Google+ Archives - Frameable Faces Photography

Okay so this is a little change of pace… Usually when I blog about social media it’s the standard “5 ways to….” or “7 tips for….” or “the 6 best….” – some type of informative lesson with the perfect title designed to explode our SEO to Jupiter and make our blog the envy of every photography studio East (and West) of the Mississippi. Okay well maybe that hasn’t quite happened (yet) but one can dream…..right?

This time it’s a little different…

This is part 1 of what could be a series of streams of consciousness about social media as it relates to Frameable Faces, being a small business owner in general, or whatever else I feel like ranting about. It is a stream of consciousness after all, so who knows what I’ll say right? And just because there’s a part 1 doesn’t mean there will be a part 2 – that could depend on the response, so be sure to comment and share this post or lose this potential opportunity forever (see – when all else fails just scare them into sharing – that should work).

Facebook Fail?

I am a facebook power user. Have been for 5 years. Facebook has changed and I’ve blogged at length about how to navigate the changes. I practice the techniques I’ve preached when it comes to staying the course, but I will admit that I’m not perfect (HA) and yes occasionally I get a little annoyed at how facebook manipulates the user experience to generate money (this usually happens after I post something boring that no one shares). While you’ll normally find me preaching to stop whining about the facebook changes and create better content, I’m just being honest here – I do whine once in a while. Observe:

Text-only posts are getting the most reach right now by a mile for business pages. I had a text-only post on Friday get a 450 reach with no likes or comments. It was a dud and yet it still went out to almost half of our following. The following day I posted a link to a blog post I thought was a good one – no one agreed with me since no one commented and it only reached 93 – only slightly more than one fifth the reach of the text-only post. Then there’s the recent status of ours that contained a link to a blog post which got 25 likes and 9 comments and only reached 306. Oh yeah facebook – that’s really hilarious. Hahaha. Ugh. BUT – the other way of looking at this is that I’m okay with 306 people seeing a great post and a good percentage of them clicking on it and appreciating it. That’s a more successful post than a post that went to 450 that no one cared about. And if my other post that only went to 93 would have been more interesting then more than 93 people would have seen it. Remember to take accountability for your content. So you see how that goes? I have my moment of weakness, but then I right myself and get back on course creating the best content I can. That’s what happens in my head.

That said, I notice as an end user that my “most recent” items in my newsfeed aren’t recent at all. Sometimes the most recent is two days old – I can see how facebook is holding back the content I want to see, so I have to go find the info manually. Annoying.

Facebook Future?

This all makes me wonder about the future of facebook – it’s not as cool of a place as it used to be. Too much garbage, spam, memes, chains, links, etc. I just wish people would post a little bit less of that stuff and more of their own thoughts, and I wish brands would stop littering with salesy posts, crappy ads and specials begging for business. Sigh. Now I’m in no way thinking about jumping off the facebook bandwagon, but I’ve always been careful to make sure our eggs are never only in the facebook basket either….

Looking on the “plus” side of life….

I’ve actually been thinking about revisiting Google+. I’ve always thought it was a ghost town, but a very interesting thing happened on Scott Stratten’s blog recently where he ripped G+ for inflating their numbers based on total Google usage across all of their products and a lot of people ripped him in the comments… he defended himself for a while but eventually he posted an updated retraction when he was proven to have had a slightly incorrect reading of the numbers. Keep in mind that Scott Stratten is one of the baddest dudes in marketing in my opinion (he calls what he does UnMarketing) and whether it was just a technicality that prompted his retraction or if he is really softening his stance on G+, it was the visceral reaction by so many on his blog defending Google coupled with the changes on facebook that is making me look at adding G+ as a regular spot for us. I’ve referenced Scott here not to point out that he was wrong, but to point out that I think he is almost never wrong and this got my attention. The question now is how we might use G+. We mostly use social media platforms for one of two reasons:

1) The “age old” (at least a few years) social media criteria of be where your peeps are

2) We use the platform for a specific purpose – either for a certain kind of content (like Instagram is our behind-the-scenes platform) or maybe it’s a good place to get info (still our favorite use for twitter – not the only use, just our favorite). I don’t like to simply duplicate content and behavior on two different platforms (part of the reason we don’t automate from one platform to another).

So that leads me back to G+ where I suspect that there is some exploration to be done specific to photography – seems that some photogs/bloggers/hangout-ers are getting a lot out of it. It might be a good time to make some connections there if it’s really still growing. Disclaimer here – we actually have a G+ page for Frameable Faces and yes I have been posting links to new blog posts there, violating my own rule of not simply duplicating content. I only do it because it takes two seconds and early on people were saying to post there to help with SEO. Google is the #1 search engine after all. Is it helping? Who knows… But I do know that G+ is not likely to be going anywhere. We just got Google computers for our kids…. Google is a monster. Do you use G+? Personally? For your brand? What do you like about it? I really would like to know.

