by Deona Hooper, MSW
Google Plus, the latest social media platform developed by Google, has made great strides in its effort to compete with Facebook. Facebook may have more users, but its new EdgeRank algorithm has been found to greatly diminish users’ ability to share updates, but don’t fret. Facebook has a solution to solve this problem for a small fee of course. In the past, many could understand paying a fee to promote content to people outside of your friend list, but now I have to pay to reach my own friends? This is ridiculous! I am going to tell you several reasons why investing your time in Google Plus is better than investing your money into Facebook.
Google is the most widely used search engine on planet earth. What Google has done and said, “If you use Google Plus, we will promote your content on our search engine over those who don’t”. Do you know how powerful of a search engine optimization tool this is just for using Google Plus? There is no down side to this if you are a blogger or a business owner. Google plus is a very rich and visually appealing platform to use. They offer Google Pages for your business which is equivalent to the Facebook Fan page. Additionally, they offer Google Plus Profile Pages which is the counterpart to the Facebook Profile Page. Recently, Google Plus began offering communities which are designed to compete with Facebook groups. Most importantly, I believe the Google Plus mobile app and iPad app are absolutely visually stunning applications. When you add Google Hangouts on top of all that, could it get any better? Why pay for Skype or Ustream, when you can conduct a Google Hangout with up to twelve people and live stream it using Google Air on Youtube for free? For cost effectiveness and top notch quality, I am one tech geek that is truly impressed with Google’s new suite of products.
As if there couldn’t be more, well there is! By investing time into your Google Plus profile, Google will now integrate your blog posts with your Google Plus profile in search returns. Lets say someone searches for a key word and out of the list of search queries only one post shows up with a picture. Which search return do you think will likely attract the person conducting the search? If you guessed the one with the picture attached, you are right. I have attached an example for your review. This is a first page search query. Don’t believe me, search for “famous social workers” yourself.
Also View:
Google Plus v Facebook on Mashable.com
