When Google+ was introduced in 2011, the prevailing thought was: “Not another social network to fill with content and keep up-to-date.” It was not really clear what the added value of Google+ was beyond the already existing and now popular social media. In short, there was not much confidence that Google+ would grow into something significant.
But now it seems that it is really 'on'. According to the latest news, Google+ is the largest social network in the world after Facebook . So if you don't have a Google+ page for your brand yet, make sure to create one. The time is ripe!
Why Google+?
Not convinced yet? One reason to get started with G+ is that you can't lag behind the digital market developments. But of course there are more reasons. Google+ offers various possibilities that help you as a brand to connect with your audience, to learn from your audience and to learn about them. Below are the most important features and benefits at a glance:
Get to know your audience with Google+ Communities
In Google+ Communities – A place for whatever you're into – people come together to talk about shared interests such as food, fashion, art, cars, cats, and so on. As a brand, you can facilitate Communities , you can follow them, but you can also participate in them. The community pages give you valuable information about how your audience thinks about certain topics, how they use certain products, and so on.
If someone follows you within Google+, this will have a taiwan mobile phone number list positive effect on your position within the search results of this person within Google search. More tips to influence your page ranking as a person within search by using Google+ can be found in this article: ' How Google+ can boost your page ranking ' .
Having a Google+ page for businesses also has a positive effect on your ranking in Google's search engine, see for example this article about the Knowledge Graph and this piece from Social Examiner about Google+ Marketing . On this page from Google itself you can read even more about increasing the findability of your business with Google+.
Ripples provides insight into the effect of your posts
Google+ Ripples – Google+’s data visualization tool – gives you insight into how a publicly shared post is spreading within Google+. It shows you how many times your post has been shared, who is responsible for the biggest viral effect of your post, how the post has spread further, what comments have been made and how long the post has been viewed. You can use this to gain insight into the most important influencers and possibly get in touch with them, but also to learn what kind of content is most appreciated and shared by your audience.
Google-Plus-Ripples-ESPN-Post-1024x646Circles for segmentation
With Google+ Circles you can divide your followers into different clusters, so you can segment them. This makes it possible to share certain content only with certain circles. Handy if, for example, your product is used by completely different groups, such as the 45 km p/h moped car that is used by both 'healthy' young people and by disabled and elderly people. Read more about Google+ circles here .