There’s been no shortage of commentary about G+ and SPYW but I think there are a few pros and cons that are worth exploring.

Google+ Pros:

As a social network, there are inherent social engagement benefits of Google+.  The Google+ shares, pluses, comments and overall interaction behaviors necessary to improve Google+ inspired search visibility also benefit social network development and community engagement. Starting with SEO and Google+ seems a little backwards to me compared to leveraging it first as a social network.

Along the lines of optimizing for customers before keywords, what about starting on Google+ with engagement and building a network for the sake of growing a community first? As you grow content and community, then bring in the SEO component – or at least simultaneously.

Google+ can definitely serve as another spoke in a hub and spoke content distribution and social engagement model. While Google+ has been reported to have 90 million users, it’s a far cry from the 800 million on Facebook. That said, Google is doing everything it can to “encourage” mass adoption. As that happens, it can become a very productive channel in an overall content and social media marketing mix.

As for SEO and G+, there’s no reason Google+ optimization best practices and social networking efforts cannot happen simultaneously. G+ has rich social networking opportunities that have value on their own vs. viewing G+ solely for it’s SEO value. Together, they represent true social media optimization opportunity.

Google+ Cons:

Is Google+ participation mandatory? The clear advantages of Google+ presence and activity in search make it impossible for companies that value online visibility not to join in. But that incentive is not the same thing as joining a social network because you know that’s where customers and influentials are. As companies mature in their social media participation, those choices are increasingly based on customers vs. chasing shiny objects, the competition or because everyone is doing it. Joining Google+ for the wrong reasons is a bit of a con to me.

A boost in Google+ is a boost for “Unknown” keywords. The more people that are logged in to Google+ and other Google services, the more that search keywords will be reported as “Unknown” to website owners. I think this is the biggest potential con for Google+ success. Search encryption enables privacy with organic search results but not for PPC search clicks. Is that double standard?

The “unknown” segment of referring keywords for our most popular site is now over 25%. That’s a lot of traffic that we know comes from Google but we don’t know which specific keyword phrase it was. As a result, optimization refinement for better search visibility is a much bigger challenge for those phrases. Additionally, optimizing content for better user experience also suffers.

Of course, we’re an adaptable bunch and we’ll simply find another way to make connections between how customers discover our content and what inspires engagement and conversions.

Can Google create their own weather by incentivizing participation? Will it be enough to create momentum and the network effect that will create “true” value for membership? Yes or no, the incentive is too strong not to join. Now it’s a matter of what can brands do to actually make it meaningful vs. mechanical.

When I posted this question on my Google+ account, here are a few of the replies:

Mike Grinberg –  Google is using a push strategy with G+. They are pretty much “forcing” people to join by integrating as much as possible with all their other services. As more people join, this will become more than just a “power user’s/geeks/nerds paradise” It is slowly happening already.

Benjamin Wright –  I like G+ because I can post comments like this, including comments with links, immediately, without CAPTCHAs and without waiting for the blog/post owner’s approval. G+ is able to allow this, I believe, because it bans spammers.

Rohn Jay Miller – Lee, I’ve joined and I check and participate–at least some times. But I’m still using blogs and Twitter far more to keep in touch with communities I’m a part of. What’s the incentive to pay the switching costs? This seems like Google-think again: it’s a technology driven idea that’s cool in the overview, even compelling.

But down here at my user level Google+ is just a “mini-net” that I look at once a day. And that’s me, a full-time social media / content professional. What about my brother in law? This has a long way to go before it’s more compelling than compelled

Ian Lurie – Google is taking this 1-2 steps further by creating a strong marketing incentive FIRST, and using that to drag us all to their property. But that kinda makes sense given that they already have the audience. Facebook didn’t, so they went about it a different way.

I DO think Google can create their own weather. Their huge advantage is their audience. It’s easy to forget, but they own the two most-used search engines on the planet. If they don’t get plowed under for anti-competitive practices they’ll likely win through brute force.

How have you approached Google+ personally or for your business?

