Google+ vs. Facebook: Will General Audience Accept Google’s Social Network?

“It’s fair to say the initial market response has been very positive overall, with accolades going to its design, usability and approach to group networking with Circles,” comScore’s Andrew Lipsman said on Friday.

The 20 million estimated by comScore is based on unique visitors, which is different than “users” in that people who never sign up may visit Google+ pages.  Google CEO Larry Page told analysts last week that 10 million have joined Facebook just two weeks after its release.

Lipsman said that the 20 million visits worldwide as of July 19 is extraordinary number in just its first three weeks.  That number represents an increase of 82% from the previous week and 561% vs. two weeks prior.  The U.S. audience recently surpassed 5 million visitors, up 81% from the previous week and 723% from two weeks earlier.

Google, Lipsman notes, does have a built-in visitor base of more than 1 billion to work with, so there is clearly potential to convert a high number of users to its new social tool — even if it is still invite-only.  Google is ranked #1 in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings, with over 50% of Internet users visiting Google.com, Gmail or other Google sites everyday.

“What is also interesting about the rapid growth of Google+ is its proliferation on a global basis,” Lipsman also points out.  The U.S. only accounts for 27% of the total worldwide audience of Google+. 

Google+, according to comScore, has clearly captured the attention of the technorati and as usage incubates among this crowd it will likely continue to proliferate to a more general audience.

While Google+ has certainly gained momentum, it’s still unclear if Google’s social network will be able to beat, or even fly as high as, Facebook.

Facebook already has more than 750 million users worldwide and its user-base is expected to continue to grow despite Google+’s entry.And Google+ could be so late in the game when Facebook has already reached most countries (except China where it is banned) and the number one social network in 119 out of 134 countries (based on Vincenzo Cosenza’s “World Map of Social Networks” last month), and could reach 1 billion users soon.

Inside Facebook Gold analytics service — which gets its information from Facebook’s advertising tool — said last month (before Google+ was launched) that having reached around half the total populations in Europe and North America, Facebook had slower growth in these regions.  However, it noted that Palo Alto, California-based Facebook continues to rise rapidly in developing countries.

“As we’ve seen in the social networking market before, success often hinges on a strong network effect, which says that the more people in the network the more useful it becomes to others and the more incentive there is to participate.  Early interest in Google+ is certainly important, but it will also need to attract regular participation among users to cultivate such an effect.  In the past week, we have seen the number of average usage days via home and work computers increase by more than 30%, an early indication that the network effect just might be beginning taking hold,” comScore’s Lipsman says.

“Time will ultimately tell if Google+ can leverage its early momentum to reach critical mass among users and capture a firm foothold in the well-established social networking market.”

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20 Essential Facebook Marketing Tips From AF Expo

Want some tips you can put into immediate action, straight from the first conference devoted exclusively to Facebook marketing? Well I have those tips, because I took really good notes during the conference sponsored by this very blog in San Francisco last week; tweets about AF Expo generated 1,463,854 impressions, reaching an audience of 392,225 followers, according to Alan K’necht. Wowza.

Here are the essential takeaways from the conference.

1. Facebook marketing is about getting the right fans, not just lots of fans.
2. Having a lot of fans also enables you to market to fans’ friends.
3. Because of EdgeRank, most pages don’t reach most of their fans. In fact, see this post on the PageLever data about how only 7.5 percent of fans see page posts daily.
4. Don’t just push messages at your fans — engage them.
5. Market like a mullet — business in front and party in the back (thanks to Duncan from Firebelly for that one!)
6. Public relations wants a seat at the social media table and everyone should please leave their silos work together as a team on Social Media!
7. The data shows that Facebook is a top of funnel influencer for many online sales and last-click analytics will not give Facebook all the credit it deserves.
8. Images in Facebook ads are critical. Try faces. It is called FACEbook, isn’t it?
9. High clickthrough rates on Facebook ads lowers click and fan costs.
10. Contests shouldn’t be used to get fans, but to engage fans.
11. Facebook should complement, not replace your website.
12. Consumers don’t use Facebook nine to five, so you can’t be a community manager with those limited hours.
13. Brands overcomplicate Facebook marketing which lowers response rates. Keep it simple. People are busy.
14. Iterative creative makes more sense in Social Media (than traditional all-at-once unchangeable creative, which really came from the limitations of print media).
15. People connect emotionally- think about what emotions your brand inspires.
16. People connect with businesses that align with causes. What does your company believe in?
17. 80 percent of fans from ads come from the like on the ad- these new fans never see your custom landing tab.
18. Don’t take numbers as is — compare them to your industry’s average, e.g. fan counts and likes and comments per post.
19. Business-to-business Facebook marketing can work, but stop talking so much about your company and engage!
20. There’s no right number of posts per day for every company — don’t post if you have nothing, but post 10 times if you have that much to share. And some businesses, like tourism and sports, are very seasonal and have more to say at certain times of year.

That’s a lot! The event also raised some questions for me.

I’d love for the Facebook marketing community to think about these three questions with me and see if any data comes up in the next few months to help answer them. We’ll have an opportunity to discuss the answers at the forthcoming Socialize conference October 20 to 21 in San Francisco.

1. Does marketing through friends really work?

Sure, if I have 100,000 fans and they have 200 friends then I can reach 20,000,000 people, but does this pass the common sense test? Most of my Facebook friends have only one or two things in common with me. I don’t care if you like Nikes more just because you’re my friend. That won’t get me to buy them. And the interests I’m most passionate about? I probably only have about 50 friends who are into those things.

Now, if Facebook starts showing me posts based on my interests and keywords in friends’ posts, then friend marketing makes sense. Otherwise, I’m not so sure. I think it makes more sense right now to directly reach the potential customers who like the kind of thing your business offers.

2. Does critical mass really matter?

I heard this phrase about five times the first day of the event. There are two ways to define critical mass- either as “I can reach a meaningful percentage of my potential audience” or “now that I have x number of fans I will go viral by word of mouth.”

The first one makes sense but it’s hard to define — does having 40 percent of Facebook marketing fans (especially if my posts only reach say 20 percent of those fans) really give me substantial mindshare? How do we measure that impact?

And as far as viral critical mass goes, the biggest problem with viral marketing, which almost no one talks about, is that the viral coefficient has to be greater than one for viral to even happen. Otherwise, it always peters out. I haven’t seen very many examples of real viral success.

Viral marketing has to be the most overrated buzzword in social media. It’s not that it never works — it’s just so difficult to get it to work and actually sell what you offer at the same time. Yes, the Old Spice guy went mega-nuclear-viral and boosted sales by $3.5 million, but how many companies have that kind of advertising and production budget, and how many other examples do we have of this working? Viral is a long-shot.

The most practical viral thing I can think of on Facebook is some kind of application that makes it easier for people to share… but wait, people can already share with Facebook’s normal functionality.

3. Is a Facebook Page really a community?

We talk about managing a page as if it’s a community — we need community managers, and so on. But how is it a community if I only see the page’s posts in my news feed, and I don’t see other community members’ posts unless I go back to the page itself?

The data shows most people don’t do that. I see comments on posts started by the community leader — so it’s more like moderated discussion meeting than a community. It’s more hierarchical.

Facebook groups notify everyone in the group when someone posts or comments — more like an open discussion. That sounds more like a community to me.

Brian Carter is chief executive officer of FanReach Facebook Marketing Courses.

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