Google+ is an internet based social network owned and operated by Google Inc. that has over 150 million active users, with about 50% of all users logging into their Google+ accounts daily. Google+ Business Pages are easily indexed by Google which facilitates much more enhanced discoverability of your brand, products or services among the targeted audience. This makes Google+ one of the most desirable social networks that cannot be ignored by medium size businesses despite it being not as popular as Facebook and Twitter.
Some compelling reasons for including Google+ in your business marketing strategy have been briefly summed up to help you understand the benefits your business can harvest through the use of Google+ :
1. SEO Advantage
68% searches are conducted by Google and using Google+ can help your brand rank higher on the search engines. One of the SEO benefits that Google+ Profile and Google+ Business Pages bring is that the content you post on your page can rank in search engines even if your website doesn’t. This is huge because the websites that appear on the first few positions on Google are likely to get 54.8% clicks from all users, says a study.
2. Google+ can be easily integrated with other Google Products
Google offers a wide variety of useful products such as Google Maps, Gmail, Google Chrome, Google Play, YouTube, Hangouts, Communities and many others. Google+ makes it easy for digital marketers to integrate, manage and share content across all these products and make their digital marketing campaigns more efficient.
3. The +1 button
According to HubSpot.com, companies that use Google’s +1 button generated 3.5 times more traffic on their website from Google+ as compared to those who did not have the button installed. The G+ button shows the number of +1’s a particular content gets and increases click-through rates when there are higher numbers associated with a particular piece of content.
4. Google Authorship
Google Authorship is an important feature that lets you link the content you have created to your Google+ profile. It provides more appealing result in the SERPs and enhances your web presence through sharing of fresh content as well as re-sharing of older content with different keywords.
5. Google+ Communities provide better interaction with the targeted audience
Google+ allows you to create your own community and align the brand, product or service you are marketing with the community members. Your Google+ profile can also help your brand participate in other focussed communities composed of other individual Google+ users or companies with a G+ account. This will enhance your brand awareness, content marketing efforts as well as help your brand reach G+ users across the globe.
6. Benefit of Google+ Reviews
Google+ reviews showing up on the search results attract potential customers towards your brand, product or service. The reviews made by people with their photos next to it are believed to be more authentic than those with mere texts.
7. Google+ Local helps promote your business Locally
Searchers that are on the move and are using mobile devices looking for local businesses can easily locate your store if your Google+ business page carries the relevant information with Google Maps embedded, office hours and contact numbers.
8. Create live interaction using Google+ Hangouts
Google+ Hangout is a very powerful tool that allows you to broadcast webinars to potential clients and hold conferences with employees and team members in real time across the globe that too for free.
9. Google+ Ripples
Google+ Ripples is a data visualization graph that can be used by small businesses to keep a check on the manner their content has been shared.
10. Better control of your messaging
Google+ allows you to group people by adding them to your circles, sort them into groups in any way you like and then channel your messages to a specific group, notifying them with updates about anything you like.
Google+ is a viable marketing option which if put to the right use, can generate useful leads for your business, boost your website’s traffic as well as enhance your brand awareness.
