Benefits of Using Google Plus for Internet Marketers - Term Paper Example

Benefits of using Google plus for internet marketers INTERNET MARKETER USING GOOGLE PLUS Introduction The current business world is quite dynamic due to the rapid technological advancement that is taking place especially since the last decade. Business firms are optimally adopting the new technology in linking with customers on the market and opening new markets in both local and foreign countries. Unlike in the past decades where business firms only depended on advertising their products using audiovisual and print media such as television radio newspapers etc; the current business organizations have ascended to another level where they open markets and do their advertisement on the internet (Roberts, M & Zahay, D 2012). It is called e-Marketing, this is where products are advertised through electronic means, descriptions and photographs of the said products are posted on the internet for customers to see. The sellers do not just post anyhow their products on the internet, but they use well-organized special sections of the internet called social networks to reach to the customers. The current social networks available on the internet are; Face book, Google plus, Twitter, YouTube, Amazon etc. There are varieties of social networks that have many features hence giving the user many options while working with them. In regards to Roberts, M & Zahay, D (2012).The main function of the social networks as the name suggests is that it enhances the social interactions between people even who are a distant apart. People can chat, sent messages, post photographs and pictures, write commends, shares ideas etc. Therefore, the business operators have found these social networks to be the best opportunity to reach to customers who are far from them. This is made possible by the availability of the internet (Forbes, 2011). More and more social networks are emerging and the ones already operating are striving to improve their features to attract more users. The more users of a certain social network, the more the company benefits (Stelzner, 2012). Thus, social networks are also businesses operated by other individuals; every social network company is often looking for better way to improve their customers’ service. They invent new features and add to the existing ones to create more fascination to the users. For example, initially Google plus was just Google. Nevertheless, after adding more features, it was renamed to be called Google plus. Therefore, competition among these social networks is compelling them to become more aggressive and creative to come up with unique features that would help to beat their competitors (Hsu, C., Killion, L., Brown, G., Gross, M.J. & Huang, S. 2008).  This paper majorly focuses on the Google plus as one the newest social network. It will show the benefits accrued to marketers who opt to use this network other the other social networks available on the internet. Google plus in most cases abbreviated as G+ is an identical services that is owned and operated by Google company. This social network is multilingual hence; it serves almost all people from different lifestyles who speak different languages. Google plus was launched in 2011 by the Google company, after one in operation, it had over 250 million active subscribers (Lovelock, C & Wirtz, J. 2011). The concept of social network is just known to the public as an online social network, however, the launch of Google plus by Google Company meant to add other features on the already existing features of its social network. Therefore, Google plus is not just a destination site for access to the websites, but is a social layer which add value and benefits to the users (Madrigal, 2012). From the analysis of the users, the traders are the majority people who have numerous befits of this site over other social networks. In reference to Hsu, C., Killion, L., Brown, G., Gross, M.J. & Huang, S. (2008).The dominant competitor of Google plus is face book which currently has over 800 million active subscribers all over the world. Google plus’s subscribers are growing steadily over months, this is because of the unique features it has that favors people like businesspersons who seek market and adverse their products easily at lesser costly. Google plus was launched as Google circles. This name is associated to its emphasis on organizing friendship information, thus the new features included relate how the user can arrange his/her profile to look more organized and convenient to access and also help the friends to reach the profile easily. A variety of features on this network satisfied the desired of many subscribers that is why many subscribed to this network within the shortest time possible (Madrigal, 2012). The benefits that the businesspersons now get from the use of Google plus rather other networks are many and they are discussed in the preceding paragraphs. First, as mentioned earlier, Google plus offers a variety of features where the users have many options to choose from according to the products he is trying to advertise (Schulze, Thomas Hess & Bernd, 2004). There are some features which allows the internet market to chat with the customers online, other options allows them to post their products pictures. Other options link the sellers to websites that have customers requiring specific kinds of products hence the seller marketer just go directly to the websites that suit him with ease (Krutonis. 2010:1). Moreover, on the variety of features, they are arranged in a manner that is well disclosed to the users and in fact, some of these features are colored with bright colors for easier identification. The variety of features also enables the marketer to make his advertisement in a variety of ways to attract the attention of every kind of customers (Armer, 2011). In addition, some features give, instant feedbacks from the customers since the marketer tend to interact with the customer live online. Therefore, different varieties of features offered on Google+ are a big advantage to the marketer as compared to other networks, which offers less features. Another benefit of Google Plus has offered to the users especially the internet marketers are that it has introduced what is known as circles (Kturonis, 2010). This is a way of placing people into different groups so that the information you share is only accessible to these people only. One can group, friends, college mates, church mates, teammates, relatives, coworkers etc in different groups. This ensures that when he/she post a message or a picture that is relevant to a certain group, other people from other groups cannot see the message or the pictures. Such personalized circles enable one to make a follow up on the right person but no one else Schulze, (Thomas Hess & Bernd, 2004).Therefore, the options of making circles enables internet marketers to group their customers according to their tastes and preferences, geographical locations, gender, age, regions etc. This simplifies for them the work of sorting hence enhances faster communication with the targeted people. Another features that is found on Google plus social network that benefits the marketer is the Google hangouts feature. These are places used to facilitate group video chat. This feature offers a video call where the users can hang out with other people online. Face book also has this feature, but it only allows hanging out with only one person at ago. While Google plus video call enables one to hang out with ten people at ago Lovelock, C & Wirtz, J (2011). Any one on the web can easily join the chat if it happens that he/she can access the same URL other people are using. Therefore, people would obviously prefer this option of hanging out with many people a fact that saves time and even cost. This is advantageous to