Are you optimizing or building community? Are you doing both at the same time? How are you incorporating Google+ with the rest of your online marketing mix?

Be sure to check out TopRank’s Google+ account here.

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Like reciprocity, commitment & consistency, social proof, liking and authority before it, scarcity has an undue influence on us due to our desire for shortcuts.

We have been trained that things that are rarer have more value than things that are common. Therefore, to make things appear to have more value, marketers can promote or even fake the scarcity of an object or information.

Like many people, I subscribe to a number of daily deals, like LivingSocial. I know that if I don’t act now, I’ll miss out on 50% off a massage, food or snow tires. Interestingly, I’ve noticed I’m less compelled to buy a daily deal these days because I know that if I miss this half-off yoga class, there will be another one from a competing studio next week. The deal is still a good one, but the scarcity has been removed.

Scarcity also plays on our fear of loss. In one example from the book, homeowners who were told how much they would lose by not insulating their house bought at a much higher rate than another group that was told how much they would save.

We also hate to lose our freedom; when an object becomes scarce or won’t be available much longer, we don’t want to lose our freedom of choice, so we find the object more desirable. In one study, people who tasted a cookie from a jar with only two cookies found the cookie more delicious than an identical cookie in a nearly full jar.

What I found even more interesting was a sales experiment for a beef company. The first group of customers were given the standard sales pitch. The second group heard the sales pitch plus were told that there would soon be a beef shortage, and not all orders would be filled. The third group heard what the second group heard, but they were also told that this information was secret, and most people didn’t know about the upcoming shortage.

The evidence was clear, as the second group bought more beef than the first group, but the third group bought even more. Scarcity of product combined with a scarcity of information proved an overwhelming sales tool.

So, how can you use scarcity to improve your web marketing and social media activity?

Scarcity works well in all types of marketing and sales, but here are a few ways you can use it yourself:

Create a member-only group. Provide these members with information only available to them and sell membership at a premium.
Limit seats. Limit the number of seats for your next webinar or seminar.
Use early bird discounts. Offer discounts for people who purchase before an upcoming date. Announce this when tickets first go on sale, and then again as the deadline approaches. An alternative approach is to off a certain number of discounted seats and once those are gone, they’re gone for good.
Give special offers to a small mailing list. Start by giving people on your internal list a special opportunity to buy early, before you announce it to everyone.

Scarcity is a powerful motivator. Do you have any other ideas on how to use scarcity in your web marketing? If so, please leave a comment below. But please hurry…comments will only be open for one week, then they’ll be closed forever!

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Part 1, How To Design Powerpoint Slides for Videos
Part 2, How To Choose a Topic for Your Marketing Videos.
Part 3, Adding Animation to Powerpoint Slides
Part 4, Choosing Music or Voice Over for Your Powerpoint video
Part 5, Testing Your Powerpoint Slides with a Slideshow
Part 6, How to Film PowerPoint Slides Using Jing vs. Camtasia

The last step of this PowerPoint video series is about syndicating and marketing your video for others to see. It’s not enough to just post it on your blog and on YouTube. You need to use your keywords carefully and publicize it.

Using Social Media to Publicize Your Video

YouTube is considered the 2nd most popular search engine so creating a YouTube channel and uploading every video is very important. Even more important is using carefully selected keywords in the title and description so your video is found in the search engines.

Also important is placing your website URL at the very beginning of your description. This helps with SEO but also gives the viewer an easy way to find your website for more information.

Obviously, post the video to your website – either in a main post or in the sidebar – and tell all your social media friends about it. Always include the link to your video in your tweets or posts, especially on Facebook so the thumbnail photo appears in the post, sparking peoples’ interest. Start a discussion about your video topic on your Facebook wall and on Twitter. Ask for comments and discussion among your YouTube subscribers.

Syndicating Your Video to Other Video Sites

YouTube is obviously the leader of video sites but consider taking a few minutes to submit to other video sites. Why bother? Submitting to multiple video sites gives you the opportunity to have multiple search engine rankings for the same video, all on one page.

