By Cheryl Salazar, The Partner Marketing Group
I speak to many skeptics about Google+. So much so it reminds me of the days when people viewed Facebook with a lot of suspicion – that is before we all jumped on board and used it as a platform to communicate the number of times we worked out, what the kids ate for dinner, where we were travelling, etc. Remember those days? So you may ask yourself, why do we have yet another social property to care about?
Why should you care?
Well, if statistics are something to go by – and they usually are – over 500 million people are connecting to Google+ now and according to Forbes.com, Google+ now has the 2nd largest active follower base after Facebook. So if you’re looking for ‘reach’ then this property is definitely a place for you to participate and engage with your prospects.
What’s different?
There are many things about Google+ that are ‘different’ from the other social properties and I’ll go into them in future blogs. Unlike Facebook and to some extent, LinkedIn, you have the ability to really target your audience through creating ‘circles’. You can create circles of existing companies you work with, or prospective companies you’re trying to reach, or publishers you represent to keep abreast of product updates.
By targeting your social posts and your messages you gain the ability to post into the circle that is most relevant to your content. For example, if you build a nonprofit circle, you can post your latest nonprofit blog, event update or nonprofit news to that audience only without unleashing meaningless information on everyone who follows you.
The same concept would apply to communicating with your existing customers. Product tips ‘n tricks, updates, service announcements and so on make ideal posts for this circle. You could also utilize circles to communicate with vendors, partners and internal employees should you wish.
What about your search engine rankings?
There is no doubt that your Google+ profile will start to impact your search rankings over time as more and more people move over to the platform. With Google’s ownership of YouTube, the focus on paid search, improving search algorithms and investment in the overall platform, you can’t afford to ignore the potential that Google+ has to help you reach your prospects.
I encourage, and often push, my clients to create a Google+ property. I definitely find challenges with finding companies on Google+ to add to my circles as adoption by companies is a little slower in certain industries versus other industries. You have to make sure you revisit your circles often and continue to grow them to increase your followers and +1’s.
The next series of blogs will go into Google+ in more detail so stay tuned.
