5 Reasons Why Google+ Is Important to Your Brand

1. Google+ is coming to search results

For companies using the direct connect functionality, Google will be increasing the screen real estate of their results. Google is still in the process of rolling out this feature to its brands, but its definitely something to get ready for. This is a significant development for brands for several reasons.

The most obvious is that having a larger amount of the results dedicated to your brand has a strong impact on the chances of a searcher clicking on your results.

The second is the fresh content that is being pulled in from the Google + page. This gives the searcher assurance that your company is active and has the expertise they are looking for.

The third is the element of social proof that it adds. The +1’s and comments give the searcher immediate proof that other people have interacted (hopefully positively) with your brand.

2. Profile Pictures in Search Results

Google is adding profile pictures to search result. This will have an obvious boost in clickthrough rate as people are more likely to trust a source that has an image attached.

3. The lines between search and social are blurring.
The main reason Google got involved in the realm of social media is to fulfill their mission statement:

“...to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Google realized the way that information is being shared is changing, in large part due to Facebook. In the past, when people have found “valuable content” they would link to it on their website. Now when people find “valuable content” they are sharing it on Facebook and other social media outlets. This represents a problem to Google because they can’t access this social data which means their search results are not as accurate as they could be. Their solution: create their own social network and integrate it with their results.

The bottomline: You can expect this integration to continue to grow making social signals even more influential in search. Now is the time to start building your social media presence.