Hey, Google, you should have asked first…
Google forgot the first rule of social media when it released its Google Buzz social networking service. They forgot to listen first. Worse, they didn’t even start a conversation with their Gmail users. Many people woke up to find practically anyone they had ever sent a Gmail to suddenly their Buzz friends. This is not a case of “suggesting” that you might want to connect to or become a friend of someone connected to your friends (like LinkedIn and Facebook do) but “wiretapping” you and exploiting the object of all your private communications.
I also discovered that people that I had never met – or emailed – were suddenly my friends. Yes, I could choose to block them – after the fact. There were some men whose pictures showed up on my Buzz page as contacts that I neither wanted to engage with on my computer nor potentially have knocking on my front door.
Given the lack of privacy settings, the inability to block contacts before, not after, the fact, I disabled Google Buzz on my account. There was no feedback form asking why I disabled the feature, no request for suggestions about what they could do to get me to use the service in the future. Clearly Google thinks it is alright to throw something out there expecting that everyone will be grateful for whatever pixie dust falls on them. Well, I am throwing Buzz right back at Google and will be very wary of any new “gifts” that come my way from them. They will need to earn back my trust.
What is the Best Way to Measure Your Social Capital?
Social capital is to social media what a Google page ranking is to search engine optimization. The difference is that a high Google page ranking means that – if people are looking for a company that does what you do – your company can be found. It infers a level of popularity and increases the chance that people will check your company out. This is fine, and if your company website makes a good first impression, you then increase the likelihood of someone making direct contact with you.
However, we know that personal referrals and networking are how most business is done. This is where social media excels. In the social media, your company (and its employees) can build those connections that can ultimately turn into business relationships or referral sources.
What Makes the top 50 Facebook Fan Pages Work? Part 2
What Makes the top 50 Facebook Fan Pages Work? In the case of Best Buy (#13 on The Big Money list), some real creativity and commitment.
Best Buy has often been used as a case study for how online communities can develop and improve employee performance. In the book groundswell, six pages are dedicated to blueshirtnation, an online employee community credited with improving service at Best Buy stores. If you look at the Best Buy TV ads over the last few years, you will see that the focus is on their sales associates – supporting the premise that good employees = good service.
Their Facebook Fan Page – although not literally a person – has personality. It is rich in interactivity, and also shows that the creators understand Facebook culture. Make no mistake, they are selling, but they are also engaging. I took a look at BestBuy.com – their ecommerce site – and it looked flat and dull by comparison to what they offer on Facebook. This is not a slam on their ecommerce site – it is actually a good site by Web 1.0 standards. However, they should definitely add a Friend Us On Facebook link on BestBuy.com and continue to grow their 1 million+ fan base.
So what am I raving about? The Best buy Fan Page has an active Wall with fans praising, complaining and asking questions. Best Buy is actively engaged there, but there are some other tabs that really caught my attention:
What Makes the Top 50 Facebook Fan Pages Work? Part 1
The Big Money published a list of the top 50 companies on Facebook the other day. They measured both the number of fans and the amount of fan interaction. They did not include pages run by fans – though the company in the top spot (Coca-Cola) has a site that was founded by a fan who continues to run that page with Coca-Cola’s support.
It would have been nice to have some more analysis from The Big Money so – over the next few days – I will try and drill down and provide some additional thoughts.
Facebook ads seem to work. This should be good news for Facebook since, from my outsider’s vantage, old-school advertising is their only real revenue potential at this time. The Big Money reported that JC Penney purchased Facebook ads for the back-to-school shopping season and its fan base went from 22,000 to nearly 500,000. Kohl’s (another retailer in basically the same category as JC Penney) ran a Facebook ad in August and grew its fan base from 10,000 to 350,000 during that time period.
