Why Google+ Is the Most Important Tool for Your Nonprofit

Aug 29, 2012

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Why Should I Care?
Google+ Is All About Driving Traffic to Your Website
Align with the Biggest Search Engine
Social Proof for Your Nonprofit
Convincing the Powers That Be
Tying It All Together

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Google+ for Nonprofits: A Quick Start Guide to Unleashing the Power of Google+ to Promote and Fund Your Nonprofit

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Google+ Is All About Driving Traffic to Your Website

I remember when a college student back in 2005 asked me what my Facebook page was. I didn’t have one. After all, Facebook was just for kids, right? Why would I want one? Now, almost a decade later, I wouldn’t be caught dead without a Facebook page.

Google+ is in an early stage that has people questioning it in a similar way. Talk about Google+ to people and you often hear, “Isn’t that just for geeks?” It isn’t. I’m convinced that in years to come it will be as important to your nonprofit as Facebook is now.

One of the most powerful things about Google+ is the way it is being incorporated throughout Google’s other offerings, especially search. If you use Gmail, you’ve probably noticed the now-ubiquitous black bar at the top. As shown in Figure 1.1, it not only shares your link to Google+, it even lets you interact with others on Google+ right from Gmail.

Figure 1.1 Google+ permeates Google products, making it easier to use than other sites. In this screenshot of a Gmail account, there are two different ways to get Google+: with the ‘+Marc’ or the red box with the number 6. The number 6 is how many new notifications I had when I took this screenshot.

But pushing that black bar across its products—like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and even incorporating Google+ Hangouts into YouTube—is not the only reason Google+ will be important for your nonprofit. Google is the largest search engine on the planet. And Google is baking Google+ into its search results.

Facebook still has many more active users than Google+. But Google search has far more users than Facebook. Google is even now a verb synonymous with search. Ask someone a question he can’t answer and you’re likely to hear, “Hold on. Let me google that for you.”

And Google is now using Google+ information to influence search.

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