With social networking sites offering retailers another means to monitor brand sentiment and interact with customer, global language and translation services agency TranslateMedia throws a spotlight on the latest offering from the online software giant
With social networking sites offering retailers another means to monitor brand sentiment and interact with customer, global language and translation services agency TranslateMedia throws a spotlight on the latest offering from the online software giant
There has been plenty of online conjecture surrounding Google+. The new social networking website was initially billed as a “Facebook killer”, and had 10 million people riding the crest of the hype wave by joining within the first month.
Although officially still only a beta, TranslateMedia said that Google+ looks like it is going to stick around. While many, particularly Facebook aficionados, may dismiss Google+ as merely a copycat, the agency contends this new platform may provide some interesting business opportunities.
Highlighting interesting Features
The agency said that some of the features that the Google+ service provide are quite innovative. This will ensure that the social network will have several branding and commercial uses:
- Circles – An easy and logical way to organise the people within a network. It works fairly similarly to a “friends list” on Facebook, but it allows the publication of certain pieces of information exclusively for an individual circle. Google+ provides 4fourpre-configured circles, friends, family, acquaintances, and followers, while enabling the easy creation of new ones.
- Hangouts – Enables video chat with a whole group of people. Ideal for business meetings with associates in different countries.
- Sparks – Delivers information on pre-defined interests within a stream in over 40 languages. By adding interests to your a, Google+ will provide information to read, watch, or share. This certainly facilitates the discovery of great content.
Google+ multilingual businesses benefits
Google+ has managed to achieve a significant viral growth in a short period of time. Within 16 days, the new social network reached 10 million users, a milestone that took Facebook 852 days to attain.
Much of this growth has come from highly populated countries across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. This demonstrates the importance of a multilingual approach, particularly within the field of social media and search marketing.
As a result, Google+ is proving to be an excellent platform for promoting original content, according to TranslateMedia. With the Sparks service available in over 40 languages, it is a great place to reach a multinational audience. But perhaps the most appealing aspects of Sparks is that it rewards interesting posts, as news and articles that generate a lot of response will be visible in your feed for longer.
Google+ has been widely praised for this service, with many organisations describing its capacity to make content “viral”. For instance, Cory Bergman of Breaking News noted that, “a few of our Google+ posts (with 2,000 followers) are starting to challenge the engagement levels of the same post on our Facebook page (with 50,000 followers)”. Similarly, TechCrunch has already ranked Google+ as one of its top 10 referring sites.
Yet, many are chiefly interested in Google+ because it can have a direct impact on Google searches.
Chris Brogan wrote on Forbes.com that, “Google has all the data from Google+. They can’t get any from Facebook. Google controls search. Where would you cast your vote for search improvement facilities?”
Boosting the power of search
Google has also been making a concentrated effort to improve their search software. For instance, earlier this year Google released the Panda algorithm, which affected much of the English-speaking search engine optimisation (SEO) community.
In spite of some strong criticism, Google have announced that the Panda update will be applied to multilingual search, and has been released in all countries, with the exception of China, Japan, and Korea. Google have confirmed that the translated algorithm will affect approximately 6-9% of all results. This is significantly less than the first iteration of Panda, which influenced an estimated 12% of all English search queries.
In response to the multilingual release, Google stated: “Our scientific evaluation data show that this change improves our search quality across the board, and the response to Panda from users has been very positive.”
Consequently, it is now more important for international firms to follow multilingual SEO best practices. These include the thorough localisation of all keywords, the creation of original content, and ensuring that all material is unique to the website.
