It has been over eight months now since Google launched it’s social network… Google Plus. I am glad I was amongst the few who were invited in to be part of the first wave of people to use the platform. I can say without a doubt..I have seen it all and Google is onto something with Google Plus.
A lot of what I saw at the beginning of G+ reminded me of the other pre-launch review groups I was in. I was in the beta review for Twitter, I was allowed into Facebook before it was open to the public. So, Yes..I have seen it all..over and over and over.
For the past half year I have averaged 10 hours a day seven days a week on the G+ platform. Maybe saying I have seen it all is an understatement.
WHY?
The question I am asked most by those who do not use G+, or don’t like it, is…WHY? Yes, that is a big question if you look at all the ways it can be used.
Why do you waste your time?
Why are you not on Facebook with the rest of the Real World?
Why are you bothering using G+ when the masses have not accepted it as a social network?
Does it get old to hear these questions asked over and over? Yes! However, validating the answers I give to the questions keeps me digging in to testing the Google Plus platform to make sure I am NOT wasting my time and lessening my professional image. So far, all the testing substantiates my investment in my time spent.
Fullfilling Interactions
I am just blown away with how much more supportive the G+ community is and how fast I was able to organically grow my community. I will also add, I have not played any games to accumulate the community.
I am unlike many others who feel they need to validate their existence as the most popular person on the face of the planet by gathering up anything and anyone to be in their community. Matter of fact, I have flushed my Circles on G+ three times now to get to the number of real people I have in my circles today.
I have tested several times on several platforms to see if in fact having a trillion people in my circles produced anything of value and it did not.
Testing
Just like the tests I have done on Facebook and Twitter, having a large number of people in my following (at one point over 10k) required me to spend a large amount of time adjusting the platform settings to keep the knuckleheads of the world out of my streams. This is also the same results many of the businesses report finding.
Since the end of last year I have built, what I am finding to be, a very robust G+ community of Real People who know the benefits of social networking and have come to G+ to get away from the relentless pounding of irrelevant posts. The lack of interaction with anyone in those other social spaces has also been brought up as why many people give up on other communities.
At first I was startled with the high volume of interaction amongst the users of G+. It was strange to be able to post a question in a social space and actually get an answer. That rarely happened on Facebook or Twitter any of the test I preformed.
It also is refreshing to hear from people contacting me on G+ who actually are interested in discussing doing business. It also was exciting to know they found me through their Google Search.
Paralleling Results
Of course my review of G+ went along with parallel testing of the other social spaces. I would post the exact content in G+, Facebook and Twitter both under my name and several test accounts I created (yes, I am not the only one who uses trumped up accounts to do testing of content. Why do you think FB and Twitter have so many users?) to make sure the responses were not made out of people personally knowing me.
The results clearly showed the interaction, quality of remarks and responses weighed heavily in G+ favor on all accounts.
I have used all of the social spaces in many different ways. Over the years I have had thousands of Friends on Facebook, even more Followers on Twitter. I played the Social Butterfly, the Linkster, the Quoter, the Video maven, the Blogging machine and many other characters. I use this same method of testing in my offline efforts as well to see how people react to different personalities.
Social World
As you see, I have actually spent the time to find out what works and what does not. Yes, that is a lot of time socializing, but it has paid off. The world of social networking is finally stepping out of the fog of lackluster internet marketing and into becoming what it was intended to be..Social.
I understand many other people feel they are getting positive results using other less social methods of social media. Many marketers don’t care about the social space or people in it, they just want the people in them to buy. Many more businesses and individual still want to hang on to the thought that if they have tens of thousands of users connected to their account they will get at least one sale. To all that I can only wonder how much more productive everyone would be if they were just more sociable to fewer person, places and things.
I also understand many businesses and business people don’t have or want to spend the time I spend online to get the results I get. I hear them loud and clear and is why while I am in the process between projects and writing another book I took the time to test what works in hopes what I find will prove to businesses and business people they need to be more social. They need to find the time it takes to adjust to the change in the way business is being done today.
More Social World
The world of social networking is full of different people with different attitudes and who have different missions in life. Many people feel more secure when they think tens of thousands of people are listening to them. The tests are showing it takes a lot of energy to maintain a large volume of friends, followers or users. Wouldn’t it be easier to know everyone in your reach and know they care about what you say or offer?
Google has been sitting back for sometime now looking at how the ‘Bookers’ and ‘Tweeters’ are going after making a lot of noise just to be seen. I like how Google has walked softly into the social space carrying a big stick and without a multimillion dollar trumped-up extravaganza launch at SXSW snuck in an opened a social space that is as solid as they come.
So my question back to those who still feel wearing rose colored glasses while wailing away their time on Facebook and Twitter is going to stop those sites from bleeding to death is….would I spend this much time and effort to test out G+ if there was not something productive with this platform? I think you know the answer to that.
Let me know how I can help.
