By now you”™ve likely heard about Google Plus ”“ or G+ as it”™s known. In fact, Ryan Doran wrote an excellent introduction to G+ for the Business Journal last month. In case you missed it, G+ is Google”™s new social network, which is still in test mode, or beta.
The G+ features getting the most attention are:
- You arrange the people you follow in Circles, as many as you want, i.e. customers, colleagues, family, friends. Then you can choose which Circle/s to share any given post with. This is a key improvement over Facebook, although in response, Facebook has just introduced a new way of grouping friends and sharing selectively.
- You can use the Sparks feature to follow topics or issues of interest.
- You can video chat with up to 10 people using the Hangouts feature.
Since it launched at the end of June, G+ has attracted some 16.5 million users, a very fast ramp up even by social media standards. As of now, Google+ supports only individual users, not business pages. So what”™s in it for your business right now? A few ideas:
- As the owner or marketer at a company, you can represent your company on G+.
- Learn your way around to be ahead of the pack when business pages come online.
- Use G+ to explore new communities/markets. For example, Ellie is following people in the jazz/music industry seeking ways to merge business with personal passion.
- If you”™re selling outside the U.S., use Google Translate in conjunction with Hangouts to host multilingual video meetings, a truly unique feature.
- Lots of journalists are poking around to see what it”™s all about so G+ may be an uncluttered place to connect with publicity opportunities.
Consider, though, that G+ almost forces you to post good content and comments to get into the conversation and be added to Circles. There”™s no “follow” reciprocity. Whether anyone sees your content can depend entirely on how they”™ve configured their settings. And at the moment, Google Plus is not necessarily intuitive and user-friendly. But there”™s a lot of help from other users if you get stuck.
These issues aside, why not take a quiet hour and jump in. The only rub is that G+ is open by invitation only. And each user gets a limited number of invitations to share with friends and colleagues. We”™d like to help. We”™ll provide invitations to the first 25 people who email a request to info@workingtheweb.us.
Ellie Becker is president of E.R. Becker Company Inc. in Norwalk, a public relations and inbound marketing consultancy. She is an inbound marketing certified professional. Reach her at ellie@erbeckercompany.com or read her blog at www.erbeckercompany.com.
Bernadette Nelson is principal of Studio B/Visual Communication in Norwalk. She has more than 20 years of experience in graphic and web design. Reach her at b@studiob-ct.com or www.studiob-ct.com.
