Google+ Plus vs Facebook – Infographic

I am starting to wonder if Google+ is a waste of time as a marketing platform for bloggers and brands.
Google+ launched with a bang last year and has now reached over 170 million registered users and 100 million active users.
The demographic is mainly male at 67%, the average age is 28 years old with a technical bent.
I do like the Google+ interface and I am sure it had a significant impact on maintaining competitive  pressure on Facebook to keep its user interface fresh with its new “Timeline” design rollout and evolution.
But there is a problem.
Google+’s engagement levels are so low that actually rank behind MySpace and almost any other significant social network you want to mention.

Google+ Engagement is Poor

Research from RJ Metrics shows that that despite the large user base they are hardly spending any time on the site whether vthat is publishing, reading or engaging.
Here are some of the findings:

•  The average post has less than one +1, less than one reply, and less than one re-share.
• 30% of users who make a public post never make a second one.
• After making five public posts, there is a 15% chance that a user will not post publicly again.
• Among users who make publicly-viewable posts, there is an average of 12 days between each post

Other research reveals that Google+ users spend on average only 3 minutes per month versus Facebook at over 400 minutes.

 What about Traffic Referral?

I am finding that it is hardly referring any traffic to my blog (despite having over 7,000 followers on Google+)
In speaking to other bloggers at the “Social Media Down Under” conference recently they agreed that they were only posting there because it was Google.
What I am finding also is that Pinterest drives more traffic to my blog than Google+.
A lot of users are posting but only because it is a Google property!
Here is some more information via an Infographic regarding Google + vs Facebook

Infographic by Pardot.com

What About You?

How are you finding Google+…is it a ghost town? Is it driving traffic for your website or blog?
Look forward to hearing your feedback and stories.

Source : Facebook Vs Google Plus

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Google Plus will impact your SEO

It was common knowledge the announcement of Google on the launch of a social search nicknamed “Search Plus Your World”, presumed impact on SEO. In this regard there have been many speculations raised, especially related to Google’s motives for this release. Among those reasons were noted as follows:
Earn a part of social networking market.
Improving the quality of search results through greater reliability and customization (Nielsen research suggests that 42% of users rely on search results, but a 90% trust recommendations from friends).

In fact, all contribute to the reasons why Google has launched social search. In this article, however, does not intend to talk policy, but how this development will inevitably impact on SEO and our positions specifically.
What is Google’s strategy “Search, Plus Your World”?
To really understand the impact this new SEO will need to understand what is Google’s strategy regarding social search. Here are my considerations:

Google is creating a “map” similar to Facebook’s Open Graph, which connects people to their content, their websites and their readers to understand who produces what content, what happens to that content and how people react. Here the labels “rel = author” and “rel = publisher” are very important.
Thus, Google will get background information on the readers and content producers, taken from the activity of their Google accounts (for example, what videos are on YouTube and searches you do when you connect to their accounts) and use these data in combination with existing positioning factors and the shared data to better position G + content in search results.

If I have reason on my findings, then we see a change in prevalence in the results pages of search engines to producers of a public asset, but only in niches where there are communities.
For example, in the niche of social media websites such as Mash able, Social Media Today Social Media Explorer and prevalence receive extra pages of search engine results because they have an audience that includes not only influential but also remaining mass of social media enthusiasts who share their content. The websites of social media that have no active public or a community prevalence lose.
In niches that lack of community social search will not change anything, unless a company create a public asset from scratch.

Here are five things that I think this change to affect social search for workers to think more like online marketing.
The email marketing will become increasingly important because of its power to encourage desired actions, such as social distributions.
Social strategies will have two sub-strategies: the “custom SEO strategy” and “non-customized SEO strategy.” The second will be almost identical to what it does but first you’ll have more to do with winning social approval and involvement of your audience.

The creation of low quality links will become obsolete in niches where there are communities and public assets. The creation of high quality links will continue to play an important role in the positioning of all websites, and creating low-quality links still work for non-competitive niches without an audience.
Companies will have to find ways to win the “social approval” of the influential in your niche (if any). +1 S celebrity in your niche will be very valuable.

Google will work to increase the percentage of people connected: This is pretty obvious.

Source : Google Plus will impact your SEO

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