Google+ is More Than Another Social Network, Its a Valuable Tool for Your Business
In Part 1 I shared some of Google’s basics: Google AdWords and Analytics and Google Apps for business. In Part 2, we’ll talk about Google+.
Google+ launched in 2011 and is best known as a social network, although it has the power of Google behind it – making it incredibly powerful and important.
- #2: Second-largest social networking site in the world (it surpassed Twitter in January 2013)
- 1M+: Business and brand pages created in the first 6 months
- 500M+: Google+ users and growing fast
- #4: Google+ was used by 30% of smartphone users between April–June 2013, making it the fourth most used app
While every social outreach component needs to be carefully considered, Google+ needs to be part of the mix. Google+ is how your company manages its Google Places listing (recently renamed to Google+ Local) which dictates how your information shows up in Google search results.
Your Google+ Local profile features relevant contact and business information, your profile image and recent posts. But it’s not only available on Google+, when a user searches for your company, your Google+ profile appears on the right-hand side of the search results. So at the very least, your building products company (and you!) need a Google+ profile.
Still not convinced? Google features social annotations which let people see endorsements from your Google+ followers by linking your Google+ page to your AdWords campaigns. So instead of seeing a lonely ad, users see an ad endorsed by people that already know and trust your brand. Ads with social annotations have a 5-10% higher click-through rate!
Want to take it to the next level? Make Google+ part of your content marketing strategy, add a +1 to your site and encourage customers to connect with you on Google+.
Sign up for Google+ today!
