Google Plus vs Facebook vs Twitter vs LinkedIn: The Grand Experiment!

take take take take enjoyment. Welcome to Social Business unplugged, helping you understand in plain English how to best leverage social media for your business. And now, here's the founder of windmill networking. Neal Schaffer. Greetings, everybody, Neal Schaffer, and I am coming to you today from Tokyo, Japan. I am almost done with my on upon airways brand ambassador trip to Okinawa. And I thought I'd take this opportunity for one last time to be able to present to you from overseas where actually I can look down from my hotel window and see cherry blossoms in full bloom. It's actually very rare that you would see cherry blossoms and full bloom this early in Tokyo. Anyway, it is a serendipity in which we begin our podcast. Today I'm going to talk about the differences. Well, one big difference between Facebook and Google Plus. And I'm also going to bring in my on upon airways brand ambassador trip as well as this notion of experimentation in social media to give you a fuller and deeper description of the really unique professional community that is developing on Google Plus a community very different than LinkedIn. But I believe for every professional has inherent benefits to become a member of if you haven't seen those so far. So well. Let's start this last week in Japan in Okinawa, with my fellow ama brand ambassadors has really changed the way that I look at Google Plus what I started doing for the first time actually is whatever I posted on Facebook, I would just post on Google Plus. Now I was sharing a lot of photos from Okinawa, the people the sights, the places we stayed what have you, but my fellow brand ambassadors Yukari. Peerless John, I can never pronounce his last name correctly. And he'll kill me for that if you ever listen to this, but I doubt he ever Well, he's a busy guy, John, pods that zenoss And Kelly Lewis. Now John and Kelly are from Geek Beat TV. So if you're a geek or you into gadgets and tech reviews, they're very, very well known. They also have from the first day strategically invested in Google plus, now John has 37,500 people in a circles not too shabby. Kelly, who is a former model has 1,985,000 people in her circles. To put that in perspective, my mariachi musician client has a little bit over 1 million Twitter followers, that's seen as being pretty significant in Mexico, he would be in the top 50, in terms of people with followers, Kelly Lewis, and Google Plus has double that. So first of all, you start to see hopefully a difference there. There's very few musicians that are even on Google Plus. And if they are on most of them, with the exception of a few like Britney Spears that have nowhere near that sort of number. But really, when we start looking behind that, we start seeing that Google Plus has developed to be in a very, very different community. In fact, I was talking to Kelly yesterday about the differences between Google Plus communities, LinkedIn groups, Google Plus is a bit Twitter because it's very public. It's also a bit LinkedIn, because it's actually very professional in a different way. And over the last 12 months, I think that a lot of people have felt that their LinkedIn user experience has been well, for lack of a better word to has taken a turn for the worse, whether it's the introduction of new features, getting new emails that they didn't end up subscribing for, or didn't originally subscribe for, or just the never ending spam, the never ending self promotion that we see. LinkedIn also has some technical infrastructure issues, meaning that sometimes when I try to reply to someone who commented on status update, I can't I go to a blank page. And when I commented on that on Google Plus, actually, a few other people said they have the same experience. Google Plus, actually is probably the most technically advanced social networking platform, the only one where you can engage from your phone very, very easily. You can do that on other networks. But the addition of being able to do that within Gmail for us Google Mail is what really sets Google Plus apart. Also just firm control. If you see spam and a comment, it's very easy to report that person. You can also easily moderate communities and what have you. So you'll see the part Twitter part LinkedIn. But the reason why I'm really excited about Google Plus as a professional networking platform that someday may surpass LinkedIn is the nature of the people and the nature of the conversation. So this is where I want to introduce this part about experimentation. How do you experimented social media I always talk about the need for never ending experimentation in social media because it's always changing. So here's a good one. Now John is an awesome photographer. He's an awesome man for for many different skills. But he really is a skilled photographer. He took a picture of me in Okinawa after we had gone snorkeling, and I was in a casual mood, and it's sort of a funny picture, but it's really a good looking picture because I don't have many good looking pictures of me. I threw it up once again, I posted on Google Plus I posted on Facebook, I said, Hey, truth be told Hold the wind. And I'm actually repeating what I what I wrote. Truth be told the Wizard of many things John positas took this picture of me at the hoshinoya resort and taketomi Island, Okinawa, Japan. As you can see, I was in a casual mood. So I'm going to let you decide