What is the second most popular social network after Facebook? No, it”™s not Twitter or LinkedIn. I admit it; I was also surprised to discover it”™s Google+.
Since its announcement in June 2011, many critics, including much of the press have declared themselves unimpressed by the product and certainly not Google”™s answer to Facebook. While they liked certain features about Google+ such as hangouts, they were largely unimpressed by the service that many reviewers declared a failure.
Yet, according to a 2013 study by GlobalWebIndex, Google+ now has more than 343 million active users and is growing quickly. In contrast, Facebook has more than 700 million active users and is accessed by 51 percent of Internet users at least once per month. Google+ with access by 25 percent of Internet users at least once per month is second, ahead of Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.
Advertisers have also noticed this substantial Google+ activity and audience. According to a STRATA survey, interest in Google+ by ad agencies is up 25.7 percent. More importantly, Google+ came in a distant second to Facebook but ahead of Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest for brand management.
Social connections are created in Google+ primarily through the use of circles. There are two general purposes behind these circles: relationships and interests. Circles are unique to Google+ and allow you to segment and group people into any number of circles. You can also add people to multiple circles.
One of the most useful aspects of Google+ is hangouts. Using hangouts, you can have up to a total of 10 people in a video chat. In fact, for my mastermind meetings, we just switched from Skype to Google+ largely because of the video bandwidth limitations we encountered with Skype; in short, we couldn”™t share video connections in Skype.
Although there are some really interesting and powerful features in Google+, what makes it so powerful is its interconnection with Google”™s other products. This is a really powerful advantage that Google continues to enhance and exploit. By remaining within the Google platform of products, you can greatly enhance your search engine optimization (SEO) and utilize its applications while still being able to reach people on other social media platforms. The seamless integration of Google+ hangouts with YouTube, for example, allows people to stream through a hangout directly into YouTube. This allows you to bypass the 10-person chat limit while taking advantage of YouTube”™s streaming capabilities. Best of all, it”™s all free. I expect that this powerful and evolving solution ”” that also benefits Google ”” will become very popular by the end of this year once several technical (i.e. mainly audio and video) components are improved. (Supposedly, Google is devoting significant resources towards its resolution.)
Re-examining the GlobalWebIndex results mentioned above further depicts the value of these cross-product interactions. Besides reporting that 25 percent of Internet users used Google+ at least once monthly, it also reported that 21 percent used YouTube on a monthly basis. Although you can”™t add them together (which would be 46 percent) because of an assumed large overlap of users, it does indicate the strong presence and pervasiveness of Google products and services and the power of their interconnection.
Interestingly, about the only point all three debaters at Westfair Communication”™s recent social media event could agree upon was the domination of the Internet and social media by a few large companies. Looking directly at Google+ and the plethora of products and services that Google offers ”” and how several of them affect SEO ”” it”™s easy to understand why the panelists”™ agreement on this topic was so strong and why Google+ has such a bright future.
