What is Google Plus, how does it work and – more importantly – what do you need to do about it? Mark Barrett, search marketing consultant at Base One, provides the key information you need to know
In September 2011 the gates were opened and anyone over the age of 18 was allowed to create a Google Plus profile. By October user numbers had reached 40 million. More recently Google allowed businesses to create brand profile pages, something that the search giant referenced at the launch of the service, and that’s creating much buzz among both B2C and B2B brands alike.
How it works
Google Plus was initially described by early adopters as a direct challenge to Facebook’s dominance. Once the platform had been scrutinised further, it became apparent that Google had positioned the platform to sit between Facebook and Twitter, adopting some of the aspects that have made these platforms successful. While profiles are similar to Facebook, connecting with people has more similarities to Twitter.
One of Google Plus’ major and much publicised selling points is its ‘circles’ function. These are in essence categories or groups, into which you can place individuals based upon their relationship to you. Circles can be created and customised to suit personal preferences. General examples would be a colleague circle where you would place the people you work with in your company. Additionally you could create a circle for your industry’s leaders, into which you would place the profiles of any industry heads whose information and insight interests you.
Once your circles are in place, they serve a double purpose. You can limit your status stream to a certain circle. So if you’re only interested in what your colleagues have to say, you can select that circle and you’ll only see their updates in your stream.
The other purpose of circles is to limit which users see what you share. You can make a post or update public, so that anyone following you will be able to see it, or you can limit your post or update to a specific circle. This means that only people in that specific circle will be able to see the update in their stream.
Another key functionality of the platform is ‘hangouts’, which allows up to 10 Google Plus users to collaborate in real-time, whether that’s sharing best practice or thought-leadership, or watching a YouTube video of a product demonstration and talking your customer through it as you watch it together.
What next for Google Plus?
With the initial honeymoon period all but over, it’s hard to address the initial success of the platform. With 40 million users, Google Plus is still significantly behind Facebook, which boasts over 800 million users worldwide and Twitter on 100 million active users.
Google seems to be responding to user feedback well, allowing the platform to develop in a user inclusive way, which is the polar opposite of Facebook’s ‘We’re changing this. Don’t like it? Leave!’ approach that continually angers users.
An example of this is the addition of business brand pages, which has appeased marketers, although they are somewhat limited and will require further development to become an effective marketing tool. It is speculated that Google algorithm (which decides at which rank a company website appears) will be affected positively if there is a link-up between your website and Google Plus,
or your Google Plus page itself will rank highly.
Google Plus pages will be developed to allow more control by brands, which will fuel further growth. As with most Google products, the future of Google Plus is shrouded and will continue to keep marketers on their toes as they try to anticipate Google’s intentions and respond accordingly.
At the time of writing, this new social media platform shows signs of promise but ultimately its viability as a marketing tool will be determined by how great the uptake is.
One thing is for sure; Google Plus has joined the social media turf war and has made strong inroads. Time will tell if it catches up to Facebook and Twitter.
What should you do right now?
- The first step is to set yourself up on the platform. Create a profile and familiarise yourself with the different aspects of Google Plus.
- Use the circles function to connect with, and categorise your friends, colleagues and contacts to understand this functionality better.
- Create a brand page. If you are responsible for your company’s social media marketing activity, set up a business page and populate it with information and news relating to your company.
- Link your business page to your website through the ‘Get Started’ section on your Google Plus page. This will involve adding a snippet of code to your website but it is the way to authenticate your page and tie it to your website.
@markdbarrett
