I remember some years ago Google launching Google friend connect. I vaguely remember a few blog sites promoting it but, like many Google ventures, it never really got traction. In May Google announced its ‘retirement’ – pretty much at the same time that Google+ was starting to gain promotion.
You’d be forgiven for thinking Google+ is just an attempt to score against other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. However, there is a genuine flaw in these platform which is has provided a real point of difference between FB and LinedIn. Most users will tell you about the difference between social media sites and professional networking sites, what they do and their purpose. We use LinkedIn to manage our career and FB for our social life.
Easy.
Not really. Not when some of your colleagues are also friends. Not when you have to manage 2 social media platforms. Not when you boss can see the pictures of the stage night you’ve just been on. The answers is Google+. The first social media platform that gives you the ability to segregate your connections into ‘circles’ and see the effects of your involvement through ‘Ripples’.
So what are the benefits?
“Circles enable me to share my stag night pictures without my Mum or boss seeing”
Many professionals have a pretty healthy network on LinkedIN. But if you’re like me and you get approached by a head hunter wanting to connect you could be in 2 minds. You know your boss could see your activity so it might spark an awkward conversation. With Google+ you have the ability to group all recruiters into 1 ‘Circle’ so when you’re ready to send you’re CV out via Google sites it’s easy to manage its instant distribution.
This unique benefit can also be applied to those in marketing. Segregating your prospect audience is critical if you’re going to provide relevant content that generates response. OK so not all of your target audience will have a Google+ profile but with the promise from Google that Google+ will be an integral part of the all of Google features including Gmail, Google Apps, Search, YouTube and Play.
Having all your applications a integrated with your social media could prove a great benefits for those wishing to avoid duplication of effort, yet still provide great content to their network.
“Ripples enable me to see how and where my content gets shared”
Social media marketing has, for some time, highlighted the benefits of driving web site traffic through back linking and content sharing. But before Google+ it’s never really been proven, tracked or measured. Ripples gives us the ability to see exactly who has shared our content and to whom. This makes the whole idea of developing content topics a lot easy in the future, because we’ll know what gets shared.
Google+ seems to answer some of the flaws in both LinkedIn and FB but like any social media platform if you want to get something out of it you’ll need to invest content creation and network building time.