Transcript:

Welcome to another Emarketeers live video.

Today we’re talking about effective ways to use Twitter search. This can be carried out in a variety of ways be it via twitter.com or using Twitter API tools such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite for example.

For now we will use twitter.com and I’m using the search bar at the top.

For now, we are going to search for conversations about restaurants in the UK.

Remember, with millions of tweets happening every week, it’s important to use Twitters search function to refine our search so that we get relevant results quickly and easily.

I’m going to carry out a search initially for “restaurant”.

[search]

As we can see, I get the latest tweets when people have mentioned the word “restaurant” in their tweets. Not especially useful at this stage as its too broad.

Now if I’m a restaurant brand looking to better understand consumer needs, I need to search using more appropriate search terms.

I’m going to search for “anyone” and “restaurant”. This will bring back tweets of people asking questions or looking for recommendations. I could also add a question mark [?] to ensure that the results also contain questions rather than statements.

[search]

As you can see, the search results are much more relevant. But they aren’t all local to me. So, if I want results of local people tweeting I can add a region or city by typing the search command near:”scotland”

[search]

The results I now get are more focused on tweets around that region.

Sometimes it’s useful to filter out all tweets with links as these can sometimes include businesses promoting their services.

If I’m a phone supplier looking for any tweets worldwide of people looking for advice on the iphone 4S I can search for “iphone 4S advice”  adding “-filter:links”.

This will filter results ensuring I only see conversations rather than promotions.

[search]

As you can see, nearly all of the results I get contain people looking for help or advice without businesses pushing their own messages or products.

Of course, it’s now up to me to engage with the relevant tweeters to better understand their needs.

I have always had an issue with brands or domains that are ambiguous in their spelling or interpretation. I don’t think it helps consolidate a brand identity and for that reason I feel it’s something that branding or design agencies should note.

According to the trending data from the last 30 days, Google Plus trends higher than Google+ in search. The trend reverses in the news index where website content refers to it the correct way rather than as Google Plus.

Geographic Trends

When it comes to geographic differences, there are some distinct trends.

In countries such as India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, Google Plus trends higher. Whereas Far Eastern countries such as Taiwan and Hong Kong refer to the correct spelling.

Correlations

When measuring correlations using Google Correlate, Google+ correlated strongly with Google Plus in the US.

However in the UK, Google+ correlated most strongly with Dobara - a Hindi film, and Zelda Williams, daughter of comic actor Robin Williams!

We’d love to hear any explanations of that correlation!

By installing social extensions, all your +1′s from your Google+ Page, your AdWords ads, your website and search results will get added together and thus appear as a single total. It means that consumers will be able to view all of social recommendations outside of Google+.
Last week Google announced that it was giving AdWords customers the ability to connect their Googe+ Pages and AdWords accounts using “Social Extensions”.

By installing social extensions, all your +1′s from your Google+ Page, your AdWords ads, your website and search results will get added together and thus appear as a single total. It means that consumers will be able to view all of social recommendations outside of Google+.

Prior to the roll-out of social extensions, AdWords ads only showed +1′s when people had +1′ed the landing page relevant to that ad, which meant that there was significantly less likelihood that someone who viewed the ad also had a colleague or friend who recommended it.

With the failure of Google Buzz and the relatively recent launch of Google+, it’s no surprise that Google is pulling out all the stops to increase its “share of social”. We know that the power of social advocacy or recommendation plays a huge role in consumer decision making and Google is utilising all of its assets, particularly search and search advertising, to encourage this. In the long term, this will improve customer experience and encourage better value from advertisers.

Furthermore, it wouldn’t surprise me if Google eventually aggregates +1 data and uses it as part of its quality score algorithm as it knows that sentiment analysis is a critical factor to consider.

But in my view there’s another more political motive on Google’s part. Currently, Google+ has around 40 million users (according to Google!), something like 5% of Facebook’s user base. Whilst the demographic breakdown between both social channels is slightly different, Google still knows it has a huge task in building critical mass.

Given its massive dominance in the search marketing and online advertising space, Google wants to leverage this in favour of building critical mass around Google+. It wants to encourage AdWords customers to create Google+ pages as in the long term this will encourage better ad performance through positive social sentiment. And the by-product of this will be to increase Google+’s share of social.

Expert Opinions

We were interested to hear the views of industry experts and asked Greig Holbrook of Oban Multilingual and Matt D’Alton of Navigate Digital their opinions:

Greig Holbrook, Director of  Oban Multilingual says:

This is yet another recent example of Google shifting their focus to social metrics, try to improve the results they serve to their users. Social networks are now one of the first places that people go for recommendations on products and services, and as the Google blog post says: “71% of shoppers say that recommendations from friends and family impact their purchasing decisions”.

