Google_ for Business_ How Google's Social Network Changes Everything - Chris Brogan [6]
• YouTube is already integrated with Google+. As the #2 search engine, this should be interesting to you. Take it a bit further and you can see that using YouTube as part of your business communications and marketing efforts is a powerful tool when coupled with the sharability and social aspects of Google+.
In speculating, risks always exist. I’m not good at predicting the future—to be quite honest. However, because Google has built dozens and dozens of properties that don’t immediately go well together, and because Google+ looks more and more like a potential “communications backbone” to all these various touch points, I think there are some big opportunities to consider, and those who are early to use and master Google+ can be best positioned to take advantage of these potential futures as they arise.
Facebook Is Better. Twitter Is Better. LinkedIn Is for Business.
In the first few weeks of Google+, what I saw more than anything else when I started proclaiming how I felt this would be a powerful new social networking tool (and also important to business) was something along these lines: “All my friends are on Facebook, so there’s no way Google+ can become the next big social network.”
For a lot of people, that’s true now. But as I’ve said earlier and will say often, it was also true that everybody was on AOL back in the ’80s. Systems change. Networks change. You’re not still rocking your fax marketing program, are you?
Twitter is excellent at providing rapid, real-time information. It’s a great source for news people (who have reported repeatedly that Google+ doesn’t give them the same benefits as Twitter does). There’s a place and a value for Twitter.
LinkedIn is a great business networking tool. Facebook is wonderful for connecting with people. But as mentioned throughout this book, there are reasons why Google+ trumps them for potential business building—at least for most users.
My First Touch with Google+
Let me be clear: I don’t work for Google, nor do I have any particular business relationship with them at the time of this writing. Google had nothing official to do with the making of this book; although, I most certainly asked Google+ team members for thoughts and ideas when it was at all possible.
Google+ became available as a limited “field trial” at the beginning of July 2011. I wasn’t given any kind of special access. (I know a few folks at Google, but it’s not like people shout, “I’ve gotta tell Chris Brogan about this!” when they invent something. I’m not that guy.) I just signed up when someone sent me an invite, and I started poking around the moment I had a chance.
What I noticed right away was that, because I was starting at zero, I had the chance to think through how I wanted to interact with this social network. I decided against connecting with everybody, and instead, I started to build small, tight circles of value. I grouped people by whether they represented a business value to me, a personal connection, or were people I wanted to follow to learn from. This process felt a bit like organizing books or a DVD collection, or like building playlists in iTunes. I say this in a positive way.
Right away, it was an addiction. I started “sneaking” Google+. If one of my kids ran off to play, I looked back in and started finding new people to connect with, seeking out people I knew at first, and then surfing their connections (I’ve coined this friendsurfing) to see who else I should follow.
What I liked was that I suddenly saw more interesting information because my circles were organized according to my interests. If Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land shared something about how search rankings were altered by Google+, I could read that, experiment with it, comment back and forth, and become informed. If Jacqueline Carly shared her daily “going to Yoga” photo, I could see that and wish her well.
In other words, because I could organize