Google+: The Good, The Bad, and The Screw-Up

Eric Webb | @EricWebb434

The Good

Google+ is a slick and organized social media template that has seen outstanding growth in its first year. But while the framework on Google's social network may be crisp, its creative aspects are lacking. Red Bull is known for innovative marketing and they have done a great job applying creative ideas to the somewhat bland G+ scaffolding. Red Bull's profile banner is super creative- an animated set of pictures showing a BMX biker in action. Plus, Red Bull's posts, which are predominantly videos, are usually clips of an extreme sport that gets your pulse racing just by watching. If the 478,000 +1's are any indication, they are doing things right over at Red Bull.

The Bad

Google+ still hasn't fully taken off as a dominating force in the social media world, but that doesn't mean businesses should forget about the platform. It's important for a company to be visible as much as possible and that means having a presence everywhere you can . Many companies haven't put a lot of time into Google+ at this point, and there is a plethora of lame company pages out there. Eaton Corporation's page is pretty bad though.

Eaton is an extremely successful diversified power management company, but they failed with their G+ page. They posted 5 things on February 2nd of this year and that's all they have ever done. Eaton has been the talk of the town in Wall Street circles for a while, and it would do them a lot better to connect with shareholders and other businesses on Google+ instead of just lackadaisically creating a page. A great company like Eaton should be represented as such in all forms of the company's communication. They definitely have some work to do with Google+.

The Ugly (A.K.A. The Screw-Up)

Steve Yegge, an engineer at Google, made the huge mistake of accidentally posting a 5,000 word rant onto his public Google+ page, instead of sharing it privately with a select group. This is especially cringe-worthily ugly because Yegge's rant was a lambasting account of Google, his own employer, and highlighted his opinion that Google+ was a terrible idea and a failure in the works (the fact that this was posted on a Google+ page is an amusing irony). On a not so ugly note, Yegge wasn't reprimanded for speaking out against his company. Google actually began delving deeper into understanding problems and how to fix them because of the points he raised. It's not everyday you hear, "Publicly berating your employer online pays off." Read his article HERE.