Since it launched last summer Google Plus has been somewhat of a mystery to many people.  What confuses them the most is not Google Plus as a whole or how it works, but finding out that the game of social networking has changed.  I take it from the many people placing me in their G+ circle that most of them did not get that memo about the change.  There are still millions out there who still feel developing fake popularity is part of social networking.  Boy, are they in for a rude awakening.

As little as a few months ago achieving fakedom was the drive for most people in the social spaces.  It was the primary part of the game many played to develop a large community of anything that generates a social profile.  The feeling most people had was the need to be popular.  This feeling was also mixed by their need, or in some cases their requirement, to have a large base of Things to broadcast to their promotions.  Their feeling of worthiness in the social space was based on the number of people they had in their Following.  If someone had few followers they were marked as a loser, millions of followers they were a Rock Star.

At the beginning of last year this act in futility was starting to fall a part as people started finally seeing that nobody in their very large community was listening.  Report after report was coming in from everywhere that people were just fed up with the constant pounding of self promoters and spam and just walked off leaving millions of inactive profiles.  Even the celebrities of the social spaces who were getting hundreds of comments to each of their posts were seeing it not accomplishing their goal or being fulfilling to their personal or professional needs.  A dark shadow was falling over the entire social networking arena all because the lack of trust was building in the core base of people using the social spaces.  Most had given up that there were actually any real people left to interact with.

Google Antis Up

So in walks Google, the master of the internet, the lord of supreme knowledge and senior of all internet icons, to pull up a chair to the table where the high stakes game of Social Platforms and anteed up to play by laying on the table their crown jewel..Google Plus.  Pokerface is not how I would describe Facebook’s and Twitter’s reaction to Google stepping into their little high stakes money game.  I envision the expression would be more of a look of them feeling nauseated knowing the big dog finally has entered the playground.  This move Google made less than a year ago the game of social networking changed.

The game of gathering up thousands of people to fulfill whatever need also stopped.  The rules of quantity over quality changed and all of this came at the perfect time.

G+ started off a little rocky and made changes to allow people use fake names that will probably bite them in the butt, but over all the game of social networking on G+ is much more real.  Yes, you can still go into G+ and start accumulating hundreds of people to put in your circle.  What that will get you is nowhere because those people in the circle can’t see anything you do until they put you in their circle.  Are they going to put someone who has thousands of followers in their circle?  Well that is where the game has changed.

Lesser is Cooler

More than likely a person with any intelligence is going to see quickly someone who all of the sudden entered G+ with several thousands people is probably up to something..mostly no good.  The game now is who to put in your circle since who you put in your circle is who you want to see what they offer.  What you have to offer is what is going to get people to want to put you into their circle.  If you have nothing to offer, look like you have nothing to offer or giving off any smell that you having nothing to offer you are not going to be put into anyone circle other than those who also having nothing of value to offer.

Google Plus offers up a real simple game now and it being accepted by more and more professionals, businesses as well as the regular social butterflies.  Yes, G+ has a way to go to get things ironed out so it is more visually appealing and easier to use, but the concept is outstanding.  The game is not really a game anymore.  It is the direction Social Networking is heading which will at the same time change how social media will be used.

It’s all about social now people.  Google holds a solid hand and is set to be a spoiler for the social spaces who are still playing the numbers game.  When you get social, you get real.

Let me know how I can help.

It has been over eight months now since Google launched it’s social network… Google Plus.  I am glad I was amongst the few who were invited in to be part of the first wave of people to use the platform.   I can say without a doubt..I have seen it all and Google is onto something with Google Plus.

A lot of what I saw at the beginning of G+ reminded me of the other pre-launch review groups I was in. I was in the beta review for Twitter, I was allowed into Facebook before it was open to the public.  So, Yes..I have seen it all..over and over and over. 

For the past half year I have averaged 10 hours a day seven days a week on the G+ platform.  Maybe saying I have seen it all is an understatement.

WHY?

The question I am asked most by those who do not use G+, or don’t like it, is…WHY?  Yes, that is a big question if you look at all the ways it can be used.

Why do you waste your time? 

