Thanks to Google+ Pages, engaging a targeted audience is now easier and more effective than ever. Whether your business aims to promote upcoming products or share exciting news with its customers, Google+ Pages gives your business a platform in the ever-evolving social media world. 

Google + Pages is more than just another website for your business to add to its collection, it is the perfect place where interaction with your customers can be taken to another level.  As a business, you now have the opportunity to start a dialogue with your customers and receive the most valuable information available: their feedback. Customers will have the opportunity to ask you questions with real time video chats through the “Hangout” feature on your Google+ Page and receive your answers in the forum. 

And the conversation does not have to end there. In fact, your business can maintain the conversation; strengthening your relationship with consumers by asking questions in discussions and posting blogs. Google+ Pages also takes your information out to an even larger audience by allowing you to make your posts public where they can be found through searches. In the coming weeks, Google will make tools available to businesses which will access data about their Google+ Page users’ demographics adding to the appeal of Google + Pages as an instrument for businesses.

Other features available on your Google+ Page include: Circles, Messenger, Stream, What’s Hot and Ripples. Each feature, at its core, makes it easier to share your information with your users while at the same time making the experience fun for them.  Your business has the opportunity to tap into your customers in a medium which is not only cutting-edge, but also exciting.

As companies evolve in their ability to analyze web traffic, it is becoming increasingly important to branch out to as many areas as possible to reach customers.  Understanding how different sources of traffic interact with your website is equally significant in where you allocate your time and resources.  Simply looking at bottom line traffic volume from various sources of traffic in Google Analytics (GA) is not enough.  Numbers don’t lie, but they don’t always paint the most accurate picture either.  Just because someone visited your site from an organic search, doesn’t rule out that they were influenced to visit your site from another channel.

A perfect example of this scenario lies in how social media impacts direct web traffic.  In a recent study conducted by ForeSee, http://www.foreseeresults.com/news-events/press-releases/social-media-low-impact-on-web-traffic-2011-foresee.shtml it was concluded that “Less than 1% of website visits, on average, come directly from a social media URL. This finding suggests that the direct impact of social media is minimal, but also that the true value of social media cannot be quantified only by examining the traffic coming directly from a social media URL.”  In simple terms, if you have a presence in social media, you probably do not see much traffic in your GA data related to social media traffic sources.  Does this mean you should abandon your efforts to build your social media presence?  Absolutely not, considering that 18% of website visitors acknowledge being influenced by social media to visit the site, according to the ForeSee report findings.  That is a significant gap in the numbers, but does not indicate any sort of disconnect with visitors.  In fact, it is closely in line with how people use social media – they are there for social interaction but can still be influenced by companies with solid social media marketing strategies.  When it is time for those visitors to find a company, their previous exposure to your company in social media influences their decision to visit your site.  They may do a search on Google to find you, and in the raw GA data Google organic gets credit for the site visit, but it was your social media presence that truly drove that visitor to your site.

Where it gets real interesting is how visitors influenced by social media interact with a website.  According to the ForeSee report, visitors to websites influenced by social media are more loyal and satisfied customers, and they spend more than visitors who were not influenced by social media.  When you factor this knowledge into the 1% statistic mentioned in the research, 1% becomes a more meaningful number.

The value of website visitors varies between sources of traffic.  Establishing a presence across all aspects of the web provides companies the ability to reach out to all types of visitors.  It is important to understand the symbiotic relationship between the different sources of traffic to your website.  Keep that in mind the next time you are reviewing traffic sources and matching that up to your external web presence.  Overall visits from your social media channels are most likely lower than other sources of traffic, but can be greater in terms of value to your bottom line.

Twitter is about to roll out ads to it’s users.  After four years of data mining I would imagine that these ads will be highly targeted.   Approximately ten advertisers, such as Starbucks, Virgin American and Best Buy will participate as they ramp up from yesterday’s roll out to 2% to 10% of their users according to the Wall Street Journal.

The San Francisco firm will leverage a new service, Promoted Tweets, in which ads will appear at the top of the search results.   Advertisers will be charged per thousand impressions, with plans for a more complex model based on users interactions with the message to come.

It will be a valuable tool for the marketers anxious to engage Gen Y or Millennials, the demographic most technologically connected in every aspect of their lives.    Brands have had a tough time reaching Gen Ys, since they use the Internet for all aspects of their lives and are not likely to be heavy readers of printed material or viewers of traditional commercial based TV shows.  Millennials get it all on the Internet with guidance from friends and consumption of content at all times and places during their day.   Some believe that this generation is the most coveted buying group due to their consumption rate being  five times that of  Baby Boomers.   Marketers will be anxious to court this generation on their own turf, and Promoted Tweets will be a highly measurable  method to achieve this goal.

Social media has to be a component of one’s overall marketing strategy and probably already is even for those not actively pursuing.  These social media communities will discuss your goods or services either with your contribution or without, its your choice.