In part one, I gave one idea to enhance or improve four of the big players in social media: Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube. (Read Part One) In part two, here, I tackle Twitter, Google Plus, and LinkedIn. Again, there are are many more where these came from and I’d love to hear your ideas and feedback!
Here we go with part two –
Twitter: Twitter is sitting on a gold mine of data and they, mostly, know it. This is their claim to businesses and brands and media networks. To entice more advertising, they recently added some limited free analytics. Limited data and a virtually useless export option doesn’t exactly excite a marketer, particularly when the entry price point remains relatively prohibitive for beginners. With social media marketing, it is increasingly important to track not just the growth of your profiles, but the overall quality, efficiency, and engagement (there’s that word).
As flawed as it may be, Klout continues to interest me because it is an objective metric that takes into account all that data Twitter knows – reach, click-throughs, retweets, etc. and assigns a single index number to track performance. I’d be much more inclined to (and informed about how to) improve my Twitter marketing tools and make more use of the platform. For now, Twitter KPI’s are some combination of link clicks, retweets, and favorites. While website data and link clicks are useful, knowing the reach and overall performance of a Twitter profile would help immensely in reporting.
Google Plus: Many have heard and understood the concept of game-ification and reputation building. Google Authorship seeks to capitalize on this idea, to a degree, by placing quality content (based on consumption and social sharing) toward the top of search results. But should all +1’s be created equally. Try to stick with me on this scenario –> A user whose +1’s (content they have +1’ed) consistently deliver more click-throughs and consumption among Google’s search results than another user for whom the performance of their +1’s are not as consistently good?
If you’re still with me, the idea is this: grade the quality of a user and the content they recommend. If a user new, and was constantly reminded of, the effectiveness of their content recommendations, they’d be more inclined to find more and better quality content to share to maintain or increase their score. Several more ideas could arise from this, but this element of gameification to Google Plus, utilizing their reams of data, could deliver the engagement they’ve long sought.
LinkedIn: One thing Google Plus has done well is partner with brands and influential figures to promote its Hangouts feature. LinkedIn has, for quite some time, tried to become more of a content producer by working people they have identified as “influencers,” who write content for LinkedIn’s users to consume and share and, ideally, return to the site find more of. But the B2B brands know that, when they want to collect data from leads, they ultimately have a webinar, a whitepaper, or a conference with live speakers. A lot of professionals are eager, and even willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money, to hear from and learn from industry experts through live speeches and e-books/whitepapers.
Google Plus has continually partnered with pro sports leagues, newspapers, TV networks, and even the President of the United States to organize attractive Hangouts to increase exposure and use of its Hangouts product, as well as traffic to the site. I may not want to read Richard Branson’s “Five Keys To Leadership” (maybe I will), but I’d gladly go to LinkedIn to hear from a social media expert for which I’d normally pay hundreds or more to see at a conference. Enhancing and expanding this element of LinkedIn would greatly increase value for brands looking to connect with businesses and professionals looking to learn and network.
Digital and Social Media Sports 