Why are you not on Facebook with the rest of the Real World? 

Why are you bothering using G+ when the masses have not accepted it as a social network?

Does it get old to hear these questions asked over and over?  Yes! However, validating the answers I give to the questions keeps me digging in to testing the Google Plus platform to make sure I am  NOT wasting my time and lessening my professional image.  So far, all the testing substantiates my investment in my time spent.

Fullfilling Interactions

I am just blown away with how much more supportive the G+ community is and how fast I was able to organically grow my community.  I will also add, I have not played any games to accumulate the community.

I am unlike many others who feel they need to validate their existence as the most popular person on the face of the planet by gathering up anything and anyone to be in their community.  Matter of fact, I have flushed my Circles on G+ three times now to get to the number of real people I have in my circles today.

I have tested several times on several platforms to see if in fact having a trillion people in my circles produced anything of value and it did not.

Testing

Just like the tests I have done on Facebook and Twitter, having a large number of people in my following (at one point over 10k) required me to spend a large amount of time adjusting the platform settings to keep the knuckleheads of the world out of my streams.  This is also the same results many of the businesses report finding.

Since the end of last year I have built, what I am finding to be, a very robust G+ community of Real People who know the benefits of social networking and have come to G+ to get away from the relentless pounding of irrelevant posts.  The lack of interaction with anyone in those other social spaces has also been brought up as why many people give up on other communities.

At first I was startled with the high volume of  interaction amongst the users of G+.  It was strange to be able to post a question in a social space and actually get an answer.  That rarely happened on Facebook or Twitter any of the test I preformed.

It also is refreshing to hear from people contacting me on G+ who actually are interested in discussing doing business. It also was exciting to know they found me through their Google Search.

Paralleling Results

Of course my review of G+ went along with parallel testing of the other social spaces.  I would post the exact content in G+, Facebook and Twitter both under my name and several test accounts I created (yes, I am not the only one who uses trumped up accounts to do testing of content. Why do you think FB and Twitter have so many users?) to make sure the responses were not made out of people personally knowing me.

The results clearly showed the interaction, quality of remarks and responses weighed heavily in G+ favor on all accounts.

I have used all of the social spaces in many different ways.  Over the years I have had thousands of Friends on Facebook, even more Followers on Twitter.  I played the Social Butterfly, the Linkster, the Quoter, the Video maven, the Blogging machine and many other characters.  I use this same method of testing in my offline efforts as well to see how people react to different personalities.

Social World

As you see, I have actually spent the time to find out what works and what does not.  Yes, that is a lot of time socializing, but it has paid off.  The world of social networking is finally stepping out of the fog of lackluster internet marketing and into becoming what it was intended to be..Social.

I understand many other people feel they are getting positive results using other less social methods of social media.  Many marketers don’t care about the social space or people in it, they just want the people in them to buy.  Many more businesses and individual still want to hang on to the thought that if they have tens of thousands of users connected to their account they will get at least one sale.  To all that I can only wonder how much more productive everyone would be if they were just more sociable to fewer person, places and things.

I also understand many businesses and business people don’t have or want to spend the time I spend online to get the results I get.  I hear them loud and clear and is why while I am in the process between projects and writing another book I took the time to test what works in hopes what I find will prove to businesses and business people they need to be more social.  They need to find the time it takes to adjust to the change in the way business is being done today.

More Social World

The world of social networking is full of different people with different attitudes and who have different missions in life.  Many people feel more secure when they think tens of thousands of people are listening to them.  The tests are showing it takes a lot of energy to maintain a large volume of friends, followers or users.  Wouldn’t it be easier to know everyone in your reach and know they care about what you say or offer?

Google has been sitting back for sometime now looking at how the ‘Bookers’ and ‘Tweeters’ are going after making a lot of noise just to be seen.  I like how Google has walked softly into the social space carrying a big stick and without a multimillion dollar trumped-up extravaganza launch at SXSW snuck in an opened a social space that is as solid as they come.

So my question back to those who still feel wearing rose colored glasses while wailing away their time on Facebook and Twitter is going to stop those sites from bleeding to death is….would I spend this much time and effort to test out G+ if there was not something productive with this platform?  I think you know the answer to that.

