Why Your Business Can’t Afford to Forget About Google+
November 23, 2012
Still not sold on Google+? Social media consultant Jesse Stay explains why you’re missing out on some crucial opportunities to take your social media strategy to the next level.
Wondering what your business can gain from Google+? In this Q&A (adapted from a previously recorded Labcast), social media expert Jesse Stay, author of Google+ for Dummies breaks down the pluses and minuses. With plenty of tips to help companies hit the ground running with Google+, including SEO ideas and insights, Stay explains why choosing to ignore the platform is to do so at your peril.
How has Google+ integrated itself into the social media landscape? And what is it that you like about Google+ in terms of social media marketing for B2B companies?
Well, the huge advantage to Google+ is that it’s Google. We’re seeing it more and more as they slowly continue to integrate Google+ into every product they own. Not only is Google now requiring users to have Google+ accounts as they join, they’re also enabling those with Google+ accounts to see their friends’ posts in search results. That means being on Google+ as a business is advantageous as a search engine optimization strategy in addition to a social strategy.
So, there are huge advantages to being on Google+ as a business right now.
What kind of advice can you provide companies looking to harness the power of Google+? Who should do what?
If your CEO were to have an account, it would be a great way to provide a transparent element around how he or she is leading the company. Or maybe you have an evangelist of sorts who represents the company who can provide an internal, much more personal view into the company. Those are two examples of how you would use a personal Google+ account to generate exposure for people within your business.
Now for the business account, it looks a lot like a personal account. It’s set up by an individual who becomes an admin. Then that business account can circle other individuals, which is the Google+ equivalent of following on Twitter or liking on Facebook.
As a business account, there are great ways you can segment your audience by creating separate circles, and that enables you to deliver specific, targeted messages (you can do this with a personal account, as well). You can also set up your own Google+ hangouts with the business account that bring specific individuals from your business into the experience. In some ways, a business account is going to be more limited, but it’s a great way to represent your brand as a more anonymous entity than the personal account.
How should a company’s approach to Google+ differ from its approach to Facebook and Twitter?
Google+ has a different audience than Facebook, and you’re going to need to take a slightly different strategy than you do on Facebook. You want to find similar ways to engage your audience to get them conversing and commenting and +1′ing your posts, which would be the equivalent to a Facebook like. But beyond that, your audience is going to be different.
Facebook is generally a much more personal audience. When you’re targeting on Facebook, you’re targeting people and their close family and friends. Whereas on Google+ you are targeting a much more professional and business oriented audience. Google+ has a somewhat weighted group of photographers, for instance, as one of their audiences.
What will businesses looking into Google+ find unique about the platform, in your opinion?
I think it’s a great opportunity for small businesses out there to get a little more attention towards their brand and to show their expertise, what they can do, and how they can do it. I think the consulting realm — the professionals who have specific expertise, like photographers, for instance — are a typical audience for Google+. At the same time, you’re starting to see more and more celebrities joining Google+, as well as journalists.
So, in many ways your audience for Google+ is going to be a lot more similar to the audience of Twitter than Facebook. Again, your strategy of posting may be similar, but your audience and your target demographic is going to be much different that Facebook.
And what about the SEO benefits of using Google+? Is Google giving content connected to its own social media platform preferential treatment?
From my experience, I’ve seen that if your brand has a Google+ page and my friends have +1′d a particular post on your brand’s page, if it has to do with the thing I’m searching for on Google, it will rank higher than many of the other posts.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that when you post something on Google+ it can appear within Google search results within about 30 seconds, whereas for traditional static content — depending on what it is and how quickly the Google bot indexes the content — can take anywhere from minutes to even 30 minutes to appear. So, it’s much more real time. If you need things to appear immediately in search results, Google+ is a great strategy for approaching that.
Jesse Stay is a social media technologist, consultant, and the author of Google+ for Dummies. He is the founder and CEO of Stay N’ Alive Productions and currently serves as the Director of Social Media for Deseret Digital Media. Follow him on Twitter @Jesse or find him at +JesseStay.