Posts tagged ‘google plus’
I’ve been experimenting with Google+ Business Pages and recently blogged about how to set up a Google+ Page quickly and easily. But should you create a Google+ page for your business?
Here are some of my thoughts on the topic:
Why you may not want a Google+ Page
1. It is one more place to post.
2. It is unfamiliar and there are fewer case studies at the moment to validate it.
Why you SHOULD get a Google+ Page
1. It’s already big and getting bigger. It has made significant impacts on social media communications with surprisingly rapid adoption. If the people you are trying to reach are using it, it’s logical for you to at least explore it and see if you can provide value by being there.
After all the talk about brand pages on Google+, they are finally here. And they are a cinch to create. The tough part will probably be everything else including:
- providing meaningful content that isn’t a rehash of what you are putting on Facebook and your other social channels,
- building a following that is attentive and who participate, and
- cultivating your new G+ Page community so it has a positive impact for you, whatever your goals.
In just minutes, I created a G+ Page for the book Mom, Incorporated that I co-authored with Danielle Smith. Here’s the page URL: gplus.to/MomIncorporated
Here were the steps:
1. Go to https://plus.google.com/pages/create
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This weekend I received an invitation through Facebook to join Diaspora. I had tried to join Diaspora last year when I learned about their Kickstarter success while writing my book on crowdsourcing, but I couldn’t get in. So of course I was curious and went immediately to sign up.
And then I was puzzled. Diaspora looked just like…Google+. Or did Google+ look just like Diaspora?
The stream interface looks like the same layout down to the black bar across the top and the profile image on the left, contacts upper right. It’s essentially the same site.
While not as feature rich as Google+ for obvious resource limitation reasons, the very functionality and implementation of Diaspora’s “Aspects are Circles. Sparks on Google+ are Tags on Diaspora.
One thing that is better about Diaspora is definitely their integration with Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr which clearly Google+ doesn’t want to do (and probably feels it doesn’t have to). What is better about Google+ is that they have additional features like Hangouts (although I’m still on the fence about Huddles). And also the stream feature on Google+ is much more robust, pulling in images from sites based on links and the ability to add more than just a photo.
And Google+ has MILLIONS of members already. Diaspora feels very tiny and empty. Or is that intimate?
From a chicken/egg standpoint, based on my understanding of the timing, I think the guys at Diaspora created this first and the folks at Google+ copied it. Hey, I’m just guessing here. If I were Google, I’d just buy up the Diaspora folks right away. There really isn’t room for both, and anything but Google at this point is going to get crushed.
What are your thoughts about Diaspora versus Google+?