This aspect of their algorithm is becoming increasingly sophisticated and sentiment analysis is coming into play more and more, whereby Google can recognise good or bad reviews and rank sites accordingly.

It will be interesting now that they have started integrating +1’s and annotations into AdWords whether these good or bad reviews could begin to influence things like ad placement and quality score and leave those businesses with the worst service paying the most for their clicks.

Matt D’Alton, MD of Navigate Digital says:

In theory it all sounds like a great move from Google. It’s good for users:  rather than shoppers having to visit review sites before a potential purchase, social extensions will bring friends and family’s recommendations straight to the Google search results page.

It’s good for advertisers that have a) bothered to build a Google + page and b) have gained plenty of +1′s as this will help distinguish their ads and provide them with an extra element of credibility. Depending on the take up by advertisers there is also the potential for +1′s to influence the order in which ads are ranked.

Until now quality score in particular has been all about relevance, however friends and family recommendations could be seen as a more important factor, giving way to a different kind of quality score – “the people’s quality score”.

There is however one big ‘if’ – in order for this move to have any significant impact Google has a lot of catching up to do with Facebook. It wasn’t long ago that many offline ads contained a call to action to “search X” or “google Y” for consumers to find out more. This now seems to have been largely replaced with “visit our facebook page at facebook.com/brandname” as brands have learned the benefits of using Facebook pages to engage with their consumers.

During the 90 day trial, Google claims to have made 91 improvements to its Google+ platform, in particular its Hangouts.

However, since launching to the select few, Facebook has managed to update its functionality to match that of Google+. Of particular note is the upgrade Facebook made to its Friends Lists and News feed functionality, which appears uncannily like the Circles functionality found in Google+.

So, the burning question is, was Google wise to launch Google+ in beta for 3 months, giving ample time for Facebook to assess the competition and make modifications before Google+ was able to build real critical mass?

As highlighted above, since its launch the fanfare has become rather muted over the summer, and many (including myself) are questioning whether it would have been more prudent to offer Google+ to everyone upon launch in late June.

We’ve seen the launch of the Google+ project in addition to seeing +1 buttons appear in organic search results and next to AdWords ads (if you’re logged into your Google account).

This is of huge significance to marketers as there will be countless debates about the +1 button’s impact on search rank and click through rates in addition to its persuasive effect a la social commerce.

Google also announced that Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools have added new social monitoring tools tracking the impact of +1′s, Twitter tweets, Facebook likes and other social actions on your website traffic.

Google Webmaster Tools +1 Metric

+1 Metrics in Google Webmaster Tools publishes the impact +1 buttons have had on your search performance.

The search impact report illustrates the number of +1 annotated impressions by page in addition to CTR (click through rate) with and without +1 annotated impressions.

+1 annotated impressions refer to the number of times a user saw a page in SERPS with a personalised annotation. The metrics will quickly highlight the impact of social advocacy in search results.

Google Webmaster Tools also publishes an Activity report indicating how many +1′s your individual web pages have received; and an Audience report illustrating demographic and geographic data about the people who have clicked on the +1 button on your web pages.

Google Analytics Social Tracking

As if that wasn’t enough excitement for one day, Google Analytics (the new interface) now publishes Social Engagement reports enabling marketers to see a plethora of social data such as how visitors shared your website content via social actions. This could include Google +1 button clicks, Twitter tweets, Facebook Likes and Del.icio.us bookmarks.

This is a welcome addition to Google Analytics and not surprising as Google seriously ramps up its social offerings.

The way everyone of us reads and responds to a story, book or a newspaper article is different. I think American Psycho describes an utterly compelling fantasist, while my friend found the unrelenting lists…well, tedious But the point is we were happy to argue about it for ages.

In May 2011, Amazon announced it had sold more Kindles in the previous 12 months than paper or hardback books.  With this rapid change (the Kindle was launched in November 2007), comes a revolution in reading. The Kindle is opening a whole new way to connect across the web, sharing what you love to read with a very exclusive group.

I can lend a Kindle book to another Kindle friend very easily, for 14 days and with no extra charge from Amazon.com. Sites like lendle.me allow US Kindlers to earn a small fee by lending books for free to other tablet users, using Amazon.com’s API.

But discovering another reader’s thoughts on a particular passage through a ‘highlight’ in a Kindle book creates a completely new connection. I can tell my followers on Twitter about the books and passages I find useful, making a very personal link to people I may not know but have a very specific shared interest with.

Will other people’s view of what they like, hate or just found interesting in a book change the way that I’ll read it? Undoubtedly.

This, of course, is all grist to the mill for Amazon. Building a Kindle community who actively debate what’s hot and not is a great way to drive sales too. Spreading the Kindle brand out across the web and knittting it into Twitter, Facebook, etc al is a great piece of positioning, awareness and marketing. Along with the ad supported business model, the hardware barrier is going to get ever lower.

