Don't Count Out Facebook as a Competitor to Google

Don't Count Out Facebook as a Competitor to Google

What FB Lacks in Search Market Share, it Makes Up for in User Time
Saturday, February 20, 2010
By Chris Crum

In case you were wondering, Facebook is pretty popular. Google is of course the undisputed king of search market share, but Facebook has the edge in some areas. Social media is the obvious area.  While Google is hoping to make some serious headway here with Buzz, Facebook is far and away the dominant being in the world of social networks.

Compete shared some data with us that emphasizes just how big Facebook is, and just how seriously it should be taken. If these stats from Facebook weren't enough for you, Compete points out that Facebook has surpassed Yahoo as the #2 site online in the U.S. in terms of unique visitors, just under Google.


In December, according to Compete, Facebook's unique visitors in the U.S. had increased by over 121%. That's pretty incredible, because I seem to recall Facebook being pretty popular in late 2008 too.


In terms of social media sites, none of the others even come close in the U.S. - not even the world's second largest search engine, YouTube:


So Facebook is already bigger than the second largest search engine. Add to that, the fact that search on Facebook itself is rising. According to comScore, Facebook's search query percentage increased by 13% from December to January, growing to 395 million searches:


Greg Sterling notes, the numbers in the chart "are likely internal searches on Facebook for content or friends, rather than web search. This is not the same thing as people conducting searches on Google, Yahoo or Bing more generally. And 13 percent growth is certainly strong, but not "phenomenal.'"

Facebook's search feature, which has been emphasized somewhat with the latest redesign, lets users search people, pages, groups, apps, events, posts by friends, posts by everyone, OR web results. Sterling makes the case that internal Facebook searches are different from web searches one would perform on Google, but in some ways, Facebook search simply goes places that Google doesn't (while also going Places that Google does via the Bing-powered web search).

Facebook is almost like its own web in some ways, and that is becoming truer all the time as Facebook gets more of users' time spent online (which it is doing through status updates, news, apps/games, videos, music, events, and possibly email in the future...we also suggest Facebook consider adding blogging to the mix).

Look at this newly released data from Nielsen about time spent online. In January (in the U.S.), Facebook users averaged 7 hours a month on the site. As a point of comparison, Google users spent about 2 hours.


In some ways, that doesn't really take anything away from Google, because Google's job as a search engine is to get you where you need to be to find what you're looking for. However, Facebook users appear to be finding plenty of stuff they are looking for along with stuff they didn't know they were looking for, as well as just hanging out and being entertained. With Facebook's search feature, they're able to find what they're looking for without having to leave Facebook until the search result (at least theoretically).

Whether you think Facebook's search growth is "phenomenal" or not, you can't overlook the fact that more people are using the search feature, and some unknown percentage of that is pulling from Bing. Maybe this should be construed as a good reason not to overlook your Bing SEO efforts. Maybe it's also another reason why Facebook should be viewed as one of Google's key competitors (along with Microsoft, Yahoo, and increasingly Apple).  Actually, Sterling points out that Google recently listed Facebook officially as a competitor for the first time in its annual 10K filing.

Google is seemingly going after the market that Facebook dominates with the launch of Google Buzz, but status updates are just part of the big picture. Search is just part of the big picture. It's all about getting the user's attention, is it not? Here are some tips for running a good Facebook page.

What do you think? Discuss here.

via webpronews.com

5 Reasons to Write Procedures in Twitter

Posted by Julie Norris on January 11, 2010 · 8 Comments 

Recently, I’ve been exploring the need for writing procedures in real-time, focusing on Twitter in particular. This is the fourth post in the series. In my last post, I was asked by Larry Kunz in a comment for thoughts on situations in which one might write procedures in Twitter. Five come to mind; I’ve described them below.

Push Information

The beauty of Twitter is that you can quickly disseminate information to a large, targeted audience. Initially, it would, of course, be followers of the feed in question. Retweeting then magnifies that distribution, possibly exponentially. In classic online docs (help, websites, knowledgebases, and the like), we wait for users to come to us. By using Twitter, we can go to them.
This puts an entirely different spin on the whole question of doc development. When planning a content strategy, consider this: what might you want to hand-deliver to your users vs. requiring them to come to you to find?

Quick Fixes

Let’s say, for example, that you have a procedure regarding a fix that’s needed immediately. If one user has a question about it and asks a question on a Twitter support feed, you can be sure that there are many that have the same question. So if a person retweets a procedure, it could possibly travel far. If there’s a negative comment (e.g., something along the lines of “this app doesn’t work, it’s awful”) it might compel a company to get out a fix or explanation, or a quick procedure to quell disruptions.
Example: late last year there were there hacking attacks that affected WordPress sites that hadn’t been upgraded to the newest version. Site managers that had not yet upgraded needed to act immediately to fend off an attack on their sites. News came through Twitter. It was retweeted everywhere. That’s how I found out about it. In such a case, you could write a quick procedure about the upgrade requirements as well as other information. Who knows how far a procedure might travel? I think that tweets pointed people to blogs and sites that had procedures or information about how to address the situation – which in itself is another excellent example.
WordPress is updated frequently. There are docs and blog posts in existence that describe how to upgrade to the latest version. It doesn’t matter what version; the same basic procedures apply to any upgrade. (That’s the beauty of WordPress. There’s so much information out there, and the open-source community is so helpful and collaborative. It’s wonderful.)
If you have an app that has regular updates (as WordPress does), or just has an impending release, why not have something written beforehand that you could point to when necessary? When I ran my Twitter procedure experiment on 12/29/09, Larry Kunz (@larry_kunz) made this suggestion:
“Also, and I know this is a lot harder than it sounds: anticipate the situation, and have responses pre-written, ready to go.”
This is exactly the type of situation that fits Larry’s suggestion. Anything that occurs on at least a periodic basis (such as app updates) should have some docs already written somewhere. Plus, said docs should be written in a generic fashion that would be applicable to any upgrade situation (content management in action) – not just one in particular. You can always address particulars, but have some clean generic docs ready at all times.

