Google_ for Business_ How Google's Social Network Changes Everything - Chris Brogan [75]
Posting frequency is something of an art more than a science. For instance, if your posts matter only to a certain geography, you don’t have to worry about finding the sweet spot in four or more time zones. If you’re a media brand such as Wired Magazine, you will likely post more often in a day than if you are Glynne’s Soaps. As a starting point, consider putting up four posts a day, either every 6 hours (if you serve the world at large) or across the morning, early afternoon, late afternoon, and evening (if you’re central to a single time zone). Post repetition is not a crime, but it might bug some of your followers. On Twitter, it’s great to repeat posts because they flow through the stream quickly and get lost. That’s not as much the case on Google+, so I don’t recommend a lot of post repetition. For instance, if you’re having a contest and there’s a time deadline, it probably won’t be a great idea to promote that contest every few hours every day. Try mixing those promotions in with other content.
Sharing
Following are some pointers for sharing:
• Sharing is caring. Make sure to cover sharing in all your strategy and policy conversations.
• Cross-sharing only your employees’ posts and other related brands will come off as cheesy. Use this as a condiment and not an entree.
• The “killer” move in sharing is to sometimes point out something interesting your competitor is doing. If Ford Motor Company can do it in the highly competitive world of automobile sales, you can consider doing it in your own business.
• Sharing your customers’ and prospects’ posts is a great way to encourage interaction because it shows that you care about what they’re talking about just as much as you care about helping them with your own products and services.
• On Twitter, I’ve often said that a 12:1 them-to-you ratio of sharing is good, where you talk about other people 12 times as often as you talk about your own products and services. This wouldn’t work as well on Google+, so think about it as more of a 1:4 them-to-you, such that you post or share something about someone else 1 time for every 4 times you talk about yourself. The difference is that conversations can happen under the posts and that lets you have the interaction that is important in a way that’s more robust and deeper than Twitter.
Video
Following are some pointers for posting video:
• If you’ve not yet built a company YouTube channel, head over to YouTube.com and set one up.
• Your commercials are probably the least interesting thing you can share on Google+, unless they are hilarious and award-winning. Otherwise, skip them.
• Testimonials make for great content, especially if you focus more on making the buyer the hero and less on talking about how amazing your own products are. Keep testimonials under 3 minutes, and ask for specifics on how your customers achieved success (without pushing them too hard to talk about your products and services).
• Product demos are a great way to use video for your business needs. Again, try to keep these brief. People’s attention span on video is measured at less than 2 minutes. You can do longer form work, but mix that in with other shorter video posts.
• If you’re a professional speaker, you can do video samples of your speeches. Presenters can do a video capture of their slide deck. Authors can read parts of their books on video. The opportunities for this are endless.
• Interviews are a great way to use video. I’m a Mac user and I use Call Recorder for Skype to shoot simple two person videos. You can also use more professional tools such as GoToMeeting with HDFaces.
• I’ve also used another Mac tool, Screenflow, to capture a Google Hangout with great success.