Social media for business

Social media has come of age overtime and now it provides a powerful means to reach out and engage with online population in an extremely cost effective and efficient way. Even as social platforms shift in popularity or come and go, businesses can introduce themselves and
interact with those who share the same interests. Savvy businesses are already using Facebook, twitter, YouTube and so many other platforms to engage their audience. Now they have one more; Google+ your business. Google, a search engine we are so familiar with, released its social network in June this year and was asking enterprises and organisations to wait for using the site for business purposes. Last Monday (October 7, 2011), Google rolled out Google+ pages for businesses to create a presence on the social networking platform for connecting with their users locally and worldwide in a big way. Google+ is google’s answer to Facebook. Like Facebook pages, at Google + pages, businesses can share content – text, photos and video – to not only a network of contacts but to anyone using Google services. Like Facebook, individuals can have a personal profile at Google+ and a Page for local business, place, product or brand, company, institution or organisation. The page can also support arts, entertainment, sports and much more. Overall, it is a social site to post information in different formats for a cause. So, what is the difference? Why businesses should create pages at Google+ for what they are already achieving at Facebook? A simple answer is the penetration of the search results.
People search on Google billions of times a day. Having Google+ pages can help people transform their queries into meaningful connections because Google is bringing Google+ pages into its search results. Google has integrated + into its World Wide Web dominating search engine. In addition, with Google+ direct connect, searchers can insert a “+” before their query and jump directly to a business’s Google+ page. Type “+YouTube” into a Google search box, for instance, and Google will take you straight to YouTube’s Plus page. This is where Google will have an advantage over Facebook or any other social media platform. This ability alone gives Google+ an edge over other more familiar social networks. This interesting and innovative feature can be a welcome mat for eager marketeers and is likely to put them into motion to claim their own brand pages.
Another difference lies in counting Facebook likes and Google +1 that are considered as public endorsements. Presently, Facebook has more than 800 million active users (Google+ so far has only 40 million in less than six months), 50% of them log on to Facebook in any given day and an average Facebook user has 130 friends. It will not be an exaggeration to add that almost everyone online has a Google account. For people that already use features like Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar, the inevitable integration between these tools and Google Plus is useful. But let me hasten to add that counting number of likes or +1 is not a measure. Instead, businesses that want to track how well their page are doing can simply use Google+ search to look for keywords for their products or services. Businesses can also use Google Analytics to measure the popularity of their page. Facebook is for people (family and friends) you already know and Google+ is for netizens who are trying to find relevant information online. Marketeers need to pay very close attention because Google+ pages are likely to change users’ search experience and web masters’ search engine optimisation forever. Instead of being an aggregator or a medium to find relevant information about your products and services, Google+ is poised to be both the platform and means of distribution for content.
While everyone in the tech space is exploring Google+ and weighing its potentials, one thing is sure, it is better to claim your own business space with Google+ pages and have a presence on it for the back link to Google. That will make your business more available on Google. Not only that, it is more in line with engagement marketing.

The writer is Deputy Controller of Examinations at Lahore School of Economics. He blogs at http://logicisvariable.blogspot.com/ and can be reached at [email protected]