Making the Kindle device cheaper for those who want it and letting users share books and thoughts for free will ultimately be a positive for Amazon – and change the way we read forever.

Today’s killing of Osama Bin Ladan has for obvious reasons utterly dominated the press both online and offline. Filtering through the articles about the US operational details and political debate, I came across a Sky News article about a tweeter based in Abbottabad, Pakistan who unknowingly reported on the Bin Laden raid prior to it being completed, let alone reported on in the media.

This was a fascinating story, not only because it provided a first hand report on the action as it unfolded, but also because it raises questions about Twitter’s impact on real-time reporting and security.

Blogging and Twitter has given birth to churnalism, an incarnation of journalism in which press releases or other stories are used by mainstream media owners to create articles in newspapers, often in order to meet increasing pressures of time, which means their validity can remain unverified.

In the case of the tweeter ReallyVirtual, who was innocently tweeting about the US military operation nearby, his story wasn’t subject to churnalism as the events of the US raid in Abbottabad had been picked up by the media after it had happened, so the real issue here is whether or not Twitter poses more of a political and maybe military risk in such cases.

This ties in with a blog I wrote yesterday about how our Internet vulnerability has reached an all time high, suggesting that while Twitter has its huge merits in catalysing political movement as seen recently in Libya, Egypt and less recently in Iran, it also poses a threat when time sensitive information is broadcast for the world’s eyes to see.

The other day, I was reading Wired.com and came across the website Tenthings.me

Too much information?

The premise is simple. It is a digital space which allows you to share ten things, previously unknown, about yourself, to your friends or co-workers. Now, I may be living in ignorant bliss here, but I had to ask myself why one would need this? Surely our friends should already know these ten facts, otherwise should they really be considered friends? Are our egos really so large now, that we assume everyone is interested in our latest activities and proclivities?

I do realise, that this piece is written with a certain irony. Who, after all, would care what i think about this particular website? Have we really created a world where there is too much information? Where we have too much to choose from? Or too much to say? I questioned a friend of mine recently, on his unwillingness to sign up to Facebook. He made perfect sense when he replied that he doubted, that by signing up to take part in Facebook, that it would actually make his life better.

We now have tools that tell the world where we are at any one time. If we check in to a restaurant, or an airport, or even our place of work – 250 of our nearest and dearest know about it. Do we have too much choice in what to say, when to say it, and whom to say it to?

Too much choice?

Dave Trott recently wrote a typically brilliant article on a similar subject, relating to brand choice. He illustrated his thoughts with a great case study on soft drinks and a variety of other FMCG products:

In most areas of business, choice is seen as a significant benefit. The general perception is that the more you have to offer, the more your customer will want to buy and ergo, the more money the company will make. Hence the increasing amount of variants in all supermarket products. But, and according to the survey in Dave’s article, this is not the case.  If we apply this thought to the UK TV market, we know that official figures record over 500 TV channels are now available in the UK (Source: BARB). Yet I wonder how many of those record significant viewing levels? How many, will be watched by less than 100,00 at any one time? In catering for everyone’s taste, and in the rush to monetise by brand expansion, have we forgotten what is really important?

In my mind, quality should still be at the heart of any offering. Whether this is a can of fizzy drink, or a broadcast channel, or a website selling stuff, we still need to know that we can get what we want, at the price we want.

What is the impact of all this brand choice on shopping behaviour? Shoppers now simply don’t have the time or mental bandwidth to compare and explore all of their options. Instead, the visual element of products becomes even more important which in turns put even more pressure on manufacturers and marketers. Eye tracking studies have shown that most shopping time is spent searching for known brands, and are most likely to buy the first brand they actively consider, rather than compare various brands.

The Paradox of Choice…

The 2004 book, ‘ The Paradox of Choice –Why More is Less’ by Barry Schwartz argues that eliminating consumer choices can greatly reduce anxiety for shoppers.

He also discusses the significance of common research methods that utilize a Happiness Scale. In this area of debate, he sides with the opinion of renowned psychologists, who independently conclude that the plethora of choice we have now, can even lead to depression and feelings of loneliness.

Within the book, there was one specific study cited that was particularly close to my heart. Together with Mark Lepper of Stanford University, Sheen Iyengar (the same lady that conducted the fizzy drink study), performed a similar exercise, but with chocolate. This found that when participants were faced with a smaller, rather than larger array of chocolates, they were actually more satisfied with their tasting.

So brands must offer choice, whilst making choosing easier, through intelligent packaging, design, marketing and pricing. Brands need to help consumers  regain their sense of control while supporting them in navigating  these and really help to simplify the decision making process for the consumer.