Posted on: August 15, 2011 by Jordan Hardy
Although there is now some competition for Facebook between Google + (Google Plus) and tTitter, Facebook is still far ahead in the social networking space.
Here are the top reasons I see:
- Facebook has a large number of users. As many new people create accounts, they can find Facebook has the highest number of active friends and companies they can connect with online.
- Next to Google AdWords, I’ve found Facebook can be very successful or advertisers.
- Facebook makes it very easy for users and organizations to upload unlimited links to articles, photo galleries, videos, and information from mobile devices.
- Facebook is constantly innovating and reinventing itself, with recent rollouts involving chat, voice calls, and video calling.
- The “Wall” which Facebook provides is more active and interesting than that of any competitors.
It is possible Facebook will have a real competitor in coming years. It is unlikely if a competitor surfaces in coming months that they will equal the number of Facebook users, similar or better “Wall” interactivity, and/or the same number of partnerships and technology rollouts.
Posted on: August 15, 2011 by Jordan Hardy
Twitter is the perfect social networking, microblogging, and information network for quick updates through streams and conversations. Since it is meant to add posts from mobile devices, now including other embedded media (photos, videos, embedded media), Twitter is limited in depth. Twitter provides the perfect platform to follow and sort through updates from people and organizations. Twitter is one of the fastest ways to discover new information from people and organizations. Some conversations on twitter become viral.
“Tweets”, or updates, on Twitter are limited to 140 characters. The benefit of this limitation is that being concise within a story is key. Some people tweet often while others don’t tweet at all.
It would seem twitter should be very useful for businesses, but they haven’t yet perfected their advertising platform. Paid and unpaid advertiser analytics are very helpful through the Twitter dashboard (Promoted Tweets, Trends, Accounts). In the dashboard, mentions, impressions, replies, retweets, clicks, timeline activity, reach, and follows can be found.
I recommend a business that wants to advertise on Twitter do testing in the first weeks to have more metrics to analyze. Some businesses are perfect to market on twitter, while others may want to start with Google AdWords, Looksmart AdCenter, Yahoo! Advertising Solutions, Facebook, or another company.
Posted on: August 13, 2011 by Jordan Hardy
Google Plus, also known as Google+, was launched in June 2011. Google Plus is a social networking Website run by Google, meant to compete with Facebook, twitter, and LinkedIn. The number of Google Plus users has grown quickly in recent months while the number of those users replacing Facebook and twitter with Google Plus has not grown quickly.
- Google Plus utilizes Google Profiles and Google Buzz. It features Circles, allowing sets of people to be grouped. This isn’t currently offered by other social networking Websites.
- Google Plus offers hangouts, where people can hang out using group video chat, to feel as if in a coffee shop or the same room.
- Huddles in Google Plus allow users to communicate through mobile devices with instant messaging within circles.
- Sparks in Google Plus allows users to leverage Google search to find interesting topics and share with contacts.
- Google Plus has a Google +1 button where users can show their interest in items.
- Instant upload allows quick upload to Google Plus from mobile devices.
- The stream in Google Plus displays updates from contacts on one page.
- Today there are 16 games in Google plus, including Angry Birds and Zynga Poker.
- Google Plus allows easy access to Google Profile to view and edit.
- Photos in Google Plus show a slideshow type view of photos from connections.
Google Plus has quite a number of innovative new ideas, the best being circles and hangouts. The problem is that not enough people are yet using Google Plus to make it a Facebook competitor. In addition, with the failure of Google Buzz and questions about Google search results prioritizing Google profiles, reviews, and other Google content, it isn’t yet clear if Google Plus will be a long term unbiased social media option which will gain traction.
Posted on: June 8, 2011 by Jordan Hardy
With hundreds of most used social networking Websites in the US and around the world, Facebook has now become the most popular. Here are 5 reasons I feel Facebook can be very useful:
- Facebook now has over 600 million users. With such a large number of people using Facebook, it is easy to find and reconnect with people.
- Companies and groups have a number of avenues to grow their business on Facebook. They can create an account, page (with campaigns), and/or ads.
- Facebook gets quite a bit of free advertising, which makes it more and more well known every day. Many companies promote their Facebook, Twitter, and other accounts from ads, commercials, emails, Websites, etc.
- Generally in a day, the Facebook News Feed in a profile offers plenty of updates. Updates including smooth embedded videos, links to articles, photos, and more.
- There is an excellent selection of companies and groups to connect with via the “Like” button.
Posted on: May 14, 2010 by Jordan Hardy
Twitter is a microblogging and social networking Website that allows users to tweet what is happening right now and follow others that tweet. A tweet is an instant text based message, posted with no more than 140 characters. Followers are subscribers and tweeters are post authors. Tweets can be sent or received through Twitter.com, SMS, and smartphone applications.
My Jordan Hardy Twitter page presents quick marketing tips, events, and thoughts.
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