Google+... that’s been around a while now hasn’t it? It’s hardly taken off as a social network but recently it seems Google have their sights set much higher than that. They know that they can’t compete with Facebook, but then they don't need to. Google are still the most used search engine in the world, they have more traffic than Facebook anyway, so why shouldn’t their social network revolve around that aspect of their platform? Well, Google have slowly been revealing that it does, and I’m here to tell you that it’s a good thing for your business. 

Combined with Google+ Business Pages, the whole Google platform can deliver more for you. It only takes 5 minutes to create a page so there’s really no reason not to. But what exactly will you get out of it?

Be Found Instantly

Not only are Google+ Business Pages another great channel to broadcast your business through, they are also an instant access point for users to reach you as a brand. For example, since the business pages went online big brands like Pepsi, McDonalds and Lexus have all signed up to the service. Users who want information or the latest news from those companies merely have to type + and the name of the company into the Google search bar.

Try it out now and you’ll see that as you type instant search literally offers you the Google+ page of that business, giving users an extremely fast way to access your social stream.

Obviously, if you’ve got a page Google will find that anyway but the Google+ integration with the search engine is just so fast and slick. It’s a service only Google can truly offer within the confines of their own platform and as users become accustomed to this unique Google offering (as we have done with so many others) it could become a winning feature.

Increased Search Ranking

Perhaps the single most relevant thing that will attract those of you who still mostly think of Google as a search provider is the ability of Google+ to improve your search rankings. There’s a new system at work to integrate with Google+ and it works like this...

Say, for example, I +1 something, a page, a product, a business (the +1 system can be integrated all over the web just like a Facebook ‘like’) and then you do a search for it. Because we’re friends (hello!), on Google+ your search results will have my relevant +1’s displayed. This means that users of Google get advice from their friends without even having to ask for it. An absolutely crucial marketing tool if you have a loyal fan base, allowing it to grow by subconscious word of mouth.

Additionally a friend of codegent who knows the guys at Google rather well recently told us that your Google+ page will be (can we say artificially?) promoted up the search algorithm for searches against your brand name. Its a very easy way to boost your search position and dominance of the first page of results.

Access to Your Customers Zero Moment of Truth

There’s been a long standing phrase in the marketing world, “moment of truth”. Traditionally this was broken down into two parts; the First Moment of Truth, when a customer sees a product they like and begins to gravitate towards it and the Second Moment of Truth, when a customer attains said product and uses it, reinforcing their belief that the product was as good as they believed it to be.

This traditional concept of these two moments is 100% accurate and has been proven over billions of sales of products worldwide since the dawn of the modern advertising agency. However, thanks to the connected world we now live in Google has assessed that there is another, more important, Moment of Truth which occurs through social media and dictates a huge proportion of peoples’ spending habits. As we now do more shopping online than anywhere else this makes perfect sense, why would we go out to do research when we have the largest compendium of human knowledge just a mouse click away? Not only that, but the benefit of the experience of millions of other customers.

This, is the Zero Moment of Truth. Gone are the days when you had to get a product home and try it out or luckily come across a good tester model of it in a shop to find out it’s real value to you. Social media doesn’t just drive peoples’ lives socially, though the name may allude to that. In reality Social media drives peoples’ opinions of everything, from football matches, to movies, to physical products. So if I were to be torn between two equally popular products, between Samsung and LG for example, not knowing what to do I might look to their social media pages. If one were to have several million more fans than the other it would certainly seem that their customers had a reason for acting in such a way and alter my perception.

That’s a high level example, but it can be equally important on a small scale, for a single product or campaign behind that product. If you publish a post (and there are over a billion a day on Google+) related to your product and it catches the right eyes it will spread. Knowledge of your product will expand and the hits on both your Google+ business page and that products own page online will increase, potentially exponentially. Many users will be experiencing a Zero Moment of Truth, proof by a large body of their peers that the product is good, appreciated, interesting.

