Google+ has a huge user base. Wouldn’t it be perfect for blogging?
Lately, I have been hearing a lot of noise about using Google+ for blogging. I love Google+. It’s big, and it’s growing rapidly. It’s shaping up to be a serious online contender that moves beyond just another social network, but blogging? Is this really a good idea?
Probably not.
Is Google+ really a ghost town? Maybe not…
Google Plus is a ghost town. Google Plus is for computer nerds or photographers. Google Plus is like a lame version of Facebook. No one reads anything on Google Plus. No one in my audience cares about Google Plus.
No.
At some point you’re going to need to pay attention to that social network gnat that’s buzzing at your ear, and for very good reasons.
Google will send you some mail to help you get verified.
Google+ Local made a mess of Google Places.
In the good old days, smart businesses signed up to manage their already existant Google Places pages, adding information on hours, products, and photos to the search results that turned up in Google Maps. Customers could find out all they needed to know about a business, plus reviews, on a Google Maps search result, which brought up those Google Places. Business owners also maintained their Google+ Business Page alongside their Facebook Page. One was map-based, the other two were social media properties.
Then Google created Google+ Local, through their Google+ social networking system, and phased out Google Places. And for a while, business owners had the conundrum of having a Google+ Business Page and a Google+ Local Page with no way to connect them together and have control over the entire package.
You can now connect the two, and you should.
Google Plus isn’t lesser or an after thought. It’s a whole different set of tools.
It’s time to start thinking about Google+ differently than Facebook.
They are both social networks, but they are not the same. Google+ excels at targeted conversation that builds connections, being a kind of mix between Facebook and Quora and LinkedIn. It gives you some tools that help you use it differently than if it were just another version of Facebook.
Google recently announced the creation of Google Local to replace Google Places. It’s clear that continued changes are in store for businesses in the Google pasture, but what does this latest change mean for users of Google Places? There are several significant differences to the new system, but the overall take is simple: It means that businesses must get on Google+, because Google is going to send them there, anyway.
Google+ Local is the latest changed offering from Google
Right now, Google+ Local pages are mere replacements for the Google Places page, and so they lack the social aspects of a full-blown Google+ page (following, circles, etc.). However, Google has said that that kind of integration will happen, and so what used to be a search result is now a social page with a following and a reputation and interaction.
That’s big, for businesses.
This isn’t a search buried in the Facebook walled garden — this is the result that shows up in a Google search, accessible by all users with or without Google+ accounts, just like with Google Places. Facebook has millions of users, that’s true, but how many more Google searches happen every day?
Google+ is no longer a search result, but is turning into a place to make the initial search.
For customers without Google+ profiles, access to the Google+ Local content (including now-free Zagat review content) is still available. They cannot, however, participate in reviews or other social activity.
The Google+ Profile is becoming the home for local search.
Customers with Google+ profiles can fully use all features with the new Google+ Local icon in the sidebar of their profile. That icon shows them businesses nearby, and provides the ability to edit their reviews by clicking through to the business and selecting the blue “Edit Your Review” button. Google+ profiles users can also get filtered searches based on the reviews, check-ins, and activity of people in their circles.
Google+ becomes, in effect, the better search destination for finding local businesses, much better than Google.com or Google Maps.
These changes raise important questions in the minds of business owners, both in how it will affect their business and how they are to manage the new system.
Customers can no longer leave anonymous reviews. This is good in that people tend to be more controlled when their name is attached and it can be seen by friends, but it also might cause some customers to prefer not to leave any reviews — good or bad — of a business. Additionally, all of the old reviews a business had are now attributed to “A Google User.” Businesses are either going to have to get those reviewers to re-claim them (provided they’re on Google+), or have a large collection of unattributed reviews. Names, even nicknames, always carry more weight than anonymity.
Gone are the anonymous reviews. From here on out, there must be names.
Google purchased Zagat in September 2011. Reviews are now based on the Zagat score of 30, which might seem problematic for businesses that Zagat traditionally didn’t review. Google is adapting this system across the board for all businesses. It might seem like a negative, but the benefit for businesses is that it allows customers to rate on different aspects, which are then tallied all together. A restaurant with great food but outdated decor, for example, might have received a poor score overall in the past. Now reviewers can say “the decor wasn’t so good, but the food and service was great!”
For restaurants, Google+ Local is integrating the OpenTable reservation system. You can find out more about that here.
There are a few key things for businesses to keep in mind:
As always, with Google, things will be changing quickly.
Customers and individual users can still benefit from the Google+ Local features whether they have a Google+ profile page or not. Just as Google Places provided information to any user, so does Google+ Local.
