Short answer, yes. We have watched Google+, a social network and recommendation platform, closely over the past 12 months and we are increasingly getting more excited about its potential. As at January 2013 it was cited as the second largest social media network in the western world (Jan 2013 CNET). Even so, people in Australia are only very slowly adopting or switching to this platform; they remain attached to Facebook and will only slowly migrate as they start to see benefits, of which there are many. We are certainly encouraging our socially savvy clients to take another look at it and would encourage your business to do likewise.
Why?
- users are able to post rich content and detailed status updates to their profile and have ALL of this content show up in other user’s newsfeeds
- users are able to follow anybody that they want to without requiring their target to accept a ‘friend request’
- being a Google product, it is SEO friendly
- Google+ Circles – create custom groups; send exclusive updates and insights to just your clients, share cat photos with just your family or even share news to all of your circles AND to their extended circles. Extremely effective in building relationships
- customisable audience segmentation.
- communities – join others or build your own – same interests, conversations, sharing
- Google+ Hangouts – simple and live video conferencing, which can be broadcast (live or later)!
- authorship – link Google+ profile to blog posts – great for exposure and ranking on Google (Authorank = SEO)
- no promotions allowed – yet!
Interestingly, Google+ recently changed the dimensions of its cover image (2120x1192px) to be more visually appealing and provide an even more evocative platform by which to display visual imagery for the personal user and the business page user. I personally think this detracts from the ability Google+ has to really own the rich content space and weed out the irrelevant hyperbole that can jam up other newsfeeds. We’ll continue to watch, use and learn from it.