Perhaps the hottest conversation going on right now in inbound marketing is Google’s newest foray into social media – Google+. There is certainly no shortage of blog commentary and excitement in the blogosphere either. Some of the biggest names in the internet marketing business like Chris Brogan are jumping on the Google+ bandwagon by evangelizing this new platform and its recent inclusion of brands. His Google+ book is expected to be released soon.
In our recent Why Only 3 Major Social Media Platforms Can Thrive at One Time we look at some of the attributes required for a new social media platform to experience heavy adoption and elite status like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The problem with Google+ is that it can’t even beat out MySpace and just recently barely bumped passed Ning in website traffic. Over the next week or so it will probably dip back below Ning in website traffic too. No one is writing books, evangelizing and publishing blog posts about MySpace and Ning taking over the helm of top social media platform. Sure, Google+ is new and could possibly trend northward in terms of adoption and traffic, but the trend below doesn’t look promising.
You’ll notice a spike in traffic for the platform after it was opened up to brands in November. This was expected because marketers like to claim and protect their brands online. The brand adoption looks like a gold rush, but with very little gold to be found. However, if a brand is marketing to tech and marketing geeks perhaps there is gold to be found, because that’s who is on Google+. The only other reason to possibly be on this platform is search engine optimization. However, even this is a guess. We don’t know what weight will be assigned to this attribute and how it will effect Google’s search algorithm yet.
Marketers and bloggers alike should calm down and put Google+ in perspective. It’s understandable why many would want to write the first book, do the first conference presentation or write blog posts about Google+. It’s in our nature to define ourselves as thought leaders with our writing. However, if Google+ can’t beat out MySpace for traffic soon, some marketers’ and bloggers’ thought leader cards may get revoked. By the way, for possible SEO benefits, why not include Kuno in your Google+ Circles. :)
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