Current Google+ users will see that Google Local is integrated into their Google+ Profile with a new icon on the left sidebar. Android users will also see some changes in the latest Google Maps and Google+ app updates. The Google+ app sends users to Google+ Local services on the map. Google has submitted changes to Apple, so it shouldn’t be long before this is available on iOS devices.
There are key changes that users will experience with Google+ Local.
Whatever else businesses take from this latest integration of Google+ into Google’s overall product offering, it’s this: you MUST be on Google+. Everything continues to point to the fact that Google is wrapping its social media product around its search. The larger social media base may be on Facebook, but Google search is the industry leader. As a business, you can’t ignore either.
Today Google rolled out a revamped version of Google+, keeping its social networking product in line with the overall changes Google has been steadily making to all of its products to unify the user experience. According to the official Google blog,
A critical piece of this social layer is a design that grows alongside our aspirations. So today we’re introducing a more functional and flexible version of Google+. We think you’ll find it easier to use and nicer to look at, but most importantly, it accelerates our efforts to create a simpler, more beautiful Google.
Through a simplified method for customizing a profile and page, Google+ has made itself fairly easy and intuitive. Plenty of white space and easily accessible privacy settings, combined with a few tweaks to current features, makes this latest iteration of Google+ the most user-friendly yet. It’s clear that with these changes, Google is leaving room for additional features and making future updates and add-ons a likely fact.
Google+ has gone through a major redesign, making it more user-friendly.
For Google+ users who are administrators on multiple pages, the new changes have made being that admin much simpler. Pages can be accessed through several locations. Users can click on their icon in the upper right corner and see the pages they are admins of, or they can hover and/or click on the designated “Pages” app in the left navigation pane.
Pages can be easily managed in several locations.
Navigation has been changed from a static collection of links at the top of the page over to the left sidebar as icons that can be moved by simple drag-and-drop. Moving an icon in or out of “More” hides or displays them. Hovering over an icon reveals actions we can take. The result is a more app-like feel that users are accustomed to today.
A new “Explore” page for both profiles and pages gives us quick access to trending topics and posts that are currently hot on Google+. We can adjust how much of these kinds of posts we want to see in our home page using a slider bar. Trending topics are also visible on the home page of a profile, though not on a page. Trending topics also indicate how the topic is trending.
The “Explore” page is a great place for profiles and pages to find content to share and to find new people to add to our Circles. Our goal is to find great content for our home page, and going exploring will help us do exactly that.
Saved searches have been moved from the left sidebar and are now located under the “More” button at the top. By doing this, Google has cleaned up the clutter on the sidebar significantly, and placed all of our information sources in one spot. We can easily see what content our Circles contain, and we can also find content based on general searches from people we don’t have in our Circles. It’s a one-stop location for finding content to share.
The "More" button organizes our saved searches and circles.
In a move similar to Facebook’s Timeline Cover Photo and Profile Image, Google+ now offers a larger Cover Photo and smaller Profile Photo. The difference is that Google+ allows users to select one long graphic, or to break it up into the five individual images previously used. The five-image option is a fun way to tell a story with photos if an album is set up correctly. However, users who prefer a single photo now have that option.
We can choose one large cover photo, or five smaller photos for our profile.
Google+ has long been a favorite of photographers and artists. The new design is good news for them: it emphasizes and encourages photos and images. Our photo albums are also easily accessible from the left navigation pane, and photos shared in a stream are quickly linked back to the original profile or page’s photo albums. Hovering over an image in a feed will offer options to view photo albums or more photos by the user who posted the image. Photos and videos in the stream are now full-bleed, filling the space beautifully and making photos and images more prominent than ever.
Quick links below each shared photo or post in a feed make it easy to see the entire conversation — using “conversation cards” — and activity surrounding the post, including who +1′d and who shared the post. Simple toggle action will show and hide this activity, keeping the news feed visually clean and not distracting from the photos or posts themselves.
One complaint Google+ had suffered from was the news feed being cluttered. This new design, using the conversation cards and more emphasis on images and actual content, has helped clean it up significantly.
For profiles, Google set the chat interface to the right, and upped the visual look of it. This makes it more of a stand-alone element and gives it more importance than it had previously, when it was simply tucked into the left side of the screen with nothing to visually set it apart.
Google has wisely given their excellent Hangouts feature its own page on profiles as well. This page includes an always-updated list of invitations from people in our circles, easy access to public and “On Air” hangouts, and a rotating collection of popular Hangouts and other tips for using Hangouts. While pages don’t have this option yet (though they can still create Hangouts easily enough), individual users can start and even join publicized hangouts. Businesses who publicize their hangout make it easier for these profile users to find them.
