Is it too late for Google+ to draw the attention of businesses to their social network, or is the market too saturated with options already?
Google has recently launched a direct competitor to the efforts Twitter and Facebook have taken to incorporating brands into their social media networks. Google+ Brand Pages will allow users of the social network to engage with brands and companies like they are able to on the other networks.
At first, Google didn’t want their social network to be associated with commercial interests. Now they are trying to jump into the game because they view their past stance as a mistake. But is it too late for Google+ to draw the attention of businesses to their social network, or is the market too saturated with options already?
Finding the time to update your companies information to Facebook and Twitter is a time encompassing task. You can either hire an ad agency, an in house person, or have one of your current staff members run it while taking care of dedicated managed hosting tasks. While Google+ wants to get into the social media business game, they do not realize that they are spreading resources too thin. Because Google+ does not have a clear purpose or future destination, the pages created by businesses by the network will be watered down and unattended more than Facebook and Twitter.
According to a report on eWeek Europe, most British citizens have a strong distrust of big business on social media networks. In developed countries, 57 percent of people do not want to interact with brands on social media and a stunning 61 percent of Brits do not want to. By adding another vehicle for corporate communication on the web, consumers will become inundated with messages from big businesses trying to act cool instead of actually innovating their products.
Because Google is the leader in search engines, they are essentially forcing brands to create Google+ pages or risk the threat of ranking lower in results. In order for Google to gain more interest in their social network, they are essentially blackmailing companies into creating pages.
While big business might not be able to make the most out of a Google+ brand page, Media sites and technology blogs are flocking to it in order to bash it. Slate has an article up where they share a link to their own Google+ profile while they lambast the poor decisions of Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO, for not garnering up more interest in the site. This might make Google+ business pages a good source for lambast and parody throughout the social media world.
Google isn’t trying to position their business pages with the intent of consumer product marketing in mind. Instead they are focusing on more technical industries with data centers and dedicated server unlimited bandwidth capabilities to pick up on the pages. But that is just their initial strategy; Google never has a business plan worked out for any of its product launches.
