We have a tendency to cling to what is familiar, even when it can have a detrimental impact on us and our businesses.
Most event planners I’ve talked to have been very hesitant to embrace Google Plus, Google’s social networking site. The key reason? It feels like Facebook, without your established network, a few unfamiliar tools thrown into the mix…and, let’s be honest, who needs yet another social network to worry about?
Well, Facebook has a pool of about 800 million users, but billions of people perform billions of searches every single day. And that’s precisely why it would be a mistake to ignore Google Plus.
The Tipping Point
2 weeks ago, Google announced ‘Search, Plus Your World‘ a controversial revolution in the world of search that will have a major impact on your brand’s online presence. As Google states on their website:
“Search has always brought you information from across the web. Now, search gets better by including photos, posts, and more from you and your friends. When signed in with Google+, you’ll find personal results and profiles of people you know or follow. You can even expand your world by discovering people related to your search.”
The World of Search has Changed
Search was once a competition of keyword relevance. Brands would hire an SEO expert to optimize their sites and find other ‘relevant’ sites to link to theirs – all to have their site ranked higher than their competition.
Google aims to change this by making search socially relevant. In other words, when someone within your social circle shares something, Google believes this content is likely more contextually relevant to you.
What This Means for Your Business and Google Plus
If you google yourself or your brand right now, it’s very likely your Google Plus profile (if you have one) will be on the first page and, in many cases, the first result. That’s because Google is giving priority to content from their social network (just like Google gave priority to YouTube videos and pictures from Blogger blogs – two platforms they own).
Connect the dots and that means:
- the content you share on Google Plus can appear higher in search results than even your own website.
- the larger the pool of people exposed to your content in Google Plus the more likely it is to get shared.
- the more people sharing your content, the more probable it is that you will be discovered by someone performing a ‘search, plus your world’.
- it’s not hard to imagine how much more powerful it is to have an endorsement of your brand from people your prospects know than it is to get random results from a search engine.
There are now over 1 million business pages and 90 million users on Google+. Will you be one of them?
True story. My friend texted me the other day b/c he googled “scissors” and one of my google+ posts showed up 4th – after wikipedia, staples and office max. Another blogger was searching for content on spotify for brands and my spotify for marketing blog posts came up #1 (b/c he is in my network) so he quoted me in his post and I got a nice track back.
@LindsayFultz Great story & thanks for sharing, Lindsay! Unfortunately, being in Canada I can’t yet test, so it’s great to get validation from someone who can 🙂
A couple of extra points I think you might find useful. You can use a G+ profile to claim authorship of your work on other websites using a rel=author. Makes it harder for other people to steal your content and improves your chances of being found on search plus your world.
On the flipside you also need to be careful with what you post on G+, for example if you write a blog post and put a summary on your G+ profile, the summary is likely to rank higher than the post.
@Daniel Frank Daniel, great additions. I’m personally intrigued by the rel=author code since my content is aggregated across a number of different sites (other blogs). I wasn’t aware of this on G+.
Your last point is an important one.
@READY2SPARK Blind Five Year Old has a good guide on how to implement rel=author (http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/how-to-implement-rel-author)
@Daniel Frank Fabulous! Thanks for sharing.