I have a personal Google+ account, but not for either of my businesses. I do use Twitter regularly, but not the other social media networks. Curious if any of you have found benefits to using Google+, or is it a waste of your time?
Just like Twitter and Facebook, there are people that use Google+ daily and it works to your advantage to use all the social networks you can to reach potential customers. Your customers may only use one or two social networks, but you should be using all of them for maximum exposure.
Well, if you're into blogging and internet marketing, then having a Google+ profile is a must do. This is how you create Google authorship (which is the little profile thumbnails that show up in the Google SERPs). You can't have Authorship without a Google+ profile. That is if you decide to start blogging. Case studies show that authorship serps get more clicks that non-authorship. Rumors predict that Google+ profiles that have more followers and more +1 engagement will have a competitive edge in google ranking. As far as business purposes, are you trying to rank a business website on Google? If you are, I'd recommend setting up a "Google+ Local Page" and try to round up some people to follow it aka "+1 and circle it". Especially if it's a LOCAL Business! This will give you better control on how your business details displayed in Google SERPs. There are other things such as Microdata, but having control of your Google+ page will allow you to control your brand a little bit better. Hope that helps.
I also wanted to also point out that I just read an article this morning. Google+ has overtaken the 2nd place position behind Facebook as having the most active users. MOST ACTIVE SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS Facebook (693 million active users) Google+ (343 million active users) Twitter (288 million active users) These #'s are debatable... Merely just being logged in can be consider active, but to answer your question... I've connected with some interesting and influential people on Google+. I've even acquired substantial paying freelance work through Google+. I've definitely found it to be beneficial. I also noticed that Google+ Communities are starting be become popular...especially in the local arena. Google+ Communities is sorta similar to Meetup.com; accept it's FREE for managers to post events....Think of it similar to Facebook Groups. Google+ Communities is also popular for photographers to share their work...Think Flickr Groups. If you're looking for benefits, this all depends on your purpose (GOAL) for this particular social media channel. Without a goal...You're wasting your time.
As I see it, G+ is kind of an improved LinkedIn. It really depends on the country you live in and the people active on G+. I'm using it only for business purpose to reach people abroad. This way - it works great.
Google+ might be useful for some. And more the traffic sources, more its good for business. Only thing you need to do is to increase your user base in Google+. You can have success with Google+
As much as I believe that G+ and Facebook are important (and I have biz pages on all of them) it's all so freaking time consuming and the end result is not all that great. You have to pretty much "dwell" on those site to see some real, tangible results. And unless you have friends/followers in tens of thousands you won't see much of a traffic to your site or online business. I'd rather pay to some PPC company to give me traffic. And I won't need to strain and ruin my back that way.
I made a pretty large site about Google+ Statistics with some partners. We really see how much is going on there and when talking to SEOs or other people incorporating their G+ Profile with their site, we almost always hear about positive effects. Even if it would not directly influence your search engine ranking, having a large amount of people following you shown next to your search results will dramatically add social proof and bring up those click through rate to your site. So in my opinion it is defiantly worth investing some time in
Social media sites are a very good marketing medium. There are so many popular social media sites and Google plus is one of them. By creating a business profile on Google plus, you can see a very major change in ranking of your website. It brings a lot of traffic because through Google plus, you can easily prompt your business.
Yeah. Google + is really a good option if you want to increase network, grow your business. Don't spam. Post valuable content. People will automatically like your post and will increase the traffic to your site.
very much agree with this statement, is pain to do all three but you can use dlvr.it and post one time and it does the rest for you
FB and G+ is what i like the best, i'll push more on G+ as i think FB soon people will get bored from and for something new will be G+ hints why it passed up Twitter for only open little over a year
Facebook & twitter is popular that,s why they are good for business but if you have google+ account is also beneficial for your business but you need to wait for response.
i believe it is very important and will continue be more and more important, especially for SEO as, after all, it is Google. They will slowly put less importance on Twitter and Facebook.
It is very worthy! It helps in Google rankings. If you are using it for SEO purposes, it's better than FB and TW.
This part of your message I really like. This is what I was trying to put my finger on. What's so different about G+ than maybe Facebook or Twitter? It's the way it's designed, and it's a lot easier to target local Internet traffic on it than most other social sites (free ones at least).
I think Google is useful but it's a long-term play. There are many, many people using Google plus and its increasing all the time. Long-term it is a threat for Facebook. The main reason for this is that Google does not have to advertise on Google plus – whereas Facebook does have to advertise on Facebook! Facebook advertising is going to piece of users eventually whereas Google does not have this problem with Google plus.
Google has Page Rank of 10. So placing a link on Google will certainly favor your website in search results. It is worth your time and not wastage of time at all.