For instance, if you use your keywords and descriptions carefully and have your video posted on your website, YouTube and 5 other video sites, chances are very good that you could get up to 7 search engine listings for that one video and they usually appear very close to each other. Your other option is to just post the video on your website and on YouTube which gives you only 2 search engine listings.

The more listings your videos gets in the search engines, the more people see you as an expert in your field, which in turn will lead to more people visiting your site and possibly buying your products or services.

How To Syndicate To Other Video Sites

There’s great debate in how best to syndicate your videos and to how many sites. There are certain automated tools that will syndicate to multiple video sharing sites all at once but the prices differ dramatically and there’s no way to customize each video for each platform. These tools include Traffic Geyser, Hey! Spread, and Content Buzz.

To submit videos manually, you will first need to setup accounts at the video sharing sites you choose. This takes some time initially but after the set up all that’s involved is logging in to the site, writing your title & description, then uploading the video.

Some of the other popular video sharing sites include: Google Video, Brightcove, Vimeo, Viddler, Blip.tv, Metacafe, Photobucket and Daily Motion. These sites all have a page rank of 6 or higher, which may be good for your rankings (there doesn’t seem to be a definitive answer on that yet). At the very least, you will have large communities exposed to your video and your company branding.

Also do some research for any niche video sharing sites that might apply to your business. Highly targeted viewers will always have a higher conversion rate than just random people seeing your video.

Following the Terms of Service

Do yourself a favor and read the Terms of Service for each of the video sharing sites you want to use. They will have different rules about the size of the videos and also what types of videos are acceptable. I once had a client lose his Blip.tv account because they thought he violated the TOS.

Video marketing can be a very powerful marketing tactic but you definitely need to make a plan to implement it well. Plan out how many videos you want to make each month / quarter / year. Plan out the topics, create your profiles at the various video sharing sites, and mark on your calendar the days you will film each video. Also decide if you want or need to outsource the production and / or syndication portion and how best to publicize your videos.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on video syndication and on this series as a whole so please do leave your comments below!

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It’s not just about where you can sell stuff to people right now, but next month, next year, 5, 10 or more out.  That’s why I think the concept of discovery, consume and engage is so important, because it transcends ideas like “social network” or “search engine” and focuses more on consumers and technologies. Will we be using a search engine like Google in 5 years? Will we be using desktop computers in 5 years? What will future social networks look like? Answers to those questions are answers to the future of marketing and customer engagement.

Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and plenty of other large companies are innovating at amazing speed to gain control of our attention. Some are doing it through devices, some through content, others through infrastructure. A handful of companies have had a huge impact on what we do online and at the same time, new companies, start-ups and individuals are creating amazing solutions. What are you doing to see the bigger picture and what it means for your business?

Rather than jumping sequentially from one thing to the next, marketers should consider developing adaptive models that allow for rapid assimilation of new technologies and trends. As it stands, companies may adopt early with some risk, move with the crowd giving up first mover advantage or wait and see until it’s too painful not to change. The ramp up time to evaluate and adopt new technologies and trends is expensive. As an example, over $100 billion has already been invested in social business and that’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the next 5 years as companies implement enterprise collaboration platforms and social technologies.

In order to survive and thrive, I think more companies are going to evolve their ability to adapt more quickly, tune in to trends and data more efficiently and at the same time have the infrastructure and partnerships that will allow them to evolve and innovate at greater speed.

From a practical level, the new internet no longer exists on your computer as consumers and content shifts to tablet devices and smartphones. The search experience has not only become distinctly different for consumers through user innovations like Siri, interface and back-end changes but also for marketers trying to play Google’s game in achieving top search visibility.

Imagine how many more changes there will be in technology as well as with consumer behaviors in the coming year. Here are 7 reports and infographics outlining key technology, social business and digital marketing trends for 2012 and beyond.

