SocialIs Google+ Really a Brand Ghost Town?

Is Google+ Really a Brand Ghost Town?

A new Reuters report claims that Google+ is struggling to attract brands. However, it might not be as dire as the article makes it seem. Why? Because brands that are doing it well, and seemingly doing it right, are in it for the long haul.

Ghost figurinesGoogle+ is struggling to attract brands, and the brands they do attract are neglecting their pages, according to a Reuters analysis published this week. The analysis called out Domino’s Pizza as one big example, since the company hasn’t updated its Google+ page since October 2012 while their Facebook page was updated two times yesterday.

However, it might not be as dire as the article makes it seem. Why? Because brands that are using Google+ well, and seemingly doing it right, are in it for the long haul.

Just under a year ago, Mashable ranked the “10 Brands Making the Most of Google+“. And every single one of those has updated their Google+ page within the last day. If those brands were truly not seeing ROI on it, would they have stuck it out for the past year, and on such an active basis?

Perhaps the real issue is many social media experts haven’t put in the time to reach their brand’s audience on Google+ and built up a following to make it worthwhile. It is no secret that people are more likely to follow and engage with brands that are active in their social media platforms of choice.

Also, a neglected Google+ brand page doesn’t necessarily say as much about the lack of brand engagement on that platform (or any social media platform for that matter), but perhaps more about those running social media for those brands. It doesn’t take long to personalize a Google+ page for a business and provide links to it from a company page along with those Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest links.

So why aren’t more brands investing that time into it when clearly brands are seeing ROI? True, it might not be as spectacular as Facebook, but remember once upon a time when no one was on Facebook or Twitter – back then MySpace and Second Life was where it was at. And where are they now?

The Reuters article also brings up the lack of available options for brands to truly customize their company pages. But again, it has been less than two years since Google+ launched, and in the two years following Facebook’s launch, they offered very little for brands either. That said, it is one area where Google+ could make some huge improvements to make the platform much more desirable for brands.

Now, look at Domino’s Pizza once again.

dominos-google-plus

Domino’s Pizza has been publicly outed as a brand neglecting their Google+ page by the Reuters article that has been republished and reported on quite a bit in the past couple of days. Yet their Google+ page – with a not-shabby following of 5,000+ and with a definite increase of traffic by people who have read the article and are comparing their Facebook and Google+ engagements – and they still have neglected to update their page from that October 2012 post of a profile picture of their logo.

Most social media experts would set out to rectify that – and possibly engage that new traffic to their Google+ page – but Domino’s has still continued to ignore it.

Yet in that same time, they have done multiple postings on their Facebook page as well as their Twitter account. So why isn’t that social media manager cross-posting their Facebook posts onto their Google+ at the very least rather than letting a company branded social media page be neglected for more than six months? There are plenty of tools available that would cross-post to both Facebook and Google+ in one step

People are not likely to follow a brand on any social media platform when it is obvious the brand is no longer maintaining it. And a neglected Google+ page – or Facebook page or Twitter account – reflects poorly on any company that fails to maintain it.

Bottom line: there might not be that many brands using Google+ to its fullest extent, but clearly there are brands who are missing the boat when it comes to utilizing all social media platforms, particularly when it is so easy to cover them all.

Now if only all the Domino’s Pizzas of the world with neglected Google+ pages take note and start updating or cross-posting at the very least.

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