I’m going to go out on a limb here. I actually like Google+. There, I said it. It’s out there and I can’t ever take it back. For me the platform provides a rich media outlet where images are not static, they are dynamic. Videos are linked very easily to YouTube. The ability for community managers to administer multiple pages from the one account. Hangouts working better than Skype these days. It simply ticks all the boxes for me. But as I said, this is a personal choice.

The question is – should businesses be using Google+?

The answer – yes if you have the time (or an internal / external community manager)

Benefits of Google+ for business

Growing Platform – Whilst Google+ does not have the popularity of Facebook, it does have a fast growing member base. As at April 2012 Google+ had 170 million active users and expected to attract about 400 million users by the end of this year. (Source)

Development – Google+ is a young social network, and still has opportunity to roll out functionality / services that will benefit business. Being tied into the world’s most powerful search engine, these opportunities may place early adopters with an advantage.

Indexing – Google+ posts and a Google+ business page is going to be found by people using Google a lot faster and easier, after all when in Rome, erm – Google.

Functions – Google+ has given us lots of great functionality for business use. Hangouts for video conferencing, linking dynamic media such as animated GIFs, Images that are indexed into search, circles which helps your business segment your stakeholders and the +1 button that is now all over the web.

Customer Service – you can use Google+ to help provide customer services via video conferencing (hangouts) or online social conversation. Creating circles for your High Net Worth clients and your new prospects helps you provide the correct level of service to each of these stakeholders separately.

Community – Google+ is mostly made up of a male population with a high number of software developers and college students. There is opportunity here to tap into these two markets for your business directly

Overall I have been using Google+ since it first came out, and found that just by sharing content from my site, links back to my site and social media posts my PageRank has increased by a factor of two. And I have never paid a single cent for SEO.

I truly believe that Google+ is underrated and should be explored more by SMBs as a useful tool that you will grow to love. The key here is to keep using it, and interacting. Put the effort into Google+ and you will reap the rewards.

As always, Share+ Enjoy.

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At the beginning of 2012, I wrote about a new mobile social networking site called Path. Since then Path has grown in user numbers significantly, with a majority of my network of friends alone jumping onto the app.

The beauty behind Path not only resides within is multiple platform features and functionality (it’s a music player/store; it’s a phone camera with filters; it enables check-in and tagging; it can push updates through to other social networks) but also that Path is becoming what the new representation of personal social networking will look like – a more niche and limited network of connected friends and a social network based purely on a mobile platform.

These two factors are very important as we start to see a decline in growth in web based social networks (excluding micro-blogging sites) and a trend towards more visually stimulated content through mobile platforms (e.g. Instagram, Pinterest, Viddy).

Path has recently released their latest update, version 2.5 with a few new features:

Personal Content – Path users currently have the ability to share what music they are listening to, and now will also have the ability to share what books they are reading and what movies they are watching. The books we read, and films we watch are rather personal choices which in turn helps drive that core personal social networking within the platform as our connections engage with these content drivers. Book data is pulled from iBooks whilst Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster integrate into our movie selections.

Personal Engagement – To help users keep the network active, Path has introduced a couple of new features to ensure your community self-polices users who have become stagnant. With a new ‘nudge’ feature, similar to the Facebook poke, users can now remind people in their networks that they should come back to Path and share content on the network. User’s friend lists now provide details of when each connection was last on Path, but then also go on further to allow each user to send a ‘quick update’ request to the people in their networks by requesting to: (i) Take a photo (ii) Provide location; and (iii) request their current status.

Additional Filters – Path’s Instagram like photo filters have now also been upgraded with four additional features to allow users to capture their ‘moments’ and share this with their networks. The new functions available are Glow, Depth, Zoom and Cropping of images.

Overall, Path is simply heading in the right direction of ensure its customers are provided with necessary tools to make social networking more personal, and more efficient using smartphones.

How often do you use Path? Religiously or hardly ever?

As always, please share + enjoy!

