Week 7, Facebook vs Google+

For the three different pages we were to rate on Facebook I chose Ottawa County Humane Society, Cedar Point and Toys R Us.  

Ottawa County Humane Society http://www.facebook.com/pages/HUMANE-SOCIETY-OF-OTTAWA-COUNTY/306301180924 I would rank this page as a C.  I feel that the Humane Society is a great cause but I feel that they have a lot of potential that they’re missing out on by not fully utilizing their page.  They should have different photo albums with the animals currently available for adoption and things that would make knowing what animals are at the shelter easier.  I just feel it needs more organization of the page.

Cedar Point http://www.facebook.com/cedarpoint I would rank this page as an A because it keeps the posts up to date and has interactive posts for people to respond to which is something we learned early in the semester.  I also posts upcoming events and other interesting things.

Toys r  us http://www.facebook.com/toysrus?ref=ts&sk=wall I would also rank this page as an A because it also has interactive posts and also posts about upcoming promotions which is great advertisement. 

With this assignment we also had to do some research on the differences between Facebook and Google+, which I found to be interesting because I've heard a lot about Google+ I just never took the time to find out more about it or to take the time to try it.  From a business stand point there is a lot of pros and cons to both Facebook and Google+.  As far as Facebook it's very easy to use and Facebook is the biggest social networking site available right now.  Businesses can use the search box to find other users who have had an interest in the profile related to your business.   There are also a lot of cons, such as the fact that you can't actually track who and how many people visit your Facebook page and it also needs to be monitored 24/7 incase something negative or inappropriate is posted to the page.  As far as Google+ goes it is still fairly new but it does have its fair share of advantages and disadvantages.  It has a very easy to use interface and the "circle" features make it easy to  customize your friends list.  On the flip side posts do not show up in the order they are posted, for example if someone would comment on a post that is a week old that post now shows at the top of your feed or stream which to a business could be frustrating especially if you're putting up posts about new promotions or upcoming events and then they get lost in the hustle and bustle of people commenting back and forth on older posts.  I also don't thing the "hangouts" feature is something that would appeal to a business.  Functionality wise it doesn't really seem like a feature you'd want to have when trying to promote a business because there's a lot of things that could go wrong with having access to live group chats.  Another draw back I found was that the Google+ app is only available on Androids.  After working for AT&T for four years and having a lot of tech savy friends I can tell you that the ratio to people carrying around iphones vs android is going to be hands down iphone any day.  As of now with Google+ being in it's beginning stages I would say Facebook would currently be the better choice for businesses to utilize, but this could be changing in the near future depending on what kind of updates Google has in mind.  

http://www.google.com/+1/button/

http://www.slashgear.com/slashgear-101-what-is-google-circles-huddle-28161844/

http://mashable.com/2011/06/28/google-plus/

Week 6

After reviewing some of the other students blogs the two that I liked the best were Carol's Week 4 post and Justin's post for 5 keys to effective social media marketing.  In Carol's post, http://carolb-smm.blogspot.com/, I thought she found a great example of a company that broke down their strategy for marketing and had a great video that tied along with it.  I also liked Justin's post, http://justinsmarketing.tumblr.com/, it was very clean and to the point and also had a link to each example.  I think making it simple for the reader is important for blogs because you want to get the information out as quickly as possible before the reader loses interest.

For my two outside blogs I found, http://www.scottmonty.com/ and 

http://www.lauraroeder.com/social-media-marketing/.  The first blog is written by Scott Monty who is head of the media marketing department for Ford Motor Company.  He has what a find a very interesting sense of humor and frequently blogs about different aspects of social media marketing. The second is written by Laura Roeder.  I chose her blog because she explains how for a business to succeed with using social media marketing.  She gives a lot of pointers and key points on things that work for small businesses such as what sites to use, how to save time and also how to check and see if what you're doing is actually working.  So these two blogs are two different ends of the spectrum being that the first one gives a humorous spin on whats going in the social media marketing world while the others is explaining how to use it to your benefit.

For my three examples of actual business blogs I chose Facebook, Toysrus and Google.  For the Facebook blog, http://blog.facebook.com/, I would give it a grade of an A.  This blog had a lot of information on what was going on with new Facebook changes and its constantly updated with posts from different Facebook employees with each post being short and to the point.  My second blog was for Toysrus, http://blogs.toysrus.com/, I would also rate them with an A as well.  On this blog there are posts  which contain the lastest deals to the newest toys and as a parent this makes for a very convenient place to find out what's what on the toy front.  They also post import safety recall information on here as well.  For the final choice I chose the Google blog, http://googleblog.blogspot.com/, and for this blog I'm going to have to give them a D.  I found the posts to be incredibly boring and long.  Most of the aren't under three paragraphs and when it comes to blogging I want something that's short and sweet, not long and boring.  Also the topics that are being blogged about aren't related to anything I'd be interested in reading about.