Before the internet, many businesses were forced to do all of their marketing through the medium of paper. Now however, the internet has allowed people to create social networks that allow businesses to market directly to them. Although there are a number of large and successful social media platforms on which to promote your business, you might be asking what’s next? Well, we can’t read the future, but we have a few ideas.
Looking back
If you go back 50 years or so, businesses were forced to do all of their marketing via paper mediums. This meant getting ‘eyeballs’ in front of billboards and newspaper advertisements in order to help maximise exposure to a product. Now, in the digital age, the basic idea has stayed the same, but businesses need to make use of social media to directly target their products.
Over the past decade a number of social media platforms have been and gone, with Myspace being a notable example.
The Present Landscape
Currently, social media platforms come in all different shapes and sizes and particularly in the last 5 years, social media platforms have tried to attract specific crowds. If your business does not yet participate actively in social media, it is likely that you are missing out on a significant market.
This is because through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other similar platforms, you can correspond directly with your audience, build your brand and deliver its message and track your audience to see who you should really be targeting with your advertisements.
Could Google+ Be Good for Your Business?
So if your business is not actively engaged in social media, or if you’re simply wondering what the next thing is, you should probably be looking to Google+. Although you could argue that Facebook is probably the most dominant social platform of the moment (closely followed by Twitter and Instagram), Google+ might just have the potential to change things in a few years.
Google+ is particularly useful for companies who are trying to connect with local audiences. Already companies like VCars have made a head start by creating a profile, creating circles of friends through which to communicate its brand and then taking advantage of the fact that companies on Google+ appear in local listings rankings on Google search. These are all fantastic ways to get more of your products and services in front of a wider, more direct audience, and with Google’s search algorithm, you can be sure that the people seeing your brand are people who have an active interest in what you are promoting.
So there you have it – Google+ is what’s next in social media, so your company should sign up today.