Just an update on where I am with online social media.

Last July, in a post about Google Plus, I explained my thinking on reserving FaceBook for family/friends, and making use of Twitter, LinkedIn and a very new Google Plus for my b2b marketing activities.

Four months on and I’ve found little need to change those ideas.

In fact, with the emergence of Google Plus into at least the online light of day, I think it’s an ideal environment for a b2b service providers.

Here’s what I’m doing with Google Plus:

1) Google Plus Personal Profile:
This is branded as ‘Mark McClure on google+‘ and allows me to interact with people beyond the b2b tech marketing world.
All the fun of adding and being added to ‘circles’ is available.

2) Google Plus Business Page:
This is a business page for Samuraiwriter Services on Google+ and is where I’ll be hanging out my freelance IT writer shingle. I’ll be posting and commenting almost exclusively about b2b IT networking from a content marketing perspective. However, unlike my Google Plus personal profile, I cannot follow others until they first follow me. So please feel free to add my Google+ page into your circles!

It remains to be seen how companies operating in the b2b IT networking marketplace will adopt business pages in Google+ but I will be keeping a digital eye on their activities. If Google have serious plans for making community and social search a key part of their organic search engine listings then I think we’ll see some action here in 2012 and beyond.

- Mark McClure

• RT @johnwhitepaper Marketing managers: Legal review of your blog posts got you down? http://t.co/2RsrDRJk #contentmarketing #

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Have you struggled with fitting a FaceBook personal account into a b2b marketing role?

As a freelance writer of case studies and white papers, I’m discovering that my ideal prospects – the marketing managers of vendors and agencies in the computer networking world – are mostly conspicuous by their absence on FaceBook. That is, they are mostly there for personal reasons and prefer work social media to be done elsewhere. LinkedIn and Twitter are two good examples of where they are to be found.

And since that kind of makes it pointless to have a FaceBook Like button on this blog, I’ve removed it and….

… replaced it with Google’s new Google + service, now in beta.

The above image shows the Google +1 button and the number of times its been clicked for that post, which right now is not exactly drowning in a sea of traffic! Feel free to go ahead and +1 this post!

In theory, it’s more likely that my audience will be using google for business, rather than FaceBook. The problem is that I don’t know how many will actually do so, beyond a minority of early adopter pioneers. However, the product is still in beta and Google has not yet said when their equivalent of FaceBook business page functionality will appear.

What is also of great interest is how Google’s search algorithms will use a variety of social media metrics to determine organic web page rankings because there’s clearly a big battle building between G & FB with regards to the social media aspects of search.

What Are Others Saying ABout Google Plus?

Here are two posts that will give you much to think about regarding Google + and competitors.

The first is from Social Media B2B Blog and titled: Thoughts about Google Plus to Inspire B2B Adoption.

And the second is from Laura Fries and titled: Google Today, Gone Tomorrow.
Laura doesn’t pull any punches on what she says as Google’s brand dilution approach to marketshare growth.

You can connect with me on Google plus using this url: http://gplus.to/samuraiwriter
(The url shortening site is not affiliated with Google but it makes creating a vanity url very easy, until Google come out with their own.)

At the bottom of this post you can find my Google Plus profile. You can click on this to see what I’m up to there.

- Mark ‘samuraiwriter on google plus‘ McClure

I came across some polished video skits on You Tube from a tweet by Aruba Networks.

At less than two minutes, these humorous videos parody IT stereotypes, as hapless and busy users are left speechless by the ‘bad guy’ IT staffer’s response to reasonable requests.

Saving the day was the ‘good guy’ helpful attitude, along with the appearance of a plug’n'play wireless widget and a few constructive words on how the CEO can navigate a simple portal sign-on process.

To their credit, Aruba have resisted any temptation to add sales or marketing links in the video’s description field. I think this works well because it’s a simple click on their You Tube user name and up comes other Aruba videos containing product content and demonstrations.

Here’s one (71s) that had me smiling before seeking out their other videos:

The CEO and his iPad — “Hold on, Let Me Check”

- Mark ‘white paper writer’ McClure