I know you are already feeling overwhelmed and spread thin by the proliferation of social media platforms and an ever mounting daily task list, but if growing your business and getting more clients excites you then so should Google+.

1. 10 Things
Businesses
Should Know
About Google+

2. 10 Things Businesses Should Know About Google+
Today, social media marketing is the new black in online advertising. It’s everywhere: brands are
scrambling to deploy their own strategies; websites are trying their best to interact with their
social communities; social networking sites are becoming increasingly central in the way people use
the Internet. So it’s no surprise that businesses small, mid-sized, end even large are looking into
the best places to execute social media marketing strategies to boost their bottom-line.
Google+ is one such place.
What Do Businesses Need To Know About Google+?
1. Google’s Serious About It, and so Should Any Business Invested in Online Marketing
When Google rolls out an algorithm update, business owners
around the world cringe. Google is the largest, most
powerful, and most influential search engine in the world.
Google-related news that in reality is quite nominal can still
make waves – like co-founder and CEO Larry Page losing his
voice and missing a few events, for instance. So when the
company’s serious about something, so should any serious
business that wants to succeed in social media marketing and
make it big on the Internet.
Despite being only barely a year old (as of this writing),
Google+ has caused quite a big stir in circles like social
media, Internet marketing, and search engine optimization.
And unlike previous attempts by Google to dive into the
social networking boom – Orkut, Wave, and Buzz, to wit – in
Google+, they really swung for the fences. Google’s seriously
serious about growing Google+ into probably as big an entity in the web as Google Search.
Google Search has grown to such heights as to dictate which businesses succeed and fail online. It
would be best for businesses to have invested in Google+ if and when Google has its way and it
achieves something similar in the future.
2. It’s Growing, BUT...
Every growing venture will hurdle its share of road bumps. For Google+, the obstacles include
continuously fading user interest and more diverse existing competition such as Facebook, among
others.
As of May 2012, Google+ already registered over 200 million users. If that sounds measly compared
to Facebook’s over 900 million users registered as of last march 2012, then consider that Google+
has yet to celebrate its first anniversary. But there’s a problem. Not all registered users are actively
participating in the Google+ community, and many of them are spending less and less time sharing
on Google+ from the first time they sign up.
And then there’s Facebook. When Google+ first came out as an invite-only project, the web was

3. instantly awash in debates pegging it as a challenger to the social media supremacy of Facebook. As
the revolution of social media marketing is currently changing the online advertising landscape, the
importance of who sits on the social media throne is made more prominent – and the top two
contenders are Google+ and Facebook. Obviously, Google+ has a mountain or two to scale before it
can tackle Facebook, and Zuckerberg’s giant is a very big “BUT” in Google+’s way.
The above two items give an overall idea of the current outlook for Google+. However, they don’t
exactly present actionable data for businesses. What social media marketing benefits can
businesses expect from Google+?
3. Again, Google’s Serious about It
It’s just too important that it merits a second mention: Google is dead serious about Google+, and
so the company is going out of its way to incorporate everything it can into the social media sharing
tool. And the assets Google has been stuffing into Google+ are as numerous as they are valuable for
social media marketing.
YouTube videos, Search Plus Your World, the +1 button – these are just some of Google’s products
and services that the company is packing into Google+. Businesses can leverage all of these services
to bolster their online presence and authority through one platform: Google+.
4. It’s Got Some Awesome Features for Marketing
Search Plus Your World and the +1 Button are the more obvious functionalities and special features
that businesses can use better if they invest in Google+. Other awesome advertising features await
the keenest of marketers, however, only when they decide to sign up.
Google+’s Circles makes it easier to segregate followers and contacts – a business’ target market.
Businesses can categorize specific demographics or separate leads that qualify for special
promotions. Google+ allows a single contact to be in multiple Circles too. Circles makes it far
easier to launch targeted campaigns to specific lead segments.
Another noteworthy feature is Google+’s Hangouts. For social
media marketing purposes, a Hangouts session can become an
informal, private webinar-type event that includes live video
streaming and even supports Google Translate.
And of course, there is extensive rel=”author” and rel=”publisher”
attribution going on. Google+ made it easier for businesses and
business owners to verify that they wrote or crafted specific
content around the web, which significantly helps build authority
and online presence.
Okay, so the marketing edge is there, but what sort of audience
can companies expect to get from the Google+ community?
5. Expect Testosterone and Tech Geeky-ness
Around 60% of Google+ users are tech-savvy males who love sharing content about technology. This
demographic typically consists of university students and young IT professionals. Evidently,

