There has been so much written about social media lately, it is of little surprise this week that we again find ourselves discussing who’s shaking up the world of social networking. Week after week it feels like the three big players, Twitter, Facebook, and of course now, Google+, are trying to out-do one another. Each wants to reign supreme as the number one social network – especially when it comes to attracting business.

They are also, naturally, trying to expand and grow, and move with the times. So what are they all doing to woo business to interact with their platforms?

Google+ Business Pages

To begin with, let’s look at how Google+ has attracted millions of users, and is currently trialling its business pages. In its short life Google+ has already gained over 20 million users worldwide, and whilst businesses were told to stay away from it as a marketing platform, Google has been working hard to build a business friendly field whereby a company can host a business page in order to then generate further brand awareness and, of course further business. Business pages, such as the one Ford have been lucky enough to secure, are rumoured to have an impact on how well the brand will rank in search – something which will no doubt motivate many businesses to sign up when they are allowed.

“Facebook For Business”

Facebook last week announced the introduction of its “Facebook For Business” site, and, on the face of it, it seems to be a way by which they plan to maintain a presence and influence. This is, somewhat cleverly, aimed at smaller businesses rather than huge brands. The reason I believe this to be a clever move by Facebook is because smaller (especially local) businesses will be more willing to give it a go in order to see if it helps their business grow, whereas large brands may decide to disregard it in favour of more traditional goals such as mass reach and search rankings.

New Tweets

Twitter haven’t exactly been quiet either, recently announcing a tweak to their sponsored tweets to make them simultaneously more prominent for advertisers, but less intrusive to users. Being able to engage a visitor with advertising, without putting them off using the service, is a critical challenge for any social website.

In addition, the update Twitter has announced will put every Twitter user on the same platform, those that are still using an older interface will therefore be forced to upgrade. This can go one of two ways: either those forced to upgrade will dislike the very fact that they didn’t get a choice and thus switch off from Twitter, or they will prefer their new interface and their experience will be enriched.

Final Thoughts

These are just some of the latest examples of how social networking has clearly become such a key component to modern marketing. Online social media is expected to continue booming for years to come, with some 52% of all internet users expected to have a regular social media presence by 2013. With the increased take-up, and increasing time being spent on social media, advertisers will play a key role in shaping which platforms thrive, and which ones fall away.

Yesterday I discussed in an article over at Fourth Source how social media is impacting Search in 2011. The main topic of consideration was that of the new Google+1 button, and the addition of a new social media site, Google+. For those of you living under a rock, the Google+1 button is set to rival the Facebook Like button, while Google+ aims to rival Facebook as a social network.

The main consideration of the article is how these recent developments are going to affect search itself – so if search is a big part of your marketing mix then it’s well worth a read. The negative aspects of +1, along with other social networking sites, also get a mention in the article.

You may be interested to read more of my regular posts on the Fourth Source website, where you can also find the rest of my views on how social media is impacting Search in 2011.

Since its launch, just a couple of weeks ago, Google+ has created a huge buzz in the online marketing world. With a report showing that the social networking site has already reached 10 million users in its 2 weeks test stage, it makes Google+ one of the fastest growing networks ever!

Google investors will also be happy as so far, revenue for Google is estimated to be up by 28% compared to the prior year. Investors polled by Thomson Reuters already expect the search engine to report net revenue of £4 billion.

Here at Gravytrain we managed to get invites to Google+ this week and have been getting to grips with the new social network. Like everyone else in the digital marketing community, a few of us are excited about the new social network and see its strong potential to rival Facebook, while others see Google+ as no competition to the current social media giants.

However, the main feature that most Google+ users seem to like is its privacy settings, which shows that the way we use social media could be changing.

While other social networking sites such as Facebook have seen innovative advances and an increase in popularity around the world, it doesn’t reflect how we actually interact with other people in real life. In real life, we don’t tend to share personal thoughts or content with everyone that we know. We’ll usually share certain things with certain people.

As mentioned in a previous post about Google+, the social network allows us to have different ‘circles’ of people where we can share different content with each group, whilst keeping other information private. Some people will use different social networks to connect with certain people, for example, Linkedin for work, Facebook for friends and family and Twitter for a mix of both. With Google+ and circles, it brings all these different groups into a platform that we can manage in one place, without embarrassment or worry over who sees what!

Arguably, Facebook does allow us to create lists where we can group different people, but to be honest, they are quite fiddly, weren’t really promoted and not clearly visible. Google enables us to have a social network that we can control ourselves, restrict the content that we receive and share information with certain groups, mirroring our online behaviour to how we socialise in real life.

Analysts however, have suggested that Google+ still has a long way to go before it matches Facebook’s popularity. Facebook announced last week that it had over 750 million users and is looking to enable video chats through its joint venture with Skype, which sounds quite similar to one of Google+’s video chat features, “Hangouts”. However, it’s still early days for Google+ and only time will tell whether the project will be successful.

So far, the increased popularity of Google+ shows that they are doing something right; it demonstrates that Google is driving towards success within social networking. Google+ could potentially be something that catches on with individuals and become very powerful, which other social networks should keep in mind.

