Google+ for Marketers

Google+ really seems to be the big breakthrough for Google regarding Social Networks after a lot of setbacks in the past. I am for myself quite surprised that there is already so much conversation and sharing going on right now. It is not surprising under the fact that already more than 10 Million people are using G+. It is more the way they use it. Even if the first hype already weakens a bit in my eyes, most of the users are quite satisfied with the workflow. 

Now, especially the new company profiles will be of particular importance for marketers. I am sure the deletion of the mashable and Ford profiles e.g. is a good indicator that these companies will be one of first companies to come up the official company profiles. When the new profiles come up it will be the task to learn fast and to apply the learnings. Already before the start of the new profiles for companies Falk Hedemann from t3n advises companies in a post (only in german) to use an imprint for the Google+ profile which could e.g. be just a link to the imprint on the company website.

A very important chance for marketers will be the opportunity to be able to better target certain customer segments using circles. In Social Networks and especially on Google+, only really good content which truly offers an added value to the customer will be useful for a company. The circles will give the opportunity to the marketers to provide such a focused content for a special customer segment. As a consequence, companies which manage this targeting process by taking account of their customers’ needs will most probably achieve very good multiplying effects in and outside Google+.

Concerning measuring and tracking these effects, you have so far the same opportunities like in every other social network. That means most of the interactions can only be measured indirectly. For a short overview see Christopher S Penn’s post on How to measure Google Plus with analytics.

Hopefully Google will provide the full analytics features for the company accounts in the future, even when privacy discussions will pop up agagin.

The following info graphic provides a few insight about the differences between Google+ and Facebook in order to better understand the possibilities and threads of both networks: 

[Via: Single Grain]