Let’s Connect:

Twitter: @cosmicrami
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Website: www.cosmicvillage.net

There has always been a bit of a gap between Social Media & Selling through Social Media. Too many in the industry, to do both together is somewhat a bit of a taboo. But as Social Networks grow and flourish with users (Customers), businesses must learn to adapt to this market and have the ability to be able to not only use these platforms as a form of communication, but to monetize them.

Many people will read the above paragraph and think, “Social Media is not for sales” and simply not read on. However, we are fast entering a phase of Social Media where Social Commerce will become just as important as the media itself. Look around, we are already moving into a world where Mobile Wallets are being used, Social Media data is used for targeted advertising and big players like Amazon, Facebook and Google have implemented their own commerce facilities.

Recently, I was invited (and happily accepted) to participate in the beta release of a new Social Commerce Platform, called community engine.

What struck me first about this platform was the beauty of all being about me. If I wanted to follow a business, I would see its offers and notices. This has a deep connection with consumers such as myself, because frankly, I tune out to all the white noise online and only watch, listen, see, read and engage with the content that is relevant to me.

Coming from the world of Social Media & operating a Social Media company, I have used many platforms in my day to day activities. My phone has 32 Social Media related apps that I use at least once per day for both business and pleasure. But community engine seems to link all the pieces of the puzzle together in a perfect symphony that appeals to every one of my Social Media Receptors as a Consumer and a small business owner.

For the small business side – I am able to create my own piece of real estate on community engine and explain everything about my business. Surely this feature is available on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ but it is only on community engine that you are able to integrate this with a sense of Community amongst other businesses in your network. Be that current stakeholders or new invitees!

In fact you can build a community from scratch around your business, by creating the space and sending out invites. There is no intrusive ‘adding to a group’ feature like Facebook, or the constant begging of people to follow your business profile like that on LinkedIn. A simple email is delivered to the recipient and if it is in line with their interest, they accept and become part of your Community.

Think that none of your customers will want to visit yet another Social Platform? Here is where community engine has made it very simple. Import your existing mailing lists / database into community engine and the invite is sent automatically to them.  Such simplicity derives such beauty in the connections we need to make but struggle to find the time to do so in our daily activities.

community engine is not like a Facebook page where you can leave a post and your fans have to visit the page or see the post in the active news feed to interact with. No. community engine offers a real-time communication network with your community, your members through the usage of the noticeboard and newswire.

The newswire behaves like a status feed of all your connections recommendations and posts – be that news, a special offer or a notice. The left hand column provides a chronological history of real social qualitative data that your network has communicated – this ticks the first box because it reduces the white noise of everything else you really do not want to read about. The right hand column still gently reminds us that we are part of a network of businesses that have products / services we are interested in – deals, offers and promotions in an easy to digest presentation.

The Noticeboard, which behaves much like a Pinterest exploration tab, gives the user an overall easy to scan view of all the output the communities they follow have shared on community engine. This helps me as a time limited business owner to review visually the right information I need to make that engagement possible. No fluff, no time wasting.

To make this platform even more social, each business can claim their own business (most are already preloaded for you) and use the platform to customise their profiles, message, receive feedback and obtain recommendations from customers, in addition to the general social media buttons we have grown custom too (‘Like’ & ‘Recommend’). This completes the circle of Social Interaction between business and Customer. A direct social channel to help all forms of communication is now open through the community engine Platform.

And if you think all this has nothing to do with Social Commerce – community engine once again integrates the perfect facilitation of transactions between business and customer. The platform contains an online payment facility driving the customer to purchase from the business (through community engine) with the click of a few buttons. In the past many companies have struggled to obtain a merchant facility that can help drive this revenue back from the digital platforms into the ledger books. In fact attempting to obtain a merchant facility can prove to be bigger than Ben Hur these days. But the community engine platform has just revolutionised this with one quick step that when linked to offers and promotions. These purchases are based on offers directly created by the business and not based around the terms of a deals conglomerate (e.g. expiry date, limitations) with the intent on making a quick dollar.

