Although Google Buzz is being phased out (and merged with Google+) businesses can now add themselves to Google+

From the Google Blog:

For businesses and brands, Google+ pages help you connect with the customers and fans who love you. Not only can they recommend you with a +1, or add you to a circle to listen long-term. They can actually spend time with your team, face-to-face-to-face. All you need to do is start sharing, and you’ll soon find the super fans and loyal customers that want to say hello.

A number of pages are already available (see below), but any organization will soon be able to join the community at plus.google.com/pages/create.

Direct Connect from Google search
People search on Google billions of times a day, and very often, they’re looking for businesses and brands. Today’s launch of Google+ Pages can help people transform their queries into meaningful connections, so we’re rolling out two ways to add pages to circles from Google search. The first is by including Google+ pages in search results, and the second is a new feature called Direct Connect.

Maybe you’re watching a movie trailer, or you just heard that your favorite band is coming to town. In both cases you want to connect with them right now, and Direct Connect makes it easy—even automatic. Just go to Google and search for [+], followed by the page you’re interested in (like +Angry Birds). We’ll take you to their Google+ page, and if you want, we’ll add them to your circles.

That sounds like a good SEO opportunity to me!  HubSpot also do a good write up on Google+ for business and how to add yourself.

Stats, stats, it’s all about stats at the moment.  This one is on the current state of play on LinkedIn for those who are needing B2B info.

LinkedIn is definitely a B2B platform – at its most basic used by professionals as an online CV.  There are still more males than females who are members, but now younger people seem to be joining (25 to 34 year olds being as big a proportion as the 35 to 55 year olds who have joined LinkedIn)

Unsurprisingly America has the largest chunk of the pie chart as far as membership but Australia has 2.3 million members (over double what it was a year ago) and is in the top 10 countries on LinkedIn.  Not bad considering the relatively small population in Australia – and not to be underestimated as to what LinkedIn can do for a business.

From a health perspective, 8.6% of industries on LinkedIn are medical – although what ‘medical’ encompasses is another matter (only 3.5% of jobs on Linkedin are medical)

Thanks to @RazChorev to alerting me to this on twitter

Smart move by LinkedIn

You can now visualize your LinkedIn network with InMaps.  Smart Move LinkedIn.

Here is what my LinkedIn network looks like – the larger the circle the larger that person’s network and influence. Now I’ve just got to figure out the labels.  This is still in the LinkedIn Labs – but great idea.

More here at Mashable LinkedIn inMaps

We have been collecting some data on what questions businesses in Sydney are asking about social media. Some are too good (and revealing) not to share. Here is a selection :

Internal Issues using Social Media

• How do I obtain meetings with senior managers & HR managers via Social Networking?
• How can you encourage internal staff to promote, follow and engage in the social media accounts your business is using
• How are large organisations using social media to interact with staff and/or clients

• How can social media be successfully integrated within a company’s website
• What type of training is needed for those involved in ongoing management, namely Marketing and HR
• How to integrate social media into existing/traditional channels i.e. trade press, advertising, events.

Top 5 things NOT to do with social media

• What are the risks and pitfalls?
• What are the costs?
• What tools are needed?
• What about privacy issues?

Requests for Detailed case studies

• How are other people using social media as part of their business strategies
• Specifically what plans were devised, how were they applied, managed and reviewed.
• Successes and Failures
• Examples of where businesses had a clear objective and were able to measure a result

Demographics:

• Which are the important social media platforms in Australia?
• How do you determine good communication via social media platforms? Is it quantity or quality of followers?
• How do you get your target group to follow your social media activities?

Business Use of Social Media

• How do you grow your network / business awareness online whilst protecting your valuable relationships from competitors?
• Which is the best platform, what is the best communication strategy and how to boost the number of fans/followers.
• How do I generate leads via Social Networking?

• How can I promote our services without looking like I’m flogging them?
• Is there a general ‘social media” framework that I can preview before deciding to go down that path (and spending the $ necessary to implement).
• How often and what type of information should I be communicating with my network

• Where is the Social Networking phenomenon going next?

Some of these are sterling questions.  To answer these Beyond Digital Media and Taurus Marketing are teaming up and holding ‘Not Just Another Social Media Seminar’ breakfast. Whether you can or can’t attend, the questions themselves show the how difficult some of this is for people in business.

The seminar itself is business oriented, no fluffy stuff, and the speakers both use social media professionally: Tim Molloy (General Manager Online for MYOB – business and accounting software) and Iggy Pintado (Author, Director of Marketing).

When: Friday 12 November 7.30 -9.30am at the Observatory Hotel. More info and to book here.

Australian LinkedIn Statistics

2010

LinkedIn is the largest networking site for professionals in Australia and New Zealand [1]. LinkedIn Australia’s managing director is Clifford Rosenberg, a former Yahoo! Australia-New Zealand managing director, who joined in November, located in Sydney.

• Worldwide LinkedIn has over 70 million members in over 200 countries [2]
• There are 970,000 professionals on LinkedIn as of January 2010 [3]
• Australian LinkedIn growth was in double digits over 2009 [1]
• Australia is one of LinkedIn’s top performing countries, particularly when viewed as a factor of professionals per capita [3]

More Web Metrics

References

[1] http://blog.linkedin.com/2009/12/03/linkedin-australia
[2] http://press.linkedin.com/about
[3] http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/linkedin-pushes-local-growth-social-networking/story-e6frgakx-1225835816746