Business Pages: Facebook vs. Google+

FROM: http://blog.pardot.com/2012/01/business-pages-facebook-vs-google/

Posted on January 3, 2012by Molly Hoffmeister in Social Media

Facebook may still have a significant edge over Google+ when it comes to personal pages, but Google+ is gaining on Facebook when it comes to business pages, according to a recent article by MarketingProfs. Of the top 100 brands (Millward Brown’s BrandZ Most Valuable Brands for 2011), 93% maintain a company Facebook page, and as of December 19, 77% maintain a Google+ page. Keep in mind that Google+ only kicked off business pages in early November, and that this number has jumped 16% in the last month— not too shabby for Google+ pages.

A major factor behind Google+’s growing popularity with businesses may be the integration of Google+ pages with the search engine’s results pages. “Google is embedding their popular new product with its dominant search marketing position…blurring the lines between social and search engagement,” said Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge (a Pardot customer). Google+ can expose brands to the billions of people using Google as a search engine every day—something Facebook just can’t offer. “Top 100 brands are realizing that they now need to address both channels,” said Yu.

So, many businesses are recognizing the benefits of utilizing both Facebook and Google+, but are they distinguishing between the two channels?

As far as we can tell, most businesses are treating their Google+ pages very much like their Facebook pages—with slightly longer posts, perhaps. But you can compare for yourself: we’ve posted links to the top ten most popular brands on Google+ (thanks, MarketingProfs!) as well as links to their facebook pages. Brands are ranked in order of the popularity of their Google+ pages, and we’ve included the number of fans for each site (as of December 29). See which brands were more successful on Facebook than Google+ (and vice versa) and learn from the best!

 

Brand	Google+	Facebook
1. Android	323,612	166,833
2. Mashable*	233,490	743,870
3. Coldplay*	196,851	15,998,117
4. H&M*	178,778	8,886,197
5. Google+	174,561	186,200
6. Marvel*	170,383	2,482,402
7. Google	157,712	4,762,586
8. New York Times	151,543	1,898,552
9. Google Chrome	140,395	7,566,815
10. Gmail	117,665	947,881

*Interestingly, these four brands ranked behind the Google brands when MarketingProfs reported on December 22, but their numbers grew significantly in the week following, whereas the Google brands remained flat.