Let me know how I can help.

Story Time:

Recently, In one of my many impromptu social media discovery sessions I was covering how social media is changing and what has changed over the past 6 months.  Naturally, in these sessions there is no way around NOT talking about Facebook and how it is dealing with the monster it has created. 

The fact will remain clear for now businesses and business people have to be on Facebook if for nothing but the validation you exist.  The question will always be if Facebook will survive the changes being made in social networking.

As I showed my Facebook account to the group as a demonstrate how Facebook should be used, one of the gentleman remarked he is on Facebook all of the time and really likes the ability to broadcast business realated information out to his friends.  When I asked how his interaction with his friends on Facebook was going naturally I got … “Outstanding..I love the site and my friends.”

I inquired if I could see his site.  He graciously signed in and here we go.  As usual, there is always something I see the owner of the site or page or account has not seen.

In this case I saw where he had posted regularly on his Facebook Wall providing his friends with content on his whereabouts using Foursquare; a couple of comment or two on sporting events and remarks on some events he had attended. Pretty average posts.  Of course I took a moment to warn the group of the dark side of the location based platforms like Foursquare before I moved on to reviewing the gentleman’s site. 

Out of the 25 or so post he made over the past month we could only find two responses and those were from someone he did not know hitting the “Like” button.

After me making comment on his Facebook Wall as looking like he had a slow month of responses and showing him where he was not getting very many responses to his posts, nor were his friends, I then asked if he knew why.  The usual shrug of the shoulder and the remark.. ”I guess people are just busy”.

I replied, …or they have left Facebook. 

Shock Factor

This kind of statement always arouses people who live and die on Facebook.  Many of the people who are today very active on Facebook have been there for years.  They have accumulated vast numbers of Friends to their account mostly in an effort to market to the masses.  A few stay true to their personal cause of visiting with Only Friends and Family but overall even interaction is brief and sometimes not what anyone would call being social.

However, for the addicted Facebooker, just the mention that someone they allowed to be a Friend on Facebook would even thing twice of leaving the site is a form of blasphemy. The fact is, more and more people are leaving Facebook for social networks with greater social ability.

In an attempt of being fair, and to prove me wrong, I suggested we take a look at the gentleman’s Friend’s list to see how his Friends are doing with their Facebook Account.

I asked him to look at his most popular Facebook Friends.  After looking over more than 25 of his ‘A List’ we found 20 had not posted anything on Facebook for over two months.  Several had not posted in over a year.  And a few had not even finished setting up their profile.  This was just 25 of the over 2500 Friends he had accumulated.  The rest of the friends in his community he did not know well or at all.  He was just accumulating as many Facebook Friends as his friends told him he needed to do to be influential.

Naturally this was rather embarrassing to the guy but illustrated the change Facebook is going through and will have to deal with if they plan on keeping their advertisers happy.

More and more people are just walking away from Facebook for a number of reasons.  Rough estimates show over 85% of the Facebook populations is getting less and less interaction from their Friends and only around 5% are seeing the same or more interaction in their Facebook Community.  There are still a large number of posts made on Facebook seemingly to appear purely for promotional reasons which also is another reason more and more people are leaving Facebook. 

Realities

The main reason given from people who have left Facebook deals mostly with the lack of response and interaction from their friends.  The large number of Location Based posts are sited as being games people play with those platforms to gain some material goods. Other reasons given for leaving Facebook have to do with the intrusion of privacy and the limits Facebook places on what can be posted.  Many leave because there really is nothing being said in their Facebook community that is of real interest anymore.  Several state they leave due to their attempts to be social with the people in their Friends list does not get any response.

I have heard from many people who are very frustrated with the many posts their Friends make to their Facebook feed but do not respond to any comments made to them.  The example given that is most frustrating is when their friends post to Facebook from third party platform and do not actually go to their Facebook account for days.  Then they post a response back to a remark made days earlier which just causes confusion and does not make sense. 

