Google+ vs Facebook: The Best Choice for Real Estate Professionals

Unless you’ve been unplugged, you’ve definitely heard about Google+: Google’s foray into the wonderful world of social networking.

But you may not have heard that in its first 30 days, more people joined Google+ than joined Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter during the last few years.

Is Google+ just  another fad? One more thing to take our attention off of the tasks at hand? Especially in this tough market, we need to focus on creating successes and leads, not wasting our valuable time with useless tools.

The good news?  Google+ might just surprise you.

There are two wonderful things about Google+ that every real estate professional out there can take advantage of:

1.   The Power of SEO and

2.   Aggressive Niche Marketing

When you think of search engine optimization, images of hours of time spent, confusing terminology and costly campaigns are conjured up.  But think about why you do it—to appear on the first page of Google.  Every post, page and profile on Google+ is indexed by Google—giving you a loaded boost to every activity that you complete in the site.

For example, once you create your profile on Google+, the odds are that when you Google your name, the first thing that comes up will be your Google+ profile (unless you have a commonly used name combination). For me, I typed in my name and for the first time in awhile, I was No. 1.  The resulting post also highlights my skills, which is a bonus and something that you can benefit from as well.

Facebook on the other hand doesn’t have this power.  The activity that happens within the site is not indexed by Google, rather it is held solely inside Facebook.  While your Facebook profile or Facebook business page may come up on searches, it ends there.

Another thing that can be a bit tricky with Facebook is niche marketing. With the many changes they’ve introduced over the past few weeks, it’s more challenging to hit your target market. Within your company page on Facebook you used to be able to send fairly targeted updates to your audience. With their last update, Facebook killed this feature.

While Facebook lost this feature, Google+ has picked it up with gusto in their creation of Circles. Circles are basically niche groups that you create and in which you add people. Think about it as if you were taking your connections and putting them into categories. For example, if you cover a certain geographic area, you can add people who looking for homes into the circles created for each different area.  Then when you have a new property or news pertaining to the area, you can write an update and choose the corresponding circle to receive the message. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

When it comes to marketing, Google+ is currently gaining lots of attention and with good measure.  It not only trumps Facebook on SEO but also on the opportunity to niche market.  My advice?  Get on there now and start using it to ride the wave, rather than crash underneath it.

Chris Tompkins
CEO of Go! Media International, LLC
Chris Tompkins is the CEO of Go! Media International, LLC—an integrated marketing firm specializing in cutting-edge social media strategy and online marketing campaigns. His firm helps a diverse international client base get the most out of their online presence through maximizing their online profile. Go! Media offers a range of training, consulting and strategy.
Read more about Chris’s firm and download your free “Social Media Roadmap” ebook by visiting http://www.gomediaonline.com and read the latest news at http://www.chrisgomedia.com