the marketer who is reaching out to a number of new customers. The marketer can chat with them for example when they are enquiring about particular features of the products. Thus, the marketer can chat with many customers at ago, answer questions, clarifies where necessary, hear some feedback, and commends from the customers. In regards to Hsu, C., Killion, L., Brown, G., Gross, M.J. & Huang, S. (2008).Google sparks is another awesome feature offered on Google plus social network. Sparks allows someone to receive information that is related to his/her personal interests. For example when a subscribers who is a footballer or fan logs in and clicks on the sparks, the news information concerning football is shown on the screen. Therefore, one get updated on his area of interest the moment he make a log in, in other words sparks simplifies the work of browsing the information he needs everyday using search engines. One can easily share the sports news, politics news, business news and other events with friends easily without struggling to search them. Google plus sparks enables the users to identify the topics they might be interest in, they are like the sorted related topics from the search results. Thus, they keep the user updated with the latest information on their areas of interest. To internet marketers, sparks is an important feature since the marketer will be able to find out things like the prices, demand, supply etc on a particular market. This keeps him informed on what to do with his products (Armer, 2011:1). Businesspersons are always busy and often need to be informed on the behaviors of the market conditions. Therefore, Google plus sparks is a big relief to them since they no longer use longer and time wasting methods of researching to find the relevant information. Another benefit of Google plus network is that it has a Google plus button. This button allows people to recommend the certain sites and parts to other people (Hsu, C., Killion, L., Brown, G., Gross, M.J. & Huang, S. 2008). When one presses this button, it means that he is sharing the article or the information he is reading with other people. Thus, when one finds important information that concerns other people he just presses the button and other people access the same information. This button is also found on face book network. This is very important feature to the internet marketer since he can use this button to share information with fellow marketers especially the information that concerns them all. Hsu, C., Killion, L., Brown, G., Gross, M.J. & Huang, S. (2008). The button can be used to share information to as many people as possible hence, it enhances linkage. This is important for example to marketers who sells their products on a particular foreign market, so they share the news about the market conditions of that common market. Therefore, this is a big advantage since the marketers operate with an informed mind. According to Hsu, C., Killion, L., Brown, G., Gross, M.J. & Huang, S. (2008).Google plus pages is another feature that is on Google plus. This feature allows organizations, which are not individuals such as companies to set up profiles or pages for posting their information. Therefore, the firms tend to post the information concerning the products they produce, the page acts as a company’s notice board. Any customers who are looking for information about a particular product, he just logs in to the Google page of the company and he finds the relevant information .This is a benefit to the firms since they are able to reach out to many customers who tend to visit their page at any time. In fact, the customers are allowed also to leave a comment about the products of the company on this page. The management of the firms makes important decisions to boost the sales and improve customer service using these recommendations from customers. Google plus-event is another feature that ads thrill in using Google plus social network. This feature is the recent one to be released by Google; it is about one month old (Madrigal, 2012). Google events allow the users to add events, invite other people and allow the sharing of photographs in real time from the event. In fact, this feature has been integrated with the Google calendar (Armer, 2011). Businesspersons find this feature to be important to them since they announce the events in that are going to take place in the firm or inform the customers about the changes that are going to the products that are going to be released soon. With this features, the marketers can display the new product that are soon going to be introduced on the market. Therefore, this is an addition to the various display sides the marketer can display its products. Giant companies such as Samsung, Toyota are just part of companies that are benefiting from these features of G-plus. The other benefit that the marketer can get by using Google+ is that he will be able to use a feature called the ripples (Schulze, Thomas Hess & Bernd , 2004).This feature was introduced in 2011 and is a visualization feature tool. It shows how re sharing the events take place concerning the public post. This feature enables one to replay the public share activity and zooming in and out of certain events. It can also be used to view statistics of the most influential users on the chain. Moreover, it enables one to see the language other people are using to share (Armer, 2011). Through replaying the events, the user will have to get the inside understanding of the real events. This feature is quite convenient to the marketer since his work will be just sitting and manipulating the features online and find the right information he wants be it statistical or factual information that concern his products on the market. Finally, Google+ has features that are used to invite contacts from other social networks such as yahoo, hotmail etc. Therefore, users of other social network can easily transfer their contacts to Google+ to interact with more users Lovelock, C & Wirtz, J (2011).Although such features are found in other networks such as face book, but carrying this process is a bit cumbersome, it is not just easy. This feature offered by Google+ is so simple. This is an advantage to the marketer since he can access to people who have subscribed with other social network easily. Therefore, the invitation feature widens the market of the marketer by reaching out to customers who have subscribed with Google+ network. Conclusion In conclusion, the business arena in the current times has taken another trend, which seems to be more technical and sophisticated. All this is brought about by the improvement of technology in the course of time. Thus, business entities have resorted in adopting the new technology to elevate their performance. Nowadays many business firms tend to trade in the same line of business or produce the same kind of products; therefore, to compete effectively for the limited, market, they adopt any technology available to survive. The current technology that is being utilized by firms is the use of social network on the internet. Many social networks have sprouted in recent years and have grown sharply due to the convenience they are giving to the users. Google+ is one of the newest social networks that many businesspersons are using to either market or link with their customer both home and away. Google+ has unique features, which add more benefits to the users especially the marketers Despite the fact that other social network also have some of these feature, as per now Google+ lead the chain by providing more convenient, and reliable services to the subscribers than any other social networks. 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Schulze, Thomas Hess & Bernd Eggers. International Journal on Media Management Volume 6, Issue 1-2, September 2004, pages 12-22. Read More