Google+; is it a potential roaring success and the fastest growing social media platform to date as some claim? Or is it just another flailing attempt from Google to enter the social media world and challenge the Goliath that is Facebook? The differing views suggest that times are still uncertain for the fledgeling social media site. But even with it’s turbulent success, there’s one thing that people, and businesses, are very much interested in, something that could potentially make or break Google+… business pages.
Facebook’s business pages have of course been a huge success. Millions of brands are now connecting socially with their customers like never before through Facebook pages, and the commercial advantages are vast and varied; meaning Facebook has become an increasingly essential resource for online marketing in recent years.
But speculation of how Google+’s business pages could trump Facebook’s has been rife. So what might these pages contain? What functionality night they employ, and how might they look?
One suggestion has been that supposed “public circles” might be a main advantage of the Google plus business pages, Circles would allow users to pick and choose which brands’ circles they’re part of (in the same way they might choose to “like” different brands’ Facebook pages), with the advantage that users can choose what information they want to receive from each of their circles, so they only see messages & updates from those they want, thus granting greater user control than Facebook. Whether this would benefit the brands on the other hand is questionable, but of course this is all entirely speculative as Google’s official business pages plans remain a mystery.
None the less, it’s fun to speculate! And some have even taken it as far as designing what the pages might look like (see below). Either way, rest assured, as soon as we know anything for certain about Google plus’ business pages, we’ll let you know.
Source: Mashable
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Sharing, we all do it on the web, a lot of the time we probably don’t even realise we’re doing it; posting a link to our Facebook profile, re-tweeting an interesting post, social bookmarking, even forwarding an email. It happens all the time, everywhere, and this phenomenon is now so big, it’s time to take notice of how it affects online marketing.
A recent study has shown that traffic resultant from sharing now accounts for about 10% of all internet traffic (that’s huge!) and 31% of all referral traffic to sites from search & social platforms.
So where is all this traffic coming from, where are people sharing? Well, as you probably predicted, Facebook leads the way. With a whopping 38% of all share traffic coming from this site alone, Facebook has yet another title to add to it’s many record breaking achievements. Well, with over 500 million users on a site that is basically dedicated to sharing, it’s not really surprising. The next biggest sharing contender is Email, generating 17% of share traffic, followed by Twitter at 11%, giving us three major players in the sharing world.
These figures have come from shared content that is actually clicked on. If you look at just how much content was shared but not necessarily clicked on by the person it was shared with, Facebook is accountable for 56%.
So, if you want to spread the word, Facebook’s the place to be. But what about if you need some interaction with the content once it’s shared? In terms of shared links, it appears Twitter users click through more than users of other platforms. The average Twitter link is clicked 4.8 times, compared to 4.3 for Facebook and 1.7 for email.
The lesson here is that sharing is a big deal. It’s now forming a huge part of our online experience and if you’re not taking full advantage of it, you’ll definitely want to do something about it. Social network users, blog readers & email recipients are sharing things themselves, you’ve just got to start it off.
Here at Clicky Media™ we offer a number of solutions to help you take full advantage of these sharing trends. We offer social media management, blog creation, email marketing & many more avenues into the online sharing world. Call us today to discuss the best option for you, or alternatively, get in touch via the website, just click here >>
Source: TechCrunch.com, ShareThis
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