Measurement and understanding how to evaluate social media analytics / ROI is becoming a specialization many PR professionals and agencies are trying to get a part of. One of the new social media platforms which has captivated the public relations industry has been Google+. While brand pages and businesses are still not able to have a profile page of their own via Google+, there are still some conversations and interesting findings when it comes to Google+.
Possible research ideas focusing in on Google+ is to see if the site is used differently in terms of sharing information or connecting /forming new networking relationships with other professionals? But the issue that we have here when it comes to the measurement component – how can we measure what people are sharing or talking about on Google+? There are some traditional ways to go about in doing this with Google Analytics – but what you will get are URL links, key term results, and the frequency of visits / traffic to the site to and from Google+.
These principles are considered to be the same across other social media platforms. However,there are some unique qualities of Google+ that are different from other sites we need to consider as well. In addition, what if you wanted to focus on the content and meaning behind what people were sharing specifically on this social networking site? Well, there is a way to do this – and Topsy has created this into their social search engine for users to search content appearing on Google+.
Topsy’s new feature is called “Topsy Google+ Search Beta” allows people to search for content and posts related to various topics specially appearing on Google Plus. It also allows you to search for specific elements in terms of key words and timing in their advanced features. Google+ is not included in their options yet for their Topsy Analytics feature, but it will be good to keep an eye out for this emerging trend and focus in terms of understanding the importance of content and real-time conversations emerging via Google+.
Will this new feature focusing on Google+ be an impact for PR professionals? What about understanding who people are using Google+ in a crisis situation? What are some messages being disseminated via Google+ , and are these different from FB? These are just a few questions to explore and think about. I am sure we will see future developments in this area – but it is interesting to see Topsy leading the way in offering a search option specifically for Google+ that is not offered by Google themselves.
Hope you all are having a great day.
Best Wishes,
Karen
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