It is no secret Facebook is hell bent on becoming a user pays service, with only 6% of followers on our business profiles now able to see daily posts. (unless we pay to boost them) And more than constant rumours abounding it is going to go even lower. What does the future hold for small to medium business, (SME’s) and their social media marketing strategies who are on shoe string budgets.
Smart marketers are building their presence on Google Plus and reaping the rewards, Google Plus offers so much more in the way of tools, analytics & functionality. Being owned by the world’s largest search engine is likely reason enough to be spending a good portion of your marketing efforts here. However here are some other compelling reasons you should make the move now.
Hash Tags
They actually work on Google Plus and work exceptionally well, unlike Facebook that just cannot seem to get this right. Plenty of data now exists that hash tags have a negative effect on your posts on Facebook, putting it at odds with almost every other social media platform you are likely to use.
Authorship
Possibly one of the most important trends emerging for high quality SEO. (search engine optimisation) Authorship validates the authenticity of content and is ranked higher than non validated content on Google. Authorship is exclusively the domain of Google Plus & Google. Facebook has nothing to compete with authorship. Authorship is easy to set up always ensure your posts include the “By Adam Houlahan”, but of course use your own Google Plus profile name.
Reach
Opinions are divided on the value of Facebooks *organic reach, with the continual drop in the ability of your fans to see your posts this has to affect your **viral reach too. Google Plus does not throttle your fans ability to see your posts, so the likelihood of creating viral reach is much higher.
* organic reach is the amount of people who will see your posts in their feed
** Viral reach is the people who will see your posts because they are friends of, or follow the pages of your fans who share, like or comment on your posts.
Integration
Google seems to be doing a great job of creating a well integrated set of tools. You Tube, Gmail, Mail Chimp, Google Plus and Hangouts are just the start. Your Hangouts can now be directly broad cast to your You Tube channel, it is no secret video is playing a major role in on-line marketing & will only become more dominant into the future.
The ability to embed your You Tube links via a hot link of your video title into Google Plus and the rise and rise of Authorship, makes it imperative to start making use of your You Tube channels. It is simply a much better experience all round on Google Plus compared to Facebook.
It is not time to walk away from Facebook just yet, however smart companies are building their presence on Google Plus. How about you, are you on Google Plus yet? Do you think it has an important place in your future plans?
Have your say in the comments below.