Facebook vs. Google+: User Focused vs. Brand Focused

FROM: http://blog.involver.com/2012/01/20/facebook-vs-google-user-vs-brand-focused/

It’s no secret for anyone that Google has wanted to create a social network to compete with Facebook’s huge popularity for quite some time. That’s why Google+ was created. Now after almost 7 months after its launch, Google+ is considered by many the biggest rival of Facebook for supremacy in social media.

Google+’s growth is amazing, at around 10 million users a month, so the question asked is whether it will overcome Facebook as the number one social media network worldwide. No one knows the answer yet, but the most probable scenario is that they both coexist (as much as it is now, but with Google+ possibly gaining a bit more attention gradually). However, in what way they will coexist?

A big possibility is that Facebook will continue to be a tool for users to get in touch with old college friends, to share a music video to people they like or to show their photos of last month’s ski trip. Google+, on the other hand, is a way to find out more about your favorite brand of clothing’s new collection or how others feel about that Italian restaurant across the street from work, as it is much more brand oriented with Circles.

 

Social Networking for Users

For users, Facebook is still usually the number one option for social networks, as it already has a base of 800 million users around the world, of which approximately 50% log in on a daily basis, uploading about 250 million pictures a day. But it is more than that: “Facebook me” is now a pretty well consolidated verb especially among young people, and the whole Facebook culture is a part of almost everyone’s life, which includes a movie and a dozen books about Mark Zuckerberg and so on.

For the moment, Google+ has around 65 million users and doesn’t yet have the popularity of Facebook. However, the fact that it is a product from one of the world’s biggest and most respected companies helps create quite a buzz. The social network itself has many of the same features as Facebook, but it currently does not share some of the most popular Facebook’s features, such as the ticker and the newly released Timeline.

 

Social Networking for Brands

From a brand’s perspective, Google+ can also be a great tool to get in touch with your customers. In its recently launched Google+ fan pages, the internet giant company has added some very interesting features, which should create an intense competition in the business field against Facebook. It is true that Facebook allows companies to create several tabs, with contests, coupons, Twitter feeds and Flickr, just to name a few, while Google+ currently allows companies to have one front page with posts, a tab with information and standard tabs for photos and videos. We are interested to see what other attributes are added to brand pages in the future.

Sony's page on Facebook, including several different tabs

At first sight, this would mean that Facebook has an advantage over Google+. But if we take some time to analyze Google+’s tools for brands, the story changes and we find that both platforms offer unique business solutions. Below are some of the features offered by Google+:

• Segmentation: Google+ Circles allow companies to segment their followers into many different categories, as the company can add each person to a different circle, according to their category (or even to more than one category). Whether it is by age, location or product preferences, the company can target a specific audience and share content with just a part of its followers, taking into consideration that only a part of them will be interested in a given subject. For example: a shoe company can create two different circles: one for men and one for women, and share content for new shoes for men only in one circle, allowing them to target the message to that specific audience.

• Google+ Direct Connect: users can find Google+ brand pages by searching “+” followed by the name of the company on Google;

• Integration with Google search: if your friends on Google+ recommend a brand or company through the “+1” button featured on the top left corner, the chances are that it will appear earlier on a Google search.

• Integration with Google AdWords: users will be able to “+1” (or recommend) companies’ ads on Google, and the chances that a friend will see this ad on Google search will grow as the number of recommendations increases. On Facebook, a similar feature is available, with the new “featured ads”, which are ads placed on the users’ news feed, according to the users’ friend’s likes. But this Facebook search feature is only visible on Facebook itself, not on Google, which is the biggest search website on the internet.

• Hangouts: Google+ allows companies to interact with its customers via video conversation with up to 9 users at a time, which means faster feedback, better interactions and a bigger opportunity to know the customers better. Allowing brands to help them with any doubts or problems or to demonstrate some new product or features to potential buyers.

Sony's page on Google+, including the "+1" button for recommendations

Needless to say that while Google+ is still expanding and growing in popularity, it can be a powerful tool for companies and brands, in the near future for social media marketing, in addition to Facebook. Some brands have already realized the value behind Google+. From the 100 top global brands, 77 now have a Google+ page, while 93 have a Facebook page.