Smart social media marketers know that some tactics are totally off the table. Spamming that Google Plus community with your off-topic links? That's a no-no. Auto-DMs to new Twitter followers? No way. Then there are tactics that aren't inherently bad, but you may not want to use them every day. Like pop-up ads, advertising jingles or re-targeting campaigns, these tactics can be just shy of annoying if used incorrectly, but often get the kind of results that make them irresistible to try. Let's call these "yellow light" social media tactics. When you come to a yellow light in traffic, [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Google: Google+ | Pinterest | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing Column | Twitter

According to an online survey conducted by SurveyMonkey, the popularity of content on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ significantly impacts the likelihood it will be read. Out of 629 participants, 374 were given a survey asking how likely they were to read an article on Facebook that already had 451 Likes. The remaining 255 respondents received a survey asking how likely they were to read an article with only 11 Likes. Survey responses demonstrated users were more likely to read an article with a higher number of Likes on Facebook. The same was true for Twitter, with respondents more likel [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Content Marketing | Facebook: Insights | Features & Analysis | Google: Google+ | Statistics: Social Media | Top News | Twitter: Statistics

Facebook has been the dominant source of social logins, but Google is closing the gap and now accounts for more than one-third of all social logins. That's according to the latest quarterly report from Janrain. After a couple years of consecutive gains, Facebook's share of social logins has dropped for two straight quarters now. In Q1 2013, Janrain estimates that Facebook accounted for 46 percent of social logins -- down from a high of 54 percent in Q3 last year. Google, meanwhile, has grown from 25 percent of social logins in Q3 2012, to 31 percent at the end of the year, and now up to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook | Facebook: Statistics | Google | Google: Google+ | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: Market Share | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Social Media

According to a recent mobile hashtag survey by RadiumOne, 58 percent of respondents said they use hashtags on a regular basis, and 70 percent of the hashtag users are doing so from their mobile device. RadiumOne's survey evaluated how consumers perceive, value, and use hashtags. Of the 494 survey respondents, 71 percent were female and 44 percent, middle-aged. (RadiumOne noted that while social media use is most predominant with 18 to 24-year olds, comScore credits middle-aged women as the group most responsible for growth in social media site usage.) Another key insight from RadiumO [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Instagram | Google: Google+ | Mobile Marketing | Pinterest | Pinterest: Business Use & Advertising | Pinterest: Mobile | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Advertising | Social Media Marketing: Hashtags | Top News | Twitter

New versions of the Google+ app for Android and iPhone are now available, with updates to photo, post, profile and community features. Users will have access to a selection of Snapseed's photo-enhancement options within the Google+ app, including basic editing functions and the ability to choose filters like Drama and Retrolux. Saturation, contrast, brightness and other photo effects can be adjusted as well, along with a single tap feature that lets users compare an edited image with the original. The new version of the Google+ app for Android will include more text up front on posts and [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google: Google+ | Google: Mobile

Looking for a specific image on Google+ just got a whole lot easier. A new "Photos" filter is now available on the filter dropdown and will limit the results to images that have been posted on Google+. Results will display items that are shared with you and also public photos posted to Google+. In the announcement from Googler Dave Cohen, he shared a few of his favorite photo-only queries: Long exposure: https://plus.google.com/s/long%20exposure/photos Steel wool: https://plus.google.com/s/steel%20wool/photos Cartoons: https://plus.google.com/s/cartoons/photos To see [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Google | Google: Google+ | Top News

Need a simpler way to save your Google+ Hangout memories? Instead of screenshotting a Hangout, saving the file and re-uploading to Google+, a new app, Hangouts Capture, will let you do this all in one fell swoop, according to a post by Googler Jeremy Ng this afternoon. The app allows for one-click saving of the specific Hangout visuals and will sync them with a shared album -- visible only to those who actually participated in the Hangout. The result is a nicely formatted album with all of the pictures snapped during the Hangout: According to Ng, the feature "will soon be availab [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Google | Google: Google+

Social content curation has blown up in the past year, after a late start that began to show traction around 2007-2008. Pinterest continues to experience massive growth, with Wanelo nipping at its heels. Social media users have gotten smarter when it comes to sharing; many are no longer posting Facebook statuses about what they ate and are instead using social networks to share their passions, ideas, and content they love. Social Media Content Value For Brands The value of content for brands has been slow and time-coming, but businesses are beginning to realize it's not the fact that you [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Facebook | Google: Google+ | Pinterest | Social Media Marketing Column | Twitter: Marketing

Like many today, Google+ offered to upgrade the cover photo of my Google+ profile page to the new larger size, up to 2120x1192. Wow, would that even fit on my screen? And would anything even show other than the picture? Let's have some fun comparing profile pages at Google+, Facebook and Twitter. Oh Say What Can You See? For this test, I loaded up all the pages on my MacBook Pro Retina running at the default display resolution of 1440x900. I normally run the screen at a higher resolution, 1680x1050, giving up a tiny bit of quality for more screen real estate. But I wanted to stick with wh [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Pages | Google: Google+ | Top News | Twitter | Twitter: Accounts & Profiles | Uncategorized

Tomorrow, Facebook is announcing big changes to the newsfeed. Today, Google stole a bit of that thunder with 3 changes to Google+ profiles and pages. The changes include local review tabs, simpler information editing and bigger cover photos. The most noticeable of the changes is the larger cover photo: Profile pictures are now up to 2120px by 1192px using the 16x9 proportion. That pixelage wasn't a typo; these pictures can be overwhelmingly huge, sometimes taking up all of your screen, not really sure why or if this is an enhancement. Here's a look at just how large high res ima [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Google | Google: Google+ | Top News

