Why Google Plus Should Become Part of Your Social Media Package?

Facebook might have more users. Twitter might make more headlines. But in 2014,

Google Plus is likely to be the most important social media tool in your communications arena.

For the unfamiliar or uninitiated, here’s a Google Plus primer:

Similar to Facebook and Twitter, it allows you to create a page to promote your business, product, service or organization
Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Google Plus adds significant juice to your SEO efforts.
The power of Google Plus, in terms of search engine optimization, is that every time you create a new post (or status update or tweet, in Facebook and Twitter parlance), you’re essentially creating a new web page, which is very likely to appear in Google search results.

Last year Google search hosted between 79 and 81 percent of all internet searches in the United States, according to StatCounter.

As if that’s not reason enough to make Google Plus part of your social media package in 2014, the service is also growing by leaps and bounds. It’s only been around since 2011 and already has more than 300 active users each month. It’s no longer the domain of techies and early adopters. Companies large and small are increasingly using it as a means to amplify their communications messages in the increasingly noisy world of social media.

So as you evaluate your social media strategy this year, make sure to make the most of this powerful tool.

Use the communities feature to create groups where your key audiences can connect, share ideas and talk about your business, organization, services or products. Use the hangouts feature to host discussions and demonstrations, share photos and connect directly with key audiences via video chats (which are proving much more popular than the dreadful conference calls everyone is so used to using). And consider integrating it into your homepage, landing pages and secondary pages.

It might not have the cache of Facebook or Twitter (yet), but Google Plus is emerging as a powerful new tool that shouldn’t be ignored.