Google +

Getting online customers to your website is one of the most important ingredients for growing your business, and when it comes to search engines, Google has the vast majority of the market share.  If customers don’t know about you or can’t find a convenient way to reach you through the Web, selling your product or service becomes that much harder. 

Google+ (Google Plus) is one of the fastest growing social networking sites available in today’s market.  While it pales in comparison to the vastness of Facebook, Google+ is tightly tied to the Google search engine.  Google+ has ‘+1’ votes, similar to Facebook’s Likes.  Those votes let Google know that what you’re sharing is being read. Google+ profiles and pages can have a significant impact on search rankings.

Google+ separates itself from other social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter by offering increased SEO or Search Engine Optimization.  Posts are crawled and indexed almost immediately, resulting in a greater likelihood of your page appearing at the top of Google search results when a potential customer begins researching a product or service. 

You can also link your Google+ page to your other social media pages, thus allowing them to benefit from the increased visibility. 

A central feature of Google+ is its ‘circles.’ Similar to Facebook’s friends lists, circles are more targeted and allow users to define the feeds displayed on their home screen and who can see them. Specific content can be sent out to targeted groups or individuals instead of everybody in your network. This means that the content you deliver will only reach the people you want it to. 

Google+ presents a more professional environment for business similar to LinkedIn, only much larger.  Most users aren’t on Google+ to find recipes for Grandma’s lasagna or to post pictures of their cat.  To those types of users, that is what Facebook or Pinterest is for. 

A smaller, more selective environment means that the content you post has a greater likelihood of being seen by people looking to act on it.  Many businesses have found that one of the primary disadvantages of Facebook is that the content they sent out was getting lost within user’s news feeds.

Just as there are a huge variety of potential customers, there are a huge variety of places to spread your social media net.  Not all sites are created equal, and not all will provide you with the best return on investment.  With its close ties to the Google search engine, Google+ offers one of the better ones.