Sure these might be a special offer, but as they are not created to be sold on mass, they won’t create a negative experience. If a business has a special deal to place, it places it directly, and within a 1 week turnaround time, Community Engine facilitates a smooth payment transition between business & customers. Goodbye Groupon. Hello respectful Social Commerce.

Thus there are many features that businesses can use on the community engine platform that help make life for business owners, in one word, simple. Yes as a business owner, it’s my favourite word to hear on a daily basis too.

As a consumer, I can tell you that these features are so in line with what I want. I don’t want to be harassed by business in any way, shape or form. This includes my Social Media newsfeeds being flooded with constant invaluable information or selling from companies. I don’t want to have to go through a middle man such as the Daily Deals companies where I may or may not receive the end product with ridiculous clauses and restrictions. I don’t want to have to scroll through a never ending feed of jargon that doesn’t apply to me.

I simply want to glance over the things I’m interested in, have special offers capture my attention, communicate with the communities I’m interested in (on my own terms) and use Social Media in my own way. After all, this is also my piece of digital real estate. I am your customer, but I am not just another statistic on your social metrics.

Speaking as a Social Media professional and as an everyday customer, community engine offers an extraordinary experience that feels respectful of my needs and wants. It has bridged the gap between Social Media, Social Commerce and the customer in a way that allows Social Media to be used as a selling tool without having to do the selling.

Most importantly for me, it opens up the doors to small business owners around the country to a new tool that allows them to harness the power of Social Media to something more than a communication channel. And teaches our customers that they are the biggest influencers and assets our businesses will always have.

Simple.

As always, Share + Enjoy.

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This morning Facebook finally announced its IPO for $5 Billion. After about 8 years since its creation, almost 800 million members and changing the way humans communicate forever, Mark Zuckerberg has decided to take his baby and unleash it to the markets.

So big was the news, it crashed the SEC website in the States, and the topic immediately started trending on Twitter.

But what does this mean closer to home here in Australia? Well, us Australian’s seem to be some of the highest Facebook users in the world, with Gizmodo reporting that between 8 – 10 million users are ‘active’ in Australia. That’s a large portion of our population (approx. 36% - 45%) and this number is growing. We also spend lots of time on Facebook, clocking up approx. 7 hours and 19 minutes per month recorded in April 2010. This number will have surely grown since then, as we seem to be using Facebook more in 2012. So it is safe to assume that anything this IPO brings down the track, will impact a large and active audience here in Australia.

However, it won’t be the impact of the Mega Social Network on our daily social media usage, but rather the downstream effect this IPO has on our up and coming generations – of which only know the technological way of living.

Mark Zuckerberg has now created an array of billionaires and every Gen Y Social Tech Geek will now be influenced by his actions today. Young up and coming entrepreneurs dream of achieving the Zuckerberg success and today’s IPO hype will only fuel that fire which drives an entrepreneur into wanting to create the next big thing.

The Australian economy and environment is perfectly situated for this boom, with lots of exciting and potentially huge start-ups already popping up around the technology hubs of its Capital cities. For perfect examples look at Big Commerce, Annitel & SurfStitch – all of which have been growing in the hundreds % range.

The Facebook IPO will now trigger a wave of young and inspired Entrepreneurs to build, design, develop and collaborate on new projects that will seize the technology opportunity and help flourish these garage-based start-ups into powerful entities that too will one day trade on the Australian Stock Exchange.

No longer are there limitations on funding and starting up a business. Start-up costs have been severely reduced with outsourced services that Start-Ups can now utilise – such as Cloud Based Services, Start-Up Incubators, Social Media and Mobile technology (Did I mention that Australian’s also have a very high Smartphone penetration rate?!)

Thus, the combination of the Aussie culture to work hard and make something of yourself, the low barriers to market entry now available, the high level of usage of emerging technologies and the drive to build a company not driven by money is the perfectly flammable environment for young up and coming entrepreneurs to start their own conglomerate. And Mark Zuckerberg just lit the first match to get that fire burning.

