Google Plus is Dying! Read All About It!

Neal Schaffer: 0:04

Welcome to maximize your social actionable 10 minute advice on how your business can maximize your social media presence. Now, the host of maximize your social social media author, speaker, consultant, and founder of maximize social business. Neal Schaffer. Everybody, welcome to another episode of maximize your social. This is Neal Schaffer coming to you from my home office here in beautiful suburban, windy, hot and dry Irvine, California, we actually had weather that hit 100 degrees earlier this week. And I actually drove out to Phoenix, Arizona, where I spoke out to events, being held there by Comerica Bank, great educational events on social media for their business customers. And for the first time of my life, I realized it was actually hotter here in Orange County than it is out there in Phoenix, which is truly bizarre. But if you've ever been here, you know that we have the Santa Ana winds, these real hot and dry winds that blow in, and that really heated up like a furnace. And that's exactly what we were having. Well, that's not the only thing that was hot over the last week, since we last chatted, the topic of Google Plus has come up again. And it's come up because once again, we have a article, a news article, a blog post, whatever you want to call it, that comes out, that gets well, almost viral attention. And some people just don't read through the article or never really understood the concept of Google Plus to begin with. So there's just a tremendous amount of misunderstanding out there in the market, considering Google Plus, from the publication on techcrunch.com. On April 24, the articles name Google pluses Walking Dead. Now, with the democratization of information, the mass media really isn't responsible, or maybe they don't feel they're as responsible for what they should be compared to in the past days of traditional media. I talked to someone this week who said he was invited to blog for one of these major sites that you see out there blogging now. And he just didn't really feel he was qualified, and was really surprised that they would want to bring him in. And I think we're starting to see this on a lot of very, very well respected names. And in all honesty, I believe that this is questionable this post as to, is it good journalism or not, because if you're going to have a scoop, and you're going to provide analysis, and you're telling people, we have multiple sources that this is happening, you got to know a lot about the product, you got to know a lot about the industry. And you, you really have to understand that unless you can tell us some convincing data. I just can't believe your story. Now, this is the case with this post, Google Plus is walking dead. And I urge you to go and read it. And I urge you to look at the comments, and how the comments just didn't seem to be responded to by the authors of this post, which was really surprising and even shocking, because it's another one of these posts that says according to sources, according to multiple sources, but let me just give you a little background on what happened if you if you really don't know what happened, or maybe you missed out in the bus. Basically, there's a gentleman named Vic Gundotra. And I wish I could pronounce his last name right. And I hope I got it right there. I may not have. But he was basically in charge of Google Plus Senior Vice President of Google. And on April 24, when this post was published on TechCrunch. Vic left Google. Now he had been there for several years, as I was talking to a friend, some of us in the entrepreneurial world are builders. So unless like taking over things that have already been built, and maintaining some of us are integrators, some of us maybe just want to move to another part of the world. Some of us may want to retire, just because a person leaves a company without any comment. I think it's really, really hard to sort of say, well, he must have been unhappy with how Google Plus was, was happening inside Google. And he quit the company. Nobody knows. And really, all that happened was this gentleman left Google. Ok. Google is not a one man operation. Google is a huge enterprise, a public company, I find it hard to believe that one person is really in charge of everything that's going on, especially for those of you that have been listening to my podcast, and have seen me speak and read maximize your social. You know that if you've heard that name, Vic Gundotra before, it's because I always include his quote when I talk about Google Plus to explain just how misunderstood Google Plus is, because Google Plus is both a community and what Google calls a social layer. It is what makes it fundamentally different than any other social network out there. It's not a matter of well, my friends aren't on Google Plus. Google Plus has a community Google Plus has a passionate community. And in fact, if we want to see who's on Google Plus and sort of the engagement, the community go To my plus.google.com/plus Neal Schaffer go check out my Google Plus profile, it's public, you can sort of see the people, the conversations, the people that are plus one that have shared the comments. It's a very, very passionate community. And it's not just about people that are involved in SEO that are on Google Plus, there's a lot of people. It's a different community, though, than other communities out there. But it is a community. Now, there may not be as many active people in that community as you have on a Facebook. But the other important thing about Google pluses, it is this concept, this notion of a social layer. It's tying together all of Google's products, and it's verifying your digital presence. So when these two gentlemen wrote this article, they immediately said, well, Vic is leaving must have been unhappy. And more than that, we have multiple sources and say, all the Google Plus team has been moved, a majority of them are being moved into the Android department, there's going to be a new building, and therefore this is really the end of Google Plus as we know it. Now, this might be true. Okay, once again, no sources are ever named. And the problem with this article, one of the other things, and the problem that people so much misunderstand about Google Plus is, it was never really this standalone product that was going to compete with Facebook, or compete with Twitter or compete with LinkedIn, it was a social layer. Okay. Now, in order to begin the social layer, they had to provide a site where people would integrate their digital presence would integrate their YouTube comments, their Gmail, their group, their Google ads, everything into one place, that places Google Plus, once again, it was never supposed to compete with Facebook. But