Will Google Plus be Big for Marketers?

Are you on Google Plus (Google+)? If so, what do you think so far? Will Google+, with its Circles, Sparks and Hangouts, make Facebook yesterday’s news (remember MySpace?), or does Facebook have the ability to take on Google+?

As important for the Big Fat Marketing Blog followers: Will marketers be able to use Google+ as an effective audience development tool? I’ve seen several marketers add the Google+1 button to their pages, but that’s not the same as Google+. Google+1 is for link-building, and you can compare that to the Facebook “Like” button.

But it seems to me – and I may be wrong – that Google+ users will be able to ignore marketing messages easier than they can on Facebook. The consumer could create several circles, and use one of them specifically for commercial content and choose to ignore it.

On the other hand, marketers could take advantage of the Google+ segmenting capabilities. Merchants already know the power of Google Ads, and it seems like that’s where their Google+ wins will be.

What’s your take? Help the community out. As a marketer, what are the pros and cons of Google+?

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