Last week, Google threw itself into the big world of social networking. They have launched a new project called Google+ which aims to make Google more social. It is a communications tool designed to complement and reflect all of our offline relationships. At the moment, Google+ is still in a limited field test and the service is currently restricted, unless you were one of the lucky people who got an invitation.

In the past, Google used Twitter for faster indexation of content, to power real time results and also for use in their ranking algorithm. It has been reported that Google removed real time results from Twitter and other websites such as their News and Facebook. However, Google plans to reinstate real time results using Google+.

Even though Google+ is different from Google+1, with each having their own unique functions – they do connect with each other. Users who have a Google+ account or a normal Google account will be able to click on the Google+1 button, which will essentially allow users to vote for their search results and see which websites other connections or friends have “+1ed”. Therefore, the result’s rankings will not only affect you, but also people that you are connected with through Google.

Some of Google+’s features

The main feature of Google+ is the Circles feature, which is similar to Facebook and Twitter Lists. Circles allow you to allocate contacts to Circles e.g. Family, Friends, Snowboarding Group, Acquaintances and whoever else you want in the Circle. You can then publish content to specific Circles or specific individuals, because as Google states, “not all relationships are created equal”.

At the moment, there seems to be more control over privacy on Google+ compared to Facebook. You can share photos with your family in one post, and then publish something publicly in the next post.

Hangout is another feature of Google+. It’s a group video chat feature where you can invite members of a certain group by sending them a notification. An additional feature of the new social networking site is Huddle, which is a mobile group chat service which could also become available from your mobile phone in the near future.

Sparks is an online sharing engine where you can create a topic of interest and share links with group friends who also have the same interests. E.g. you could share results of Snowboarding in France with your “powder chasing” friends.

Why Google+?

Some people may wonder why Google has bothered launching Google+. The reasons are because nowadays, search is about real-time information, people and the relevance of information to them, not just about pages.

Google has been an advocate for real time and social media for a while now, with Google Buzz, Google Places, Google Wave and not to mention the list of its acquisitions of social sites e.g. YouTube and Blogger.com.

The senior vice president who oversees Google’s social product, Vic Gundotra, said “It’s ‘project’ rather than a product because it’s an ongoing set of products and ‘Plus’ because it takes products from Google and makes them better”.

Google doesn’t see itself as a competitor to Facebook or Twitter, as they say that the way people connect online is limited – it’s just a new way to connect online with the people that matter to you.

What’s next?

For now, businesses and organisations have been warned to stay away from Google+. Christian Oestlien, advertising lead on the team behind Google+ explains that the social media site was designed for individuals in mind, “We’re working on building a optimised business experience for Google+ which will hopefully be rolled out later on this year. It will include the ability to connect to other parts of Google such as AdWords and other rich analytics”. However, their main focus at the moment is optimising the consumer experience for Google+.

In terms of SEO, social media won’t replace traditional SEO however, it will indeed help it. SEO practices including link building, content creation, keyword research and targeting will be the foundation for ranking success. Even though social media is gaining more importance and interest, using a combination of both technical SEO techniques and social media are the best steps towards success.

Sadly, we weren’t lucky enough to get our hands on an invite the first time round, but we are looking forward to when we are able to get onboard with the project.

Less than 2 months after the Google +1 feature made its first appearance in the US search results, Google has released +1 buttons that can be placed directly on web pages. Using a small snippet of code, the button can be placed on a web page in a similar fashion to the Tweet and Facebook Like buttons.

The idea behind adding the +1 feature to the Google search results is to make each person’s results more personalised and also more social, promoting sites in their results that they and they contacts have liked with the +1 button.

With the new +1 button directly on sites this idea continues, with people being able to +1 individual pages and pieces of content on a site, as well as the actual site itself within the Google search results. But will people use it?

Competition with Facebook and Twitter
When it comes to the Google search engine, the +1 button can completely dominate as neither Facebook nor Twitter can add their buttons to the search results, and therefore the only option to like or promote a site will be through +1. However, when it comes to actual web pages, the Google +1 button may struggle to compete with the Facebook Like and Tweet buttons.

The idea behind the Facebook and Twitter buttons is to allow users to share the piece of content amongst their friends, through their own personal profiles. So, for example, the web browser sees a great blog post about a new Google feature, Tweets it, which puts a link to the post into their Twitter stream, and then the users followers can go straight to the recommended piece of content.

It is the same concept with the Facebook Like button but with +1 the idea seems to fall away slightly. Yes if you hit the +1 button people within your Google address book will be able to see it but you are not really promoting it on a profile or sharing it in an open format.

Sharing Content or Promoting the Site?
With +1 you are essentially saying you approve of the site and are promoting it in your personal search results, whereas with Tweet and Like you are sharing it. +1 then doesn’t seem to really fall in line with the Twitter and Facebook buttons and so may receive less attention because of this.

In fact, it is only early days, but if you look at sites that have already integrated this new +1 button, alongside Tweet and Like, you can see that it is not generating nearly as many clicks.

Of course as people become more aware of +1 and it becomes common on sites it will be used more, but will people develop a greater affinity to +1 than Facebook and Twitter? Google are dominant in practically every area of online but, for now at least, they are 3rd place in the rankings for social.