18 Feb Google Plus as an Alternative to Facebook?

There seems to be an endless number of possibilities to market yourself using social media platforms. At The Social Calling, I’m constantly offering Facebook and Pinterest consultations, but I’m also busy navigating other social media outlets.  Using Google Plus communities definitely has some key advantages on which I’d like to elaborate.
Google+ has presented itself as an interesting alternative to Facebook. And as Facebook gets a little more radical and big brother in their policies, there’s a window for Google+ or even a new player to step in and take control. But for now, I’m just going to focus on what I love about Google+ communities. There’s a longer “top 10” list outlining the benefits of Google+ communities for marketers at Leaderswest.com.
While the article does indeed list 10 key benefits, most are not actually unique to Google+ communities. In fact, with the exception of the brand being able to have its own identity rather than the traditional Facebook method of requiring an individual user to act as an admin, any tool you leverage in Google+ communities is translatable to basically any social media space. For the purpose of discussing the benefits of how to use social media I’m going to focus on the two key benefits listed in the article that I think are the most important:

1. Identify the most active community members. This is easy in any platform. You can either eyeball it or run the platform’s metrics to see who is posting, how often, the types of things they’re posting, their sharing activity, the days and times they’re active, etc. This is key to seeing where your potential brand advocates and potential influencers are. I’d butter these people up a bit and make sure not to make them mad.
2. Seeing new or changing trends within the community. Here you can use Google+ communities to monitor which topics generate the most interest, passion or dialogue. If you’re thinking of a new product or feature, you can monitor how people react to it and get tons of free feedback.

All in all, these social media platforms are a potentially effective and very cost efficient way to get real-time and real world market research information that can help you build or increase your brand’s presence and success.
Are you asking yourself, what is social media or why use social media? Contact me and let’s get those questions answered.  Email me at randi@localhost or visit me at my Facebook Page and send me a message.