An Open Letter to Vic Gundotra and the Google+ Team

Dear Vic Gundotra and crew:

I know you’ve heard the news. Pinterest is beating you guys now. But hey, you’re still 4th or 5th, depending on which numbers you look at. When you guys launched Google+ I’m certain the goal wasn’t “Hey, let’s make the 3rd biggest social network ever!” You guys wanted to be at the top. You’re Google for cryin’ out loud. You guys have the bank and the muscle to be #1 in social networking.

So how do you fix this? Here are 4 changes that will make an impact.

Put public hangouts in users’ faces. You spent all that money on TV spots that showed hangouts, but when users responded, they had no clue how to get started or who to hangout with. Make an easily accessible stream that constantly shows all of the public hangouts taking place across the network. Make it searchable by topic to help the newcomers out. Watch Hangouts explode.
Make public streams on topics. Yeah, I know people can search for what they want to see. But if you add topic boards about the categories people care most about, you’ll push newcomers right into conversations and get engagement exploding all over the network. Part of the draw of Pinterest is you actually get feedback on the things you post, instead of the Ghost Town feeling many newcomers feel when they try out Google+.
What’s hot was on the right track, but trending topics is where it’s at. Here’s the bonus: Google can do it better than Twitter. You guys are the algorithm champions. Google should be able to come up with a constantly rolling trending topics list that is actually relevant and better than Twitter’s “Brazil Needs Bustin Jieber” and “Ben Dover” (Actual Twitter Trending Topics.) Trending Topics drive engagement.
Give Businesses more tools to drive engagement. Add the ability to create polls. Ability to buy promotion on the site. Skittles has 21.5 million likes on Facebook but only 104 +1′s on their Google+ page. That’s right. One, zero, four. Skittles is no Social Media slouch, either. The NHL has already come to Google Plus and left. I have to say it again. Business pages are broken and need more tools to drive engagement.

I’ll share more ideas as they come to me. But these first 4 will make a big difference.

Kind regards,
Michael Beck

Recap of tonight’s #GSMC Twitter Chat: “Branding in Social Media”

This is the recap from tonight’s #GSMC (Global Social Media Chat) Twitter Chat. Tonight we talked about Branding in Social Media.
You can join #GSMC every Tuesday night at 9PM EDT!

E-Mail Subscribers: If you can’t see this slideshow in your e-mail, be sure to visit http://www.MichaelRBeck.com to see the discussion!

Empire Avenue Puts Stock in Social Media

Empire Avenue turns Social Media into a stock market and allows people to buy and sell stock in your personal brand.

It’s part part game, part promotional channel, and part measurement tool.

The Game

There’s a score involved: your stock price. You want to have the highest stock price possible. The way you do that is to be active and social media and get other people on Empire Avenue to buy your stock using “eaves”. That’s Empire Avenue’s currency.

How do you get people to buy? By being a social media star and telling people to do it. Okay, maybe that’s how social media celebrities pull it off.

I sold the bulk of my stock in the beginning simply by connecting every social network possible. Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, Blogs, Instagram… all that’s missing is WordPress.com. (I have self-hosted blogs so I don’t have a WordPress.com account.)

When you connect all of these networks your stock price rises. And when it starts rising from the beginning, everybody wants to jump on that stock. Enjoy it while it lasts, though. Once your “new member smell” wears off, you need to actually do a little work to get additional sales.

First, you need to make sure your stock’s dividend is good. Eaves are the thing that make this online world go round, and the way to introduce more eaves into the system is by collecting daily dividends off of the stock you buy. The higher the dividend, the more profitable it is to hold on to that stock, and buy more of it.

How do you get your dividend per share up? By being active in social media. Upload pictures to Instagram. Tweet them. Facebook them. Flickr them. Upload YouTube videos. Rate them. Comment on them. Post on Google+. Check in on Foursquare. Write blog posts. All of these things feed back into the Empire Avenue monster and makes it grow. The more it grows, the more you earn for other people. The more you earn, the more people will want to buy your stock. Dividend per share is King.

Just because you have a great dividend per share doesn’t mean people will automatically flock to buy your stock. They have to know you exist. You need to fire a shot across their bow and get their attention. The most effective way to do this is to buy their stock first.

That’s right, spend a little to get a little. Each time you buy stock, it notifies that person of how many shares you purchased. And when you make a purchase, eaves are added to the account of the person you bought from. That gives them eaves to invest back in your stock.

The more you buy, the more they’ll buy, and the more they buy the more your stock goes up. And the wheel goes ’round.

The Promotional Channel

When people start buying your stock, you’ve simultaneously begun building a new audience. Empire Avenue gives you tools such as “shareholder mail” that you can use to reach your shareholders and tell them more about yourself, and what you do. Empire Avenue also hosts many community groups for you to join and connect with other members who live near you, or have the same interests in you.

Recently Empire Avenue introduced a new feature called missions. With missions you can offer to pay eaves to Empire Avenue members for doing what you ask of them. For example, you could offer 1,500 eaves to each member who clicks your Facebook page link and likes it. Or you could offer 2,000 eaves for each member who follows you on Twitter.

It’s a great way to kick start engagement on your social networking channels.

Measurement Tool

One of the great pieces of Empire Avenue is the measurement tools. Empire Avenue has some great charts and metrics to help give you a sense of how effective your social media channels are. The main measurement Empire Avenue shows you is the quality of your content vs your audience.

There are other tools out there from other sites that give you a deeper look at your individual networks, but for a quick glance across all of your channels, Empire Avenue offers a pretty nice tool for free.

Bottom Line

Empire Avenue is another social media channel you should consider. But like most social media channels, you will only get out what you put in.