Background to Google+

So what is Google+. For anyone not familiar with it, it is a social network that allowers users (individuals) and brands to share links, images, videos and status updates. Users are able to share and comment.

63% of Google+ users are men and many post about technology and two of the biggest groups are college students and software developers.

According to Google 170 million have upgraded to Google+. Does upgraded mean active? Who knows. It's easy to get hung up in these huge figures but the fact is a lot of people are using Google+ and there seems to be a general agreement from analysts that these numbers will grow.

More important for you though, than the huge numbers is understanding what the marketing advantages or disadvantages of Google+. and how they impact on your marketing strategy.

Advantages of Google + for Marketing

Google + and integration into search results

Status updates from Google+ and any content that has been endorsed with the +1 appear in organic search engines on Google.com

This means it doesn't matter whether you have a +1 button on your blog or website of whether you are regularly publishing to Google+ your content is far more likely to dominate search results than it would have done before you signed up to Google+, A very good reason for signing up don't you think?

Google+ circles

A 'Circle' is a group of Google Plus users. When you post to content to Google+ you can choose to share specific information only with people in particular cicles.

The means you're able to do targeted marketing to particular groups of followers which will result in higher levels of engagement as well as higher CTRs (Click Through Rates). Think how often you hear people complaining about their CTR. Can you afford to miss the opportunity to improve yours?

Increased Traffic with the +1 button

Having the +1 button on either your blog or your website makes it easy for people to be able to share your content and there is no doubt that you will experienced increased traffic.

No issues with duplicate content

There are no issues with Google + in posting the same content there as you may have done on other social networks.

Disadvantages for Google+ for Marketing

Well you didn't expect it to all be good news did you.? There are some disadvantages to using google+ which you may be well aware of if you've been using it.

People find it confusing

There are a number of issues that are putting people off from even trying google+ because some things are not immediately clear, including the differences of posting directly to Google+ and just +1ing content..

If you can't understand it properly - why would you use it? I know I've heard people who think it's well worth it but also people who have already given it up as a dead loss.

Value of Google+ yet to be established

Despite the huge numbers that Google state are involved in Google+ the current position is that users aren't spending very long on it. In fact it's only 3.3. minutes on average per visit. which really isn't very long and is well behind the 100 minutes people are spending on Pinterest.

If Google+ are unable to offer users a unique selling point that differentiates them sufficiently from the other social networks, marketers may well be reluctant to use it.