Should Your Business Have A Google Plus Page?

The simple answer to this question is yes. You might as well set one up now because, if you don’t, every time you log onto your YouTube channel or your Gmail account Google is going to pester you to set one up anyway. Of course, you might not have a Gmail account or a YouTube channel. If that’s the case, and you never intend on getting them then, well, you should probably still set up a Google Plus Page for your company.

As I mentioned previously, Google is trying to get all its users, no matter what part of Google they are using, to sign up for every Google service imaginable. To be honest, though, signing up for every Google service imaginable isn’t too bad an idea. Gmail is a popular and respected email service. YouTube is the biggest video sharing site out there. Drive is great for sharing files. Calendar is perfect for companies that need to share work schedules. Blogger is a very good blog site. Search is… Well, it’s the original Google, the most successful internet site of all time.

So, all of Google’s services are useful, even the ones I didn’t mention above, but why do you need a Google Plus Page? All you need to sign up to any Google service, after all, is a Gmail account. Well, it turns out that Google are so proud of their social network they want everyone to start using it, despite its lack of popularity when compared to the likes of Facebook.


To persuade people to use Google Plus, the search giant released a special dashboard a couple of months ago. From this Google Plus dashboard, users can organise their business’ profile and settings on many Google services: they can change their company address on Google Maps, they can manage their YouTube channel and they can change their company’s search results on Google Search.

Search is how Google made its name. It’s the most popular search engine online and it makes the most money of all the free-to-use websites. Maintaining an active presence on Google Plus, by setting up and managing a Page for your business, helps your company rank in Google Search – not just your Google Plus page, your website as well if you link the two together.

Don’t get me wrong, Google Plus has a number of great features as well as the dashboard. On the service, you can post diverse content with interesting hashtags to drive conversation. You can follow, comment, +1 and interact, potentially gaining your company new clients and customers. You can find communities that are relevant to your business and connect with likeminded people. Best of all, you can use Hangouts to run video conferences.

When Google last updated Plus, adding hashtags and changing the stream, I noted that, although the features improved the social network, people still wouldn’t flock to it. Google announced, last year, that400 million people were on Google Plus. In may this year, that figure went up to 500 million. At the time this seemed like a stretch. The reality was that 500 million people were signed into a Google service, be it Gmail, YouTube or docs, but they were not necessarily maintaining an active Google Plus account.

For the reasons I have mentioned above, though, its still worth setting up a Google Plus business page. Don’t put as much effort into it as you would your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, but make sure it’s there so that when you need it (and, considering Google’s domination, you soon might) you can access it in a moment.

What do you think of Google Plus?

Shutterstock Deal Provides Companies With Free Facebook Pictures

Facebook has struck a deal will photo library site Shutterstock to provide businesses with millions of images to use in their adverts. Businesses often have a tough time finding the right photo to fit their advertising campaign but, thanks to the new deal with Shutterstock, companies will be able to search through the a Facebook-based database to find the right, free image to use for their advert.

Facebook announced the new Shutterstock deal yesterday on the ‘Facebook for Business’ blog. In the announcement, the social media giant has promised to release three product updates over the next few days, as well as the new Facebook pictures library, which will help small businesses to create and manage ads on the site.

Shutterstock’s images are going to be accessible within Facebook’s advert creation tool and they will be completely commercially licensed and formatted for use on all Facebook advert formats. The deal is great for small businesses, who don’t necessarily have access to significant photo libraries, as good images always boost advert interaction. According to Facebook:

High-quality, engaging photos often increase the performance of ads, particularly in News Feed. And now, through our collaboration with Shutterstock, it will be easier for businesses to integrate beautiful photography into their Facebook ads.

Businesses can also now upload multiple Facebook images at one time, allowing them to create more than one advert at a time. Marketers will be able to select images from various sources, such as previous ads and Shutterstock’s database. Businesses will be able to test different photos in their advertising campaign thanks to the update.

