Google Spiders Have a New Boss, The Google Octopus

What happens when great marketing minds get together to share ideas? Inspiration happens and marketing patterns take shape that could be seen as trends. SMAZ 6 is the culprit for the inspiration behind my top 5 takeaways from this event:

1. Facebook is still a powerful marketing beast but for what purpose (especially when the average brand has .5% engagement from their marketing efforts)?
2. “Eat me!” is arguably the best brand tweet ever (thanks @JasonFalls and #Quiznos).
3. The word ‘kittens’ converts better in Pay-per-Click than ‘Death Lawyer’ (@MySpy and Convertasaurus.com)
4. You can lose weight from a beer and sausage diet. (Evo Terra)
5. Google Plus is not a priority for brands and marketers. (Thanks to Fred von Graf and SMAZ for forcing me to create a new presentation on Google Plus – see below)

Content marketing is the hot topic and focuses for most marketers…and it should be. What is odd is how few have a content marketing strategy in place, and those that do are not including Google Plus. At the start of my presentation, I polled the room and found about 5% of the audience admitted to having a Google Plus account and only half of them are active with their account. This just shows that people are not paying attention to #gplus (RIP)

When you look at the top 5 social networks, only one has the potential to directly influence your rank in Google SERPs. You certainly can argue that all social networks help influence rank but when it comes to getting the most juice from your content marketing, Google Plus is the winner. Is this not enough motivation to say, “maybe our business should shift some resources to Google Plus.” What is the main reason businesses turn their back on Google Plus? Lack of time and believing the hype that no one is on Google Plus or active with their account is my best guess.

We have all heard about search engine spiders. They work hard every second to make sense of what we publish so content can be indexed and easily found in search results. Search engine optimizers work just as hard to influence the spiders as to where their website and content appear in the rankings.

Since Google Plus came around, the Google spiders have taken a back seat to the ‘Google octopus.’ Let’s call him “OctoPlus”. Think of Google+ as the head of an octopus, a very hungry octopus. All things Google is now controlled by OctoPlus; YouTube, Picasa, Google Maps Local, Blogger, etc. OctoPlus feeds on all relevant content; blogs, videos, articles, press releases, photos, PowerPoints, and status updates. Additionally, all of your other social networks can help increase your influence and visibility in search engines by connecting them with your Google Plus account.

To make OctoPlus work to your advantage in the search results, you first need to claim all of your Google and non-Google properties under your Google Plus account. Once you have done this you should consider publishing from your Google Plus account first and update your other social networks secondarily. If you use the Google Chrome browser, add DoShare and Extended Share for Google Plus to schedule and syndicate your marketing content from Google Plus to all the other social networking platforms. Just about every network is represented.

If you are looking to get more lift from your social media and content marketing activity and since Google Plus is now dead, put your energy into maximizing your new business potential with Google My Business.