I thought it about time I had another weekend sale, so tomorrow night at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST) that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
I don’t want to spoil the fun and tell you what it tomorrow’s sale is all about just yet, but let’s say I’ve actually seen the light and I’m going social.
Up to now I’ve dabbled a little in the social marketing arena with content locking via Like+, but I’ve now suddenly realised how important the whole social marketing scene is. I’m telling myself it’s because it’s all finally come of age, and not because I’ve been a little slow on the uptake.
😉
So I’ve now decided to extend my reach out into the social market and hopefully show you a few things that I’ve learned / am learning in the process.
For example, it’s commonly thought that G+ has been a bit of a flop in terms of competing with FaceBook. I no longer believe that’s the case as the whole idea of Google competing with FB on their own terms was a complete red herring. It looks like a lot of people (myself included) got that supposition wrong. I now no longer believe that was ever Google’s intention – they have something else in mind.
The main difference between the two should have caused everyone to stop and *think*.
FaceBook is a walled garden – what goes on in there once you create an account and make friends all happens within FB. They tried to open it up to the outside world by introducing fan pages, but it could be a case of too little too late.
G+ was open for all to see from day one. And unlike FB, you can go in and edit what you said in the heat of the moment.
Anyway… Whatever… Let’s assume that Google has something else in mind and that it will all unfold in time and become apparent to us all. So let’s not write off G+ just yet.
Secondly, Google introduced something in May that just last night slapped me in the face with all the force of a Monty Python wet fish.
This one thing coupled with G+ could change the way you do marketing for yourself and for your clients.
It’s called Google Hangouts (video chat like Skype for up to 10 people), which has been around for a while now, but has just had live streaming (On Air) added to it in May. The joined up thinking here and what slapped me in the face is that the live stream goes straight out to YouTube.
Here in fact:-
When the live stream ends, it’s processed and automatically added as a new video into your channel where you can then edit the duff bits out.
You can even embed the live stream into your own web site if you want to so that you can get your customers viewing there instead of on the distraction of the YouTube site.
And it’s all free. *
Link this live streaming of video to the G+ system, and you can make sure that your business and pages outrank others of the same nature.
Think about that one for a moment.
Google will pay more attention to the G+ system of voting than anything going on elsewhere.
So you invite your group of followers, customers, whoever to your live stream and tell them that you’d really love it if they voted for your page, video, site, whatever with a G+ like. Tell them to consider it as a payment for the free content / entertainment / whatever it is you’re doing.
Doing so isn’t against their TOS, in fact on the YouTube Creator Playbook, they actually TELL you to ask for likes, subscribes etc in the content you create.
http://www.youtube.com/yt/creators/playbook.html
Aha!
I finally get it. But it’s taken Google Hangouts On Air to get me there.
I now accept that I have no choice but to get both social and viral and do it fast before too many other people cotton on.
I already have some ideas to do this swilling around in the mess of my brain and I think I know what I’m going to do with it all. More on this and that another time.
For now, tomorrow, we’re going to get social somewhere else with a plugin.
The system and thinking behind this plugin is viral and relatively easy to do too – if you get your act together.
I’ll tell you more about this tomorrow and kick off the weekend sale at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST) (Friday 27th).
Think hard about what I’ve said and make sure to have a nice day. 🙂
-Frank Haywood
* There’s actually no such thing as free. Somebody, somewhere, is paying for it, and as a general rule of thumb you get what you pay for.