It’s impossible to emphasise the importance of this effect to you and your business but Google are helping with that one too. They’ve introduced a feature called Ripples, which allows business people, marketers and general speculators to view the effect a post had, a sort of butterfly effect on Google+. Your post flapped it’s wings here and then what? You can see where it spread, to which users, how it spread on from them and the impact it had on your site traffic.The ramifications of this type of awareness are astonishing, allowing marketers to tailor their posts to mimic their most effective campaigns.

The simplest way I can summarise is - get your business on Google+. There’s never any telling how a new service or product will pan out but Google+ has a lot to offer you right now and you shouldn’t miss out.

If you’d like to know more about the Zero Moment of Truth and how it really drives your customers then Google literally wrote the book on it, which is a free download in all the common eBook formats and can be found at www.zeromomentoftruth.com.

People are buying Apps for phones, tablets and computers all over the world. There is big money in it and it is not just going to Apple. For example, Gartner predicts that by 2015 Android will account for 49% of smartphones.

The best way to source Apps is through App Stores. Apple, Google, Nokia, Blackberry and even Amazon have them, plus there are many spin offs proliferating the web.

App Stores provide a consolidated location for developers to upload their products and gain instant visibility and traffic from millions of users. However, these stores are quickly getting crowded and competition is intensifying as we strive to build awareness and recognition. Step forward App Store Optimization (ASO).

Optimizing for App Stores

The App Store search algorithm works quite differently to Google. Relevance is driven by downloads, ratings and keywords so, once optimised, popularity is very important. As free apps are downloaded far more than paid ones it supports the theory that a free or “lite” version is advisable. This, in turn, promotes your paid-for upgrade. It’s no coincidence that the same app will often occupy the top spot on both the free and paid charts.

Unlike traditional search engines App Store rankings are not built up over time. Baptiste Benezet of faberNovel came to the conclusion that "The formula for App rankings only accounts for your last 4 days of sales." The formula is 8 times the sales of the current day + 5 times the sales on the 2 proceeding days + 2 times the sales on initial date.

Source: ReadWriteWeb

It would seem that short, sharp campaign bursts are the best way to achieve high rankings, break into the category charts and great a self-perpetuating cycle of high download figures.

However more recently Google and now Apple are including user activity as a factor. Daily or Monthly Active Users are logged and those Apps that are used more frequently will also rank highly. The Android Marketplace takes note of the percentage of users that keep the app installed on their device as space is generally more of a premium with users removing Apps that don’t cut it far more frequently than those using Apple devices.

The Apple App Store search is exact-match only. Your app will only show up if there is an exact match against the app or company name or keywords you have specified. Apple does NOT search against your description, which means that text should be purely around convincing the user reading it to hit install/buy. However, the iTunes Web Preview page is often indexed high on traditional search engines and the first three lines of your description can be indexed so it is still worth optimising the start of your description text. Other App Stores such as Android Marketplace do include description in their search criteria though.

Keyword optimisation is therefore pretty crucial. You should follow similar techniques to standard SEO. Prioritise the words and try and think of what keywords or phrases a user would think of to find your type of app. This could also include popular competitors or major platforms you have integrated with, as their names are popular search terms. A word of warning though. You do risk being rejected by Apple if you blatantly hang on the coat tails of a competitor so you try and be a bit subtle.

That brings us onto the name. Unfortunately a buzzy sounding app name will rank poorly against a does-what-it-says-on-the-tin title. You should also consider starting with a number or early letter in the alphabet for when the user orders their result by name. Including popular search words such as “fun”, “easy”, “exciting” and “free” would do you no harm either.

For example on our new Learn Chinese App we have used the title "Learn Chinese Lite - Mandarin Phrasebook for Travel in China" to capture as much keyword traffic as we can. We have substituted "Lite" with "Pro" for the paid version and also linked to it heavily in the free app to prompt upgrades.