Still others are not finding anyone of interest or those they have found of interesting now post only Blah Blah self promotions; photos of stuff they are not interested in or just other content only a family member would appreciate. Just like the gentleman attending my session, there are many who have found the people they have Friended have left Facebook for some of the many reasons given.

Change Is Here

All methods of social networking change frequently and Facebook is not immune to people loosing interest in the site. Facebook will still be a site for the people who are not out for adventure or interaction.  However, as the consumer’s demand for interaction with their community increases they will eventually migrate to sites that offer that interaction.  Facebook is quickly loosing ground to other sites that make it easier for people to interact socially and professional with each other.

As a result, businesses are going to gravitate to those sites where they can interact with their consumers.  Then where will the ghost town be?  Things are changing in social networking which will change social media…just hope more people learn how to make the change. 

Let me know how I can help.

It seems I have been around the world with this issue with businesses only being interested in managing one Social Network.  As I can see their logic in how the economy is forcing them to quit using the shotgun effect of marketing online I have to wonder if there ever will be a single social network.

I am sure as more and more businesses start evaluating where they are getting the most sales from they will quickly jump to the conclusion they only need to be in that one space. I am sure many in the Digital Strategy industry will disagree with them on focusing on just one space.

However, I see in the near future businesses who advertise heavily on a social network to start pulling out of less productive social spaces because that space is not working and/or they are finding another one is working better. This move of revenue from one site to another will eventually level out the playing field in the social spaces.  This move to a more productive online environment could very quickly sift out to there really only being one place to go to find value these businesses are demanding.

In reality..these social networks..Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter and the multitudes of others..are only out for the money, not the people in the network. They are going to go where the money goes or change to keep the money.

Which network will it be the site of preference?  Can we tell today?  What do the social spaces have to do to keep the businesses who write them the big checks each month? How will the people in the special spaces react?

All these questions are being asked. I wonder if the social networks are listening? I would say they better be.

I have always been very concerned with how open online social networking can be and have been vocal on how using location based social platforms like Foursquare send out more info to more people than most people realize.

In a recent article posted in the Dallas Morning News: Leave Facebook at Home, the Dallas police warn people on posting in their social spaces information about them being on vacation.

I agree. Since the criminal element is now becoming even more tech savvy and social friendly than ever before and more reports are coming out on how what someone posts in their social network..Face, Twitter and others…was how the criminal used to find out someone was not at home or locating their whereabouts.

There have been reports from all over the world on how Foursquare has served as a radar system for burglars and muggers.  It simply is amazing how so many people completely disregard their personal safety in an effort to gain influence or win a prize.

The world has changed in so many ways.  Now you can’t go on vacation and enjoy it with friends afar without worrying who else is enjoying your absence.

Let’s be safe out there over Spring Break and let me know how I can help.

Hard to believe social media has been around for more than ten years.  You would think by now more businesses would be using it.  Could it be most businesses still don’t believe in a social style of marketing really working…or will work for them?

The question, What is Social Media, has been asked a large number of times over the years and each time there is a change made in the world of online social networking the question is asked again.  The issue on how social media is best used remains the same after all these years and what remains constant over time is still most businesses just do not know how to be social.  The root cause resides with the fact most businesses lack the interest in being social. 

Over time the lack of understanding how social networking works turned into businesses developing the belief there is NO ROI in social networking.  From there the drums from both sides of this debate started pounding out articles saying how social media can improve business or saying how much bunk there is to using social media. 

What has been found to be very true is social media works for some and doesn’t for others.  However, what is overlooked is the fact that social media would work for more businesses if they knew how to use social media and once learned dedicate ample time and resources needed for the social media to become the mainstay of their marketing campaign.

The Bottomline: 

Businesses want immediate profits from their marketing campaigns.   Consumers are looking to the internet to find out who they can trust in the business world.  There is still a complete disconnect between businesses and consumer since the message being delivered is not what the consumer is looking for.  Businesses have to understand what social media is and how it works in order to benefit from its value.  Businesses have to learn that social is being personable and media is how that the personable message is delivered. 

Pretty simple, once you understand what social is.  Hope more businesses learn this quickly and not waste another 10 years arguing how social media will not work.  Let me know how I can help.