Facebook or Google+ Pages: The Social Battle

With the creation of Google+ Pages for Business, the popular brand is giving Facebook a challenge.  Both platforms offer similar features, and each have areas that they excel in over the other.  Here are some of the features and their differences for you to think about when you are planning your social strategy for your business.

• With Facebook (FB from here on out) Pages, they offer you a Welcome page.  This lets users have a landing page to learn all about your company and services, even if they haven’t “Liked” your page yet.  Google+ (G+ from here on out) doesn’t offer this extra bit, as of yet.
• By FB allowing profile pictures to be longer, there is more room to include other information and details, other than just a logo.
• Both FB and G+ allow you to share things with your followers and allows you to attack videos, pictures, links, and even add a location to your post.  FB calls the Status Updates, and G+ calls them Posts.
• FB lets you have Sub Pages.
• FB and G+ both let you create albums and post videos and photos to them; and both let you control who can see what.  This feature is great for portfolios to showcase your business and it’s products.
• FB has tons of plug-ins which add various features to your pages.  This gives you a lot of add-on flexibility and creativity with what you can do.
• Both FB and G+ offer analysis of your page data.  FB sends weekly emails which tell you things like how many people “Liked” or “Un-Liked” your page, commented on a post, and other useful statistics.  However, G+ does it’s reporting through Google Analytics, which can really help analyze all of your social data in greater detail, which could be beneficial with future marketing initiatives.
• The FB information page offers more room for you to put your business’s information; including multiple webpages, numbers, etc.  Whereas G+ pages gives you room enough for an introduction, a phone number, and a website link.
• FB’s “Like” button and G+’s “+1” button are very similar.  However, a +1 button can be integrated for users, allowing users to recommend ads, your content on Google Searches, and to share content on Google+.  A Like button does not have these added benefits.
• One big advantage that G+ has over FB is that G+ integrates with its existing services which include Google Search, Direct Connect, Android, YouTube, Chrome, and G-mail.  This allows users to switch between services, and share information from one area to the other on your page, with little effort and without having to ever leave the area you are in.  FB services are limited in comparison.  Many think of G+ as having taken the best features from FB and from Twitter and mixing them together.  Even though G+ is in the early stages, it’s not far-fetched to see that that they will quickly catch up with popularity.

My idea, to get the best possible for your business is create both FB and G+ pages and work monitoring them into your social strategy.  The more you get your name out there, the better!