Why Google Plus Should Be Part of Your Social Media Package

It always been said that Google Plus will become the most important social media platform in a company’s online communication arsenal. Despite this, a large number of people are still familiarising themselves with Google Plus as a social media platform. For those people here is a brief background of the social media platform:

• Google Plus is similar to other social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, in that it provides an online space where individuals can create a designated page in order to promote their business, brand, products or services.
• However, unlike other social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, Google Plus provides users with the additional benefit that it also supports and helps improve a business or brand’s SEO (search engine optimisation) efforts.

The SEO potential that Google Plus provides is due to the fact that each time a user creates a new post on the platform, (The Google Plus equivalent of a tweet on Twitter, or a status update on Facebook) they are in essence creating a new web page which is likely to appear in Google’s search results.

This feature provides businesses and brands with phenomenal potential to get their message heard as Google’s online search hegemony continues.

In addition to the above, Google Plus continues to grow in leaps and bounds as a social media platform. Whilst it is true that earlier in its history, Google Plus was the realm of a limited elite of techies and early adopters, Google Plus has managed to evolve into a diverse social media platform.

The potential marketing power provided by Google Plus can be demonstrated by the number of businesses and companies, both large and small, that have set up a presence on the platform. These entities use Google Plus as another avenue for spreading their commercial message in the increasingly noisy realm of social media.

It is imperative that brands and businesses hone their social media marketing strategies to incorporate the increasingly powerful tool that is Google Plus into their efforts. Brands are able to use the Communities feature of Google Plus in order to create a number of subject specific groups where they can interact with key members of their audience. In addition, the Communities feature can also be used by brands to share ideas and communicate directly about their products, services and organisation.

Google Plus also offers brands the Hangout tool. This tool enables brands to host video based discussions and demonstrations face to face with members of their following. In addition, this feature enables for an intimacy to be created by businesses and brands which is not available on other social media platforms. Hangouts can be used to share pictures, videos and files. Increasingly, the Google Plus Hangouts feature is becoming a popular vehicle for hosting conference calls and external meetings.

It is true that currently Google Plus does not provide access to anywhere near the same amount of online users as are offered by other platforms, like Twitter and Facebook. However, Google Plus is still arguably is still growing at an impressive rate, whilst also providing a powerful online marketing tool which small businesses should be keen to take advantage of.