As always, Share + Enjoy

Let’s Connect:

Twitter: @cosmicrami

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Social Media plays a huge role in our lives today. Most of us use it on a daily basis as a minimum, and many of us use it on the go, from our smartphones. Needless to say, Social Media now plays a vital role in our daily communications and obtaining information. As businesses have begun to recognise the value of our time on Social Media sites, they too have now jumped into the Social Media game, by having a presence in Social Media. It is here where the two meet: Consumers and Business. And it is here where, businesses must monitor, like any marketing strategy, what is working and what isn’t.

Social Monitoring is the process of using Social Analytics Tools and applying this data to measure, review, evaluate and highlight business achievements and campaigns.

As businesses are starting to see the value of their presence in Social Media and start communicating, engaging and influencing through their Social Media Platforms with their customers, naturally, they would want to see the value of using Social Media and the metrics it can provide into how effective Social Media is for them. As such, businesses can now use a whole range of Social Analytics tools to help them understand their brand engagement on Social Media Platforms.

Thus, it is not enough for businesses to only have a Social Media presence but also to be monitoring their activities, their customers and their success through their Social Media presence.

Social Analytics and Social Monitoring tools can provide businesses with a huge array of data for them to pour over, analyse and utilise to their advantage. For example, businesses can measure their positive vs. negative sentiment ratio which measures the number of good vs. bad mentions about the business. Businesses can also measure detailed demographic data such as Gender, Age and Location of their customers. The ability to also gather data across all Social Media platforms (along with the web) to continually monitor any negative feedback, and address this in real time is extremely imperative in a world where every Smartphone is now a consumers tool to praise or destroy a business – in real time.

One very important aspect of Social Monitoring is that you are able to tie this back to your Return On Investment. Remembering, now we don’t only measure ROI in financial terms, but also in digital assets, in online reputation management and in brand equity, businesses can tie this data back to their one true reason to exist – revenue.

An example of this would be to graph over x amount of time, the number of positive sentiments a business received as measured through Social Media Analytical tools. Then on the same graph, overlay the revenue the business earned for the same period. Any correlation?

Another example would be to measure the value of revenue generated out of Social Media campaigns. Graph this against traditional marketing campaigns. Now look at the underlying costs of your Social Media campaigns vs. your traditional marketing campaigns. Which provided a better net return? Which had a bigger reach? Which required fewer resources?

Social Media Monitoring tools come in different shapes and forms, and all of them can provide you with the tools you need to get started in measuring your campaigns.

There are free tools such as: Twitsprout; Klout; SocialMention; Facebook Insights; Twitter analytics and there are enterprise tools such as BuzzNumbers, Radian6 and Dialogix.

Generally, the free tools provide you with a high level overview, however for a much more focused and accurate result, purchase and usage of the enterprise tools is highly recommended. Whilst some businesses may see this as an additional investment in Social Media and be reluctant, but can businesses really put a price on the data and information these tools can provide? If so then businesses are only achieving half of what they should out of Social Media, after all, there is no use of jumping into any marketing campaign unless you are able to measure its effectiveness. That includes Social Media.

As always, Share + Enjoy!

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Music Producer David Guetta, recently released an album through Facebook. With 24 million fans on his Facebook page, Guetta utilised the ability to use Social Platforms like Facebook to sell directly to the people whom want to buy his product – his biggest fans. The fans that spent the time to ‘like’ his page.

This is the start of the Social Commerce age.

But what is Social Commerce? Why should businesses take note of Social Commerce? Who is currently using Social Commerce and utilising tools like the Facebook Store (FB-Store)? And where is Social Commerce heading in the future?

Social Commerce is a new and emerging field that is the next step of evolution in Social Media. Whilst businesses and customers have now been thrown together at high velocity in what we term today as ‘Social Media’ this engagement will more than likely not be enough in the near future. And its businesses whom are driving this change.

