Google Sites Goes Mobile

Google has added a new feature to "Google Sites" that allows small businesses and others to create mobile sites themselves. Google Sites "mobile landing pages" allows retailers and companies to create professional-looking mobile home pages without any coding experience.

Google has been offering the Google Sites program to give businesses and consumers a way to quickly build their own websites with no HTML knowledge required, making it relatively easy for anyone without a technical background to build a simple website. Until now, the platform has not had a mobile component.

Google Sites "for mobile" allows users to pick a template that suits the consumer’s needs, such as an e-commerce template for users who want a mobile site to sell products using Google Checkout. Google also offers customer mobile templates for local businesses, restaurants, lead generation and social.

On these mobile sites, businesses and users can include the ability to integrate their Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and other social accounts.

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Will Google+ Succeed?

I have no idea whether Google+ will be success. But I would say it seems as though Google has a shot at creating a social network experience that fixes a problem many people routinely encounter with Facebook, namely that it is indiscriminate. The whole idea of "Circles" is that real social networks come in "real" groups, not imaginary "communities." There's your family, your extended set of friends, your high school or college buddies, the circle of your business associates and then the various other groups you have in life. See Read more here.

Nobody seems to think Google+ will replace Facebook, and that's probably healthy and realistic. The issue is whether Google can tap something new, such as the fact that Facebook "friends" are a jumbled mess of all kinds of people from all kinds of natural groups, and increasingly also includes people you don't even know.

"Not all relationships are created equal," Google says. "The problem is that today’s online services turn friendship into fast food—wrapping everyone in “friend” paper—and sharing really suffers."  Read more here.

Among the obvious problems Google says Circles will fix include the fact that "we only want to connect with certain people at certain times, but online we hear from everyone all the time." Because every online conversation (with over 100 “friends”) is a public performance, so we often share less." And there is no ability to account for important nuances in real social relationships.

43% of U.S. Firms Use Social Networks for Customer Acquisition

According to a new survey by Regus, 43 percent of firms are successfully using social networking to win new customers, up eight percentage points from last year’s survey. The research also reveals more firms are using social media to engage with existing customers than a year ago

About 50 percent of businesses in the United States use applications such as Twitter to engage, connect with and inform existing customers, says Regus.

In the United States, 55 percent of firms encourage their employees to join social networks such as Linkedin and Xing. Also, 38 percent of U.S. companies dedicate up to 20 percent of their marketing budget to business social networking activity.

Globally, the survey reported a seven percent increase in the proportion of businesses successfully recruiting new customers through social networks such as Facebook.

43 Percent of U.S. Businesses Using Social Media, Social Networks to Win New Business

An Explosion of New Types of Content

Just about everything is changing in the video business, including the ways advertisers do video content and messaging. As video on demand is a reflection of increased demand for video wherever people are, using whatever devices are available, so video advertising now is changing to reflect the increased ability consumers have to simply ignore the messages.

Advertising and public relations are two different ways of accomplishing the business goal of communicating value to external constituencies, prospects and potential buyers. Owned media, content marketing or custom publishing are other ways to achieve many of the same objectives. So it might be revealing that practitioners from the "advertising" start talking about an "absolute explosion of new types of content from brands."

So says Chris Schreiber, director of marketing at social video advertising company Sharethrough. A leading expert on social content strategy, Chris recently presented a two-hour workshop on viral video at the Cannes Lions festival.

Simply, more "storytelling" is going to happen, with much more investment in content creation. In advertising as well as elsewhere, pushing messages at people doesn't work as well as it used to. These days, people have to be enticed to come check something out, hang around and then share.

5 Ways the Advertising Industry Is Preparing for a Digital Future:

Will "Social Business" Disintermediate Unified Communications, Email, Phone Systems, even IP Communications?

“Social business” is a buzz word, but it also appears to be perceived as a strategic executive imperative in the enterprise, according to a survey conducted by Penn Schoen Berland and sponsored by Jive Software.

Some 78 percent of the executives surveyed said having a social strategy is critical to the future success of their businesses. You might wonder what that might mean.

Fully 66 percent of executives surveyed believe that social applications for business represent a fundamental shift in how work will get done and how companies will engage with customers. about 53 percent believe they must adopt Social Business or risk falling behind.

