Google+ is often seen as the white elephant of Social Media. If you are online regularly then chances are you have a google account and, by default, if you have a google account then you have a Google+ profile. Irrespective of whether you use it or not it is sitting there, people can find you and add you to their circles.
In reality there are over 540M active users (October, 2013) but only a tiny percentage of these are Australian, as you would expect because we only make up a very small percentage of the total world population.
So, is Google+ really a while elephant? By definition a white elephant is a possession that is useless or troublesome, especially one that is expensive to maintain or difficult to dispose of. If you start spending more time than your business can afford using Google+ to try and generate sales for minimal result, then yes, it is going to be a white elephant for you.
However, in reality you don’t really have to do much with it for it to have a positive impact on your business. Let’s stop for a moment and consider what it is that Google+ really does. That in itself can seem pretty confusing on face value but in reality it is quite simple to use and has some very powerful built-in tools that can be really useful for offline businesses to offer after sales service and follow up. We will dive into some of them at a later date.
At the highest level Google is the number one search engine on the planet, consequently being active on Google+ is going to increase the chances of your business being found in a search. Claiming your business page and adding location information will significantly improve on your google ranking when someone searches by area for your business or service. Just by having your business listed on Google+ will see you ranking ahead of businesses that don’t.
Let’s say for example you run a dental practice, when someone searches online for a dentist in their local area you will rank above dental practices that have not claimed and filled in information on their Google+ business page. If you have a website of your own then you will rank higher than practices that don’t. The more regularly you update your website and other social media sites, again, the higher you will rank.
So, the question you need to ask yourself is: How reliant am I on Google (or other search engines) to enable my customers to find me?
This will depend on a number of things including the industry you are in (and how niche your business is within that industry), geographic location and the strength of your online presence already. Think of Google (and other search engines) as being the yellow pages of old, if your business is the type that once would have relied on a combination of yellow pages, traditional advertising and word of mouth then a better search engine ranking is important to you and your business.
How active you are on Google+ and what content you post there will vary depending on other aspects of your businesses’ online presence. In the majority of cases we definitely wouldn’t recommend it as the first platform to go out and try and get a heap of followers but ensuring that your business page is properly set up and that you post from time to time will have a positive impact on your overall search ranking.
