Google+ Is Not Quite Open For Social Media Marketing Yet
Posted by Patrick Murphy on Fri, Aug 12, 2011
Google+ has been creating so much buzz in the social media community, and with PR and Marketing consultants too. Everyone has been speculating on what can be done with the platform to promote businesses – but the truth is that nobody really knows yet! You see, while Google+ has now opened publicly (you no longer need a much sought after invitation to join the social network), Google has also asked businesses to hold off on creating their company profile for now. According to Google, their business products just aren’t ready for use yet, but they are coming.
No room for business at Google+
If you try to experiment with Google+ for your business by setting up a profile, the profile will be deleted without any exception. This doesn’t mean that Google won’t be going in the business profile direction with plus- quite the opposite in fact. For now, the product is only aimed at consumers for the trial period, but they are working on some great tools for business users. Christian Olsten is the product manager on the Google+ project, and he released a video recently explaining what’s happening with Google+ for businesses (see below). In the video, Christian said “We have been watching Google+ take shape over the last week and we’ve seen some really great companies get involved. But frankly we know our product as it stands is not optimally suited to their needs. In fact, it was kind of an awkward moment for us when we asked Ford for his gender!”
A social media marketing evolution?
The way that businesses interact with social networks is different, and right now Google+ can’t support this kind of activity. They are working on it though. Google are building some great features that will benefit business brands separately from user features. They may even be more powerful than the likes of Facebook, and should give far more accurate measures of progress with marketing on the platform than Facebook can give. Currently the only real way to monitor your brand growth through the medium is to count your likes, page interactions or else invest in some heavy social media marketing tools. But Google+ will be allowing use of its SEO and metrics tools, so your Google Webmaster tools will be available to you during your Google+ campaign.
We are very excited at the evolution for social media marketing that could come from Google+, and we can’t wait to try out their business tools for ourselves. But right now we have to wait, and so do you. In the meantime, you can register for a free social media evaluation from SiliconCloud.