2019 UPDATE: Is Google Plus For Business?

2019 UPDATE: Is Google Plus For Business? It is unfortunate to announce that as of April 2nd 2019, Google killed the Google+ platform. Although the platform held significant potential, they failed to adequately implement 3rd party support features. They also had an extremely poor deployment strategy.

…raise awareness to a new business, I strongly encourage you to develop a comprehensive, consistent content creation and curation strategy rather than use social media.

As a result, widespread adoption of the service became non-existent.This was coupled with Google’s failed attempt to force Google+ integration into YouTube comments. The catastrophe that ensued tainted the Google+ brand significantly among its very social YouTube platform.

The answer to the “Is Google Plus For Business?” question today is an emphatic “No.” In fact, very few social networks are even worth the massive time investment required. Business’ will yield more benefits producing a comprehensive, SEO strong content inventory than dumping hours into social media.

Social media is a great platform for businesses who already know their target demographic and are willing to spend money advertising. If this is not you, and you’re trying to raise awareness to a new business, I strongly encourage you to develop a comprehensive, consistent content creation and curation strategy rather than use social media.

Original Question (April 1st, 2014): Is Google Plus For Business?

The truth is, Google Plus nails down the user experience side as well as the content creator, aka Google Plus For Business, side of things.  They’ve given us, as content creators, the tools we need to connect to the right people at the right time. Who are those people? They are engagers.

Google Plus also gives the users a wonderful experience to actually enjoy content consumption.  That’s a delicate balance, in case you haven’t noticed. Especially in social media, things get ugly the minute that advertisers get involved. Content producers become sponsors, and then you see all these promoted posts. I certainly hope Google doesn’t get heavily involved in forced content advertising because they’ve talked about it.  

The user experience starts to dwindle because it starts to feel inorganic. What will solidify the future of Google+ is the continued growth of organic relationships. Not to sell out to promoted posts.  

The problem is as soon as you initiate something called promoted posts and allow content creators to pay to be above the fold, then the content and feed become inorganic. The users are smart enough to know that it is fake content. Users then start to leave the services and search for organic content again. 

This is one of the dilemmas that every social media network has ran into. It’s constantly a balance.  How do you make inorganic material appear organic? If you have to pay for something to show up in front of their face, it’s not organic. Organic means that I’ve created a piece of content that is worthy of showing up in front of people’s faces.  

If I’m paying for content to show up in front of user’s faces, then it’s inorganic, its not good enough quality content to even merit them seeing it.  That’s basically the idea behind it.  Google has a great platform, so I hope they don’t mess with it. It’s important to think about these things when considering Google Plus for business use.