Does Google+ have a Business Use Case?

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jethro's picture

If you don't know what Google+ is then you can read on and find out . Google+ unlike Twitter, Yammer, LinkedIn, Live Messenger or Facebook is not just a social network. And while all those mentioned have different elements of social networking in them unique in most cases to each one, Google+ contains elements of them all, and then does it a completely different way.

googleplus-iconThe most different thing about Google+ is the circles. Simply put circles are overlapping groups that can be created very easily and you can add your contacts to them. You can then easily share posts with different circles. If you need a new circle for a specific reason, just create one, add some people to it and away you go. Additionally, people don't need to be your "friends" in order to follow you and vice versa. Thus you can broadcast to a circle including people who aren't following you, ad they can broadcast to you. Muting or blocking a person is easy.

Hangouts and Huddles are real time chat tools for web and mobile allowing some pretty cool interactivity to occur.

But how can this be used for business, or even should it be used?

I think there are a number of things to consider here.

First just because you or your business don't use it doesn't mean your customers, staff and competitors wont. And given the instant public nature of the content generate they could be slanging you off. Not being there to manage your brand could be a big mistake. Coming late to the party could also be bad for the same reason.

Second consider the users. Currently Google+ is  in beta and non public invite only. Primarily internet savvy tech and geek early adoptees are using it. this might change as it goes more public, but it is not anticipated that it will be come like Twitter and used for celebrity stalking for instance.

Finally consider the medium. Social networking is a two way engagement. Broadcasting sales messages doesn't work. Twitter and Facebook have proven that. For a business to consider using Google+ they must have an existing social media engagement strategy and policies and be prepared to adapt those to work with the Google+ environment.

 

Google+ is brand new  but growing fast and as it does more and more uses will be discovered and tested. I have linked some resources here for further research.