All in all, the new design isn’t necessarily a feature overhaul, but simply a case of Google making Google+ a more inviting social network to be a part of. Businesses and individuals can easily make use of the powerful features and the continued integration of Google+ into the rest of Google’s products. This design upgrade and across-the-board integration of products is just one more reason to not ignore Google+ and focus solely on Facebook.
If you sign up for a new Google or Gmail account, you’ll get a Google+ account whether you wanted one or not.
Want it or not, Google+ here you come!
While the old Google signup page is still available, and there seems to be a huge flock of blog posts telling people how to sign up for Gmail or Google without getting a Google+ account, it isn’t likely that Google will leave that option in place much longer. Nor is it likely that they’ll let Google account users avoid a Google+ account in the long run. Google has focused their search around their new social network, and they’ve even changed their privacy policy (with much criticism) in an effort to continue unifying their services all across the board. Google’s goal is clearly to bring all of their kids under one roof, and have them play nice with each other.
For a small business, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It means that huge numbers of Gmail users (your potential customers) are likely going to have a Google+ account. Google is essentially handing us a platform, giving us users, and saying that they’ll help searchers find us if we set up shop on Google+.
There’s a certain element of inevitability to Google: massive user base for a huge variety of products (Calendar, Docs, Gmail, Analytics, Voice). We will see Google+ continue to evolve and connect with all of these Google products. Google has already connected Google Apps to Google+, letting us know they’re serious about business and organizational use of the system.
The obvious downside is for those who don’t want Google+. They’ll get it anyway, and Google is trying to make the medicine go down with a sugary spoonful of “we’re unifying our services.” For those of us who already use all of Google’s services, it seems quite minor, but for those merely wanting a Gmail account it, a forced membership into something that is technically still in Beta and sounds a bit like a dismal social network subsidy. It probably feels like a Google+ account is yet another onerous online service to manage, particularly since it isn’t integrating with some of the other services, such as Twitter, without a variety of browser add-ons and tweaks.
We can choose to fight it (by not having a Google account), or we can set up a Google+ profile that will make our online presence work well with the Goliath that is Google. It might seem that just about everyone is over on Facebook, but just about everyone uses Google to search. While there is a certain sense of puppeteerism at work, there is simply no denying the powerhouse that is Google search, what it means to our business, and, frankly, all of the very useful services Google provides in the form of Google Docs and Google Calendar to name just a few. We can ignore the Google+ account that we’re handed, or we can make lemonade out of it. Be hopeful. Finding a “how-to” post on Google+ pages is notoriously tricky as the ever-evolving service mixes things up as it creeps closer to an across-the-board seamless user experience that will cooperate with other accounts we already use and flow into our use of Google.
It’s the perfect time for those of us who have left a withered Google+ page in the past to try it out and breathe it back to life. There are going to be a lot more players out there now.
Google+ is on the move. After launching only a few short months ago, this newcomer social network has already made a major impact on social conversation, and how we approach search engine optimization. In the last few weeks, the importance of Google+ for the small business has gone from moderate, to severe. We need to be on Google+, but what do we do once we are there? Google has mixed in some unique features, such as Hangouts, that make Google+ a compelling offering for many brands.
What are Google Plus Hangouts?
We all need a place to come together and chat – everyone needs a hangout. It’s almost impossible to think of a single sitcom where the cast of characters doesn’t have some kind of hangout. In Saved By The Bell, Zack Morris and the gang hung out at The Max. In Fraiser, the hangout was Fraiser’s apartment, and in Seinfeld there was the always charming RESTAURANT. Everyone loves a good hangout, so why should they be absent for social networks?
Everyone needs a place to hangout.
Since launch, Google+ has offered it’s very own equivalent to the the Seinfeld RESTAURANT, and it simply calls them Hangouts. This feature is essentially a video chatroom, and enables Google+ users to participate in live, and often times spontaneous, video chats. Hangout can be opened to any of your Circles, offered to friends via email, or left public so that anyone could choose to pop in. All participants are required to have a webcam, mic and a Google+ profile.
Google+ hangouts are open to anyone in the Circle(s) that you share it with.
The public chat options available in Hangouts are unique to the service, and were recently used by President Obama to host a town-hall-style question and answer forum. The event was a success, and proved the value of hangouts for many brands and organizations.
For the social business, there are a few ways that Google+ Hangouts can be integrated into our online marketing. How and why hangouts are used will vary by industry and brand personality, but we must understand the nuts and bolts of the services before we can really evaluate its potential.