Envisioning Emerging Technology. At the heart of the fast changing digital ecosystem of mobile, internet and information is technology. 10 years ago not many marketers could have predicted the ubiquity of tablet devices and smartphones we see today. What’s in store for the next 20 years. Or 30? This smart data visualization from Michell Zappa charts future technologies like artificial intelligence, interfaces and robotics through 2040 on several dimensions including relative importance and consumer impact. Virtual Reality life forms anyone?

2012 Social Business Developments. What’s the future of business? Social Business. Here are 12 social business predictions from Dion Hinchcliffe of Dachis Group covering the move of social to mobile, marketing consolidation, budget and operational aspects of social business and some keen insights on social business applications.

“It’s a Social World: Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where It’s Headed. Globally, social networking is the most popular activity online according to a new study from comScore. The impact of Facebook and microblogging have had a profound impact on how brands and consumers connect and engage around the world. Any company doing business globally would benefit from reading this report that covers social media usage, adoption and trends.

Mobile Outlook 2012 (pdf). Mobile predictions finally came true in 2011 and companies have invested significantly in mobile websites, apps, advertising and integration with local and offline promotions. The future of mobile is even brighter as outlined in this report from Mobile Marketer including Mobile payments, Advertising, the continued effectiveness of SMS, mobile social media and search.

B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends (pdf). The second annual survey from Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs tapped over 1,000 B2B marketers and shows continued investment in content marketing as well as its uses and intersection with other channels like social media. This report provides useful insight for B2B marketers to gauge where their peers are investing, challenged and applying best practices content marketing in 2012.

Digital Marketing Budget Trends for 2012. What are the lowest cost but most effective online lead generation tactics? Where are companies investing in their marketing for the coming year? 6smarketing assembled a great collection of digital marketing budget trends ranging from overall digital marketing spend to online advertising and mobile marketing.

Internet Statistics Compendium North American Edition. This isn’t a report or infographic on future trends, but a collection of statistics compiled by Econsultancy regarding: Affiliate Marketing, Internet Advertising, Web Analytics, Social Media, Search Marketing, Mobile, Email Marketing, E-commerce, Customer Experience and Technology Adoption. Part of seeing future trends is having a baseline of data on what’s happened in the past. This report, which is one of many you get with a paid Econsultancy subscription $495, is a useful compilation of that kind of data.

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Facebook is the world’s largest photo sharing site, but others sites such as Pinterest and, the popular iPhone app, Instagram have also attracted large followings based primarily on the ease of photo sharing.

Reclaimed rock quarry in Curritiba Brazil from my Instagram feed

Instagram is a photo-sharing site that’s a bit of a Flickr meets Twitter. iPhone users download the Instagram app and then share images after applying a range of effects and filters.

Other Instagram users can “like” and comment on images and follow users to view their images in their own feed. Users can also easily post the images they upload to Instagram on Twitter, Facebook and Flickr if they choose.

As with many social networks, personal use has spawned most of the growth. With heavy adoption however, businesses are now starting to take note of ways to use the Instagram tools and network to promote their business.

Naturally image heavy businesses such as hair salons, graphic designers, and remodelers have obvious uses for the photo sharing site, but any business can find ways to use the network and the growing set of tools supporting it to supplement their marketing efforts.

Below is a list of some Instagram applications that can help turn Instagram into a marketing tool for your business.

iDarkroom – This isn’t really an Instagram related tool, but it’s a great tool to use to enhance your images before you upload them to Instagram

Webstagram – This tool helps you search, sort, tag, follow and comment on photos shared by other users. One of the ways to make Instagram pay off is to build a following and part of that is done by finding and following relevant users and adding your comments to their images.

Instagram is a simple tool and lacks many of these basic tools so Webstragram makes using Instagram much easier.

Postagram – This might be my favorite application. Postagram allows you to turn any Instagram image into a postcard with the push of a button. Then Postgram sends your postcard for less than dollar. Think about how you could send product images to customers or showcase a project you’re working.

What if you took client images at an event and turned them into personal postcards? This little tool could produce tons of good will and buzz in the right hands.

