What about Google+

 What about Google+

there’s still no clear map for what success looks like for a business on

Google+. Sure, the Google+ member base grew faster than any product or

service Google has launched in its entire history. The network reached ten

million users in a stunning 16 days. It grew a lot faster than Facebook did at the

same point in its history. (Twitter took 780 days and Facebook 852 days to get to

ten million.)

But despite the millions who suddenly signed up for Google+, few are deeply

engaged with the community yet. Research from comScore recently found

Google+ members spend a mere 3 minutes a month on the network. The figure

for Facebook is a hefty 405 minutes a month. And here’s another hint that all is

not well with Google+: it’s not exactly an inspiring message when your VP of

engineering asserts that the network is “not a ghost town.”

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Yet you can’t dismiss Google+. The platform remains an important place to test,

learn, and optimize. Some Google+ innovations, like Hangouts (interactive

online video chats), could prove to be important behavior-changing and

trendsetting developments. Others, like Circles, were quickly copied by other

platforms and may not remain much of a differentiator. Thus far, these are the

most attractive elements of the Google+ play:

1. It can offer benefits in search engine optimization (SEO). Google calls its

new approach to social search “Search, plus Your World.” A robust

Google+ network can benefit your organic search presence in four ways:

a. Personal Results. Google+ photos and posts from the searcher and his

or her personal network rise to the top of that user’s organic search

results. That feature enables Google+ users to “search across

information that is private and only shared to you, not just the public

web,” says Jack Menzel, director of product management at Google

Search.

b. Profiles in Search. Google+ profiles are crawled and ranked. They

appear in both autocomplete and organic results, favoring people

within the user’s network or those whom the user might be interested

in following.

c. Pages in Search. Google+ pages are crawled and appear in search

results. In fact, Google+ content seems favored by Googlebot (hmmm,

whodathunk?).

d. Social Signals in Search. Google’s organic search-ranking algorithm

now incorporates not just links and on-page content, but also “social

signals” of a page’s popularity. One recent study found that high

organic ranking is more strongly correlated with the number of Google

+1’s that a page has received than with the number of Facebook

“likes” it has received. 

Google+ offers compelling integration with

your AdWords paid search ads, which should boost click-through rate and

even conversion rate. When you link your AdWords account with your

Google+ page, your ads display “social annotations”—showing the

destination site’s total Google +1’s (which are equivalent to “likes” on

Facebook) and spotlighting those from friends of the searcher.

3. Google+ offers exposure across other Google account features and

YouTube video hangouts. As ExactTarget put it in a research report, “We’re

curious to see whether Google’s continued integration of Google+ into its

other messaging channels—Gmail, Google Chat, and Android mobile

devices-will deliver on the promise of the ’social inbox.’”

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4. Google+ Circles and its interactive, real-time video Hangouts are real

innovations that have taken today’s social networks up a notch.

LinkedIn is the world’s biggest professional networking site, with over 175

million members worldwide. If you’re a business-to-business company,

LinkedIn should sit front and center of your corporate social media efforts. Even

if you’re in B2C, LinkedIn has a valuable role to play in building your own

personal brand and in helping you connect with vendors, resources, and partners

to help you successfully run your social media program.

When I worked in the digital agency world, as VP of marketing for Timberline

Interactive, LinkedIn was an important part of my outreach to the e-commerce

industry at large and to particular e-comm professionals. Building a strong,

coherent, industry-focused network is the heart of success on LinkedIn.

Whether you’re an expert in network security, political fundraising, or Pilates,

LinkedIn is an ideal way to broadcast your expertise to potential new clients,

industry media, conference organizers, and even the mainstream media. Posting

good information—whether it’s something original that you wrote on your blog,

or whether you’re sharing the insights of others—boosts your profile as an

expert in your field. You can also link these posts to your Twitter account.

Participating in LinkedIn Groups and LinkedIn Answers furthers your

professional reputation. You can drill into special-interest topics, connect with

other members, and be recognized with “Best Answer” badges.

Impending industry conferences and commentary about trending hot topics in

business generate a buzz on LinkedIn that is unlike that of the other social

networks. Being part of that conversation makes you better informed and

ultimately more valuable in your job.

On LinkedIn, you can signify your openness to career opportunities, new

ventures, consulting offers, business deals, and the like. LinkedIn is de rigueur

for job seekers and recruiters, although unlike Monster.com, LinkedIn is much

more than just a career site.

If you work in B2B sales and marketing, it’s natural to view LinkedIn as an

opportunity to reach business prospects. I firmly agree. But I caution you to

observe one cardinal rule: never send a sales inquiry in the form of a connection

request on LinkedIn. LinkedIn best practices are clear. You should only seek to

connect with people you actually know. I frequently receive connection requests

from salespeople I have never met, and I ignore them every time.

Tip On LinkedIn, request a connection only with people you know. People are

attuned to disguised selling and will resent it.

Once I am actually doing business with someone, if that person is a valued

member of my professional network, by all means I’ll connect with him or her

on LinkedIn. If you want to make a sales inquiry, do your research on LinkedIn,

but reach out via phone or email or by an InMail.

LinkedIn maintains company pages, but they’re pretty blah—functioning more

like business directory entries than interactive brand pages. The site recently

pepped up its home-page functionality, displaying industry-specific news and

images attuned to each user’s industry focus. But at the heart of it, LinkedIn’s

real attraction remains its ability to help its members build their professional

networks and enhance their professional reputation.

For more on how to employ LinkedIn as part of a B2B marketing program, I

recommend LinkedIn for Business: How Advertisers, Marketers and Salespeople

Get Leads, Sales and Profits from LinkedIn, by Brian Carter (Que Publishing,

2012).

Another good read, although less about LinkedIn than about career development

in the new economy, comes from LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and coauthor

Ben Casnocha: The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and

Transform Your Career (Crown Business, 2012).

Building a healthy network of contacts on LinkedIn is a worthy mission for any

B2B professional. On LinkedIn, your network means people connected, within

three degrees of separation, to your friends. With 800 or so connections, I have

over 15 million people in my network. That’s a stunning number.

Important to notice:

Google+ still works? no was stoped 2019

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