If you aren’t part of the discussion… who’s in control of your brand? Google’s Sidewiki is an often neglected part of Social Media analysis and reputation management. It’s available as part of the Google Toolbar and in the as-yet nascent Google Chrome Browser market. Volume of users that *could* be engaged? The last estimated usage figures for Google’s Toolbar, that I recall seeing, were in 2003, and were in the millions, then. You can find the Sidewiki as a plugin for the Google Chrome browser – a little under 10,000 downloads when I checked, to write this article. These are sizable potential audiences. Is it used? Does it matter?
Here’s what happens to a large brand that hasn’t taken control of their brand presence.
Contrast that with, erm, someone else…
So there’s apparently unknown and ignored discussion about the brand, visible when the brand’s web site is visited. The potential audience for usage of the Sidewiki is possibly on the same order as the volume that uses FaceBook. Google hasn’t pushed it hard. It could be integrated with Buzz, I think.
See a risk? See some potential? If you aren’t managing Sidewiki, especially as a major brand, go claim control by logging in to your Google Webmaster Console and creating your branding message. Then monitor and contribute, just like any other social medium… but that’s an article for another day!
Any guesses as to why Apple might have missed this trick? I suspect that it may be because the Google Toolbar is available for MSIE and FireFox, and the plugin is available for Chrome… But Safari has no way to surface this content. If a technologically sophisticated brand with good media management skills has missed the opportunity to engage with the audience, care to guess how many other brands have managed to engage?
Here’s Google’s promotional video from last year:
Oh, and time from publication to seeing a Google alert for this article? Five minutes. It took Google five whole minutes to spot the article.
