By Dhawal Shah
Google Plus - The Future Of Social Search
Photo courtesy of Dhawal Shah
Google threw its hat into the social network arena with Google Plus (Google+) in late 2011, which many felt was too little too late, especially with Facebook growing at an amazing rate. Since its release though, Google+ has grown quickly, and increasingly, being on this platform is a must for the fashion industry. There are plenty of reasons but we’ll discuss the 5 major ones here.
1) Modest User Base
At the end of 2012, Google+ had 158
Fashion Bloggers and 168 Fashion Brands and Designers on its platform
as well as 135 million active users.
With such modest numbers, one should wonder why any fashion label or
blogger would be interested in jumping on the platform.
These figures indicate the room for
growth on Google+ and the smaller user base means brands or bloggers
have a great opportunity to establish themselves without getting lost
in the noise, which brings us nicely to the next point.
With only a
small number of influencers currently online, the chances of reaching
out and connecting to them are much higher than on a noisy platform
like Facebook.
2) Communities
Google+ has created a great community
feature that allows users as well as business pages to create and join existing communities of like-minded people. This
allows a brand like Hucklebury to reach out quickly to others that are interested specifically in
what we have to offer as a fashion label by creating a community
around our brand and inviting users.
Photo courtesy of Dhawal Shah
3) Circles
The defining feature of Google+ is
Circles, which can be confusing to get at first but is amazing once
it becomes clear how to use circles.
You can now segment the people you wish to reach out to. A fashion
blogger could separate his readers from influencers and fellow
bloggers to target each group specifically when he has pertinent
information for each group. As a fashion label, you could segment
your Circles based on buyer groups, influencers, suppliers, bloggers
etc. The possibilities are endless and left to you to devise to fit
your needs.
Photo courtesy of Dhawal Shah
4) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Google is the biggest search engine in
the world, and one of the reasons for creating its own social network
was that it realized the importance of social recommendations for its
search algorithm. Google+ is going to be the cornerstone for its
social SEO efforts. Already, if you are logged in to Google while
surfing, you start seeing the effects of social recommendations. So
as a fashion label whose reach and sales online are dependent on
their search ranking, adding that +1 Button on your site and having a Business Page linked to your website is important.
As a fashion blogger, Google
recently introduced Google Plus Authorship,
which is a way of ranking authors online. When someone searches for
you, your profile photo shows up beside your article, increasing your
likelihood of a click. If you have a fashion blog with many authors,
you should set this up straight away and link each contributor
through their Google+ profiles to drastically increase your rankings.
Photo courtesy of Dhawal Shah
5) Localized Business Pages
If you have a brick-and-mortar store,
having a Google+ Business Page is even more important. You can give
Google your exact location and your type of business (‘retail’
for example). Google sends you a postcard with a PIN to enter online.
Once done, your search rankings will improve based on localization
targeting, and Google will show a map beside your search result
letting people near you who searched exactly where to find you.
Photo courtesy of Dhawal Shah
Being barely more than a year old means
that currently, it seems that Google+ will not be able to match
Facebook in social media. However, the fact that most of the world’s
monetizable traffic goes through the Google Search Engine means that
Google+ is set to take a dominant role in search, and ignoring it
would be foolish. Get started right now!
About The Author:
Dhawal Shah is the co-founder of Hucklebury, a vertically-integrated online fashion label selling better fitting men's shirts, and co-founder of 2Stallions, a digital agency specializing in web development and social media management.
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