As economies contract, businesses are looking for the most efficient and effective way to reach their customers utilising free media tools, such as Social Networking  and Microblogging sites. Whilst businesses today are starting to respond to the need to be ‘were the customer is’ they have still found it difficult to monetise this presence in Social Media.

A question I am nearly always asked when speaking to businesses about Social Media is:

“How can we make money from this?” or the more direct “Show me the ROI?”

This burning desire to capture every dollar out of every connection to the business is the holy grail of business revenue dreams – and Social Media the catalyst!

Enter stage right, Social Commerce.

Whilst many old school business owners would shudder at the thought of transacting over social networks or social media sites, this is the direction we are headed in.

Social Commerce moves businesses away from traditional ROI models of financials into 4 quadrants of Social ROI: Financials (of course); Brand Equity; Online Reputation Management and Digital Assets.

Social Commerce is thus then reflected through businesses transacting through platforms like Facebook (Social Networking Sites) and Mobile devices.

Social Commerce already exists, and several large companies like Coca-Cola, Startbucks and Disney are already transacting through their Facebook account. That is they are directly selling on Facebook.

Want more proof? Here are some statistics on Facebook Commerce:

Number of Diapers P&G sold on its FB-Store in under an hour: 1,000

Number of retailers who have opened up a FB-Store: 50,000

Starbucks customers using their e-commerce-enabled FB CRM loyalty program: 1M+

Customer using Wal-Mart’s group-buy FB app on day of launch: 5,000+

FB-Store conversion rates: 2% - 4%, which is on par with most web-stores: 3% - 4%

Click through rates on Facebook Walls: 6.5%

And it doesn’t end there. With the web now becoming the MobileWeb, we are all more connected to our Social Media platforms through our smartphones. The introduction of NFCs and the Mobile Wallet will mean that businesses and consumers now have a way to transact through the MobileWeb. And Social Media will lie at the heart of this.

So what should we expect to see in the next few years in Social Commerce?

More than likely it will branch into two types: The first will be based on consumer to consumer recommendations through Social Media – where connected friends on Social Networks will drive sales based on experience, preferred brands and the way businesses behave in Social Media. The Second will be based on special offers, loyalty and incentive programs. The most certain prediction is that both these scenarios will be played out on the mobile platform utilising mobile wallet and Smartphone technology.

To conclude, Social Commerce can be summarised in a great quote by Sumeet Jain, Principle of CMEA Capital:

“It’s a matter of time – within the next five years or so – before more business will be done on Facebook than Amazon”

Now businesses, I ask you: “What will be the impact on your ROI if you don’t get involved in Social Media Now?”

Next week, we look at an Introduction to Social Monitoring

As always, Share + Enjoy!

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Over the next 3 weeks, I am blogging a 3 part series about how Social Media and Smartphones are the best technology marriage we have seen in years, how smartphones are driving a new web for us all and how are smartphones are going to replace our wallets. Tune in!

The UK Riots were ‘apparently’ caused by Social Media networking on Smartphones; the San Francisco BART operators shut off 4 Mobile communication towers to avoid protestors organising themselves and several witnesses all used their smartphones to capture the moment a concert stage rig collapsed in Indiana.

It seems everything we hear on the news there is some involvement of Social Media and that it is mostly generated by the general public using their Smartphones.

This week the question was raised if the Social Media and Smart Phone marriage was a benefit or limitation to our societies. Personally, I think it is a benefit and has helped our society come a long way. Below I describe why.

The biggest topic last week was as @pembo put it so eloquently in his article (featured in The Punch) ‘The World’s Biggest Bludger Uprising’. The London Riots. The riots caused by many youths have been linked to Social Media and Smartphone usage, as a key driver in the organisation of such a destructive event. Twitter was blamed for the social network to host the organisers’ information, and Blackberry the tool used by the culprits to communicate. After 4 days or rioting several government officials played around with the idea of having a ‘kill switch’ on Social Networks.

