Before we go any further I have a disclaimer to make. I LOVE Google+. There… I said it. Now, you may be wondering what am I doing writing about a social network that everyone eulogized ages ago… Well, Google+ is not dead. In fact, it is very much alive and it offers great insights and tools for marketers and entrepreneurs.
Usually when you’re trying to decide whether or not working with Google+ is something worth considering, the most obvious reason to vote for Google+ is SEO…. Everyone knows that since it’s a Google product, the content will be indexed and it’s likely to boost your website’s visibility in search results. This approach, however, barely scratches the tip of the iceberg and often leads to brands just setting up a page, empty of content and forgetting about it – a ghost – which is just about the worst thing you can have in social media.
Balance
Google+ offers, in my opinion, a great balance between the friendliness and “sociability” of Facebook and the matter-of-fact business orientation of LinkedIn. When you start spending time on Google+ you will see lots of interesting people and posts about anything and everything from great photography and recipes to business strategy articles and industry news in many niches. What you’re not likely to see are posts about someone’s latest vacation or public comments and communications between family members. You’re more likely to see things people genuinely care about and share out of sheer interest in interaction and engagement.
Visibility
I know I said “other than the obvious SEO”, but when I say “visibility” I mean much more than search engine results. A Google+ brand page that is built correctly and connected correctly to both your website and a YouTube channel (another thing most brands miss completely!) becomes a powerful tool that drives traffic to your content and to your website – even when people do not follow you! You see, on Google+ people can view the content in its fullest and interact with it without following you or your page. They can follow “collections” (a new tool Google+ introduced about a year ago which is an awesome content curation option) without following the entire brand page, they can +1 and share it, read it and tag friends even without following you. Connecting your page to your YouTube channel, means that every video you upload is automatically posted to your Google+ page, saving you a lot of time and promoting your video on two channels at the same time. Google+ supports hashtags (unlike LinkedIn for example) and they are used in a smart way (smarter than Facebook for sure!) for content discovery with a great algorithm that suggest connected hashtags and keywords based on trends (it is Google after all). You can get seen without too much effort and that is a great power.
Networking as a brand
This one is a fact I keep repeating and I am always surprised at how many people are simply oblivious to it: Google+ is the only social network allowing you to network and operate in groups (Google+ calls it “communities) as your brand! On Facebook and LinkedIn for example, you cannot go into a group with your company page. Only with your personal profile. Not so on Google+! You can actually join communities as your brand identity and have the page post and interact in groups. This is one of the most awesome and powerful tools out there, and yet so few brands make use of it! Google+ has many communities about lots of topics, some small and some with hundreds of thousands of members and they are all active and alive. I cannot think of a better way to engage as a brand with many people who are interested in what I have to say at once!
There are more very good reasons to love Google+ and use it. I cannot list them all in one post (I wish I could write all day long, but I need to get some work done too!), but if you’re in Israel you can join one of the Social Media Marketing courses I teach (connect with me to learn when & where the next one will be) and if you’re somewhere else in the world and would like to know more… we’re about to start some very special “sounding board” sessions for entrepreneurs, founders, marketing managers and CEOs who want to run their ideas by us, get feedback and learn from us.
Want to use us as your sounding board?
Drop us a line to let us know you’re interested!
