Fifty years ago, marketing over virtual networks is nothing but a far-off dream. Nowadays, businesses thrive on selling over the internet and marketing never seemed easier yet more complicated at the same time. With social networking sites battling it out and patrons juggling between two or three social media, real estate businesses have found a new niche – a new frontier. Between Google Plus and the mogul, Facebook – we listed several reasons why the first seems to have more power against the predictable, more popular choice.
Social Networking Rebirth
Many social networking sites have come before Facebook, but its launch trampled and eclipsed even Friendster, which at that time was deemed, unsinkable. When Google launched Google Plus, everybody coined it as “Google’s attempt at social networking” – sadly, the attempt was a massive flop. Or is it?
If Google+ was such a colossal disgrace, then why didn’t Google end it? They still employ massive numbers of developers working day after day – silently weaving the plan that is Google+. While everybody thought it was a flop, Google was bidding its time until they’ve got their arsenal fully loaded.
Years later, Google+ is still around whilst others have all reached their doom, and it’s only getting better with time. Contrary to popular opinion, Google+ was never created to wash out Facebook, it was meant to level the playing field out in due time. Its quietly improving infrastructure responds not just to quench our personal thirsts for meet and greet – it means Business.
Here are four great features of Google Plus that’s sure to give Facebook a run for its money, by real estate business standards:
1) Commune
Google+ Communities was launched in December; its platform simple: people joined by common interests. Comparable to Facebook Groups, Communities boast robust features such as file-sharing through Google Drive, events hosting, hangouts, etc. You can find “Circles” of people within the same industry: call center agents, actors, school principals, home-based businessmen, models and more. Unlike Groups, you can invite people you do not personally know which creates bigger opportunities for business.
2) Google Analytics, Business Page & Local
Picture this: You are medium local business, you can enlist your business in Google Local so you get exposure within your immediate community. For even more exposure, Google has Business Page, where you can maximize the publicity of your business AND get Google Analytics to track the traffic on your page so you can make informed decisions about optimizing your web content or developing more materials for your websites.
You mark your business as Your business – plain and simple and you get free assistance in tracking your raw ROI.
3) Say MINE!
As a business, it is important to have a variety of content on your website that appeals to your demographics. But how unfortunate that some materials are actually spun helplessly and claimed by similar business types as their own. Google Authorship allows bloggers, writers, reviewers and business owners put a stamp in their written work and say “MINE”. If you have a Google Plus account, you can customize your business website to automatically mark the contents you made with your picture and name like a byline.
4) Google+ Anytime, Anywhere
Facebook remains the most widely used application to date, with billions of users worldwide and updates being rolled out like candies at a theme park – find anyone who has a Smartphone and she will most certainly have Facebook online. This does not say that Google+ cannot compete. Note that Google still has the biggest hold of the Android Market with the Google Play Store as the common place for application downloads. The Gmail dashboard on mobile phones integrates all these Google Apps for a seamless, user-friendly experience.
These features are gold for real estate business. We get to create pages and invite people in and track their interests using Analytics. We would be literally watching each customer walk in and out of our websites and note their preferences, their ages and the nest website they visit. We get to plan our next big marketing campaign around the data. We get to claim rights to our written work before anyone else had the audacity to steal them. Google+ is pure genius, the reason why it knocks out Facebook in the real estate industry marketing scheme.
About the Author:
Iryna Ostapets writes about WordPress, mobile and other tech news via online exposures. She is the author of Phone tracker site.