should I use this as my new profile pic? Please comment yea or nay now, on Google Plus, I specifically have a profile pic, which is aligned with what I have on Twitter and LinkedIn then as for SEO best practices that said that your Google Plus profile image should really match the profile images that most represent you throughout the internet. So that's what I use now on Facebook. And on Empire Avenue. I've always used a more playful image of me using my fingers as a frame and still on my suit. But it's obviously a little bit more playful for those more playful environments. So just to see how far Google Plus has come when I put up this photo, and I did the same thing on Facebook. I'm just going to give you some of the comments that I got from people just to give you an idea of the difference in the atmosphere between the two networks. So Google Plus Thomas Finley, awesome guy, one of my biggest fans, I think we all have fans out there friends, people in our network that end up sharing a lot of what we do in social media. Thomas Finley is one of these people that I have never had the the honor to meet. I hope to soon you know his comment name Neal Schaffer, although I do like to pick in the casual mood, Kenneth munus. And another great guy named Neal Schaffer. For me it's a disconnect from your brand in my opinion, Devin Whitfield and other one of my biggest supporters nay it's very convertible but doesn't match your brand image. My windmill networking contributor for social media influence Raymond Moran height, but only if you decided to launch a new FaceBook Fanpage to express that punk rocker sport fan and you and Elise Hernan, another one of my big fans and big supporters, especially on Google Plus, and Twitter, I don't know if I would have recognized you without the name fun to see but agree with most here, not your brand style. And then Judy gamida, my social media public relations contributor and women on that where he now you're not wearing a blue t shirt. Very true. Now, I mentioned that I posted this exact same thing on Facebook. So let's see what the people on Facebook said in comparison to that. And I think you all have a pretty good idea about what's going to be said, it just goes to show you just the different types of people that different relationships that we find the different platforms I mentioned, Google Plus is very close to Twitter, in terms of being this public platform. These are many people similar to Twitter that I have never met, but we share similar interests and we become good friends. So we go to Facebook, the first comment from Serge Lavell, who's also very active in social media in Japan as well as back in Canada after a long long night of car, okay, one of my in laws said yay, Cassandra Trejo, who is one of my mariachi friends said, Yay, friend, you're happy it shows through your eyes. You'll digo que si, Richie. calmo. Another one of my supporters. Another relationship that carried over from Twitter to Facebook. I like it with a smiley face. Roger Marshall. Yay, Roschin Dan, I like it. But like your current one even better. Annie Chang. Yes, Craig. I'm Jamison, my window networking contributor for social media for b2b sales. Well, it would be a step up cheap on check an old colleague yay. Yoriko Yamazaki Carlotta, an old colleague from Japan, yes, Neo with a smiley face. I think there's no better way through this experiment to show you the gap in the conversation some of the people I mean, there's definitely still some overlap of people between Facebook and Google Plus, but you will see that Google Plus has just turned into a much more professional network. And you see also the difference with LinkedIn, there is no place on LinkedIn where I could have done this, I could have posted it on my status update. But there is not nearly as much engagement on status updates, in all honesty, as I see in Google Plus, because Google Plus is all about status updates, it's easy to plus one and comment from your email. With LinkedIn. As I said, it's just not as easy from the user interface perspective. It's more about a static profile than a stream of real time updates. So I hope that gives you some ideas. And by the way, the differences between LinkedIn groups and the professional conversations that can happen there. And the conversations that are happening in Google Plus communities, it's like night and day. This is why I really think if you're into professional networking, and you're not on Google Plus, you're really missing out. I'll stop there because I don't try to spend time trying to convince people to join or not joining social networks, and perhaps you're already on and hopefully you're seeing the light. I appreciate your comments, your support. Please share the link to this podcast with your friends. And we'll be back at you next week with another episode of social business unplugged. Make it a great day, everybody. Bye bye. You've been listening to social business unplugged with Neal Schaffer, social media author, consultant, speaker and university professor. If you'd like any specific topics covered on future episodes, or if you'd like to be interviewed for this podcast, please connect with me by email. Neal at windmill networking.com on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/neal Schaffer and on Twitter at Neal Schaffer. Please also visit windmill networking.com for daily social media. For business updates thanks for listening and make it a great day