Google+ for Business.
How Google"s Social Network Changes Everything.
Chris Brogan.
To everyone who brings a positive view of the world to their surroundings. And to Jacqueline, for believing.
Acknowledgments.
Thanks to Katherine Bull, for suggesting I could do this, and to Ginny Munroe, for helping me make it all work better.
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Introduction: Google+ Is So New.
If you"re picking up this book, it"s because you"ve heard about Google+ (maybe even have signed up for an account), and you"re curious as to whether this can be helpful for your business. It"s a technology that launched to a limited audience in July 2011, and so, if you"re even considering this book, it means that you like to stay on the cutting edge. To me, that"s reason enough to jump in and pick up this book.
Google+ is a social network created by Google with features that might remind you of Facebook. If I said just that, you"d shrug it off and decide this probably wasn"t worth your time. But there"s more to it. Google+ is a social network that Google uses to better understand the human aspects of sharing information (like pointing people toward specific links) and as such, Google uses information gathered in Google+ to improve search rankings and findability of information. Being that Google is the #1 search engine in the world, you might now have another reason to consider picking up this book.
When writing a book around a specific technology, it is impossible to get everything perfectly right. Things change so fast that this book might have some outdated information by the time it"s in your hands. As best as I can, the majority of this book is based on the concepts and the business values of these tools more than it is based on any how-to information pertinent to the features and functions of the software. I"ll leave a lot of that to other books and blog posts. You and I will talk more about how to consider these tools for your business applications, no matter if you"re a small business with only a few employees, or if you"re part of a large corporation.
Who Am I?
My name is Chris Brogan, and I"ve been involved with various online communities and social media tools since I was a kid growing up in the "80s. My background before doing this was mostly in the telecommunications industry, starting with an old Bell company and then joining a wireless company.
In 2006, I co-founded an event called PodCamp, which explored how podcasting could impact businesses and organizations. From there, I worked with Vonage co-founder Jeff Pulver on his Video on the Net conference and helped him with a startup called Network2. I started a marketing company called New Marketing Labs in 2009 with Stephen and Nick Saber, and merged it with their new company, The Pulse Network, in 2011.
Along the way, I co-wrote a New York Times bestselling book, Trust Agents, and started another company called Human Business Works, which provides tools and smarts for small businesses. I"m a professional keynote speaker for corporations and conferences and have my fingers in lots of other pies as well.
My blog, chrisbrogan.com, is in the top five of the Advertising Age Power 150, and beyond that, I"ll just say that I"m quite active in understanding how to help humanize business, and how to help others build sustainable, relationship-minded businesses. I"m quite pa.s.sionate about how community building and being helpful drive business value, as you"ll see throughout this book.
What"s in This Book.
In this book, you learn how to use Google+ for your business. Consider it a bunch of serving suggestions. Some of these ideas can immediately be useful to you. Others won"t match your needs. You might need to modify some things to better suit your needs. Don"t fret. You and I are both learning about how this new social network tool can benefit your business. We"ll get there together.
Following is a peek at the upcoming chapters: * Chapter 1, "How Did I Get Here?": The idea of joining yet another social network is about as exciting as asking for 200 more emails a day. And yet, Google+ is worth your time and you need to jump into it now, if you want to use it to grow your business.
* Chapter 2, "The Opportunity of Google+": Millions of people are already using Google+ in what feels to be an organic and referral-based ecosystem: The more people who like what you share, the more they"ll want to engage with you about your business.
* Chapter 3, "A Day in the Life": What do you do when you get on Google+? You can observe a few versions of a day in the life of a Google+ user, for the small business, the large business, the owner of a company, and an employee on a team.
* Chapter 4, "First Moves with Google+": Setting up a personal profile is step 1 to becoming involved with Google+. You walk through the basics and then talk through some of the tricks and tips you might not normally consider but that give you value.
