Google+ Plays an Important Role in Marketing

Google+ was launched on June 28, 2011, as Google’s answer to social media. This was the company’s second attempt after the failure of Google Buzz.  Google+ was slow to gain popularity and many felt it would never fully pan out.

 

Now, three years later, the story is different. Roughly 25% of  internet users are active on Google making it the second largest social network in the world with over 500 million users.More importantly it makes this picture no longer accurate

As a user of social media it might be time to start taking Google+ seriously. As a business you should have set up your Google+ account yesterday. Surprised? Well the reality is Google+ maybe one of the most important social media platforms for businesses and marketers to utilize. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Google+ plays a role in SEO. Having a Google+ business page will increase your visibility on Google.  There are a few reasons why:

• Google takes 1+ (The Google+ version of a “like”) into consideration when deciding your ranking.
• Local Google Plus Pages enhances how your business appears in search results with information like hours, location, and phone number. This makes your business stand out in the results page and allows your customers to quickly and easily reach you.
• Google is starting to incorporate Google+ reviews in their search results.  This again enhances how your business appears on Google and also taps into a much more powerful force: word of mouth marketing. People are much more likely to take advice from a friend than a traditional sales pitch.
• Authorship is a newer feature that allows you to link your original content from all over the internet to your Google+ page. This further helps your content get found.
• When you make a public post using Google+ that content gets indexed by Google and could appear in search results.

This is important as Google is the number one used search engine and 97% of consumers use the site to search for local businesses. If they can’t find you on Google you probably won’t be doing business with them.

2. Circles. This enables you to fine tune who sees your content so that you can better target your message to the right audience. You can’t do that on Facebook or Twitter.

3. Full Google Integration: Google+ is becoming more and more integrated into the other Google tools and features making it easy to manage your message across all Google has to offer.

While social media can be used to foster relationships with existing and and potential customers email can lead to a much stronger connection. It is important to email only those who might be interested in your product or service though. Otherwise you end up spamming a bunch of people and turning them off to any potential business in the future. So where can you find quality emails? You guessed it Google+.  Google has announced that users of Google+ can email anyone who has a Gmail account. This means you have access to your Google+ followers who are already interested in your business.

Many critics of Google+ find Googles relentless integration of Google+ as a desperate attempt to grow the user base.

While this maybe partially true it also leads to a much better product overall. Whatever their motives with the power and influence of Google and the reasons listed above your business cannot afford to keep ignoring Google+.

Social Media-The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Facebook has over 1.19 billion active monthly users. 

400 million tweets are sent per day on Twitter.

There are 238 million users on Linkedin and 3 million companies.

If you don’t have a social media presence already you should have created one yesterday. Your customers and your competitors are all using social media and your business cannot afford to be absent.  Your competitor will be more than happy to fill the void and help your would be customers if you’re not there.

Apart from the fact that it’s expected from your business, social media can be very beneficial. One such way is through the use of crowdsourcing.

Social media platforms can be used to solicit feedback and ideas from your customers in an easy low-cost way. Businesses can use crowdsourcing to improve their sales process, customer service or their products. Believe it or not product development can be accomplished through social media.

Vitamin Water did just that in 2010. The company asked their Facebook fans to help select the newest flavor, the packaging design and the new name for their drink.

Another example is from AirTran in 2009. They were looking to add a new service to all their airlines so they posed the question to their Facebook fan base. Facebook decided that wi-fi was needed on all their flights and AirTran made it so.

Social media can also be used for customer service. (On Twitter such Tweets are up 44%. ) Customer service has always been important but in today’s world the stakes are much higher. With the raise of social media customers now have the power to broadcast their displeasure with your business like never before.  Increasingly more customers are taking their customer service concerns to social media platforms over traditional outlets.

Forbes has 9 rules for great customer service on social media. The two most important I found are being fast and responsive.  Customers expect speed with social media and expect to be fully helped as if Facebook was the customer service help desk.

Social media can be very positive and create lift for the rest of your online marketing. It can also go terribly, terribly wrong if not handled correctly. Case in point: Applebee’s.

What did Appplebee’s do wrong? Let’s break it down.

1. They spent a lot of time lying. Applebee’s deleted comments and removed users from their page and then denied ever doing it. This is a bad move as the interest remembers everything even when deleted. If they wanted to delete comments from their page they should have been open and honest about it. Users are going to know what happened so lying just makes it worse.

2. Basic social media and PR etiquette was not followed. Applebee’s was posting status updates at 2:30am, arguing with people in the comments and sticking status updates in the middle of threads. If your going to run a social media account you need to do so with etiquette and professionalism in mind. After these actions it is impossible to take Applebee’s seriously.

3. They did not personally respond to people. If your going to jump into the conversation please craft a personal message each time. Applebee’s started to copy and paste the same comment every time they responded to someone. These people wanted to feel heard and be taken seriously.  Applebee’s could have given them that with personalized responses.

What I learned from this is mishandling a crisis on social media can out shadow the original problem. Users take social media very seriously and there are many rules to follow. Always take the time to understand what is expected on social media and deliver that. A basic understanding of how the internet operates doesn’t hurt either. Always be aware that what you write on the internet is forever and people do remember.

Wow. That was pretty heavy.

Lets finish up with a quick discussion of Facebook’s EdgeRank. EdgeRank is how Facebook decides what will appear in your newsfeed. Here’s how it works by Stuffedweb:

Due to this update not everything you post will be delivered to your fans/friends. Many people, including George Tekei and Mark Cuban were up in arms about this. Their argument being every post should have an equal chance to be seen and this change is just a way for Facebook to make money off of promoted posts.

While I agree with their two main points it’s just not that simple. With more people and businesses using Facebook our newsfeeds would be a mess without something to keep things in check. Cuban believes Facebook should be that cluttered because at its heart it’s only a “time suck”. While this may be true, if  newsfeeds became to long and cumbersome to look through users would start going some place else. This is now a problem because Facebook is a publicly traded company that has to make money. They cannot afford to let newsfeeds get out of hand and risk users leaving. This is the heart of the issue. Facebook is not a charity. Free access to a customized audience is not a right.  Businesses had to pay for audience in the past and they will have to again in the future.

 

With that being said if your business creates quality content and enjoys an engaged fan base you don’t have much to worry about. Much in the same way as SEO people will continue to see your content and it will enjoy higher rankings. It comes back to permission marketing. The people who are interested and engaged with your page will continue to see your posts.