Digital Marketing Blog

Google+ 5 Months Later - Should Brands Care?

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Since its initial launch, Google + has made plenty of waves in a very crowded social media ocean. As a digital marketing agency we found it impossible to avoid the initial flood of Google + reviews, critiques and endorsements as they jockeyed for position throughout twitter streams, news tickers and blogs across the web. 

However it wasn’t long until the chaos surrounding Google+ began to subside, leaving many wondering if there was any real need for yet another social networking site? 

Within a month of its launch Google+ would soon claim upwards of 10 million users but many doubted the true staying power or long term impact of Google +. Does anyone recall Google Buzz or Orkut?  Each of these efforts was met with varying degrees of success and commanded the attention you would expect of a product released by a company like Google.  However, both have dropped pretty far off the radar, if not completely.

Fast forward four months down the road to October.  Google+ has quadrupled their user base to an estimated 40 million but much like its predecessors, the dark shadow of a quiet hype-less post-launch  was growing larger and darker by the day. Detractors grew in numbers, “nay-sayers” typed their vindictive “Told-You-So’s” vigorously and the online buzz returned, but this time it to pose the question, “Has Facebook’s lead competitor fallen to the wayside?”

Open for Business

Then in November of this year Google+ announced some exciting news; that the much-anticipated Google+ “Pages” was now officially open to the public, finally allowing businesses to connect with users of the network. 

The strategic integration of many Google+ tools and features into Google’s various other web services, has quickly furthered consumer awareness efforts, increased the network’s user base and threatens to accelerate Google+ past the phase of just early-adopters to a place no-other Google social network has ventured before – the main stream. 

With Google+ now open to businesses, Google has begun the strategic integration of many of their new social network’s tools into a variety of their other web services such as Gmail, Google Apps and their all-powerful Google search engine.  With a user base steadily growing and awareness at an all-time high, there are a number of Google+ tools and features that companies should be taking advantage of.

Direct Connect: Earlier this month, Google+ Direct Connect was released as an effective way to tie together Google’s search engine with the Google+ network.  Now when a user inserts the “+” symbol before a brand’s name in a Google search, a link to that company’s Google+ account will appear just below the search box above all other search results.  Additionally, by hitting the “enter” key users will be brought directly to the brand’s Google+ profile.

+Keywords: Features such as +keywords, which is rumored to be slated for release, will give users the ability to find people by +keyword searches and filter the content they wish to view. Essentially this feature will function quite a bit like Twitter’s #hashtag system.  Similarly, if leveraged properly +keywords will assist brands to discover and engage within trending topics as well as appear in relevant social media searches.

Circles: These are individually organized groups for sharing information, and can allow businesses to communicate more effectively to their audience through message segmentation.  The marketing benefits of delivering resonant, relevant and audience-specific communications alone makes a strong case for the value of Google+ for business use.  Interestingly enough Circles has also been implemented into the Google+ chat system, which means knowing a user’s email address is no longer mandatory for chatting.

Sparks: With Sparks users can easily share information through Google’s search engine direct to their Google+ account, putting the onus on brands to ensure they are monitoring and interacting with mentions of their brand.  Additionally, “Sparks” makes it easier than ever to share web content.  If your business prides itself on thought leadership and providing valuable content within your particular field, then the importance of your web properties’ SEO is most likely going to become even more evident with this development.  

Hangouts: Additionally Hangouts, which allows for up to ten users to video chat simultaneously, has some more operational business benefits.   Web savvy companies could use this feature to host training events, client meetings, or to effectively communicate with a virtual work force.   With the Hangouts feature, the possibilities are limited only by one’s imagination.

Ripples and What’s Hot: The introduction of “Ripples” and “What’s Hot” are relevant to businesses on Google+ as well. The former give marketers a great tool for measuring and refining their content by creating a visual timeline that tracks how any given post is spreading across the social network.  The latter gives marketers the power to track trending topics and is very exciting news given the context of the network wars.

So, is Google+ a worthwhile destination for businesses? Time will surely tell, but it is intriguing to note that whatever position Google+ is currently in the social marketing universe, a user base 40 million strong and growing is hard to ignore.   Given Google’s vast array of wildly popular web services and solutions, their ability to reach and connect millions of users instantly cannot be overlooked.  The internet titan has already flexed its muscles with their initial batch of cross-channel integrations and as Google+ further nests itself within the Google family, its benefits will only become more undeniable and unavoidable. 

Have any of you used Google+ for your business? If so, we’d like to hear about your success or failure with Google+?