It’s been hailed as the new facebook and, according to research, over 10 million of us have already jumped on the bandwagon and signed up. But how – if at all – will this new social network change the nature of social media marketing and online content-sharing?
Shiny Shiny recently laid out some of the features that Google+ boasts which could affect content sharing. Google+ has already shown that it drives high volumes of traffic to news websites, and the ability to separate contacts into different ‘Circles’ might encourage users to share links that they wouldn’t otherwise post – e.g. knowing that they aren’t bothering friends with work-related stories or vice versa.
The ‘Sparks’ function could also potentially drive new traffic and help to boost the success of viral video campaigns. Working a little like Stumbleupon, in Google’s words, ‘Sparks’ allows users to “find stuff you’re interested in”, by selecting different subjects and browsing through a generated newsfeed of relevant content on that topic.
Google+ could also enable other Google products to be linked together. While some may find the concept of Google+ events automatically appearing in your Google calendar a little too Big Brother-esque, there is no doubt that this kind of functionality could prove invaluable for those orchestrating social media marketing and PR campaigns. Even more significant would be if Google+ were able to link to other, non-google products, through which marketing and PR opportunities would be increased significantly.
The potential formatting sophistication of the way Google+ allows users to share content could even change the form in which online media content is produced, according to Chris Brogan. Mixing “audio, video, photo, text, link, and location data into a ‘package’ or ‘project’” could change the ways that journalists write, focusing less on traditional journalistic tools such as the headline to introduce and draw attention to a piece.
With all of this in mind, it will be interesting to see how Google+ develops, and whether it becomes as powerful a tool as Twitter or Facebook in social media marketing. This all depends on whether Google+ takes off as a platform, which many including LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner are sceptical of. Weiner suggests that Google+ does not provide anything new, and is simply an amalgamation of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Whether people will continue to devote time to Google+ after the initial rush of sign-ups, and what effect this has on social media marketing will be a question answered over the coming months.
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