In order to get engagement you first need to engage. Don't expect or wait for others to come to you – they will come you need to put the effort in first… so take the first step in reaching out.
Originally shared by +Lee Smallwood
Ghost Town – You're Kidding Right?
I've seen a few posts this week saying that Google+ is still a ghost town. But in fact the very opposite is true…
Yes, there are people receiving little or no engagement on their posts – but that doesn't mean G+ is a ghost town – it means that either:
– Content isn't getting seen
– People may have already read a similar post
– People may not appreciate/understand what was posted
but more than likely:
They're not engaging on other people's content first…
This is like opening a shop in the middle of a field and not building a road to your shop door!
Let's dispel the Ghost Town myth
Using nod3x.com, we analyse what people are interested in across a wide variety of topics on Google+. Each of these topics are saved as Projects Dashboards on +NOD3x and I'd like to share them with you (Statistics are taken over the last 7 days. Depending on when you view the projects the following values may have changed as they are real-time statistics):
– 8,387 posts
– Average 61 seconds between posts
– 2,479 posts contain links
– 4,651 posts are from unique authors
#Fashion & #Shopping http://goo.gl/hkUdMb
– 11,531 posts
– Average 44 seconds between posts
– 4,842 posts contain links
– 4,840 posts are from unique authors
#healthyliving http://goo.gl/sla0Z7
– 10,476 posts
– Average 49 seconds between posts
– 5,011 posts contain links
– 4,658 posts are from unique authors
#MentalHealth http://goo.gl/tOjwdR
– 2,111 posts
– Average 245 seconds between posts
– 764 posts contain links
– 1,316 posts are from unique authors
– 12,732 posts
– Average 37 seconds between posts
– 4173 posts contain links
– 8,526 posts are from unique authors
#Movies & #Television http://goo.gl/tI0OwI
– 24,762 posts
– Average 20 seconds between posts
– 2,474 posts contain links
– 8,365 posts are from unique authors
#Photography http://goo.gl/V5kzy3
– 4,667 posts
– Average 111 seconds between posts
– 1,454 posts contain links
– 3,022 posts are from unique authors
#Politics http://goo.gl/hzUvqj
– 10,147 posts
– Average 51 seconds between posts
– 3,180 posts contain links
– 5,592 posts are from unique authors
– 12,532 posts
– Average 41 seconds between posts
– 4,324 posts contain links
– 4,938 posts are from unique authors
– 2,966 posts
– Average 174 seconds between posts
– 814 posts contain links
– 993 posts are from unique authors
#Technology http://goo.gl/8IBpWs
– 6,779 posts
– Average 76 seconds between posts
– 2,652 posts contain links
– 3,532 posts are from unique authors
– 4,158 posts
– Average 124 seconds between posts
– 1,927 posts contain links
– 1,799 posts are from unique authors
As you can see, there's plenty of people and content talking about those subjects!
Building Roads
In order to get engagement you first need to engage. Don't expect or wait for others to come to you – they will come you need to put the effort in first… so take the first step in reaching out.
If you are one of those people that are receiving little or no engagement try the following:
1) Click on a link for a category that interests you – this will take you through to the NOD3x Project Dashboard
2) Click on the 'Relations' link in the top navigation bar and wait for the graph to open
3) Click on any of the blue dots (nodes) this will open that persons post
4) Leave a meaningful comment if their post motivates you to do so – please don't just say 'Nice post' – how would you feel if you received that on your posts?
5) +1 their post if you like it
6) Repeat this process for as many posts as you have time for
… and finally
If you take the first step something magical happens: when other people, that haven't been getting engagement on their posts, start getting engagement on their content they look to you for ideas on engagement then also start engaging on other people's posts.
Then suddenly you've started a ripple that won't stop unless you do!
Let me know how you get on 🙂
Enjoy your Sunday!
Fairly similar to life itself… Refraining from engagement might offer one explanation why escaping life into social networks more often results in depression rather than joy of acceptance and belonging.
it's like in real life, one needs to engage with others. IMHO G+ hast all the tools to do so, but as a default you're on your own – like your own home w/o internet/phone/TV/open-windows-to-neighbors. You've to turn-on the TV, connect to the Internet, pick up the Phone, open the door/window to your neighbour – unlike FB where IMHO you're being hammered with everything as a default. I think G+ is for more proactive thinking people
You are absolutely right on this one, Max. People want to talk to the resident bad-ass, not the crazy guy with the tinfoil hat who just showed up to the party.
