Google Plus - The Caution Flag is Still Out

The following blog article was written by guest contributer Liz Horgan of Strategic Social Media.

Liz specializes in helping small- and medium-sized businesses and individuals in the Charlotte, NC area grow and prosper using social media.  Liz has been involved with the financial services sector for many years, and recently earned her Masters in Strategic Communication.  She enjoys playing tennis, hiking, and is a wanna-be gardener helping out at a local community garden.

In the financial services industry, social media efforts are irrevocably bound to compliance rules and regulations.  Systems have to be set up to archive and review social media activity at each Firm before individuals can “get social”. 

What can you do to prepare yourself and your business marketing for the social media opportunities both here and heading your way?

Listen and Learn.  Listen and watch to see what your people are saying and doing in the social media sphere.  While you learn about LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, consider looking at Google+ during your due diligence phase as well.

Why Google Plus?

* Visibility: Google+ impacts Search - Google+’s new comprehensive social networking platform is closely integrated with the world’s largest search engine (Google search). What is posted and shared on G+ influences where you or your brand/subject show up on the search results.  

In addition to traditional search, Google has a new social search, “Search Plus Your World” (SPYW).  As of this writing, SPYW integrates only Google+‘s social networking information.  While there are workarounds to this, other major social networking sites (Facebook and Twitter for starters) are not adequately represented and so right now G+ is positioned advantageously vs. other social networks.

* Expand your Reach: Sharing information with key influencers and building individual credibility is “easy” with Google+’s Circles.  Content can be optimized for keywords and can help you become top of mind with your target markets. 

* Niche Marketing: Fine tune what you send to each of your target audiences using Google+.  G+ offers the ability to add the same contact to many different circles with a few quick clicks. 

For example, your favorite CPA can be in your financial advisor list and your sailing buddy list.  You can send your CPA industry news using the financial advisor circle for distribution of a post, and you can also send the same CPA and all the rest of your sailing crew (without including all other non-sailing financial advisors) a quick note about next weekend’s race - all by selecting the Circle(s) you want to use.  Google+’s Circles work intuitively and dovetail with the way you think - no difficult systems or new routines to learn with this.

* Analysis: Google+ has a built-in analytic tool, Ripples, which lets you visualize how and where your posts are being shared.  You can gauge which messages work best for your given business objectives.

* Cool video platform: With the Hangouts feature in G+, you have the ability to conduct your own audio and video conferences live - from your computer.  Hangout is a web-conferencing platform, with many professional features that make it more flexible than Skype. 

* Free: And...it’s free, except for your time.  There is no cost to setting up your profile and business/interest pages, but any social network requires a time commitment, and we all know “time is money”. 

While these are compelling reasons to become somewhat familiar with Google+ before being able to use it in the financial services industry, there is a caution.  How will G+ play out vis-a-vis the competition: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter?  Will it be worth your time? 

As all of the social networks evolve, things will change.  As Dan Mitchell muses, perhaps Google Plus will end up being the network of professionals, techies and creative types, while Facebook continues on as the network of the mainstream. Maybe Google Plus will end up with fewer members and less traffic, but higher business values.  Adoption rates for Google+ have been impressive to date, but what happens going forward will really dictate how important G+ can be for your marketing strategy.

The bottom line:  Solid marketing reasons to consider Google+...but it’s too soon to jump in full bore.  Listen and learn until it becomes clearer.

For more on Google+, check out my recent blog post: Google+ Niche for Businesses - Thoughts and Current Insights