Happy 1st Birthday To Google+
On Tuesday afternoon I attended the Google+ Social to wish happy 1st birthday to Google+, and hear a series of talks highlighting the success they have had using the channel.
Google used this opportunity to discuss the latest figures and updates for Google+, highlighting an impressive 250 million users in one year, with 150 million active and 75 million daily users. Livia Zuppardo, Product Specialist for Google also announced the new features being added to the product such as the beautifully crafted Events section (try out Party Mode for your phone!), the creation of apps for Hangouts, a better offering for mobile and tablet devices, and a new Recommendations tab (very much a more influential +1). All of these are simple offerings to make Google+ better for the user, but apparently there are much more exciting features to be released in the next year!
Anyway, I am very open to using Google + as a platform for our clients as I can see the enormous search benefits that are available, but also that you can get a much more engaged audience with the right brand through the early adopters of the platform and therefore providing much more exclusive content to these fans and seeing a greater return than other social channels. This was highlighted from the speakers that presented to us, Jerry Daykin from Cadbury, Richard Kemp from Late Rooms and music sensation Daria Musk.
Each speaker discussed the huge success they have received globally through the use of Google+. With each brand boasting huge numbers of fans for a platform that is just over a year old and each seeing search advantages to the product and an increase in sales, you can see that these are the success stories, but I wonder whether this is attainable to social departments who don’t have full backing from their company or client. For example, Cadbury’s have been incredibly successful on Google+ but they also have had financial backing to create great content to post, along with providing hang outs with Olympian Rebecca Adlington. This gives huge incentive for people to follow them, and therefore a greater chance to increase sales.
If you don’t have this sort of backing, is it possible to attract a large audience on such a new platform? Only time will tell. For now though, I’m going to continue thinking up strategies for Google+ and push the channel as an important method of reaching your fans, along with chilling out with the G+ sunglasses and flip-flops I was given!
@BenSheppard89
