Kristi Dement

The world’s biggest search engine, Google, started their own social media network called Google Plus in November of 2011.  This blog post is part of a series of blog posts discussing sections of the book, The Power of Visual Storytelling: How to Use Visuals, Videos, and Social Media to Market Your Brand by authors and social media experts Ekaterina Walter and Jessica Gioglio.

Google Plus Statistics:

• With an open interface and community features, there are 250 million Google Plus accounts and 150 million active users across the globe.
• 42% of Google Plus users are young adults, mostly 18 to 24.  Thus, Google Plus has many young, tech-savvy users.
• People in the United States, India, and Brazil are the most active on Google Plus.
• There is a stronger male audience with traditionally male brands doing well.
• Video is the second most posted content on Google Plus.

Google Plus Features:

• Users can separate connections by industry or interest with tags
• People can share new and updates with your specific relevant audience (versus all of your connections)
• Google’s +1 feature gives users a way of showing agreement or interest in content
• Information shared on Google Plus is prioritized in online searches
• Google Hangouts are private live video chats with a select group of people
• Recorded Hangouts are automatically posted to YouTube (an even wider audience)
• Manage Google Calendars and keep updated with current events
• Google Plus supports long posts which you can combine with shorter, snappier posts with photos and videos
• Ripples show how a post interacted with other Google Plus users

Google Plus Strategies:

• Huge potential for brands looking to engage and connect with their audience
• Brands can engage very differently with colleagues and customers
• Tell a story through the images you share
• Follow people whose posts and images you can share to inspire others
• Host Hangouts and share them on YouTube to get traffic between the two sites
• Tell stories by sharing videos of behind the scenes activity at your company
• Tell customer stories and have them share their own company testimonials
• Add great captions to make the images stand out on their own
• Regularly point back to your website to show customers where they can learn more
• Share different content with different circles of people
• Have an active profile to boost you up in Google’s search engine by keeping content fresh and posting regularly
• Label circles meaningfully to specifically target each group
• Use the Events feature to promote future launches, conferences, meetings, presentations, awards, and more
• Send out invitations that then sync with Google Calendars
• Use the Ripples feature to find out more about how your posts have been shared
• Use relevant keywords and links to your About page to help drive search engine optimization
• Since Google Plus has a powerful search facility, add the +1 feature to your company’s web pages

Knowing all this about Google Plus means that it is very smart for companies to have an active social media presence on Google Plus.  Google tends to favor content shared on their own social network.  Feel free to share what you like about Google Plus in the comments below as well as what kind of results your business is getting from your Google Plus efforts.

Image by Marcus Berg of Unique Angles Photography