Printstagram – This tool takes your Instagram images and allows you to turn them into posters, mini prints, and mini books.

Again, I’m thinking of some pretty cool ways to create project and client story books and present them as visual reminders of the relationship.

StickyGram – This app takes your custom Instrgram shots and turns them into magnets. It’s like having your own little promotional products creator right in your phone, but potentially much cooler.

Think about the artistic and relevant community shots, event shots, and product shots you could turn into a library of giveaways.

Canvas Pop – If you want to take up a notch Canvas Pop will take your Instagram images and print them on canvas frames.

Think about the artsy ways you could showcase your work, your staff or your customers with this tool.

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It’s important for marketers to think more holistically about their search marketing programs because with brands and consumers empowered to publish 24/7 via mobile, tablet or computer, we live in an age of information overload. Increased competition for consumer attention, interest and engagement means marketing messages must do more to stand out and focus not only on transactional outcomes, but influence and branding.

For consumers, Google has been an effective filter for the billions of documents in its index handling over 11 billion searches per month on Google.com alone. But search isn’t enough to carry the day in most internet marketing programs.

There are challenges for marketers and for Google in anticipating changing consumer interests and the language used with search activity. Of the daily queries on Google, 16% have never been seen before. How can you keyword optimize and advertise for what’s never been searched on? How can advertisers tap into the ebb and flow of relevant topics that represent consumer interest, word of mouth and influence?

A bit part of that solution is the shift towards optimizing for customers and outcomes vs. a sole focus on keywords.  Search terms are often seen as an objective when they are really a manifestation of what buyers care about relevant to the brand’s offering. Understanding customer needs, pain points and interests is the gateway to mining keyword data effectively. Of course determining keyword performance with organic search (with Google) is becoming much more difficult. However, Google AdWords advertisers won’t have that problem since keyword referrer data is not being masked on PPC traffic.

Search ads are highly effective and according to Google, search advertisers realize a 7:1 ROI on investments in search-based internet marketing.  But search is changing even faster than in the past with continuous improvements in infrastructure and technology, changing online consumer behaviors and of course the growing influence of social media and mobile. Companies have not necessarily been quick to adapt to such changes as evidenced (for example) by the fact that only 33% of advertisers have a mobile optimized website.

Social media has been capturing the biggest share of media attention in the internet marketing world and it’s often warranted. Social networks have facilitated major changes from revolutionizing online gaming to facilitating revolutions in countries.  However, social media investment is a kitten’s meow compared to the lion’s roar of search marketing budgets.

According to Forrester’s most recent Interactive Marketing Forecasts (2011 – 2016) for the U.S., interactive spend is to reach $76.6 billion by 2016. While social media spending will increase about 6% in that time, 43% of the overall interactive forecast by 2016 will be search marketing.

That said, the combination of social and search may be even more powerful and as marketers realize the benefit of integration, many will see significant returns. This is something we’ve been proponents of for many years at TopRank Online Marketing whether it’s optimizing social media content for better visibility in search results to incorporating social sharing features in online advertising and media.

The combination of social media with search is more than compelling. GroupM and comScore published a report called “The Virtuous Circle: The Role of Search and Social Media in the Purchase Pathway” which revealed that only 1% of respondents were led to purchase by social media alone. More than half (51%) arrived at purchase by search alone and 48% by a combination of search and social media. For even casual observers of the internet marketing space, it’s easy to see that the effect of that combined interaction will only increase in the future.

In response to the massive competition for online attention and changes in both consumer behaviors and expectations, I believe there are 3 areas marketers can optimize for a more strategic and holistic approach to successful internet marketing:

1. Optimize for Discovery – How does your target audience prefer to find information? Search, Social, Email, Advertising, Word of Mouth. What devices do they use? When are they most likley to search, socialize or purchase?

2. Optimize for Consumption – What content formats and media types does your community prefer? Do they like long or short form? Text, images, audio or video?