* Chapter 5, "Circles": The most important feature that Google+ has brought to social networks is a much better way to organize contacts and interactions. Setting up your circles can make or break your experience with using the product.
* Chapter 6, "Posting in the Stream": Creating interesting posts that draw attention and spark conversations is the "coin of the realm" with Google+. Learn how you can add video, photos, and interesting links to build relationships before the sale.
* Chapter 7, "A Simple Content Strategy": You"re a publishing company, whether you"re willing to believe it. How do you decide what to post on Google+, what to share, and how can it help you build business connections?
* Chapter 8, "The "Warm" Sell": Selling via a social network isn"t the same as pushing offers into a stream. Google+ more than any other social network has some established norms that make an outright direct sale effort far less favorable. How do you keep your prospects" ears and eyes in an opt-in universe?
* Chapter 9, "Growing an Audience": Marketing, at least, is often about the numbers. It"s not so easy to discern the way that social networks can drive business. It"s definitely not the same as direct marketing pieces in the mail (under 1% response), but there"s a nuance to it. How do you grow an audience, and what is your best bet for building value before you sell?
* Chapter 10, "Sharing": If creating good content and posting in the stream is the coin of the realm, sharing is part of the marketplace. Sharing other people"s good information builds a following for you, establishes you as someone who finds interesting and helpful information, and makes that balance discussed in previous chapters possible.
* Chapter 11, "Power Plays in Google+": You"ve figured out the basics already. This chapter includes some experiments, tips, and tactics that might work well for you in your quest to build business value with Google+.
* Chapter 12, "Setting Up Your Business Page": You"ve mastered the personal profile, and now it"s time to move to the business page. There aren"t many differences, and yet, the way you use both is varied and different. This chapter includes your first steps.
* Chapter 13, "Feeling Lucky?": Google+ is a clear signal that Google, a company that dominates search, thinks that social platforms send important information that validates and verifies the importance of specific links. Said another way: You"re likely to get better search rankings and results if you appropriately use Google+.
* Chapter 14, "Next Steps": You"ve gone through everything. But what can you do with this. This final chapter includes some thoughts on actions to take, if you"ve not yet taken the plunge, plus an invitation to connect and talk even more about what you read in this book.
With all that said, let"s begin.
1. How Did I Get Here?
You should be a bit skeptical about starting with yet another social network. And it"s not like I know every person picking up this book, but some of you just started figuring out Facebook not too long ago and maybe still don"t understand what all the fuss is about Twitter. And here comes another living-in-his-own-world marketer/business guy telling you that Google+ is where it"s at, right?
I"ve decided to make the first chapter of this book a bit of an answer to the question "why?" because I think it"s important. Whenever you hear the buzz about something new, that"s probably the first big question that rushes into your head. Why should I have to know about this? Why must I spend even more time typing into yet another box? What can all this mean for my business?
Another reason I wanted to start this book with some answers to your potential skepticism is because I"ve felt that, too. I started blogging in 1998, when it was called journaling, which might be reasonably early for blogging, but isn"t that early for someone having a web presence, meaning, I wasn"t much of an early adopter.
In 2006, I was reasonably early (but not bleeding-edge early) to Twitter, which I came to believe, with all my heart, was going to change business communications and marketing. Because I started so early, I was right about that. It made a great difference to my business, and I helped lots of other companies (and some individuals) figure out how Twitter could add business value.
But for the last few years, I"ve been asked at every keynote presentation and corporate meeting I"ve spoken at: What"s the next big thing? I haven"t been able to answer that question. In every single case, I"ve answered in a kind of mumble that "I don"t actually know what"s next, but I"m quite convinced that mobile platforms are big, and uh, I would never bet that either Twitter or Facebook would be forever." I haven"t had a good answer to "What"s the next big thing?" until now.
I"m just as surprised as you.
Why Is Google+ the Next Big Thing?