To be blunt, this has to be one of the most hypocritical ideas in history. Only several months before, these officials were praising the use of Social Networks and Smartphones for the liberation of countries like Egypt, Tunisia and Libya.

The mechanism, communication and tools were the same. A large mass of people organising themselves using the latest technology to revolt against a common cause. But are the Social Networks and Smartphones to blame here?

No. They are neither the cause nor effect of the outcome. They are simply the medium through which the outcome travels. As such, placing a ‘kill switch’ at the power of a few to control the masses is not only a huge leap backwards, it’s actually counterproductive. What would have happened if Mubarak or Gaddafi had a kill switch on their nation’s social networks?

So in conclusion, the parallels between the benefits of Social Media and Smartphones to our way of living are very clear, and derive a positive outcome for societies around the world. We are more connected, we now have all the information we need in real time, we have built a web of trust on our connections opinions and we can save more lives in events like natural disasters.

Should anyone person, organisation or government control Social Media, or have the ability to switch it off? No. Social Media, like the internet does not belong to anyone of us. It belongs to all of us. As such, we should be able to use it as we like. 

What do you think? Should Social Media be controlled or should it remain free for all to use as they see fit?

As Always – Share + Enjoy!

Next Week’s Blog Teaser: How Mobile is your Web?

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Hashtag: #MobileWeb

Our lives are moving at a rapid pace. So fast, that we can barely keep up with everything. In fact, we can’t. It’s impossible to be able to be three steps ahead with everything in your life. That’s because there is so much going on. Our brains are moving into a new phase of evolution. We now no longer require the growing brain capacity to do the thinking for us. Instead, we are smart enough to build machines to do this.

Once upon a time, we had our close group of family, friends, peers and work colleagues, that we called our social network. Now, we are all connected to as many people as we possibly can, like never before in the history of our species.

The human brain is designed to maintain approximately 150 stable social networks. This is called Dunbar’s number. This is where you brain knows the person and how each person relates to every other person.

However, in these hyper connected times, which we are propelling forward faster and faster in time, we are connected to a whole lot more than 150 people.

Think about your immediate family, then your second cousins, then their immediate families, then your work colleagues, then your immediate friends, then your school friends, then your special interest friends … the list goes on. Most of us will have already bridged the 150 mark just thinking about the above.

This is where the need for online social networking comes in.

Humans have built technologies like computers and the internet to record and store information. Online social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have come along at the perfect time where we need to outsource this part of our brain to the internet to hold this information for us.

Online Social Networking has given us many advantages, and we are now so accustomed to it, that if it were to disappear tomorrow, our lives would be in disarray.

We are use to having this information delivered to us at such rapid speeds, with no limits on distance that we feel utterly disconnected when we don’t receive our ‘hit’ of what has happened online.

From organised events, to photo sharing, our digital opinions about brands, products and services to the simply checking in on how our friends and family members are, without the need to speak to anyone.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Are Social Networks destroying real life interactions, or enhancing them?

Many would argue it is bad, because the human interaction we all crave is starting to fade. Whilst less face to face interaction may occur in certain aspects of our lives, does this really have to be labelled as a negative to our social brains?

No.

Remember, we have now shifted our social brain online, outsourcing this once limited computing power of the human body, to the infinite collective thought of everyone connected to the internet.

We now organise charities, raise awareness and build engaging relationships with people whom we were previously unable to access, all in the search for social good.

We now share our lives, stories and news with the world in a way that humans are now regaining power from governments to become a more humane society. We have witnessed these events through the power of social networks radiating away from several Arab nations.

We now assess our brands, products and services not from greedy corporations whom have a message delivered to us in advertising with their profits in mind, but rather we source our peer reviewed content about these brands and products. Our Social Networks have shifted the power to the consumer.

We are now able to stay in touch with more than our 150 social relationships with such a high quality of detail, which we no longer need to worry about distance as a barrier to this connection. Instead, we now follow, interact, reach out and influence those whom are of most interest to us.