Two months ago, Facebook announced that Facebook ads were going to be simplified so that small businesses could better use them. The deal with Shutterstock makes the process of finding and uploading photos far more streamlined. Facebook has also updated the Pages Manager app for iOS and Android devices.

What do you think of Shutterstock’s images?

Zuckerberg Wants to Bring the Whole Planet Internet Access

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to bring Internet access to everyone. Late Tuesday he announced the launch of Internet.org, an initiative to bring Internet access to the two-thirds of the world's population that can't get online.

Only 2.7 billion people have Internet access, with Internet adoption growing by less than 9% annually.

The founding members of Internet.org are Facebook, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung. Their goals? Efficient use of data, making Internet access affordable, and helping businesses create new business models and services that will drive Internet access.

Some potential projects of Internet.org include development of lower-cost, higher-quality smartphones that could help deploy Internet access in underserved areas, data compression tools and data caching systems as well as localization of mobile devices.

" There are huge barriers in developing countries to connecting and joining the knowledge economy. There are huge barriers in developing countries to connecting and joining the knowledge economy. Internet.org brings together a global partnership that will work to overcome these challenges, including making Internet access available to those who cannot currently afford it," said Zuckerberg in an official statement.

Zuckerberg also published a mission statement accompanying this launch, addressing some of the issues that Internet.org will have to face. Perhaps the most important of them is profitability — or lack thereof.

"The unfair economic reality is that those already on Facebook have way more money than the rest of the world combined, so it may not actually be profitable for us to serve the next few billion people for a very long time, if ever. But we believe everyone deserves to be connected," he writes.

The actual website — Internet.org — currently provides an overview of the project and its goals as well as a full list of partners. In the coming weeks, it should also provide news on Internet.org's activities as well as interviews with technology leaders and experts.

Social Media Optimization: The 3 Reasons To Go With It

Today, social media divides people. Some people - a great majority in fact - cannot go through the day without logging onto their Facebook account. This is the little gossip area where they can know at a glance who has done what. Others not only do not use Facebook but they have an aversion for it. The gossip cloud above it has such a negative fingerprint on Facebook that they cannot see beyond it. The first group of people thinks they are embracing the trend, the second one thinks they are blessed to stay away from it. Where is the truth in these two statements?

Let's be fair to everyone. As private person, social media is something you can totally live without. Whether you like or dislike this, tweet or not that, it has absolutely no incidence on you. However, if you are a businessman, you must step in social media. Why? Here are the 3 reasons why you do not have the choice.

• People. The majority likes social networks. We are not talking here about your competitors but about all the people you want to reach with your website, your services and your products. This is precisely why you must jump into the social wave and get carried around. Your clients are very likely to use Facebook, Twitter and Google+. You must take advantage of their dynamism to share data about your company and all the things you have amazingly done for them. People are not always ready to trust a website or ads but they already trust their friends.


• Today's Search Engines. Search engines such as Google love social media as well. Ranking algorithms evolve. In the past, counting the number of backlinks was the best way to assess the popularity of a website. However, search engines got tricked by link farms. Inbound links have lost their shine, at least the way they were. Today, ranking algorithms are more and more listening at people' opinions. Search engines can use behavioral data from websites i.e. bounce rate, browsing time etc. because it cannot be manipulated. Similarly, social networks represent a tremendous amount of data. If people like a website, they talk about it and each time they share a link, they create a backlink.


• Tomorrow's Search Engines. You have probably heard about Google Knowledge Graph. This is not quite ready yet but it represents Google engineers' dream, a world where Google knows what users want and gives them the answers regardless websites & backlinks... This feature relies on the ability to precisely identify the intent behind the query, to pull out the right entity and the corresponding data. Social networks can help building the entity around your company and it brings a web 2.0 feature to your website i.e. a dynamic interface that evolves with your company and grows with it.

You probably realize if you did not before that the social game is on. Do not worry. You will not have to go against your hatred for social networks. You always have the option to get a SEO company that offers SMO Services. Good luck and see you soon on Facebook, Twitter or Google+!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7894103