I"m not a Google insider, by the way, so this all comes from a pa.s.sionate user"s seat outside the Googleplex. I know nothing more than most users. I have no secret in. What I do have, in abundance, is the ability to extrapolate and speculate, and that"s part of what fuels my answer.
First, the easy stuff. Google+ is a social network indexed by Google. In recent years, Google searched for ways to amplify the way humans pa.s.s links and data inside social networks, which is different than how one page references another page for a search. Stated more simply: Google+ is tied to Google search, so by using it well you can improve your primary website"s findability for folks searching for it.
Second, what"s probably the least obvious but most powerful part of Google+ is how much of it is built toward making it easy for people to discover you and connect with you, on the one hand, and how simple it is to choose to limit what you share and with whom you share on the other hand. When you choose to follow new people, you can see who follows them, and often, you can see who that person has chosen to follow. (And by "follow," I"m talking about the act of opting to receive updates from someone inside of Google+.) Facebook and LinkedIn are somewhat more closed. If I"m not your Facebook friend, you have to make special effort to see what I share on my wall. If we"re not connected via LinkedIn, you don"t receive updates from me. Twitter is more like Google+ from an inclusivity perspective.
Speculating on the Future.
The reason I think that Google+ is the next big thing has less to do with the previous information and much more to do with speculating on where things might go. Google, over the past many years, has created several applications that don"t exactly line up logically. I think that with Google+, there is a huge potential to link together some of the disparate things, which can create some useful business applications from that linkage. Following are a few thoughts along those lines: * Google Places enables businesses to add more information to search results. Integrating Google Places data into a Google+ business page means that your customers and prospects can have more information built into search results from Google, which can drive more potential discovery.
* Google Docs is a decent collaborative application, enabling you to create and share doc.u.ments, spreadsheets, presentations, and more. Adding the communications, sharing, and distribution powers of Google+ to Google Docs means that in-company workflow and collaboration has a new powerhouse tool.
* Google Calendar added event functionality on top of its existing meeting, appointment, and task functionalities. Posting events as a business inside of Google+ enables integrated scheduling and improved findability of events that matter to your prospects.
* Google Checkout is Google"s payment solution, which competes with PayPal and Amazon Payments, to name a couple. Integrating payment management into Google+ would permit businesses to execute transactions inside this social network without requiring the user to leave the Google+ ecosystem. (People might be more likely to complete a transaction that stays inside the social network.) * Google"s Android mobile platform has many location-aware features, where your Google searches take into account where you"re located, and Google+ is built to accept, post, and share location data. Commerce and marketing options are huge in this "buy where you are" system. This isn"t so much speculation because the tools are already in place. It"s just up to you to use them as such.
* Google a.n.a.lytics integration with business pages on Google+ means that not only do you understand the a.n.a.lytics of your primary websites, but now you also have visibility into how people on this social network find your information and what they do with it. This improves your ability to move people toward what they want, not only on your primary website, but also on this social network.
* YouTube is already integrated with Google+. As the #2 search engine, this should be interesting to you. Take it a bit further and you can see that using YouTube as part of your business communications and marketing efforts is a powerful tool when coupled with the sharability and social aspects of Google+.
In speculating, risks always exist. I"m not good at predicting the future-to be quite honest. However, because Google has built dozens and dozens of properties that don"t immediately go well together, and because Google+ looks more and more like a potential "communications backbone" to all these various touch points, I think there are some big opportunities to consider, and those who are early to use and master Google+ can be best positioned to take advantage of these potential futures as they arise.
Facebook Is Better. Twitter Is Better. LinkedIn Is for Business.
In the first few weeks of Google+, what I saw more than anything else when I started proclaiming how I felt this would be a powerful new social networking tool (and also important to business) was something along these lines: "All my friends are on Facebook, so there"s no way Google+ can become the next big social network."
For a lot of people, that"s true now. But as I"ve said earlier and will say often, it was also true that everybody was on AOL back in the "80s. Systems change. Networks change. You"re not still rocking your fax marketing program, are you?