Is Google Plus the new Twitter?

With the launches of many platforms there is typically huge buzz!  The launch of Google Plus (G+) is no exception.  Some predict that G+ will die a quiet death similar to that of Google Buzz, while others believe it could spell the death of Facebook and/or Twitter.   From a small business perspective, should you spend time networking with potential customers on this new platform?  Yes, this well thought out strategic play between multiple Google properties will change social media forever!

Circles
There are quite a few reasons that so many people are raving about G+.  The first item that I feel is most important for business owners is the fine grained sharing control.  G+ has created the concept of circles that you can easily drag and drop customers into!  These circles give you the fine-grained ability to determine what gets shared with each group.

Can you imagine having a circle for each step in your sales funnel and sharing different content for each group?   Suppose for a moment that you were a local carpet installation company.  You now proceed to share a blog post titled “Should your carpet be professionally cleaned or replaced?” with all of your prospects.  A few moments later you send out a coupon for a discount on installation to all of your warm leads.  This type of control allows you to broadcast to specific groups very quickly and then follow-up 1 on 1.

Don’t forget that G+ allows you to share with other G+ users as well as with individuals via e-mail.  This means that the customers in the example above didn’t even need to be members of G+.  You simply add their email address to your G+ circle and voila you can share your blog or coupons with them too!

Sparks
The idea behind sparks are pretty simple: provide G+ users with interesting content for their interests.  You simply tell G+ which types of content you’re interested in and it will find content for you.  This functionality is useful for quickly finding useful content to share with your customers.  This means that you can share blogs and news items with your customers in 2 clicks.

I suspect that in the future Google will probably integrate this functionality right into your stream which means that it will require only 1 click to share!

Hangouts

There is a lot of new marketing ground to be broken using Google’s new concept of hangouts.  Hangouts are virtual rooms where up to 10 people can video chat simultaneously.  You simply choose which circles you’d like to allow into your hangout and they will all be notified that a hangout is available.  Because you want to be adding value to your network this could be a great opportunity to introduce members of your circles to each-other.  This is a perfect opportunity to learn more about your customers.  Additionally, by helping others connect you’ll be perceived as valuable and remain in the forefront of your customer’s minds.

Aside from the fact that I believe G+ will be a huge game changer, you need to ensure that it fits properly into your marketing strategy.  I suspect that all of the new capabilities G+ brings will allow it to fit into the strategies of many business owners, but not all.

Duct Tape Marketing – A must read for all small business owners

As the title of this post says, I would reccomend that every small business owner read this book.  Not only does it clearly outline the process for making the business successful, but it is full of TONS of practical ideas that any small business can implement immediately!

John Jantsch shows you how to lay the foundation for your marketing platform by identifying who your target market is so that you don’t waste any time or money chasing bad relationships!  Next, he helps you through the process of boiling your core message down to a single sentence (“Talking Logo”) that will ensure that potential clients, vendors and partners know exactly what benefits you will provide them right off the bat.  Next, we’re off to logo and branding land where we apply all of those initial foundational elements to now create imagery.

I have seen many companies setup that skip completely past these first steps.  Most of them jump straight to selecting a name and creating a logo before laying this crucial groundwork.  Personally, I think it’s probably the hardest part about starting a company and a process that most people don’t feel is practical.  Obviously, once you know it’s there you realize that it’s absolutely necessary.

After John has walked you through the foundational elements of marketing he takes you through the process of developing products for every stage of your customer lifecycle.  This is a very key piece of The Duct Tape Marketing system and another piece that most small businesses overlook.  Typically they have 1 or 2 packages that are fee based and don’t think about giving something away for free to help pull customers into their marketing funnel early on.  This is something that larger companies tend to do, but most small businesses go straight at the hard sell.

The rest of the book really focuses on applying multiple other channels to your marketing system to round the entire thing out.  Rather than going into details or specifics about these I would like to reccomend again that you pick up the book.  It’s worth millions to you if you follow it step by step.  It should be required reading for anyone that doesn’t want to work for someone else their entire life.

How have you used this system for your business?