Community Breakfast February 2012 - What's the Big Deal with Google+?

Notes taken by Ethan Kim. Notes are in a conversation format and in chronological order:

• Questions brought up during the discussion in Bold

• Responses to the questions (if any) in Italics

• Comments and general thoughts in regular text

We’re not sure where G+ fits into a platform for community management

What type of content is shared on G+?

How do we use G+ for community rather than for marketing?

'Who has G+ accounts? Who posts to G+ regularly?'


 * Majority of the community managers have created G+ accounts but only half regularly posts to G+

G+ seems to be important from SEO perspective. Some have found the newly introduced Search + MyWorld to be useful from search perspective as the search suggestions and results take into consideration your G+ Circles. Therefore, the search suggestions and results are tailored to what’s relevant to the industry rather than what’s relevant for the general audience. It optimizes your SEO for people following you on G+.

What content are you posting to G+?
 * Everything we post to Facebook

'''Then why 2 platforms that have the same content? Why create overlap?'''
 * Potential benefit from Search +MyWorld and SEO
 * It’s not enough of a platform yet to have a focused strategy but also doesn’t hurt to manage the platform to post content you’d post on your FB page.
 * SEO is potentially a driving force for companies to use G+.

What analytics does G+ offer?
 * Not Sure

Do you see traffic coming to your blog/website from G+?
 * Not a substantial amount

Are you able to drive traffic to G+ page from your other pages?
 * Not sure

Majority of G+ users seem to be young men. Is that still the case and is that potentially an issue? Does it effect the ‘cool factor’ of G+?

Has anyone tried using Hangout?
 * Hangout could be a different and useful way to reach out to your community.
 * Video is archived to YouTube.
 * It was ok
 * We’ve done it for user testing internally but externally

Will G+ die out / become a corporate page parking lot?
 * Perhaps. We’ve seen use case for: corporate recruiting tool for conducting interviews; classroom tools
 * That isn’t so relevant for community managers

Is anyone actively using circles?
 * No
 * It seems to be just full of people talking about G+

Has anyone seen brands who are active on G+ and has been doing a good job?
 * Not brands but singer/song-writers doing mini concerts to engage their community
 * Noticed some success with musicians
 * Dell seems to be doing a good job. Perhaps because their audience is so big but they’re testing and playing with the platform publicly
 * GE also does a good job of using G+ to reach out to younger generation – i.e. posting a picture of an engine and making people guess

What about a fan’s perspective on utilizing G+?
 * I’m more likely to share something with the brand on G+ than on Facebook
 * Is G+ more for the tech/business community? Is it too ‘techie’ and not social enough?

G+ is still young and it’s yet to be seen where it will go. Perhaps because it’s Google that G+ is receiving the amount and the type of attention it does today.

G+ could potentially be a marketer’s dream because of the array of features they provide – analytics, different ways of organizing communities, etc.