When Google+ was first released in 2011, there certainly was a lot of buzz in the marketing world.  However, for many of us, the reaction was this: “Oh no; do we really have another social network to worry about?”

Well, if you have been neglecting adding Google+ to your marketing activities up until now, you may want to re-think that approach! Here’s why.

Search Plus Social

Last week, Google announced that they were going to make some fairly significant changes to their search engine. They labeled these changes “Search, plus Your World”. These enhancements would dramatically change the search results that were presented to logged-in users. The results presented to people would now greatly incorporate the social networking data that a person is connected to — at least the social networking data that Google had access to.

Users would notice this difference throughout the links, images, and videos that were presented by Google’s search engine. Yes, what a person saw two weeks ago as the #1 result when they searched for “printing services” could now be radically different, based on their social network connections.

Since Google only has access to the data within so many social networks, Google+ is playing a major role in the changes that they’ve made to their search engine.

This has caused a number of debates to arise as to whether their actions are fair and justified. But for people like us — those that are looking to do whatever we can to grow our business — we must react to the reality.

And the reality is this: If we want people to find our business online, we need to be on Google+!

How to Get Started with Google+

Google started rolling out these changes to users last week. Thus, chances are very good that you have access to them.

Below are a few things that you can do now to take take advantage of these enhancements:

• If you don’t already have one, create a Google Profile.
• Once you have a profile, make sure that you log-in to Google before you run your next Search.
• Get on Google+! It’s free to create an account.
• Google+ allows you to have a personal profile, of course. But you can also create Pages for your Business, Products & Services, Events, and more.
• Start creating and publishing content on your Google+ profiles and pages
• Build your Google+ community: Take the time to add people and Pages to your Circles and invite others to do the same for your accounts.

It certainly will be interesting to see how companies adapt and benefit from these changes.

Once you’re logged in to your Google profile, start running a few searches. It can be quite fascinating to see how the “Personal Results” change what is presented to you.

If you have a free moment, check out the video that Google has released regarding the “Search, plus Your World” functionality below. I think it does a great job of demonstrating the importance of using Google+ in one’s marketing efforts.

P.S. These changes have absolutely motivated me to increase my personal Google+ usage. Feel free to “Circle” me there!