Thanks so much for the re-share +Max Huijgen You know how much I value your opinion so to have you re-share a post really means a lot.
Cheers
You were just spot on in laying the responsibility for engagement on G+ in the hands of the users instead of some secret winning formula AND you offer them a perfect tool to start engaging themselves.
How could I not share it with so much win +Lee Smallwood
Great post and so true +Lee Smallwood +Max Huijgen
Well, I'm making a personal study about my followers using G+ Apis.
I can't say G+ is a Ghost Town, but I can say it's not busy town.
15% of my followers never made a post, only 20% engaged my posts in the last 3 months. 30% didn't make any post in the last 30 days.
I still get more comments on just about anything I post to fb than here, personally, and I've spent a lot more time on Plus over the past two years than FB. And no, it's not strictly fluff and stupidity on FB – I have smart, interesting friends and family including scientists and artists and authors there as well as here. Sure, perhaps I'm "holding it wrong" or perhaps there's some legitimacy to that complaint.
Unfortunately I can't reproduce your stats +Maurizio Ceravolo as I don't have access to 'my followers'. Google only shows me the first 10.000. Very unfortunate limitation.
I can't compare +Angyl Bender as I don't have an account on FB. I seem to have a decent response rate: could I do better on FB?
Max, that would be an awesome trial. I don't think you could replicate the surge of followers from the early circle sharing (and that still seems to be the big dividing point between people that claim "high engagement" or "ghost town" oddly enough, just how much early bootstrapping they got). I'd be happy to be available to answer your questions on the system, contrary to popular rhetoric it's got basically the same set of options available, so that wouldn't be a problem. It would be super interesting to see of someone with your degree of Plus engagement could get the same or better on FB within a year, since most of the narratives are about people who started on FB or Twitter.
+Max Huijgen right, you have much more follower then mine, and there's this limitation.
But get a good sample, you could make a check about the followers of the ten k followers that you see.
Or you can make a check only on the engaging people to find out how many of your 55k follower really engage with your posts.
Check my stats on +CircleCount +Angyl Bender I wasn't active during the early circle sharing. It's 'homegrown' in my case.
It's an interesting idea to actually test it. Could I use duplicate posts +Angyl Bender as adapting to FB culture would be difficult as what I do on G+ is my natural style
Oh good, then it really could be a fair trial!
You could but they would present differently, and I think you'd have to hand-copypasta them because hootsuite and such API cross-posting is only for Plus brand pages. I feel you could probably just copy the entire post to FB, but I'd want to check if there's character limit that would impact you. The picture from link thing you do should work just fine.
+Angyl Bender let's try this as a controlled experiment. Ping me privately and let's see how it should/could be done.
+Max Huijgen it's not "still" a ghost town, it's again a place where the activity experienced by the vast majority does not match up with the claimed total activity (which is why I've always argued that only the relative comparisons matter, of course gplus was never literally a ghost town…).
I actually took the time to do some searches on the linked hashtags, and it turns out that even on the "best of" setting, all but about a dozen or so posts for e.g. #politics are showing no activity at all.
Yes, it's Sunday, but there is a looming political showdown over the u.s. debt ceiling, so one would think that there would be at least some activity on a network that purports to 1) map the interest graph, 2) be the thinking wo/man's network, 3) have 100 if not 100s of millions of "active users".
Same thing goes for the low number of posts required to make it on the "trending topics" top five to ten. That should not be the case of there were even just activity equivalent to Twitter, which is still only used by 20% of u.s. web users. On Twitter it nowadays takes hundreds of mentions of a term to get there, on gplus, dozens…
Blaming the users for this state of affairs is exactly part of the problem, a la Vic's infamous "maybe you're using it wrong".
Addendum: businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-twitter-is-still-very-small-2013-9
/cc +Alexander Becker my previous comment
Also, some people have a hard time engaging folk because they strive to be perfect. What many don't realize is that rough drafts are better than getting nothing out.
I realize this is a bit off topic, but does anyone else think there is no way that goldfish is going to make it to the other fish bowl?
Ah, angry bird experience translated into fish +Tim Kemp
Lean in, little goldfish.