Have you struggled with fitting a FaceBook personal account into a b2b marketing role?

As a freelance writer of case studies and white papers, I’m discovering that my ideal prospects - the marketing managers of vendors and agencies in the computer networking world - are mostly conspicuous by their absence on FaceBook. That is, they are mostly there for personal reasons and prefer work social media to be done elsewhere. LinkedIn and Twitter are two good examples of where they are to be found.

And since that kind of makes it pointless to have a FaceBook Like button on this blog, I’ve removed it and….

… replaced it with Google’s new Google + service, now in beta.

The above image shows the Google +1 button and the number of times its been clicked for that post, which right now is not exactly drowning in a sea of traffic! Feel free to go ahead and +1 this post!

In theory, it’s more likely that my audience will be using google for business, rather than FaceBook. The problem is that I don’t know how many will actually do so, beyond a minority of early adopter pioneers. However, the product is still in beta and Google has not yet said when their equivalent of FaceBook business page functionality will appear.

What is also of great interest is how Google’s search algorithms will use a variety of social media metrics to determine organic web page rankings because there’s clearly a big battle building between G & FB with regards to the social media aspects of search.

What Are Others Saying ABout Google Plus?

Here are two posts that will give you much to think about regarding Google + and competitors.

The first is from Social Media B2B Blog and titled: Thoughts about Google Plus to Inspire B2B Adoption.

And the second is from Laura Fries and titled: Google Today, Gone Tomorrow.
Laura doesn’t pull any punches on what she says as Google’s brand dilution approach to marketshare growth.

You can connect with me on Google plus using this url: http://gplus.to/samuraiwriter
(The url shortening site is not affiliated with Google but it makes creating a vanity url very easy, until Google come out with their own.)

At the bottom of this post you can find my Google Plus profile. You can click on this to see what I’m up to there.

- Mark ‘samuraiwriter on google plus‘ McClure

Mark McClure is a freelance b2b writer, specializing in white papers and case studies for the computer networking industry. About Mark