4. businesses can expect some machismo going on, and a lot of geeky sharing – which means
businesses who have a large demographic of either young adult males or tech-savvy inclinations (or
both) can likewise expect to delve into a potentially huge and active following in Google+.
6. It’s More of a Snack than a Meal
Businesses should craft social content that doesn’t take up too much time when planning social
media marketing and content strategies for Google+. Because when it comes to how much time
users spend in it, it pales in comparison to such networks as Facebook and Pinterest. Facebook’s
various time sinks (apps, games, Pages, sharing, and general online socializing with contacts) can
take up to eight hours of the time spent online by its active users. On the other hand, the highly
visual Boards in Pinterest pique the interest of its mostly female users for an average of 100
minutes. In comparison, Google+ users spend an average of a bit over three minutes on their
Google+ profiles before wasting time elsewhere on the web.
With this sort of audience businesses can expect from Google+, won’t it be a bit more difficult
strategizing for social media marketing there than on other platforms? What sort of challenges can
businesses expect when investing time, money, and effort in Google+?
7. Google’s Trying to Go It Alone
While Google isn’t shy in integrating a wide range of its own services and products into Google+, its
external integration capabilities are near zero. This is a major advantage where Facebook reigns
supreme. With Facebook’s powerful and far-reaching Application Programming Interface (API),
websites the world over can choose to integrate Facebook into their user interfaces. Logging into
somewhere else using a Facebook account is now the norm. For Google+, this isn’t an option.
Google’s reach is far and wide, and it as close to omnipresent and ubiquitous as a brand can
become. But without an API for wide-scale external website integration, unless Google takes over
the web in its entirety, Google+ will not be able to reach a vast number of people surfing the
Internet.
8. Not Much Market Diversity and Engagement
Social engagement is a key factor in driving social media
marketing performance; in fact, users engaging with
social content can increase conversion rates for
websites by over 150%. But with Google+’s users
spending only a mere 3.3 minutes on the social sharing
platform, businesses will be hard-pressed to think up
new strategies and tactics to better engage their target
market.
Adding to the conundrum of low social engagement is
the lack of market diversity. With a predominantly
male, technologically savvy population, Google+ space
is lush marketing ground for companies who focus on
technology, gadgets, and computing. There will come a
point in time, however, when investments from companies with other target demographics will be
needed to sustain Google+’s profitability and usefulness as a marketing machine. If Google+’s

5. community doesn’t diversify as it grows past its first anniversary, its growth may be hampered by
its unintentional, one-dimensional focus on everything tech.
Now that Google+’s current situation, the social media marketing advantages, the community, and
the challenges have been laid out, there are only a couple of things of importance about Google’s
social media platform that businesses should know about. What awaits Google+ in the future?
9. For the Last Time: Google’s Really Serious about It
This is the final time this fact will be mentioned, and by now concerned businesses should have
memorized it: Google is sticking with this venture to the very end. Google+ is here to stay, and
Google is putting as much push as it can behind Google+’s drive. This is one of the main reasons
Facebook should be threatened by Google+. It could very well be the Android to Facebook’s Apple,
and all because Google is playing for keeps – the company’s really serious about it.
Google+ represents Google’s views of the future. A future where social media pervades everything
– from e-commerce to just general Internet browsing. Unlike Facebook that only developed an arm
specifically for businesses and marketing because of the impressive growth of its user base,
Google+ was designed for individuals and companies from the get-go, in anticipation of a future
where web browsing and social media are inseparably intertwined.
10. It’s Waiting for Something
Google+ is a social sharing tool, not the social networking platform that Facebook is and has stayed
more or less true to since its inception. Google+’s aim is to be the one place where people can go
and share everything they care about to everyone they care for in a World Wide Web that is
entangled in personalized e-commerce, social media-powered browsing, and intelligent search.
This is what Google+ is waiting for – this future where its function and its endeavor will be central
to everything.
And it’s inevitable, really, that the advent of personalized e-commerce comes into fruition; that
social media marketing becomes merged with pretty much everything else; that search will be as
social as it is universal. And Google+ is waiting for this inescapable future to take off, and any
business serious about social media marketing and becoming successful online will do well to wait
along with it.
If there are 10 things businesses should know about Google+ for social media marketing, it’s the 10
things listed above.
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