Some 62 percent think social approaches can lead to "better customer loyalty and service levels" and 57 percent anticipate "increased revenue or sales" as a result of implementing a social business strategy. A similar 62 percent think businesses need to leverage social software inside and outside their organizations in order to remain competitive.

Some might think social business refers only to use of social networks. A better way to look at matters is to substitute the word “collaboration” or “communication” or “feedback” or “market intelligence” for “social.”

It definitely is true that social networks and online communities are an important source of information for making purchase decisions, especially for Millennials. Some 54 percent of Millennials said that they are more likely to rely on and make purchase decisions from information shared by personal contacts in online communities versus 33 percent more likely to use information from "official" company sources.

Also, about 83 percent of executives leverage at least one social network for work use. But the larger point is that Web-based tools now can be used to support all sorts of business processes more effectively and efficiently than before.

The study of 902 U.S.-based knowledge workers also suggests growing interest in app stores as a way to source a broad range of business applications. Some 70 percent of executives and 51 percent of Millennials have downloaded at least one Web-based application for work use either on their mobile device or personal computer.

Knowledge workers still find communication to be one of the top work challenges. Some 77 percent of executives, 68 percent of Millennials and 61 percent of general knowledge workers indicated that email usage in the workplace has increased in the last two years, but 89 percent of executives, 88 percent of millennials and 76 percent of general knowledge workers believe that they and their teams would be more productive if they could dramatically reduce the time spent writing and reading emails.

Perhaps most importantly, 73 percent of executives, 73 percent of Millennials and 64 percent of general knowledge workers agree that social platforms will fundamentally change the way people share, connect and learn at work and with companies.

That’s the immediate, practical meaning of “social business.” It represents a potentially new way to collaborate with all internal and external constituencies. People sometimes too casually talk about “redefining communications.”

“Social” is a buzz word, but it also hints at something more profound, a new way to achieve business results once promised more prominently by all sorts of “communications” tools ranging from phone systems to email, email on mobile phones to unified communications. Sometime much bigger might be coming.

More significantly, for many, something different might be coming.

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Square Raises $100 Million At $1 Billion Valuation

Square, the mobile payments provider best known for the free one-inch credit card "reader" that plugs into a smart phone (iPhones and iPads at first) and lets anyone accept both credit and debit-card payments, has rasied $100 million in financing, with a $1 billion valuation, the Wall Street Journal reports. See this (Wall Street Journal subscription required). If not, see this.

The valuation will worry some observers, confirming a possible investment bubble in Internet-related start-ups that promises much pain when the bubble finally does burst. But Square's rapidly-growing transaction flow also indicates that mobile payments finally, after many false starts, getting traction.

Square's value proposition also highlights the complexity of roles in the new mobile payments ecosystem. Square sells a service built on a new type of point of sale terminal (the "square" adapter) and so might be said to compete with VeriFone. But Square monetizes the terminals in a different way, essentially making its money on transaction fees, as do credit card and debit card issuers. In that sense it competes with bank card providers.

Square also competes with Intuit, as both Intuit and Square provide special value for small retailers and other non-traditional retailers. And many expect PayPal to make its move into retail commerce, at least in part, with its own point of sale system designed to be used by smart phones or tablet devices.

But Square also has launched "Card Case," an app that would let users pay directly from their smart phones. That makes Square a contestant in the digital wallet space, where Google, among others, plans to focus.

Half of Twitter Activity from Mobiles?

As of May 2011, 13 percent of online adults used Twitter, according to a study by the Pew Research Center Internet & American Life Project. That represents a significant increase from the eight percent of online adults who identified themselves as Twitter users in November 2010.

Some 54 percent of respondents access and use Twitter on their mobile devices, which makes sense. Twitter is a quick reaction update application. Mobile devices are always with people, and can be used at any time, for that reason.

Facebook CTO Bret Taylor has been known to say that “mobile devices are inherently social," and that a third of Facebook users access the app on their mobiles. See this. It appears Twitter might be "more mobile and social" than Facebook, on that score.

Twitter Update 2011 - Pew Research Center