Is Anybody Outside of SEO Industry Getting ROI from Google+ ?? Tell the truth!
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I think the best areas working for Google+ from my experience are people in the IT and Photography, yet I see an uplift in some work we do from a fashion front on the site.
But if you want an example of real world engagement look at H&M, they always have fashion fans on the G+ page, sure they do not have crazy numbers but it is enough for me to say hey this is interesting.
That been said I would not invest all my time into Google+ I would use it as a top 5 social sites strategy and put a few hours each month into it, and post content every 2 days from your brand.
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I see this A LOT lately, and I have been using Plus since it started in beta.
You get what you put in to it. Period. If you only use it as a "megaphone" to self promote, who cares. If you use it like any other social network (to network and share) you will get something out of it.
Most of the people I see that say they don't get anything out of it, don't try. If you opened a Twitter account, followed 10 people, then sat and looked at it.... only sending out links to your own crappy content, you will get the same results.
I have found that by sharing content, videos, images, etc... and actually engaging with people like you would on FB or Twitter, you get more out of it.
That being said, Google has made it very difficult to get people to circle business pages, so I have learned a trick or 2 to help expedite that. I have a local home builder page that has over 300 people that has circled them, while our FB page only has 130 fans for the same builder. And yes, I have seen it help the SERP's.
We share industry related articles, cool architecture images, and add in a little of our own stuff for that builder, and we are starting to see some traction.
Bottom line, you get what you put in it. I am seeing local groups forming to work together to help promote each other, etc...
Still a very young network. Remember, you can't automate "social".... (not that that was question at hand, just like to remind people social isn't a "set it and forget it" metric in marketing)
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Google+ Facebook, Twitter, and the list goes on. They are social viruses. They bog you down thinking you will get something out of nothing, and you miss things that actually give you real ROI. I do not know how old you are, but back in the days the hot thing were these live chat rooms like a craigslist in away- real time micro post going on and you go go PM somebody. These were in like MSN or Yahoo or somewhere. Great place to meet the ladies back in the day. Then it eventually migrated to MySpace then Facebook (where 1:3 people state they are board with it) to something new and just straight up wasting your time. Speaking of Facebook I look at it and say really? Where is the value. Then I ask my kids where is the true value in facebook, and nobody has the answer- then bamb it goes IPO and fools buy it. Just make sure you are not buying into anything with social media outside of keeping a super clean image for business reviews.
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Time requires energy, time is money, etc, so what is your true ROI on this. How does it impact your bottom line? You are right it is not set it and forget it, but is it truly the most profitable thing you can do with your time. I would not waste a single penny on twitter, google+ facebook, etc. However, I do enjoy social places (Not social Media) like www.cre8asiteforums.com here I can give and get, and network for a niche thing or things I need and can hopefully give. All social media will eventually die. I love Chevy, I love Pepsi, and the list goes on, but I am not chilling in their social media areas. Those are giants, so a spending less than .0001% of their money there.
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Where are really any of them in any true form of social media?
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Being social online takes a huge amount of time.
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Google is like the Miami heat. Not sure when the people will turn from google. In 20 years where will google be?
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I do not know where Photo people go to get business, but the only way I would do any photo work with anybody in any social media is if it was a dear friend I knew rocked at photo work. Otherwise, I am going to bing it, and see what I find.
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This is my final thought on the subject matter. Take away us small business people and tech people. We are online playing more so in a business fashion than most. I bet we are online more than most. The people online are not out there google+ this and that. I know I do not google+ anything. I do not look on facebook or twitter for anything. I really outside of my niche real estate and working on SEO do anything online. I will book a hotel, a flight, a room, etc online. I might buy an eBook, etc too. So really what do people do online. Yes, there are transactions, etc every second, but really are they from social media?
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I have had success with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. But when it comes to Google+ its a ghost town for me. One thing I've noticed is I can't get a custom URL like I can with the other sites so promoting my G+ account in person is not as easy Or maybe i just don't know how if it is possible. Also I can't get people to join the network. I understand that those who can get G+ will benefit on local seo but getting people to take a moment away from Facebook and twitter to even register for a G+ account has been virtually impossible. How can I entice people to G+ my site? That is the million dollar question. Has anyone found a way to successfully get people onto G+?
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Hi Egol,
Honestly, Google+ still has not brought impressive referral traffic to our website...there are few but Facebook and Twitter are our biggest source and Pinterest is also showing a good potential.
Thanks,
Roy
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Thanks for the report, Roy.
I am still not seeing anything on my sites.
So far, Google + is not worth the time.
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This is what I did, but it depends on you having interesting posts for others ANd also finding people who will contribute to your Plus, which means you reciprocating and contributing to theirs.
That is what social is about.
If you connect to Robert Scoble, and watch what he does, you will get a good ide of what works. Because he has "a name" everything he says gets dozens or hundreds of comments. He is always talking to interesting people and passing on interesting information. He also interacts with people, but I was never able to get him to interact with me - maybe because I was a relative nobody. But the interesting thing is you can interact with a few people on your own. You don't have to be Robert Scoble, but you do have to interact with people.
In twitter, for a couple of years, I just pushed out tweets about our stories. We publish 50 to 100 stories per day and I don't tweet them all, just a few dozen. And occasionally, I would RT someone else. After aggressively following people and hoping they would follow me back, I had 4600 followers, but I wasn't getting a lot of action. One of my editotrs did experiments and now I do it differently. I spend more time (too much time) helping other people. I also dropped 400 people I had followed, who hadn't tweeted for 2 years. Since then, about 100 people have followed me and I an engaging with them. I plan to do this for a couple of months and I hope the result will be that I gain a lot of followers who will interact and RT. One follower is doing a great job, I am helping him and he is tweeting about 10 of our stories each day. I'm hoping a few people who have either a big following or a loyal interactive following will RT our stories. I expect this will be more valuable then Google+ - certainly, Facebook already is about 50 times more valuable than G+ and twitter is probably 3-5 times. As I don't seem to be getting any value at all from G+ (I think it is a wasteland) I think thats a better use of my time, and I enjoy it more.
I'm not inclined to boost google so they feel good about themselves, because they give nothing back. They aren't people and they don't get social, in my opinion.
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If you ask anyone outside of the the SEO world what Google+ is and they have rarely even heard of it. In fact I did a quick poll of my customers to see if anyone was using it and got a nil response (not typical from other things I have asked). No-one has even heard of it, FaceBook has won hands-down. It just has all the momentum already!
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My clients demand a google + button, and I'm confided I am the only person who has clicked one.
Google+ is great. It is better than facebook, but nobody wants to switch. It will go the way of Google Wave
Google Wave was even better, but noone dropped email and started using it.
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I use G+ as a valuable resource tool. It is very visual which is why so many creatives love it. It is one of my first points of reference for finding up to date information on the SEO and SEM industry and it is also very easy to connect with what people like, who they they might be interested in etc. Its like Facebook for for people with a brain.
But - no, as far as I know it has tendered no customers, but has allowed me to access information that enabled me to improve my online activities and revenues.
So It scores A++ for me.
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I had started using Google+ for one simple reason, to save from using the pinging services I had at the time and get quicker crawls of new content. (The necessity of the pings I am not sure of but to post on G+ and see the bot within moments I have no doubt about it.)
Now, I am thinking about getting more involved as the Google+ hangouts can be live cast on YouTube and then stay available.
You can use your comments section as a user chat and build a nice set of relevant keywords around your video and your link to site. We are doing some testing on it now.
I have 9300 followers on twitter, a couple thousand on FB and 24 on G+. I have made my best contacts from social media out of the 24.
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