Last week I published an article (and a poll) on my personal blog, PR at Sunrise, asking industry professionals how they are counseling their clients when it comes to Google+.
The results? 60 percent said they are advising clients to take a wait-and-see approach before moving ahead with a business page, while 28 percent said that brands should build a brand page immediately. To be honest, I was surprised to see that many people vote in favor of taking action right away.
We’ve seen large brands with massive budgets like Dell and Starbucks jump right into this new channel and have attracted thousands of fans in a short amount of time, but a majority of companies and PR clients are still considering what to do with Google+, if anything. Personally, I think the wait-and-see approach is the way to go if you haven’t already created a business page. Why?
- It’s still new – Take some time to evaluate it. Reportedly, there are more than 62 million users on the site, but it’s still unclear how many of those users are active. Keep exploring the site, see what other brands are doing, and do as much research and monitoring as possible. This will arm you with the a good knowledge base so that you can to give the appropriate counsel and recommendation to your client.
- It’s not going anywhere. Be patient. In addition to the previous bullet, remember that there’s no harm in waiting to build a business page. It might be wise to secure a page for your brand so that no one else ‘steals it’ before you. But you are not going earn a gold medal just for being one of the first brands to start a Google+ page. Once you decide to build it (if at all), your fans will come.
- You need to find out if Google+ is where your audience is. Before starting any sort of a social media campaign or initiative, the first thing you should do is make sure that what you are doing is going to resonate with your audience. E-mail your customers and prospective customers, ask them what their favorite social media channels are, find out how they prefer to interact with you. If your research finds that your audience is not using Google+, don’t create a business page just yet. However, if your customers ARE using Google+, it’s probably time to create a page.
What are your thoughts? Leave a comment below and feel free to share this article with others who you think would be interested in reading it.
Andrew Worob is a Managing Associate in the Digital Practice at Finn Partners. Contact him via Andrew@finnpartners.com or on Twitter.
This is interesting. 60% are waiting to see? That seems like a high number, but would explain why you don’t see many brands/businesses actively signing up!
With so many inactive accounts Google+’s numbers are inflated. I agree that the audience may not live there yet for many brands. Good summary!
It was a relatively low sample size (less than 30), and the 60% has since dropped to 55%, but you’re right in that it does seem to accurately reflect how many brand pages have been created to date.
Very curious to see what happens in the coming months.
Appreciate the comment, Britton!
@Worob