Product Launches and New Features

If a company has an app revision or new feature and wants to get the news out, a related procedure in Twitter might support marketing efforts. (As in, here’s our new feature; here’s how to use it.) It also never hurts a company to promote visibility of their products, keeping the company in mind. Pointing out features that would help users and save them time is always a good idea.

Real-Time

People are growing accustomed to getting information right now. They may not have the patience to look through online docs to find it. I cannot emphasize real-time considerations enough. There’s also always the possibility that one of your tweets will be picked up and distributed immediately once it hits the airwaves.
Either put a quick procedure in Twitter, or put in one tweet that links to the appropriate location in online docs or some other location, such as a SharePoint portal. Help your users. Answer their questions before they know they need them. Fix their problems. Monitor support questions and get something out there once in a while. Why not put a short FAQ in your support feed, particularly if it’s asked regularly?
After all, excellent customer service is always a good idea. Given that tech writers must perpetually sell their worth to a company, it sure can’t hurt to help customers.

Go Where Your Users Are

If users are scanning Twitter regularly or using Facebook, that’s where some of your docs should be. If they’re reading your blogs, think about adding procedures there. You can embed Twitter feeds in multiple places: WordPress sites, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google Wave. Also, in Facebook, people can leave comments for each tweet that becomes a status item in Facebook. Look at the Mashable page for an example.
Remember: social media is a primary mode of communication these days. Start using it, if you’re not already. If nothing else, mentions of detailed docs and links to them can easily be integrated into these locations.
If your users are all at Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and the like much of the time, why not go there? If not, you may find yourself standing at an empty storefront.

About Julie Norris
I'm a writer. What else is there to be? Mostly, I tech-write, primarily software help. Been doing that for over 20 years, starting after getting my degree in Technical Communications. When possible, I also write for fun; perhaps I'll toss up some of those thoughts as well.

via 2morodocs.com

Reasons to Have a Facebook Page and Ways to Make it Better

Reasons to Have a Facebook Page and Ways to Make it Better

Chris Crum | Staff Writer
Get More Out of Your Facebook Page

I don't have to tell you that Facebook can be a tremendous source of web traffic. There's a good chance that most of the people you know are on it, and the ones who aren't may be eventually.

The social network is consuming more and more of people's time, and thanks
to mobile devices, it is always accessible. If you don't have a Facebook
Page, you may be missing out on not only traffic to your site, but a chance
to engage with customers and ultimately help your brand's reputation.

One of our blog partners, Jay Baer, of Convince& Convert
wrote a great piece about why you need Facebook for your company. He highlights "11 things you need to know." These things include how Facebook has 350
Million global users and counting (although Facebook has sinced announced
reaching the 400 million user milestone), and how the average Facebook user spends
55 minutes per day on Facebook. Nearly 80,000 sites use Facebook Connect.

He also notes that the Facebook Fan Box is becoming more pervasive, the average Facebook user has 130 friends and fans 2 pages per month. His statements are backed up by various reports and studies.
Perhaps you have a Facebook Page, but it's not performing how you'd like.
You feel it's a waste of time. "If your Facebook fan page is a bit of a ghost town, you're not alone. A fantastic study by Sysomos of 600,000 Facebook fan pages shows that only 4% of pages have 10,000 or more fans - and only .76% have 100,000 or more," says Baer. "That's why it is so critical to focus your Facebook strategy on activating the fans you have, not just collecting fans like baseball cards."
"The Sysomos study also found very little correlation between how frequently the Facebook page admin posted to the wall, and total number of fans.
However
- and this is important - there is a strong correlation between amount of other content (notes, links, photos, videos) and number of fans," he says. "Thus, if you want to grow your Facebook fan base, it is imperative that
you move beyond simple Wall posts and add photos, videos, links and other content."

Promote Your Facebook Page.

Here are some places you can do that:

1. Prominent link on your site
2. Facebook Fan Box
3. Author Bio section on articles/Blog
4. Email newsletters
5. Other social media profiles
6. Google Profile (which is getting more attention now as a result of Google Buzz)
7. Business Card
8. Signage
9. Email Signatures
10. Advertisements

Have you employed these promotion methods?


Another one of our blog Partners, Dave Taylor, offers some tips from Patrick O'Keefe, author of the book Managing Online Forums, on making a Facebook page more interesting. Among
these are:

- Participate and make it routine
- Ask questions
- Host events on your page
- Highlight contributions from others
- Go beyond just text
- Integrate your other online presences
- Take it easy with apps, boxes, etc
- Run offline events, if you can

One thing you want to do is pay attention to your Facebook analytics. Pay attention to stats. Pay attention to changes Facebook makes in this area. For example, recently it was discovered that some admins were starting to see impression counts for each post, as well as the number of likes and comments for each impression. Like Baer says, test content types to see what works best.

via uk.mc244.mail.yahoo.com