The human social brain didn’t stop growing in our bodies because our brains stopped growing. We built Online Social Networks to allow our species to maintain its lead on the rapidly changing and driving technologies we created and evolved.

Therefore, Online Social Networking has brought many great advantages to our species. It has helped us rapidly advance well ahead by maintaining our greater power of knowledge over our social relationships and allowed our brains the capacity to compute our daily activities, which come with living in a social world.

Welcome to the next stage of human evolution. The internet and our Social Networks are now an extension of our human brains.

As always, Share + Enjoy

Follow me on Twitter: @cosmicrami

#SocialBrain

We all have some form of social networks in our lives, be it Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr …. We can’t seem to stop using them. It’s where our friends and families are, it’s where our work colleagues are and most importantly – it’s where our customers are.

So how do we capture this rapidly growing market for our business? Easy! Build a Social Network within a Social Network – much like the Russian Babushka dolls.

I call this the Social Network Babushka Effect. It’s not hard to do, any business can utilise the already existing infrastructure and the model is already proven to be successful.

To do so there is no need to hire a whole development team to build an entire social network around your business, rather look at using the existing social networks to create your content and utilise the free tools available. It won’t take long to develop, and your customer base is already out there awaiting you to deliver some quality content that relates directly to them. From there, they will do all the marketing for you, as these networks spread virally.

The winning factor in developing your own social network is to carefully plan it out, build it around upcoming events and always conceptualise your strategy.

Take the time to plan out what your customers are wanting now and in the future. Think about what content you would deliver through this social network, and pre-plan all your blogs, your campaigns and the goals you want to achieve. Then plan how you will measure your success, what metrics you will track and how often you will make these measurements.

Think about any upcoming events e.g. conferences, gatherings, concerts that your plan can relate to and plan out how this can relate back to your social network. This process helps you develop a strategy that allows you to stay on top of the rapidly changing environment and drive your message clearly from start to end.

Then comes the easy part. Build this into your Social Media Strategy and Marketing Plan and go for it! Have your Social Media employees build the campaign (using tools such as Facebook Connect) and send it out to your client base, tweet about it, make reference to it on your blog and website, tell your family and friends about it and before you know it, it will grow organically.

Whilst this isn’t a new concept, there have been a few examples of how this has worked very well for many businesses.

Intel recently launched the ‘Museum of Me’ application, which basically sources the data straight from your Facebook. Intel didn’t develop the infrastructure to use they simply collated the existing data and built a social network that applies within Facebook to give users exactly what they want – a beautifully categorised art exhibition (including soundtrack!) to share with friends and family.

Today, Lady Gaga launches her Social Network within a Social Network campaign to allow her ‘little monsters’ the chance to win tickets to her exclusive and intimate Sydney concert on July 13. This Babushka Social Network already utilises all the features of Facebook: likes, photo sharing, tagging, viral marketing and the content is created by the users themselves – uploading photos of themselves to win tickets to her concert. The key to Gaga’s success of this social network within a social network is that it is well planned out (Strategy to promote her new album ‘Born This Way’), it’s all about the content driver (users) and it links to her upcoming events (Sydney Exclusive Concert).

The benefits of the Social Networks Babushka Effect is that it is very cheap to develop for all businesses, it taps into an existing massive market where your consumers are currently spending their time, and it provides them with content that they can share with people whom have common interests.

All whilst your business, brand and social media portfolio gain lots of exposure, digital equity and increased online trust and reach.

So businesses should start to think about what they can do for their upcoming campaigns, and how to factor in a social network within the social networks that can help drive their messages to their target markets through social media.

This can help boost social media consumer bases, help provide valuable direct customer feedback and help spread the word virally for your business brand / image / message.

By building a Babushka Social Network, you are increasing your presence in Social Media and thereby enhancing your reach, trust, influence and engagement with your consumers. There really isn’t much more importance in Social Media marketing these days, then to grab a share of the market that is awaiting you to deliver the goods!

As always, Share + Enjoy

Follow me on Twitter: @cosmicrami