Design & Build

The icon that represents your App is hugely important. It should be eye catching and well designed to give a solid first impression and communicate that this wasn’t cobbled together by a talentless nerd playing with a bit of code. Check out this superb guide on good app icon design.

Whilst your icon design might gain you a view, your screenshots are likely to tip the balance. They should be well chosen examples that flatter the app, demonstrate it’s usefulness and grab the user’s attention. 

Additionally the filesize of your app can affect its popularity. An app under 10MB in size can be downloaded over a 3G network whereas anything over that requires a wifi connection or it has to be downloaded via a computer associated to the device. If you can’t access the app the moment you find it, you may never come back.

Building Downloads

A well-optimised app will still not rank well until it proves to be popular. In order to maximise your potential download figures you should get listed in app directories.

Reaching out to bloggers can be very powerful. We noticed this after we launched Learn Thai and it was picked up by a prominent blog within a few days, skyrocketing downloads. Don’t be afraid to contact bloggers, they need fresh content to write about! Just keep it short, friendly and relevant.

Be social! It is easy to integrate Twitter or facebook connect into the app and encourage users to share their scores, activities or even that they like the app on those platforms with their own audience.

It is also worthwhile asking your more active users to rate the app. If a user has had the app for a while and has used it quite frequently it is worth popping up a simple message asking for a rating or review. If this is done in an unobtrusive manner it should not harm your app at all.

There is quite a lot of information to take in there but I hope I have communicated just how vital it is to plan, research and test your search and marketing tactics to avoid your masterpiece lying unused in the murky vaults of an App Store server.

The number of people using social platforms as a source of information is constantly increasing and search engines are understandably trying to keep up with this trend and benefit from it. Google knows that if they finally get their social strategy right they will become an integrated search and social platform with new revenue opportunities.

So, after some not so successful attempts at going social with Google Buzz, Wave and Orkut, Google has launched its latest new social concept, Google +1. But what is so special about this new development and how much of an impact may it potentially have on our existing search behaviour?

Google +1 has been considered by many to be a copycat of the Facebook model. Similarly to Facebook, once you are logged into your Google account, you can “like”...or “+1” in this case, recommended websites, blogs, advertisements etc to make them visible to others.

Unlike Facebook you are not restricted to sharing content with friends; you can exchange +1 content with all of your Google social connections, including people from the outside your network of friends (Google social connections includes everyone in your Gmail chat list, all Google Contacts and people you are following in Google Reader and Google Buzz). This makes the Google community more impersonal compared to Facebook particularly as interaction finishes the moment a recommendation is made. With Google +1 none of your social connections are able to comment further on your +1 content, as can be done on Facebook.

However Google’s trump card is that +1 content is remembered by the search engine and gets displayed in SERPs in a real-time. This means that any +1 content is highlighted in your search results allowing you to quickly identify content recommended by your connections. Google believes that the +1 function will earn more credit than its previous social initiatives as the recommendations show the opinion of people you know and trust, as opposed to authorities that aim to influence your opinion.

But do we really need our peers’ recommendations in our search results? So far Google has earned its credit and become trusted to deliver reliable and accurate search results. Is socially influenced search really going to improve the existing mechanism?

My concern is that our search results will become cluttered with opinions from our social connections and there should be an option to turn them off. Imagine all of those +1 buttons popping up in your search results telling you what all the people from your contact list think. Could they pose a threat to the reliability and clarity of Google search? As much as you might feel that you are happy to rely on your peers’ opinion, at some point you might need more viable information i.e. based on factual or aggregated global measurements.

Google +1 has attracted lots of attention so far but is still in its early days. I suppose we need to wait and see how the experimental and testing process eventually shapes this new concept. It looks like it could have huge potential and there is a big chance that these improvements will take Google on a new social path.

Let’s just hope that Google +1 will eventually facilitate rather than clutter our search process and that we learn to love our “likes”...

After all, no one ever clicks on the sponsored links.