3. Optimize for Engagement – What messages, topics and contexts motivate your community to interact, share and convert?

There’s a diversity of influences for consumers as they discover, consume and engage with content and advertising messages online. An integrated approach that empathizes with consumer needs, pain points and position in the buying cycle will help marketers improve their relevance and effectiveness while providing for a better user experience with their target audience.

Within the universe of customer influences and experiences there’s a constellation of opportunities for online marketers to attract, inspire and engage their target audiences.  A holistic mix of paid, owned, earned and social media provides marketers a much better platform for attracting, engaging and activating customers. The question for marketers to answer is, “Do you know enough about your customers, where they spend time online, what they’re influenced by and what key messages and experiences with motivate them to action?”

How are you integrating paid search or even organic search with social media, content, email and other forms of online marketing?  Have you had any obstacles in getting integrated search programs budgeted? Implemented?

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The brand equity is roughly equivalent to something like “Mr. Clean” — successful, well-known, historic, but not exactly the center of daily conversation. A household given.

The company has two success metrics for this social media initiative:  1) Did the brand have more Likes than the leading competitor and 2) What was the “cost per Like?”  So internally, brand managers competed fiercely to have the lowest “Like acquisition cost.”

At first, I was amazed that a major brand would have such a seemingly strange view of marketing success but these are smart people so I gave them the benefit of the doubt and tried to figure out what the possible benefits of this approach might be. Here’s what I dreamed up:

• Perhaps they have research that shows there is important value in the appearance — “the social proof” — of having lots of Facebook Likes versus competitors.
• Maybe they are planning to create exceptional content that will reward those people who like the brand and turn them into fans. I don’t think this is the case, but it could be possible.
• Some studies have come out equating Facebook fans with a dollar value. I am skeptical about these generalizations but maybe they have some new market insight about this potential.
• By creating this internal competition, perhaps they are exploring best practices to garner fans.
• Maybe with this experiment, they are figuring out the most cost-effective way to link paid advertising and interaction on Facebook

On the surface, this battle of Facebook Likes seems arbitrary, but what do you think?  What is the possible value?  Are people getting caught up in this at your company?  Are you linking “Likes” to brand loyalty or sales?

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Andy has some excellent video tips in this post:

Since 2007 YouTube videos have had the great benefit of being able to influence the search engine results on page 1 of Google. Many Internet marketers have been using this benefit to their full advantage over the years, but there are still many businesses, brands and bloggers missing out on some fantastic underused YouTube Internet marketing tools. The following article outlines five key underused Internet marketing tips and assesses how they can help to boost your SEO, improve conversion rates and generate higher levels of traffic to your site.

Closed Captions
Closed Captions have been around on YouTube for years, they are by all accounts one very old YouTube feature, yet so many videos lack them. Closed Captions (Transcripts) are not only practically useful by providing a visual aid for viewers hard of hearing, but they also offer a great deal of SEO value. All text fields on YouTube are scanned by both YouTube and Google search engines and the same goes for the text submitted in your Closed Captions. This means you can textually include keywords and phrases within your video content to help your content get found by searching Internet users.

Keep Your Old Videos Updated:
As YouTube videos impact Google searches you want to be on as good terms with the YouTube search engine as possible. One of the easiest and most powerful ways to do so is to keep your old video content updated. Changing video titles, descriptions, tags and adding Closed Captions to old videos are great ways of doing this. Keeping your content updated showcases your Channel to YouTube as being active and useful. YouTube rarely flags up old content in searches, especially content that is not being used, so by maintaining your old content and keeping it fresh you will help to give it a great chance of appearing in the search results.

Use It As A Social Platform:
YouTube has and always will be a social platform, yet so many users forget that. Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn are all very popular social media websites, but that doesn’t mean YouTube is any less of a social website. Its nature as a ‘sharing’ website has always brought about huge amounts of audience interaction in its video content, and that shows no sign of stopping. Become Friends with other users, Subscribe to other users content, Comment, Video Respond and Like/Dislike content similar to your videos niche. By being an active user you will help to encourage activity and engagement with your own content. This will give you great promotional benefits and help to spread the awareness of your video content across the web and get the message it’s portraying out to the world.

