beautiful bytes – Is it time to rethink search strategy? Again?

Google+ launches brand pages

After initially booting brands off Google+, Google have now made a u-turn and introduced brand pages to their social network.

Brands can take advantage of Google+ features such as circles which will allow them to segment their audience. This opens up possibilities for targeted asks for online campaigns and really simple split testing for things like landing pages. Circles can also be used to carry out things like focus groups.

So, this really begs the question: “Should I spend time setting up a Google+ brand page?”

According to Google, they have more than 40 million unique users (which apparently has ‘grown significantly’ over the last few weeks). And while not specifying numbers, Bradley Horowitz (Google+ VP of Product) also stated that they have a high percentage of active users due to the number of apps and integrations that have been recently released.

Direct Connect

A further new feature released by Google this week could be the deciding factor as to whether or not you set up a brand page. If you type +Google into Google (it won’t break the internet I promise!), the automatic suggestion is populated with brand pages (if there is one). So, not only are we fighting to get to the top of search results, we’ll be aiming to get to the top of this list too, and brand pages seem to be the way to do this.

Has anyone set one up yet? What was the experience like? What do you intend on doing with your Google+ profile? Leave a comment!

Should social networks be blocked during times of civil unrest?

According to a recent survey, the majority of the British public would support the closure of social networks during times of civil unrest.

Back in August, social networks were blamed for helping rioters organise unlawful activities, causing the spark that initiated the idea of blocking social network access during riots. However, post-riot studies of social network activity (particularly Twitter) seems to disagree with the idea that it was used in this way.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest supporters of the idea were over 65’s, and the lowest level of support came from 18-24 year olds.

What do you think? Would blocking access to social networks help or hinder these situations? Would action like this provoke further anger among those already taking part in riots? What about everyone else? We’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

Creepy use of Facebook Connect

This is really something you should watch instead of having it explained. Suffice to say that it is very weird, creepy and will make you consider changing your Facebook profile visibility settings. Follow the link below:

http://www.takethislollipop.com/

More soon,

Ash

http://www.estherfreeman.co.uk Esther

Well thanks guys! Now I’m going to have nightmares!! ;0)
http://www.hellobeautifulworld.com Ashley

It’s horrible isnt it! How quickly did you want to change your privacy settings after watching it though?!
http://gplus.to/dogstrust Alex

We set up a brand page for DT for a few reasons:

1. Why not? There’s simply no harm in being there and watching how things develop – that alone is not going to drain resources and you can’t make sensible decisions about how much time to invest in it if you ignore it altogether. And we’re fans of experimenting a little first and building a strategy after, which I know some people don’t agree with (and I accept it wouldn’t work for everyone) but it seems to fit with us.

2. There’s no official way to make a vanity URL / verify an account so it doesn’t hurt to have a clearly defined presence there. Should they introduce these things later, as Facebook did, it does help your case (we know this from experience on FB!).

We’re actually about to do something we never would have done with Facebook or Twitter which is post about an appeal (eg fundraising) having built a very small community of around 100, which is almost exclusively made up of very narrow age / gender demographics. We’re pretty curious.

Far too early to make any grand predictions, and certainly too early to qualify how ‘best’ to use it – so we’ll play, see, and let you know what we think!