As a blogger, Google plus is now my primary social network. I find no value in spending time on Facebook, for the reason being it’s cluttered with the same old friends and our interests vary a great degree. Twitter is so austere that it doesn’t look like an exciting place at all.
In this post, I’ve highlighted 10 top reasons why I favour Google plus against any other social network. And here are those 10 reasons:
1. Authorship
Authorship is Google’s unique way of crediting the authors in its search results. Ever saw those thumbnail sized profile pictures of people appearing next to their websites on Google? Yes, that is authorship. Authorship makes your search listing prominent (especially if you have an attractive profile picture!) and thus helping your CTR. So if you want to enjoy all these benefits, there is really no substitute to Google plus.
2. SEO Benefit
Google has very tightly integrated the social network with its search results, especially the personalized ones. So If you have personalized search results turned on, you are very much likely to see those results on the top which have been voted (+1’d) by your circles. Cool, isn’t that?
3. Text formatting and editing
This is the reason why I love Google plus the most. It gives you enough flexibility to personalize your text. Want to make your text appear in bold or in italics? Just enclose your text within two asterisks (for bold effect) or within two underscores (for italic effect). It’s that easy! Most importantly, the social network allows you to edit your published posts. Twitter and Facebook literally suck at this feature. Whenever I make a typo, I always end up deleting that particular tweet or post for a new one!
4. Support for GIFs
Yes, that’s true. Try to do that on Facebook or Twitter and then bang your head against a wall!
5. Tight control over sharing, commenting and privacy of posts
Google plus gives you full control to moderate your posts. Here, You can share a post publicly, privately, disable comments or even the re-shares! You won’t find a flexible moderation of this kind on any other social network.
6. Niche communities
Google plus is more than just a typical social network where people just keep filling their timeline with posts and stories. The community feature on Google plus lets you connect with an exclusive group of people sharing a common interest. Here are a couple of benefits of joining G+ communities: Interact with all like minded people, ask, answer and boost your niche knowledge 🙂 There are a lot of communities on Google Plus. Join those that interest you.
7. Hangouts
Its hangout feature lets you video chat with any person or with a group of people together (currently limited to at the most 10 participants). Although Facebook does allow you to video chat with a person, it currently lacks support for video conferencing. Here are a couple of benefits of using hangouts: You can host free webinars (you’ve to mind the participant limit though), organize group meetings or if you are a college student you can also discuss your class topics with your friends on Google plus 😉
8. Deck-up your profile
Google plus doesn’t let you compromise the about section of your profile page unlike Twitter or Facebook. There’s no word limit to describe yourself and that too with full support for text formatting and ability to add as many relevant links as you want.
So if you’re a blogger or a freelance writer, I can bet you won’t find any social platform to describe yourself and your work as good as Google plus. One more added advantage is that it lets you link to your other social networks from within your about page. This forms an important step towards personal branding!
9. Explore What’s HOT
Finding nothing interesting on your timeline? Jump to the what’s HOT section and discover all the posts that are going viral on G+
10. Auto (or intelligent) hash-tags
Hash tags make your posts searchable on Google plus. They’re like keywords in blog posts that make them visible in search results.
Google plus intelligently adds them to your posts on its own. I’ve seen them being added automatically even to the photo posts. Yes, that’s freaky! How can it predict accurate hash tags for images? But that’s certainly cool. Right?
Your Thoughts?
Now that Google+ has surpassed Twitter in terms of number of “active users” worldwide, it is now the second most popular network behind Facebook. With a progress that sublime, do you think it’s worth joining and investing your time here? For those already in the boat, what other things do you like about G+? I’m eager to look forward to your thoughts…
