Visible Banking: Google+

Since early 2009, my Visible Banking team have been tracking how financial institutions are using social media services like facebook (now over 1,100 pages and apps in 75 countries) and twitter (over 1,600 accounts in 72 countries). It gives us some unique insights we share with our clients to help them immediately increase the level of engagement on those popular online communities.

This month, I've asked my team to start tracking financial institutions on Google +.

Google + was launched on 28 June 2011, and in the last four months, everything has been said of Google's latest venture in the world of social media. This is the fastest growing 'social network' ever with 40 million 'users' (vs 'active users') at the end of October 2011.

Social media gurus are divided on the Google service, I invite you to read those articles: 'Google+ Is Dead', '
Google+ Proclaimed Dead. Is This a Fair Assessment?', '5 Reasons Google+ Could Win the Social Enterprise Battle'.

A couple of weeks ago, on 7th November, Google launched 'Google+ Pages' for brands and other businesses 'a la facebook pages'. In just a week, it has been claimed that over 60% of world's top brands created a Google+ page. With this move, the search engine giant is poised to reach 60 million users by year end.

So how big is the opportunity for brands and how critical it is to build an active presence on this other social media 'channel'? More importantly, should financial institutions hurriedly jump on the bandwagon and create another social media profile without much conviction or engagement?