Your mom was wrong. You should care what your friends think. And you do.
Social Media and networks like Facebook and Twitter don't seem, to most people, like a threat to Google.
Apparently, there are some researchers inside Google who think differently. One of these - perhaps soon to be a former Googler - put together a presentation that is dire in its assessment of Search vs. Social.
Strangely enough, your mom is more like Google than Google would like itself to be. Google wants you to come and ask its opinion of what to buy, how to drive there, etc.
Facebook (The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World
) and Twitter are like your friends. They're constantly interrupting you and making you follow links that might be fun. Who would you rather be right now?
What this researcher sees is not a mirage. Increasingly, via comments, tweets, newsfeeds, and product reviews, consumers are sharing their thoughts about products in compelling ways. In droves, consumers are joining sites and services that provide them the unfettered ability to express their love - or hate - of products and services. Brands are often defenseless against this, and as the researcher points out, 'Search' is powerless to influence people who don't seek it out.
Brands, in response, are working feverishly to capture the attention of consumers in the most effective way possible. How can they do that?
Get in front of the conversation by enlisting their fans via social groups
Develop Audiences within the ecosystems where the conversations are occurring, like Twitter and Facebook
Let the audiences make the product their own
It's not the static web anymore.
You can't control the dialogue
All you can do is become part of it.
If you don't make it easy for people to follow you, it's hard to be a leader.
The 360i blog: The inside scoop on LiveIntent interview
360i's Amanda bird can be followed on Twitter @oiseau678
Many thanks this morning to our friends at 360i.
Last week LiveIntent's COO Dave Hendricks sat down on the floor of a Metro North New Haven line train with 360i's Amanda Bird (ala @oiseau678) to answer a few questions about @liveintent. Actually, Amanda wasn't physically there but she was on email. And Dave was sitting on the floor of the train for lack of seats.
Here's an excerpt of the article:
[360i]: Currently LiveIntent is very focused on Twitter – do you have plans to work with other social platforms, as well?
[Dave Hendricks]: LiveIntent has planned from the beginning to create a ‘Connections Server’ that presents and recommends the best creators of content, regardless of which service they inhabit. We started with Twitter because it had several characteristics that made it a good place to start. First, Twitter has an excellent API on which to build complementary services. Second, while the concept of ‘following’ was already established, the mechanisms for recommending the best accounts had not been developed. We thought that Twitter’s ‘Suggested User List,’ while generating many followers for the few accounts that it promoted, was not the ideal solution for most users. Twitter users, especially newer ones, are often frustrated and lose interest because they can’t figure out who to follow in order to make Twitter productive and enjoyable. We sought to solve that problem first within Twitter – the Discovery Problem – and then move on recommending the best friends/channels/groups/fan pages on other services like MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn — and eventually Facebook.
For more, please visit: Blog.360i.com
Your ‘Follow Us’ button is a Social ‘Leak’ from your site
It seems harmless enough. A cute little blue bird. An inviting come on: 'Follow Us on Twitter'. Who could resist?
And, everyone's doing it, right? Even the cool sites. So what's the harm in putting a little 'Follow Us on Twitter' button on your site?
That innocuous little button is worse than you think. It's akin to a termite colony. Watch. If you click on the bird above, you will leave the site! You will end up on Twitter. Which is cool, unless you are the site that was just left.
If you're a publisher, it's tough enough to attract visitors. It might have been a link in an email or a tweet that motivated your visitor to come to your site. Whatever it was, they made it there. And if you are advertising-supported, you want them to stick around.
Of course you also want them to follow you on Twitter - if they don't already - because that means they might come back when you tweet a link.
So it seems that the button is a no-brainer. Do you have a choice? Yes. Ditch the button. Plug the hole in your site.
- The 'Follow Us' button leads people off your site - it's a 'Social Leak'
- It only serves one twitter feed - and if you have more than one, only the one you choose will get followers
- It doesn't monetize - and once it's used for following it's wasted space
LiveIntent has developed the only real alternative to the 'Follow Us' button. The LiveIntent Window keeps people on your site, serves up dynamically generated Twitter accounts based on your visitor, and can be sponsored.
Ditch your button, get the window
The window in this example is approximately 300 x 550 pixels, contains two branding elements, three publisher accounts, and replaces space that had previously not been either monetizable or traffic-producing.
Compare that to the lowly 'follow us' button.
If you are interested in exposing more of your site's accounts to your visitors, stopping the 'social leak' problem, and generating revenue where there was only an exit before, please contact LiveIntent!