Google Plus has stormed the social media scene and marketers/tech people galore have jumped on the bandwagon, and rightfully so.
Google Plus has the makings of a great social network, but many questions remain and the site will take time to grow.
I’ve seen lots of people write extensive articles about the product and the hype (not a negative) is moving full speed ahead.
Chris Brogan, a well respected expert in the social space, has stated the following about Google Plus,
“It’s become (in the first two weeks of its existence) the No. 1 referrer of traffic to my website, and that’s good enough for me.”
It’s very easy to read that statement and get excited, but there are three important things to consider:
- Chris was a late adopter of Facebook and only has 6,022 “Likes” at the time of this writing (Compared to 188k on Twitter). With that said, he has not experienced Facebook’s full power and the traffic it can send to a site. It’s also important to note that since Google Plus has fewer users than Facebook, there is less clutter allowing article posts to standout more and garner more attention.
- Chris writes about business related topics and it’s highly likely that those types of people are following him on Google Plus. If so, it makes complete since that he’s getting good traffic, especially since he’s been pushing it so hard.
- Business related traffic (related to the “referrer of traffic” statement) is great and can cause lots of excitement, but will that translate to consumer traffic? Likely so after a unknown growth period.
And don’t for a second think that I’m simply trying to say the opposite of what Chris says. He’s extremely smart and knows his stuff, but I’m just analyzing the scenario and looking at the “why?” (number 1 & 2).
I recently asked a wide group of consumers what they thought about Google Plus so far and the responses were pretty interesting. Read some of them below.
“It’s hard to get comfortable with it. So far I haven’t done much with it. It doesn’t seem as easy to use and get started with as Facebook did. Even if I end up liking it I can’t see using it INSTEAD of FB. I see them both serving different groups of people. I think there will eventually be an age gap with younger folk steering towards Google+ and older folks sticking with FB.”
“I love it. The ease of being able to set up circles and direct specific content to those circles makes it awesome in addition to other things it has to offer.”
“I like it, but it’s remarkably similar to FB. I don’t plan on using both for long, though.”
“I checked it out and abandoned in one day.. it’s going to be a drug like facebook.. I don’t need two drugs…”
“I’m using it it’s really boring I’d be into it if I could import all of my photos from Fb but you can’t and I don’t like that.”
Those aren’t statements that you’ll likely hear from industry insiders, but these are the people we are eventually going to be targeting with Google Plus, so there are clear hurdles to overcome.
Again, I’m a fan of Google Plus and think it has tons of potential, especially as it’s impact on search evolves, but I’m not abandoning Facebook by any stretch of the imagination.
