Businesses are still slow to adopting Social Media as a viable Marketing Channel. They want results. Where’s the ROI for all the Customer Service and Marketing resources being dedicated to the largely consumed channel?
Facebook is approaching One Billion users as early as this summer and nearly 5 million currently with Google+ with ease of access via Cloud Computing through mobile apps and PCs. And yet, businesses still balk at putting in the time for beefing up their social strategies in favor of optimizing the “low hanging fruit” with SEO, SEM, E-mail…and in some instances even their brick-and-mortars.
Sorry eCommerce folk, it looks as though we no longer have a choice but to embrace social media more than ever.
As you know at the end of last year, Google launched ‘Social Search,’ which was just the beginning of incorporating your life into search results. Google is looking to add Twitter and Facebook to their default search in the near future.
Recently, Google announced its latest addition in social-friendly search, Google Search Plus Your World. The addition includes three new features:
- Personal Results , which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;
- Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and,
- People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.
Eh, no biggie. This should only affect those searchers already logged in to their Google+ account. Hmm, a potential five million at the minimum, assuming all are logged in at once.
What this means for your business?
Businesses will be losing out to brands on Google+ who optimize photos and profiles specific to the searcher. The push to further entice searchers to sign up with Google+ in an effort to compete with Facebook forces the issue at hand: “is my business also optimizing our social presence?” Now more than ever, brands must decide not if, but when they will join Google+. With the addition of Google Search, Plus Your World, brands that are not a part of Google plus will not be able to capitalize on search real estate.
Authored by: Randy Harinandan, eBusiness Strategist, Venda Inc