So there you have it…. a little bit of my mind in words…. fascinating right? Stay tuned…. 🙂

At Frameable Faces we spend a lot of time on social media and facebook in particular. Sure it’s primarily how we market our business and I personally spend a ton of time on the various platforms because I consult on on the side, but it also dominates much of the conversation with our clients in general because we post sneak peaks and/or video clips from the sessions on facebook, this blog, YouTube, even Google + a little, and we tweet as well so it’s just naturally a popular topic. We also pin, use LinkedIn (although frankly we have a ways to go on LinkedIn as a brand) and a few of the others. Based on my own observations I’m not sure the typical casual end user knows where to go for help to get more out of social media for themselves. The social media “gurus” focus much of their content on how brands can build and engage with their peeps, but who is helping the customers to get the most out of social media? People still seem to get frustrated with facebook or don’t quite get twitter for example. So while this is by no means a comprehensive list I thought I’d provide a few of my own tips to help you manage and benefit from the information available on social media platforms.

1. “Like” and more importantly interact with your favorite brands on facebook. More and more companies are dedicating resources to maintaining a presence on facebook and interacting with their customers there. The company website will have information sure, but you can usually interact with your favorite store, restaurant or TV show in daily discussions if you like on facebook. Keep in mind that hitting the “like” button, adding a comment to the conversation or even sharing something you find really worthwhile with your facebook friends will help ensure that future posts from that brand continue to show up prominently in your news feed. This is why the interact part is so key. Plus by liking, commenting and sharing you are putting your own stamp of approval on things that are important to you for others to see (which is one of the social aspects of social media). So as you can see you can essentially craft your own personal flow of the information you care about on facebook.

2. The “unsubscribe” button is your friend. If that annoying acquaintance from high school finds you and insists on telling the world that it’s cold outside every time it’s, uh….well…. cold outside, or that they didn’t sleep well, or who you should vote for, you can just hover over their status update and unsubscribe from their updates. This goes for all of your settings when it comes to customizing your content and your privacy. I still hear a lot of people say they don’t want to be on facebook or don’t like facebook because they don’t want people to know a bunch of information about them, they don’t want to be in contact with a bunch of people from high school they don’t care about, or they don’t care what people ate for breakfast. Facebook has evolved a lot over the last couple of years and you don’t have to share anything you don’t want to share, you can select who sees what, and you can unsubscribe from annoying status updates without potentially hurting someone’s feelings by de-friending them. These are all easy and intuitive tools and if you don’t understand them then ask someone who does. It’s very easy to tailor facebook to your interests so that it becomes a valuable source of information while still filtering all the noise.

3. Follow your favorite brands, news outlets, blogs and teams on twitter. If facebook can function as a good flow of information and interaction with friends and brands, twitter can positively be your personal AP wire. I remember when the first smartphones came out and were shortly followed by sports scores apps where you could pick the teams you cared about to get updated scores. Cool right? Except they never worked, you had to launch the app to get the updates and then they were barely ever updated. Now many sports teams will tweet frequent updates during a game beyond just the score, including stats and even brief mentions about how rowdy the crowd is or if the momentum has shifted. If you want to follow the Detroit News you’ll get breaking news throughout the day. If you follow local blogs you can get updates on what’s happening around town. If you follow your favorite brands you can get updates on their products and content related to those products. You can tweet and retweet as well and build relationships but you don’t necessarily have to to get a lot out of twitter.

4. Make use of lists on twitter. If you start to really dig twitter and find that it’s a great way to stay up to speed on the things you like you may start to find that following too many tweets becomes a little overwhelming. Unlike facebook where your interaction and/or unsubscribing can help shape your news feed, on twitter you are either following or unfollowing a tweeter and that’s pretty much it. You might miss some tweets you may have cared more about because they quickly made their way down the wire behind a slew of other tweets from all the tweeters you are following. That’s where the use of lists can come in handy. You can create lists within twitter and name them by category, slot all the different feeds into the categories and then view the feed for each category. Some of our lists (most of which I’ve left as publicly viewable if you’re interested – you can even subscribe to them) are “Social Media focused”, “Local Detroit / Michigan”, “Photography” and “Bloggers”.

5. Have fun and be smart about it. This is general advice but people often talk about how each new platform is just a new “time suck” – a way to keep themselves from being less productive. Pinterest for example can certainly be that way, but if you think about it as the virtual pinboard that it was designed to be then it can be useful – as if you were pinning things up on a board in your kitchen for use later. YouTube? Subscribe to the official channels of brands, people, teams, things that are of interest to you instead of just aimlessly searching for the new fun popular videos.

What are your favorite tips? Now it’s your turn to interact – remember?