Before I tackle the “Big 3″ as I like to refer to them (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn), I’d like to provide my findings on the social networking service that could make the “Big 3″ become the “Big 4″: Google+. To be perfectly honest, when I started using Google+ a few months ago, I wasn’t particularly “WOWed” by it; however, I thought I’d give it a chance and take a closer look. Plus, ignoring Google is probably not the smartest thing for an aspiring marketing diva like myself to do.
What is Google+?
Google+ (a.k.a. Google Plus or G+) is a social networking service operated by search engine giant Google, Inc. G+ is a relatively new service as it was just launched last June and, according to Reuters, just passed the 90 million mark in its number of users. That’s nothing compared to Facebook’s 800 million users, but hey, it’s a pretty impressive start.
How does Google+ work?
If you’re familiar with Facebook, figuring out Google+ shouldn’t be too difficult as it has many similarities. Users create a profile containing “About Me”-like information: educational and work experience, interests, activities, etc. As with Facebook, G+ users connect with other G+ users by adding them to their network; however, unlike Facebook, other users don’t have to approve you before you can connect with them on G+ as G+ users control what information they allow certain groups of users to see. These groups are known as “Circles“. There are four different types of Circles: “Friends”, “Family”, “Acquaintances” and “Following”, and users can add other users to their Circles accordingly as well as create custom Circles based on their own preferences. Once added to a Circle, the user receives a notification and can choose whether to add the other user to their own Circles.
As with Facebook, G+ users can post content for other users to see, such as links to websites, pictures, videos, or just a status update of what they’re doing. The beauty of G+ is that you can select which Circles you’d like to see whatever you’re posting, so if you’d like to share something with the people in your Friends Circle that you’d prefer your Grandmother in your Family Circle not see, you can select the Friends Circle before posting that update to your Stream, which is the G+ version of Facebook’s News Feed. Something most folks who write about G+ don’t mention, however, is that Facebook also has this functionality (in a different format, of course), but only for personal users and not for businesses and organizations that have Facebook Pages, which I’ll cover at a later date.
How might Google+ benefit business?
In addition to personal profiles I described above, G+ also enables businesses and other organizations to create profiles called Google+ Pages (ring a bell?), which were just released last November. G+ Pages offer room for an organization’s basic description, contact information, photos and videos. A Page’s Circles are quite fittingly named “Customers”, “VIPs”, “Team Members” and “Following”, and businesses can post updates, links, pictures, videos and the like to their Stream and control the content they’d like each Circle to see. This proves particularly awesome when wanting to, for example, offer a special deal only to VIP customers and not to regular customers. You can also target content that’s relevant to certain customers but not others, enhancing the clarity and focus of your messaging.
Businesses also have the option of publishing their content to the public using their G+ Page, which I hear significantly enhances the speed in which your messaging reaches search engines, often even faster than your own website. In my opinion, this may be Google+’s biggest benefit to businesses and one that Facebook doesn’t and will probably never have.
Another much-celebrated feature of G+ is the “Hangout” feature, which enables video conference calling among users and businesses in their Circles. To my understanding, Facebook does offer a video chat feature in conjunction with Skype, but it doesn’t have conferencing capabilities and is currently unavailable to businesses with Facebook Pages.
You may have seen Google+’s social sharing button, the +1 Button (pictured right). This is basically the Google+ equivalent of Facebook’s “Like” button or Twitter’s “Tweet” button, allowing users to send content from websites and blogs to their respective profiles for their followers on each service to see. When you put a +1 Button on your business’ website, blog and other online content, you allow site visitors to give their “public stamp of approval” by sharing your business’ content with their Circles, providing a free, “word of mouth-esque” endorsement for your business.
For further information on Google+’s benefits for businesses, check out Hubspot’s excellent free guide “How to Use Google+ for Business” as well as the other resources I’ve listed on the References page.
On a personal note…
Conducting this investigation on Google+ was actually pretty difficult as it’s hard to understand a social networking service that hardly any of your friends or family members are using (and no, this doesn’t mean I don’t have any friends, thank you very much). The G+ Circle concept sounds great, but I can’t really know how awesome Circles really are in practice when I have only a handful of people and businesses to put in them. I manage a G+ Page of a community organization in addition to their Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, and posting content to their G+ Page is more of an afterthought for me as the G+ audience is virtually non-existent (where are these 90 million users?!?). This will hopefully change over time as G+ becomes more popular, but that brings me to the question: will G+ achieve a level of popularity that justifies its coexistence with Facebook? Do we really need two virtually identical social media service giants? Is there room for two?
Until next time…
CASE CLOSED?
