place orders without requesting samples because video helps them find what they want.

At Ceilume, video helps customers choose among 30 different styles of ceiling tiles. Ceilume, a 40-person company that has about $5 million a year in sales, produces its “Ask the Ceiling Tile Guy” videos for little expense with internal tech staff and Mr. Davis as narrator. The videos have attracted more than 500,000 views, and Mr. Davis says he believes that video has been a crucial factor in increasing sales 15 percent a year.

CREATE A DESTINATION It is easier to win customers if you give them a reason to tune in. For BBQguys.com, the reason is food sizzling on the grill.

BBQguys.com began as a traditional brick-and-mortar store (The Grill Store and More) in Baton Rouge, La. In 2001, the company went online, which allowed it to reach legions of new customers but also reduced its ability to provide personalized service. Online video has helped the company recover its human touch virtually.

In 2006, it started posting informal YouTube videos featuring new grills, narrated by its customer service manager and chief executive. The channel grew so much that the company recruited a local chef, Tony Matassa, to be its on-camera personality.

It now has nearly 400 videos on YouTube, which have collectively been viewed 1.4 million times. Video has become so essential that the company has built a small studio in one of its warehouses. “We see the video almost like a TV commercial,” said Troy Olson, digital advertising manager for ShoppersChoice.com, the parent company of BBQguys.com. “We’re planting our brand name in their minds.”

The company does not just pitch products. Rather, the goal is to establish its people as customer-friendly experts and provide a channel full of useful information about how to fry a turkey, grill a pizza or smoke a beef brisket. The hope is that the information will draw viewers — many of whom will become customers — and increase the site’s conversion rate. According to Mr. Olson, a person who comes to the site and watches a video is twice as likely to make a purchase as a visitor who does not watch a video.

USE ANALYTICS AND TOOLS YouTube offers tools that allow you to measure the effect of your videos. BBQguys has used this data to make its videos more compelling — shortening them, for example, to two or three minutes after discovering that customers tend to stop watching the longer ones. The company also discovered “hot spots” that viewers rewind to and rewatch — particularly images of food sizzling on the grill — and it now makes sure to include more such scenes.

“Video has to be evolving,” Mr. Olson said. “You have to always be willing to change everything you’re doing.”

BUILD A BRAND CHANNEL One way to get the attention of customers is invite them to become your video producers — especially if they jump off cliffs, ski down steep powder ridges or do somersaults on BMX bikes.

GoPro.com, a maker of small high-definition cameras that can be worn during adventure sports, has built a thriving YouTube presence with customer videos. YouTube allows businesses to establish channels, or a home page that lists videos, playlists and contact information. The GoPro channel features more than 100 videos — including surfing, skiing, motocross, auto sports and flight — which have been viewed more than 24 million times.

“It is the No. 1 most convenient way for us to validate our product to customers,” said Nick Woodman, founder and chief executive. He said business was growing 300 percent a year. “Viral word-of-mouth marketing for GoPro is massive. Video is really the conduit.”

ADVERTISE WITH VIDEO YouTube is the second-largest search engine after Google(which owns YouTube) and represents a huge audience of potential customers. It offers a dozen advertising options, including banner ads, promoted videos that appear on top and beside search results, and “preroll ads” that appear during other YouTube videos much like a conventional TV commercial. YouTube recently announced that it was displaying more than three billion ads per week.

Like Google, YouTube generally follows a cost-per-click or cost-per-view model so advertisers pay only when users click on ads or watch ad videos. Advertisers can view metrics such as number of impressions, conversions and viewer demographics via theirGoogle AdWords or YouTube Insights accounts.

Ads can be aimed at customers based on demographics, keywords or interests. For example, a person who searches for “ceiling tiles” might see a Ceilume video titled “make an ugly ceiling elegant” highlighted as a promoted video atop the YouTube page. Ceilume devotes about 10 percent of its advertising budget to YouTube.

OFFER INSTRUCTION Online video makes it easy to follow the adage “Show, don’t tell.” Many businesses have turned to video for instruction manuals and how-to guides.

Directfix.com sells replacement parts and accessories for smartphones and other electronics. The business faces a constant customer service challenge: showing lay people how to take apart electronic gadgets and install fragile components.

In the early days, the company used pictures and text, said Robert Stanley, founder and chief executive. Inevitably, those instructions left customers with questions that placed a burden on the company’s customer service department. In 2007, the company began posting how-to videos on YouTube. That summer, it released one of the first videos showing how to take apart an iPhone, a video that has been viewed more than two million times.

The company has compiled a library of instructional videos that have reduced customer questions by half, allowed the company to eliminate phone support and cut its customer service budget about 40 percent. Without video, Mr. Stanley said, he would have to hire four or five additional employees.

“You can tell somebody over the phone to turn the screw in the top right corner,” he said, “and they might understand what you mean and they might not. If you show them on a video, they get the point.”