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Uh, oh. It looks like big brands are not 100% behind Google Plus.
According to a couple of recent surveys, top 20 online retailers in the UK and the US have a lackluster presence on Google Plus. Some of the big brands post rarely or not at all. Other brands post a lot, but have very low levels of user interaction.
According to the numbers, 19 of the top 20 UK online retailers had Google Plus pages but only 13 posted content on a regular basis,” and “US retailers are even less bothered about Google Plus than their UK counterparts, with just 12 of the top 20 US online retailers updating their pages on anything like a regular basis.”
So how should smaller brands respond? Should you abandon Google Plus if big brands won’t put their faith in the channel? If you’re not on Google Plus already, should you just stick to a cookiecutter Facebook and Twitter strategy? I think not.
Instead of assuming that big brands know best, recall that most of them are slow adopters. Most people reading this were probably on Facebook and Twitter before big brands jumped on the bandwagon. So it will be with Google Plus. But that’s beside the point. The lack of big brand engagement signals an opportunity for smaller businesses to develop an audience while the big brands play catch up later on.
Being an early adopter gives you the advantage of providing value and connecting with your audience without being drowned out by the blaring firehouse of big brand messaging. In fact, now is the time to put more effort into Google Plus: optimizing your profile, curating quality content and having meaning conversations. And that’s what social media is about, right?