now I read this news. In fact, if it is true, and if there are people moving around Google, major companies have restructured to move people around all the time, this is nothing new. But if people are moving around this, to me is a sign up that Google Plus is part of The Walking Dead or is dead, is the fact that it's evolved now, because of Google Plus really becomes the social layer and becomes more and more entrenched inside Google products. It's only natural that instead of having a dedicated Google Plus team, you now have split up factions of these team members that are further deeply integrating Google Plus, in other parts of Google's digital properties, whether it be Android, whether it be Chrome, whether it be Gmail, or whether it be Google AdWords, or YouTube, or what have you, right. It is a natural extension. It's almost like the evolution of social business itself, it sort of mirrors that, where sometimes you start out with a social media person, then you have a social media department. But at the end of the day, companies are returning back and say we don't need a dedicated social media department, because we do social media, in every department in this company. And this is exactly what I think is happening with Google Plus, if this is true. Now, maybe Google decided they were going to do that. And they told Vic, that you know, we're going to be moving everything into its natural place, we're going to evolve to the next level of having to integration with Google Plus throughout Google. And you know, maybe Vic thought that would be boring. Maybe he wasn't offered enough salary. Who knows. And this is why this is almost like the first podcast the first piece of content I've ever created, that is trying to guess what is going on up there. Because, you know, I always talked about social media in the here and now. And if you have a doubt about Google Plus, go to Google Plus do searches. Just like the first time we had a doubt about Twitter, go through the same exercise, right? Look at your Google Analytics and see what Google pluses is providing. It's the same thing. Write the same thing in a different vein, if you subscribe to the maximize social business newsletter, and if you haven't, you really need to, if you listen to my podcast last week, I'm obviously investing a lot of time in that to really provide a weekly source of unique and insightful news. One of the 10 posts that I included in the addition that went out this morning, is how Jack Daniels is dealing with reduced reach in the Facebook newsfeed. And you'll have to read the article read the newsletter to find out what they're doing because of that, but social media is always in flux, right? It's always going to be in flux. And the only way that you can determine the ROI, what you're doing, obviously, is first having the strategy and if you've read maximize your social, you have the strategy you're monitoring is go back and measure, right, Google Plus is dead, you shouldn't be getting any traffic from Google Plus. And if you've been active on there, I guarantee you that you still have engagement, and you're still getting traffic. And if you're not, it may not be because Google Plus is dead, it may be because you're just not putting enough tender loving care into what you do on that site. So once again, we need to stick with social media in the here and now even some fairly well respected names out there in the media world. You know, I sometimes wonder, I thought that this article was almost irresponsible once again, I would hope that these people at least respond to all the comments that we see at the bottom of that article in the comment section. Probably I'm going to put this link up somewhere in the description of this podcast. So hopefully you can be able to copy and paste that and actually go to the site but I really want you to take a look at it. I want you to and those who know me know that I was a punk rocker growing up. I want you to get back to that question authority punk grok attitude, I hear that Twitter's going away, oh, Facebook stock price is going down, all the teenagers are going to Instagram and Snapchat. And there may be some truth to any of these. But the fact of the matter is it really all comes down to your audience, your community, your social media objectives, and Are you still seeing that activity or not. And if you're not seeing that activity, don't wait for the media to report on it, you got to mix things up, or go somewhere else. And that as always look at everything holistically, and really, really, really question the authority of some of these blog posts, especially some of the more sensational ones. That yeah, they're gonna get a lot of views. And some people who really don't understand Google Plus in depth are going to assume that it's dead. But really question and stick with your own intuition, your own heart, your own metrics, and do the right thing. So I'm hoping that I'm doing the right thing on behalf of the community. They're in Google Plus, on behalf of this amazing product that Google Plus has already created, or that that Google has already created in Google Plus, and you really owe it to yourself to question authority, and not listen to some of these sensational posts that we see appear here and there in social media. That's it for today. Hey, if you have a question about Google Plus, I want you to reach out to me and ask me, and I'll be more than happy to do a few more podcasts on Google Plus, because it really continues to be one of if not the least, understood social networks. I think Twitter used to be that way for a few years. People get Twitter now. But I tell you, I've recorded a Kobe Bryant my favorite Laker always say that Twitter is a waste of time, why would ever want to be on Twitter. And now you know, he's rumored to potentially be the next coach of the Lakers. And someone here and on ESPN Sports Radio said, Man, if Kobe becomes the coach of the Lakers, you're gonna have your first coach that only tweets and hashtags. That's how dedicated an active Kobe has become on Twitter on Instagram and Vine. So hey, that's it for today. I hope that this little 10 minute exercise that I go over every week with you, I hope it provides you value. I just want to give you a brain dump of what I've been thinking in hopes that it empowers you to do more with your social media for your business. So for everybody, I'm wishing you wherever you are in the world. Have a fantastic week ahead. We'll talk again next week. Bye. Bye, everybody. Thanks for listening to maximize your social. We appreciate your iTunes subscriptions, ratings and comments. If you would like to appear on this show or recommend content, please contact Neal Schaffer at Neal at maximize your social.com make it a social day.