Why Google+ Is Still Crucial to Marketing Efforts

In today’s competitive intelligence arena, marketing has higher stakes to not only gain clients and maintain interest, but create a lasting impression on the market. Social media has known to help improve search rankings, consumer engagement, and audience analytics. So what are the benefits to building a solid Google+ presence?

Google+ has become a competitor to the largely popular Facebook. It differentiates itself from Facebook with it’s more streamlined interface and business-friendly environment. Google’s visualization tools are embedded into the site, allowing any business to receive accurate traffic estimates as well as a map of it’s typical user. Google+ was introduced as being a “social layer” instead of just a site. In other words a ‘layer’ that reaches out to other online properties as part of Google itself. The result is a site that is highly linked to user accounts and settings.

Real-life Interaction With the User

Google+ “Circles” allow users to organize groups. This replaces the friends list known on Facebook. The result is a function that can be used to market a product or service with specific features targeted to specific audiences. By using “Hangouts”, the company or product can create an on-air broadcast, simplifying updates to be recorded later for users to watch at a specific time. This “real-life” interaction allows for more authentic marketing and a better understanding of the audience.

Points versus Likes

Facebook has always functioned with a “Like” feature. Google+, however, functions with a +1 button. Although similar to Facebook, Google’s version of ‘liking’ material is embedded into it’s search engine. Although it doesn’t improve SEO rankings directly, it can indirectly by Google+’s internal rankings and search options. The +1 feature operates much like a ranking of points. By using the “ripples” tool in Google, you can find out just how high the ranking features are for your marketing campaign.

Marketing Design Impact

Although social media is starting to hone in on its features in marketing tools, Google+ has allowed several features in design that have impacted marketing profoundly:

1.) Google Reader Interface
Introducing a white letter or pertinent source information for a company has never been easier.

2.) Google+ Events
A revamp of events allows more streamlined analytics of audience participation.

3.) Improved Mobile Support
Mobile support is crucial in any modern marketing campaign. This includes strong SMS support and the ability to organize notifications sent to the user.

While we believe Google+ is still in diapers, it is a powerful marketing tool that is tightly integrated to the marketing giant itself. It would be ill-advised to overlook the powerful effects that Google+ can have on any marketing campaign.