September 19, 2011 / The_Mike_Johnson

Talking about Google Plus with Jeffrey Hayzlett, David Stark, and Esteban Contreras

Beyond Google+ panel (left to right) David Stark, Jeffrey Hayzlett, Esteban Contreras.

The New York Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators held a panel providing insight on Google+ called, “Beyond Google+: How the Best Brands Are Using Social Media to Enhance Corporate Reputation and Grow their Business.”

Panelists included:

David Stark, Program Manager for Social Business Services at IBM believes that social media is an important component of your company/organization’s strategy and makes your organization transparent, but there comes a point of social overload: How many networks can you really use or have the time to use? To answer that question you should see which social media marketing channel benefits you and your company best.

But before you even start you must ask the following questions:

– Are your customers in that area?

– What activity and leads are you generating from one all the time?

– Do you understand your data?

– Are you able to measure your data?

– Is the data real-time or two weeks after it all happens?

The best strategy may be what you have already been doing successfully applied through Twitter, YouTube, and/or Facebook. In moving the brand forward David believes that social media has been best used whem previously customers may have failed with a customer service rep and now that customer can go on Twitter and ask for help and resolve any problems quickly as those same customer service reps are now engaging customers on Twitter. You can follow David on Twitter @davidastark.

Jeffrey Hayzlett of The Hayzlett Group started off by providing some figures:

– Google+ has 25 million users

– LinkedIn has 120 million users

– Twitter has 145 million users

– Facebook has 750 million users

Jeffrey’s take on Google plus is that he sees other sites like Facebook and Twitter being influenced by Google+ where Facebook and Twitter are making similar offerings. Jeffrey suggested to think about the following before approaching your social media strategy:

– How can you measure things online that drive sales and drive customer satisfaction?

– Who should blog for the company?

To get the most out of these Jeff believes you have to provide a social media policy/guide for your employees. It is best to educate your employees, and when Jeff was at Kodak they named an employee as chief listening officer where his role served that similar to an air traffic controller: routing issues to specific departments/people in the right area to address those issues in the company. Jeff also stated that you hear a lot of, “What is the return on investment in social media?” but he feels the bigger issue is, “What is the return on ignoring?” The conversations will go on with or without your organization/company’s participation and you do not want to ignore those online conversations. You can follow Jeffrey on Twitter @jeffreyhayzlett.

Esteban Contreras, Social Media Manager for Samsung USA also began with a question your organization may want to ask before you jump into a social media strategy: Do you have the resources to handle Google+? Your staff must be ready to engage with those customers that decide to follow you in this social media channel. As for which social media channel works best you need to count circles, see and understand the metrics. In the current workplace employees must always be connected to post content, respond to people at all times, and demonstrate that we are listening to our customers. Esteban also sees many benefits of Google+ including enabling users with added search that you cannot do on Facebook. Esteban blogs and podcasts about technology + marketing + social media at socialnerdia.com. Follow him @socialnerdia and @samsungesteban, and learn more at estebancontreras.com.

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