Use Calls To Action:
YouTube Annotations are ironically an ‘overused’ YouTube feature, but an incredibly ‘underused’ marketing tool. Annotations can be carefully placed in your Internet video content to give viewers extra pieces of information, whether it’s a website URL, a link to another video or an important call to action. One of the biggest difficulties of using a video to market content is to then send traffic from that video to a desired location. By using calls to action in your Annotations you can make sure viewers get essential instructions and encourage them to go beyond watching your video, and get them to check out your website, article or download.

Embed Your Videos

A stigma attached to using a site like YouTube as a marketing tool is that it’s a giant diversion, that it takes audiences away from blogs and websites and onto a very distracting media platform. This is actually a very good point, and in fact quite a true one. Yet, so many users neglect to use the embedding ability YouTube gives videos in order for users to promote it on their own websites. Many websites and blogs get a huge amount of traffic already and have no need to fragment their audience by sending them to other websites. Embedding their YouTube video on their website is a perfect way to use the power of Internet video and still keep audiences on their site.

Although, one of the biggest pitfalls with this approach is that so many people forget to Sitemap their embedded video on Google. A Sitemap informs the Google search engine that your embedded video content is actually on your website, which gives both video and your website essential SEO power. If you want Internet users to check out your video content on your website then creating a Sitemap is essential. Especially if you don’t want them to end up on that pesky ‘distracting media platform’.

Summary
So there you have it, five essential underused YouTube Internet marketing tips. By using these tips and tools to your full advantage you can help pick up extra SEO value for your videos and boost  traffic to your site and your newsroom.  And encourage those sought after conversion rates to increase.

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At a recently help Ad Age’s Digital West conference, the group product manager for social advertising at Google, Christian Oestlien, made an important announcement. He said that Google+ will very shortly unveil its business profiles. This will then clear the road ahead for companies to create pages and circles- and generally spread their wings on the social platform.

Prior to this, Google+ opened its doors to all the users, and now they are going to bring out the business profiles very soon. Earlier, the company had categorically instructed companies to stay away from Google+, they had even deleted some profiles like that of Sesame Street. Google+ allowed only Ford and General Motors to be a part of the beta testing and setting up “test account” and “sneak preview” banners.

What Is Happening Now?

With Google+ coming out of the testing stage, marketers with the purpose of claiming brand names at the earliest, have already set up several unofficial business profiles. Most of the profiles of big brands are just squatters registering the brand name.

Some of these famous names are- Starbucks, Home Depot, Coca Cola (the soft drink giant had multiple profiles).

Even big media names have their profiles on Google+. But they are blank. They have nothing on them, are they genuine, well we can’t say. But they seem fishy for sure. See for instance, the Wall Street Journal’s page.

This Has Happened Before!

Yes, this rush of fake brand pages has been seen before on Twitter, when the original brands could not take the names as they had been claimed by fans of the brands. But Google+ is different. The platform allows for one name to be registered multiple times. As Google spokesman Jim Prosser says, “It’s not a land-grab situation. Right now it’s very clear, because there’s only two business we’re testing with, so in a very binary way, it’s clear that anyone who’s acting as a business on there [is not authentic].”

Brands are worried, that while Google+ knows that those putting up profiles in their names are fake, the same cannot be said for the users. How will a regular user know which profile is genuine?

What Has Got The Companies Concerned?

Companies and brands have been waiting patiently to get on Google+. But with brand names’ profiles already filling up the network, it can be extremely frustrating for them. Many companies may feel that they are losing out the time to make an initial impact on the users.

However, most brands have already worked out, what will be better for their brands. As Michael Zuna, chief marketing officer of Aflac said, “Given Google’s strong track record, both +1 and Google+ are platforms that we are closely watching. We are most interested in +1 because of its potential impact on search.” There it is the power of +1. marketers are aware of it and so are the brands.

How Will Google+ Identify The Originals?

