As a social media specialist, content creator and aggregator... as a person who measures collective interest in these sites and their product for a living, it's easy to see what makes each site individually appealing. How one site is used versus the other, and how each creates its own style of meaningful connection and ability to interact with other people -- customers, friends, companies; you name it.
But how do you know when you've really got something special on your hand after you come up with an idea for a new network in your dorm room? Is it your first fifty-thousand early adopters? Your first million? Is it when the news begins reporting your impact? When companies can't "exist" without being part of your network?
Nope. All close, but not close enough.
The real testament to a social network's rank? When other social networks use your network as a means to provide information to their users, developers and fans.
You know your social networking site is working when other social networking sites have to create profiles on yours to brand themselves.
— Christella (@christellasays) September 11, 2013
After this moment of clarity (accurately depicted here in a tweet) I went searching. Here's what I found:
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| Pinterest on Twitter - 1.48 M Followers |
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| Google on Twitter - 6.89 M Followers |
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| A "Google on Twitter" list containing all of the offical google twitter accounts -- on Twitter, by Google. 173 Official Accounts. |
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| Some of the List Members of Offical Google Accounts of Google on Twitter, by Google... on Twitter. |
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| A Twitter Page on Facebook. - 10 M Followers |
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| A (slightly underloved) Google Plus page on Facebook. |
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| An Official (and verified!) Google page on Facebook. 14 Million likes. |
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| Official Pinterest page on Facebook. 2.8 M likes. |
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| An Official Twitter Account on Pinterest. Not very many followers. |
It's actually quite humorous if you think of the moment a social network social media marketing team has to decide to officially launch a page on a new social network.
But, in reality... it shouldn't be that funny. Any business should be concerned with staking a claim in what is, for all intents and purposes, theirs. Right now it probably doesn't seem like a big deal to a small business if they have to secure their pages name on Facebook, make sure they're on top of their Google Plus page so they can tie in reviews, or launch a twitter page to connect with local users. In a little while, when they are finally at that step and need to confirm their pages they may have become popular and someone else has reserved those pages.
It has happened to me before. In a large corporate setting, I was the new social media marketing specialist and it was my job to put them on the map, so to speak. Well lo and behold a multi-million dollar company's name isn't available anymore. Of course not! Someone thought to take it for themselves, whether intentionally or not.
The process in trying to attain any previously registered name for your business can be time consuming and often doesn't even yield results. Often times businesses just have to choose another name altogether, if they didn't agree to pay through the nose for the one they wanted originally.
My advice to you (and to emerging social networks out there!) is to stake a claim in whatever you can... now. When they're still a good chance what you want is available for the claiming. Develop your brand with these things in mind.
My other advice? You really don't need 173 different pages that all essentially do the same thing. Er... unless you're Google. ;)
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