I’ll be the first to admit that it’s hard to keep up when it comes to social marketing. You tweet, you blog, you post to Facebook. There’s a lot to do to be fully engaged. At the same time, there are smaller, simpler, one-time things that can have a big impact on your efforts down the road. We can now add Google’s +1 button to that list.
Google launched the +1 button in search results in March of this year. In June they added the ability for webmasters to add a +1 button to their own sites. The silence from the marketing community was deafening. Whereas Facebook’s “Like” button instantly creates visibility for the website when clicked, the +1 button seemed to lack any real teeth... until now.
With last week’s launch of Google+, the +1 button now has as much relevance as the “Like” button (and possibly more since it also relates back to search results). Google+ is currently in a limited launch, but I can comfortably predict that it will be the first legitimate challenger to Facebook. Why? Well, for starters each time they open the valve to allow invites, they get swamped. More importantly, the digital and cultural early adopters have embraced it. One need only look at the Technology Adoption Lifecycle to see how critical a factor this is.
The doors will eventually open wide for the general public to pile into Google+. When that happens, a meaningful portion of our daily sharing activity is going to happen there instead of on Facebook. You want to have your +1 button in place by then. In fact, the sooner you have it in place, the better. Fortunately, it’s quick and easy. Just visit http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/