Google+ is all set to sort out the weeds. They seem to have a plan to identify the original brands, just like they have done with celebrities. In August 2011, Google+ announced plans to give verification badges to celebrities and important figures. Google’s Mr. Prosser said, “We’re not announcing anything yet, but you can see a good example by looking on the consumer side with what we’ve done for celebrities.”

Google+ is open for complaints by companies against any fake profiles. Google+ will inform the concerned user to change to their original names, or appeal the finding before it takes further action.

Google+ Is For The Authentic Users

To settle down ruffled feathers, Mr. Prosser said Google is using a “consumer-operations team that does work – both algorithmically and through people to prevent folks that are trying to take on fake identities.”

As a brand only you will be exist on Google+, that seems assured. Maybe it is time for you to work on your brand strategy for Google+.

In fact, the very definition of marketing has changed dramatically enough to render the original Four P’s somewhat useless as a foundational marketing and business strategy concept.

Today’s most important business and marketing directive is one of building trust. Engagement, connection and story are the new forms of promotional art. Price is a function of value and place has become bytes and ether more often than a shelf or an office.

There is a home for the Four P’s in today’s business but it’s in the very mortar of the business and the story of its people rather than in a department on an org chart.

That Four P’s are now more about how a business is experienced than what it sells. They reside in the expression of human characteristics that turn commitment into culture and culture into customer.

The following elements make up a redefinition of the Four P’s for the fully alive business and further make the case that marketing is everything you do and every business is really a marketing business.

Passion

The first element of the Four P’s in a fully alive business is the passion for living that the owner of the business brings. When the founder of a business can serve their own personal passion and purpose by growing the business good things can evolve.

The leader of a business must have a great sense of passion for the business, but they also must be able to connect that passion with purpose in order to bring out the desire to commit in others. Leading with passion is how put yourself out there and do what you were meant to do.

“A ship in port is safe but that’s not what ships are built for.” ~ Grace Murray Hopper

Purpose

Purpose is how a business defines why it does what it does. It is the reason people are drawn to work in a business, it’s the reason they come to life inside the business and it’s the reason customers voluntarily become loyal ambassadors of the brand.

Purpose builds trust because it allows people to see their own values in action in support of something they strongly believe. A regular paycheck, important sounding title, or great deal on a cool product, probably doesn’t invoke much in the way of purpose.

Joining a business that is on an epic journey to create joy, change an age old industry, innovate under the nose of a Goliath, or just do a great deal more of the right thing – that’s purpose, that’s not simply a business it’s a cause and people will do some remarkable things inside and around the support of their cause.

Positioning

Organizations that understand the power of purpose also understand that purpose is what they need to package as their reason for being, core difference and position in the market. They lead with why and let those attracted to that why create their own definition of what.

In fact, brands that start with purpose over product can effectively enter most any market with the same positioning and compete with entrenched category leaders. I know it’s become cliché to cite Apple as an example, but this computer company routinely blows competitors away in any market they enter. Think mp3 players and mobile devices – two categories they entered and dominate even though they’re a computer company.

Apple’s sense of why is so prevalent in their positioning that it wouldn’t surprise me if they entered the coffee market and became the category darling.

Personality

The final P is how a business uses desirable human traits or personality characteristics a vehicle to allow all that encounter the business to actually experience purpose.

It’s one thing to state your purpose on a plaque or marketing brochure, it’s another think entirely to live by a tangible set of daily habits, language and process that offer proof of purpose.

We are drawn to people and experience that are simple, inspirational, convenient, innovative, playful, community oriented and filled with surprise. These are the personality traits that of a fully alive business uses as the everyday creative language of the business.

These traits act as the filter for every decision and make up how the business is run internally and the brand is experienced externally.

Imagine what would occur if every college students today were taught these Four P’s. Imagine if every business were started with this framework. Imagine if everyone could go to work for a company built with this way of thinking at its core. Imagine if we could experience these Four P’s by simply becoming a customer of your business? What would that be like?

I don’t know, I think it would be pretty great.

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