More thoughts on Google+ for business.

At last week’s PSAMA luncheon, Amit Fulay, Product Manager for Google+ Hangouts, gave a sold-out audience a quick overview on how businesses and people are using Hangouts to grow their brand.

Some of the key insights he shared on the advantages of Google+ include:

• Makes your brand personal, accessible and engaging.
• Can segregate your customers with more relevant information and interchange.
• Offers a social interaction in real time.
• Allows brands to broadcast, multicast and unicast.
• Puts a face (literally) to your brand.
  

Amit’s closing charge to the audience was that now is the time to join Google+ -- to understand the platform, learn how to use + pages and + Hangouts, and take advantage of first mover status among your customer base. Google will continue to add to the usability and value for business, and now is the time to lead, not follow.

The more I read about Google+, the more I agree with Amit. The growth of Google+ has been more impressive than most people realize. On Dec. 27, Business Insider reported that Google+ is adding more than 600,000 new users a day and projected that it would have nearly 300 million users by the end of 2012 if growth stays the same.

With growth currently accelerating, some forecasters are predicting that Google+ could reach more than 400 million users by year's end.

While these numbers don’t approach the 1 billion users that Facebook appears to headed towards, it would be a mistake to look at Google+ in terms of just numbers. With nearly 65 million subscribers today, can you really afford to ignore it?

Last week, Google tweaked its search engine by introducing something called Search plus Your World. Google now pulls information from users' Google accounts (like Google+, Picasa and potentially others in the future), giving users the ability to toggle between search results that are much more personal and searching the Web as Google has always done. This service is more applicable to social users at this time, but I don’t see why your business can’t use this as a tool as well.

Take a look at this video, currently playing on YouTube.


At this point, it's important to stay informed about Google+, and I recommend that all companies begin to explore this new tool. Google+ will continue to add new features, and smarter businesses can use this time to gain a real jump on their competition.

This means you will need to add more workload to your social media staff, but if you want to take advantage of this as it evolves, now is the time to act. You can bet that if Google has its way, it could change how the Web works for the majority of users.

If you want to read more, I suggest you read this recent blog post Is Google+ About To Make Facebook Frown?, published by Mitch Joel. Mitch is president of Twist Image and the author of the blog and bestselling business book Six Pixels of Separation. http://www.twistimage.com/blog/


-- Don Morgan

Don Morgan is VP Communications for PSAMA and Head Rainmaker at Raindance Consulting, a business development and social media consultant in Seattle.