Inside PR 402: Whither Google+

It was first suggested in the midst of an interview with Sundar Pichai and then was confirmed in a Google+ post by Bradley Horowitz. Google+ as we know it is coming to an end. All that we know so far is that it will be broken up into three products – Streams, photos and Hangouts.

So, where does that leave marketers and others who have cultivated communities on Google+ or published original content on it? Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and I discuss these questions and what the broader meaning of the changes at Google+ for content marketers.

What do you think?

Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], join the FIR Google+ Community, join the Inside PR Google+ Community, join the Inside PR Facebook group, leave us a comment here, message us @inside_pr on Twitter, or connect with Gini DietrichJoseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter.

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Thank you to the people behind Inside PR.

Our theme music was created by Damon de SzegheoRoger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR is produced by Ashlea McGrath.

 

Inside PR 2.78: The plusses of Google+

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We recorded Inside PR 2.76 on the day Google+ opened its pages to businesses and watched as companies developed their G+ presence in real time.

Now it’s a couple of weeks later, and we thought we’d take a closer look. Gini kicks it off by referencing her blog post on the topic. She calls out Google’s transparency in admitting they helped several companies build their brand pages in advance of the launch. However, she’s noticed some of those organizations haven’t grown their followings or done much posting.

She goes on to say while the social media bubble may have wanted G+ to be a Facebook slayer, that’s not likely Google’s intent. She believes it’s to give us a social reason for using Google and that will provide them with more data.

Martin likes the interface, that you can share directly from Google Reader and that Google docs, calendar and Gmail are all there. He wonders if there’s more of a business application to the platform because G+ is so open and when you’re with friends you want to be in a less public environment – a private room with the doors closed, like FB.

Joe calls out the ability to organize circles by interest. And in his circles for journalists, marketers, web design and PR, people continue to publish interesting discussions. Joe uses the platform to follow posts on an industry by industry basis.

Martin suggests it could be a mini-blogging platform without the constraint of 140 characters; a place for companies to start a larger discussion.

Some recent updates: G+ can be managed by third-party apps like Hootsuite. Right now, there’s only one administrator allowed for business pages – that’s going to change in the new year, but currently it’s a drawback.

And finally, we want to wish all our American friends and listeners a Happy Thanksgiving!

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We’d love to hear from you.

Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], join the Inside PR Facebook group, leave us a comment here, message us @inside_pr on Twitter, or connect with Gini DietrichJoe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter.

Our theme music was created by Damon de SzegheoRoger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.

Inside PR 2.62 Hanging Out on Google+

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It’s two weeks since Google+ launched and the Inside PR hosts, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley, have been testing it for its strengths and weaknesses. This week we  talk about our experience so far.

One of the things that has caught most people’s attention is Google Hangouts, the feature that lets Google+ users set up video conference calls with up to ten users. So we thought that we’d use this feature for our recording. Well, as you’ll hear in this episode, there’s a reason why Google+ is still in the “test” period. Not everything works the way that you’d like it to. We lose Gini part of the way through. But she rejoins us by the end. We also experienced the same problem that Shel Holtz noticed when he and Neville Hobson recorded a special episode of the FIR podcast using Google Hangouts with Camtasia studio. The video recording had several defects – frozen screens and video that lagged behind the audio. Hangouts is quite ready for this use. But we’re hoping that Google will keep improving this feature and we’ll keep testing it. Eventually, I’m sure we’ll be able to produce a video version of Inside PR to accompany the audio version.

Have you ever sat down with a long time partner and said, if we could do it over again, what would we do differently? So far, I think that Google+ is the Social Network that’s doing it over and is doing it right.

For me, Facebook started as a place that suggested we could have private conversations with friends and family. But as Facebook developed its business model, it broke the faith with us on that. Bit by bit, it pushed our information onto public feeds – and it wasn’t always up front about what it was doing and didn’t provide us with easy control over how we could control our information.

Martin has been focused on rebuilding his network on Google+. And he’s found that it feels like the early days of Twitter, before the celebrities invaded it and the network became obsessed with numbers of followers. Martin’s finding that he can connect with his real community of interest on Google+ and have much higher quality conversations than he’s experienced on the other networks.

So far, I’ve had an experience similar to Martin. I’ve found that I share the interests of most of the people who have followed me. And by using the Circles feature to sort people by topic, I can dip into different areas just as I would if I were choosing between sections of a newspaper. A great way to increase the signal to noise ratio.

Martin also finds that a strength of Google+ is the ease with which users can adjust their privacy settings – on a general basis and on a post by post basis. It’s intuitive and clear.

Gini also points out that the Circles approach is different from the asymmetrical following on Twitter and the symmetrical friending on Facebook. And this means that we’ll have to develop a different way of figuring out how to manage ourselves in a way that takes full advantage of the unique properties of Google+

So, that’s our Google+ discussion this week. It’s the biggest thing that’s happened in social media in the past couple years. We’ll continue to test it and share our experiences in future weeks.

And what about you? Are you using Google+? What do you think of it? It’s strengths? Its weaknesses?

Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], join the Inside PR Facebook group, leave us a comment here, message us @inside_pr on Twitter, or connect with Gini DietrichJoe Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter.

Our theme music was created by Damon de SzegheoRoger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Kristine Simpson.