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Google+ Social, London – Conference Round Up

I was invited to the Google UK headquarters in London yesterday, where around fifty Social Media Managers and Online Community Managers were refreshed on the benefits and future of Google +.

Ian Carrington hosted the event and gave us some statistics. After only one year, Google+ has 250m registered users, 150m monthly active users and 75m people daily log-ins.

Next up was Livia Giulia Zuppardo, a Product Development Manager for Google, who shared the main points from the Google I/O meeting in San Francisco last week.

Google+ Events

Users will now be able to create an event which will have a longer lifespan than just a calendar entry. An option to “Party On” will enable attendees to automatically upload photos and videos to the event page as soon as they’re taken, rather than retroactively.

New Phone and Tablet Apps

Over 200 applications have been built for ‘Hangouts’ (group video chats/live streams) to chat face-to-face-to-face. One in every three Hangouts use one of these applications, rather than via the website.

G+ Recommendations (+1ing)

Recommending a website, article, post, photo or video by pressing the ‘+1’ button next to it will allow your friends and followers to see the online content that you value. This will appear next to the site in a Google search and raises it in the rankings to suit your preferences.

“There’s a whole lot more coming. The next three to six months are going to be incredible.” – Livia Giulia Zuppardo

Jerry Daykin, Social Media Manager for Cadbury spoke about their impressive track record. The chocolate brand has 1.8m followers on Google+, which is the biggest non-entertainment platform on the network.  Rich Kemp, from LateRooms.com has lead the company into the social sharing site as an early adopter, demonstrating a “fun and personal company”, with tools such as the use of the Photo Strip.

Both brands have been given the ‘Recommend to Follow’ status on occasion, which has seen their followers increase rapidly, giving them the full exposure Google+ can offer.

After the case studies from Cadburys, Laterooms, we heard from the charming Daria Musk. Ms. Musk is a singer who has become an internet sensation and advocate for the networking possibilities of Google+. Since signing up last summer, she has played 3 ‘Hangout’ concerts, the first viewed by just a few users, the latest viewed over 200,000 thanks to her online-savvy and sociable fans. As well as a loyal fan-base, she has demonstrated the value of marketing on a personal level with her supporters, which is a method that many companies could learn from.

Join us on Google+ where we post and share industry content, blog posts and photographs. We also have a G+ button on our sites, where you can recommend them to the people in your G+ Circles.  What do you think about Hangouts? Would you use them for networking or video-conferencing?

If you had the opportunity for a Q&A session with a knowledgeable Recruiter, or perhaps get a few tips from a Social Media Manager, would you want to do it via Hangout?

Let us know via our Google+ page, @puregenie on Twitter or in the comments below.

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