When you follow someone on Twitter, you see everything they post. When you follow someone on Facebook, it decides what you see. Which is right? I'd say both, and it comes down to the live TV versus DVR personalities of each service. Should Facebook Show Everything? The issue of Facebook deciding what to show people in their Facebook news feed came up this week when Nick Bilton of the New York Times wrote about how over the past year, the engagement on his posts had dropped, despite his having gained a huge increase in Facebook followers. That echoed concerns from Star Trek alum and soc [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook | Google: Google+ | Internet Marketing Industry: Acquisitions | Search Marketing Column | Social Media Marketing | Twitter

Google is promising that its new Google+ Sign-In is a way to avoid all that "social spam" that unnamed other services (cough, Facebook) "spray" into your social timeline. Hey, I know Facebook can get aggressive. But how about a reality check on Google's supposedly altruistic move? Google Account Sign-In Had No Social Worries For one, I had a perfectly good way of logging in to things via Google without worrying somehow, some application or website was going to create the social spam that Google's worried about in its blog post today. It was called a Google Account. Not a Google+ Account. A G [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook: Buttons & Plugins | Google: Google+ | Top News

Today Google officially entered the social sign-in space with the launch of Google+ Sign-In. This new functionality will allow Google+ to compete against Facebook who has been the leader in the space since 2011. Instead of a normal Google account the new feature leverages Google+ credentials to sign-in to a mobile or Web app. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vydTPnIjAHI[/youtube] So why would marketers use Google+ Sign-In? Besides targeting social spam (as they claim), the biggest benefit is that Social Sign-In helps make the overall experience seamless. With the vast variet [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Google | Google: Google+ | Top News

In a nutshell... not that much. You'd think that a big promotional event like this would get a little more attention in social media channels right off the bat. But as with most online marketing and viral campaigns, it seems like it's going to be a slow roll to get people talking about the movie. With a nationwide opening date of June 7th, there's still time. As was announced last weekend (we first discovered it via Facebook), 'The Internship’ held a special Hangout On Air earlier today to debut the official movie trailer, featuring host Conan O'Brien and actors Vince Vaughn and Owen [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Google | Google: Google+ | Google: The Internship Movie

Have you noticed a drastic drop in your Google+ brand page +1 numbers? You aren't alone. This morning while reviewing our social channels, we noticed a 384,000 drop in Search Engine Land's +1 numbers that appear below the logo. Yesterday, it was over 409,000 - today only 25,000. Luckily, the number of people and pages who have you in circles, a little lower on the right side of your profile, is still at 366,000. However, 25,000 plus 366,000 still don't add up to 409,000. So, what's going on? We checked with our contact at Google, who confirmed that this is a known issue, and there is som [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Google | Google: Google +1 | Google: Google+ | Social Media Marketing

Where else would you go to promote a movie about working at Google other than Google itself? That's what the producers of The Internship will do next week when they premiere the movie trailer during a live Google+ Hangout with the movie's co-stars, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. It's set to happen on Wednesday, February 13th at 11:00 am PT. TV's Conan O'Brien will host the hangout. The producers are also hoping to create some buzz across Google+ by encouraging users to submit questions for Vaughn and Wilson via video, using the hashtag #theinternship. They've also created a Google+ Pag [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Google | Google: Google+ | Google: The Internship Movie

Soon after our post about Twitter being referenced in 50% of Super Bowl commercials, and Google+ being shut-out, the Google+ defenders started complaining. Since Google+ supports hashtags, was our analysis biased toward Twitter? Nope, some further analysis shows. You can see some of the complaints in the comments to our original post, and I received a few when I shared our story to Google+ yesterday. As a result of that, I started doing some counting yesterday, to see if those hashtags really were aimed at Google or not. The 19 Brands Using Hashtags In Super Bowl Ads There were 19 brands [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook: Instagram | Features & Analysis | Google: Google+ | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Hashtags | Top News | Twitter

The Baltimore Ravens just beat the San Francisco 49ers to win Super Bowl XLVII in a game that came down to the final seconds. But online, the social network showdown belonged to Twitter in a dominating win over Facebook, Google+ and all other social networks. According to my count, Twitter was mentioned in 26 of 52 national TV commercials -- that's 50 percent of the spots that aired during CBS' game coverage. Facebook was mentioned in only four of those commercials -- about eight percent. Google+, which is reportedly the No. 2 social network in the world, wasn't mentioned at all. YouTube [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Industry | Facebook | Facebook: Instagram | Facebook: Marketing | Facebook: Pages | Features & Analysis | Google | Google: Google+ | Google: Marketing | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Hashtags | Statistics: General | Statistics: Social Media | Top News | Twitter | Twitter: Marketing

Google+ has passed Twitter and is now the second-biggest social platform worldwide with 343 million active users. That's according to a recent report that, frankly, has some confusing claims and stats. The data is from GlobalWebIndex, a site/service that I can't claim to have ever heard of before. The company says it does 130,000 Internet usage "interviews" in 31 international markets -- covering about 90 percent of the global Internet-using population. We reached out for clarification about the data and how it's collected earlier today, but the company has yet to reply. As for the da [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Features & Analysis | Google: Google+ | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: Market Share | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Top News | Twitter: Statistics

As Google Plus Daily first reported, Google+ has launched a new Page manager dashboard with a new look, added functionality and some very basic stats about the Pages you manage. The old dashboard was spartan and borderline useless. It only displayed the different Pages you managed with a blue "Switch to this page" button for each -- the same button you'd see if you skipped the dashboard and went directly to the Page itself The new dashboard still shows all your Pages and links to "Switch to this page," but also includes: basic stats like how many followers each page has and when the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Google | Google: Google+ | Social Media Marketing | Top News