What is Google+ and What Does it Mean for Online Marketing?

Most people interested in, or working with, online marketing are well acquainted with the importance of using social media to reach customers and with the buzz that surrounds every new social media platform. The rationale goes along the lines of “the social media giants for online marketing are Facebook and Twitter, and everyone is using them, but what if there's a new social outlet that will put my online marketing strategy ahead of the competition?”

Google+ is perhaps the new social media venture to satisfy the internet marketing professional's curiosity. Google + combines the Google search engine facilities that many of us use daily for work, school and play with a social mindset that makes the experience more engaging, more 'lifelike' and essentially, more rewarding. With these elements and organisation, Google+ could very well prove to be a dominating social media influence, and an influential online marketing tool.

This new venture by Google, which combines regular search with sharing functions, may allow a multitude of online marketing techniques to be channelled through just one social outlet. This could result in more streamlined online marketing strategies and a wider and more receptive audience.

So how does Google+ work? It is an online social network, much like Facebook, but with a few fresh twists. One of the most important features are “Circles” which are used to organise contacts into social groups. The emphasis of Google+ is sharing via the web, so often Circles will be made based on the type of information users are likely to share.

The online marketing advantage with this feature is that your contacts will only access the information you have shared when they choose to, and when they will be most receptive. Google+'s Circles can also be used to share information with a select group of users, giving better opportunities for customer targeting in internet marketing.

Another important feature of Google+ for online marketing is the “Sparks” search box. This search box uses a much more oblique form of searching than the traditional Google search engine. To use Sparks, members enter an interest or a subject they care about into the search box and the results return media, including WebPages, news, videos or books, from across the web that might appeal to the member's interests.

This unique search engine provides new internet marketing opportunities and challenges, particularly in the SEO area. Choosing keywords for SEO may soon feature a new emphasis on using keywords that do not directly target particular products, but are merely related. Google+ is still in its early stages, and there are undoubtedly many more online marketing opportunities to be discovered in this innovative social network.