Hangouts allow up to nine people per chat session, which makes them a great hosting option for online meetings. Many businesses are already using Skype to communicate with colleagues and co-workers all across the globe. While Skype only allows two people to share video with its free service, Google+ provides a way around this limitation while keeping it free.
With built-in support for desktop screen sharing, Hangouts are a potential platform for online customer support. While the hangout would have to be initiated by the actual business providing help, it could be a way to offer open-forum help for a certain group of users. This type of service could redefine the traditional helpdesk, and offer a fun new way to help customers.
Recently, Google has begun rolling out a new feature called Hangouts On Air. This new feature allows Hangout hosts to record the proceedings and automatically publish them to YouTube. We can see many examples of this type of recording on the video services. While a bit lack-luster, these recordings do provide an inexpensive and simple way for businesses to host and publish their own video show or vlog.
Perhaps Google+ Hangouts are the press conference of the future? Traditionally, large company announcements are reserved for some type of press conference, but Google+ brings this idea directly to the social network. While only nine people can participate in the Hangout, many more are able to watch and view the proceedings. This makes it a great platform for spreading news to the masses when the times comes. All the more reason for us to be investing time into our Google+ presence.
Getting a Google+ profile for our business has grown in importance now that Google, the leading Internet search engine, has made changes to how their searches work. The Google social search, called ‘Search Plus Your World‘, mixes public Google+ pages with regular search results. The idea is to make it easier for people to find all relevant information, including content that might be provided by friends privately through the Google+ and Picasa Web networks. So far, this new search option doesn’t include other social networks like Facebook or Twitter. What does that mean for us?
It means we need to get a Google+ page for our business, and we need it to be set up the best way possible.
First up: make sure our about section is completely filled in with all the information we want our followers to know about us. Adding recommended links on the about page to our other social networking sites is a great way to help people find us on on the web and spread the word.
Complete the 'About' page, and don't forget outside links.
Click on the blue ‘Edit Profile’ button in the upper right corner of our page, and navigate to the ‘About’ section. Click and then fill in the areas that apply; we don’t have to fill everything in, but the introduction, website, and contact sections really are important. We can add outside links by clicking in the ‘Recommended Links’ section of the ‘About’ page and entering the URL and title of the links we’d like to share. When we’re finished, click the gray ‘Done Editing’ button in the orange bar at the top of the page.
As with any of the content we put on Google+, we can specify who we’ll share our information with. The same applies for the ‘About’ section. We have the option to select a circle or keep it private as we edit.
The importance of uploading our business’ logo goes without saying, but Google+ also has a scrapbook feature across the top of the page that needs to be addressed. A picture is worth 1000 words, so we need to give our fans every chance to learn about who we are and what we do. At the very least, have five scrapbook photos so that each space is filled in and can give our fans something to look at other than gaps and space.
Make sure to have at least five photos in the scrapbook album.
Click on ‘Photos’ to navigate to that section of the profile. Once there, find the ‘Scrapbook’ album, and click on it. This will take us to the page where we can upload photos to our scrapbook album. Once there, click on the red ‘Add More Photos’ button, and select five photos that best represent our brand. Remember, these will feature prominently. Drag and drop the photos into the uploader, and select ‘Add Photos’ when finished. The sharing setting can be adjusted to keep if within specific circles, or public. Consider making the album public. Our goal is to be social, and not restrictive.
If we’re active users of a connected Google Picasa account, we’ll see an album called ‘Scrapbook’ within that system. That album is connected to Google+, and can be managed in both places. We can rearrange the photos in the ‘Scrapbook’ album to suit a certain order across the top of the Google+ page. Otherwise, we can upload and work with photos directly through Google+.
For those of us who have created videos, the same method can be followed to get those on our Google+ page, too. Don’t forget to connect our YouTube account to our Google+ page by a link on the ‘About’ section. We’ve made that content — why wouldn’t we share it? Stock our Google+ page with all the relevant content we can, definitely including lots of great photos and videos. People want to get to know us, so lets help them.
While these few tips will get us started with a nice foundation, there are always things we can do to improve our visibility:
Don’t forget to check out our page, and add Todaymade to your Google+!
In this video we give a quick tutorial on how to set up your own Google+ page, and how to do some basic customization.
If you haven’t heard much about Google+ branded pages, here is an article over at Mashable about the recent launch. Google+ is not a “must have” for local brands yet, although it holds some very exciting opportunities for Google searches and SEO. One of the most interesting features is Google+ Direct Connect. I cover it briefly in my video, but blogger Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Land does a much better job.
Good luck, and feel free to post a link to your Google+ page once it is done!
