As many businesses continue to hire younger employees, we are seeing the new generation bring in a new communication style, relying almost solely on social media platforms like Google+ to chat and communicate. In order to facilitate this, many companies have been integrating social networks, and in an effort to make Google+ that much more relevant to companies Google has recently introduced some interesting new business-relevant features.
In mid June, Google announced that they had implemented a number of new premium features for Google Apps users who use Google+. These so-named ‘Google+ premium features’, could prove to be just what businesses are looking for, especially when it comes to establishing internal social networks that are for your employees only.
About Google+ Premium Features
If your business uses Google Apps and Google+, and you are the admin for your business, you may have noticed an extra option in the past half year or so labeled premium features. These features were tested by select Google Apps users, and proved to be successful. So much so in fact that Google has announced that premium features are now turned on for all new Apps users, with existing users getting them by mid July at the latest.
The goal of these features is to enable a more customizable social media platform for businesses who may want to create and maintain a secure internal social network with users who can also join an external network or work group.
In a broad sense, these features influence two key aspects of Google+:
- Control options – With these features admins have greater control options over employee accounts. For example, you can set it so that all posts are shared only with your domain and made inaccessible to outside users. You can also set it so that certain employee profiles will not show up in public search results. Essentially, these features give you better ability to tailor how your business uses Google+, and the overall security of the network.
- Hangouts – The biggest boon this set of features offers is the ability to host larger hangouts and video calls – up to 15 users on the same call (instead of the normal 10). Users can also initiate or join a Hangout right from Google Calendar, email invitation or a URL. You can also set the privacy level of Hangouts to ensure that they can’t be accidentally opened to the public, ideal if you need to discuss sensitive information or projects for example.
Activating Premium Features
If you are an administrator for your company’s Google Apps account, then you can enable these features by:
- Signing into your Google Admin panel. This can be accessed by typing ‘admin.google.com‘ into the URL bar in your browser.
- Clicking on Other Google Services followed by Google+.
- Scrolling down to the premium features section and clicking on Enable Google+ premium features.
- Clicking on Sharing Settings and modifying or enabling the different premium features.
If you are looking to learn more about using these features or Google+ get in touch with us today to see how we can help.
Ways To Improve Password Security
With a steady increase in the number of users, Facebook has become a centralized medium for both businesses and customers to engage with one another. Now, businesses on Facebook will be equipped with more ways to enhance brand experience as the social network has just extended its video capabilities. To keep up with new developments it might be time you familiarized yourself with Facebook’s Video Views Objective feature, as well as its reach and frequency campaign model, to see how your business can benefit.
What Is Video Views Objective?
Following the introduction of video metrics and Premium Video Ads, Facebook has now introduced expanded video capabilities, called Video Views Objective. This feature will enable businesses running video ads to choose video views as an objective for their campaigns. In short, this allows businesses to take advantage of two solutions to direct Facebook users to additional content. All businesses will be able to plan their campaigns using the traditional broadcast model of reach and frequency.
Video Views Objective (VVO) will be added to Facebook’s Ads Create Tool, Power Editor, and its ads application-programming interface. Ads created using VVO will automatically be optimized to be shown to targeted Facebook users who are most likely to view videos across devices. This will allow businesses to take people on a deeper journey with their brand by encouraging them to take action right after they have watched a video, and sending them a targeted brand message later on.
How Does This Help Businesses?
As mentioned earlier, you will be able to encourage those who have viewed your videos to view additional content with two new solutions. Firstly, businesses who work with a Facebook account representative can create audiences of people who have already watched their videos. Ads can be created for those specific groups to help move them from awareness to affinity and consideration of the brand’s product or service.
A second way businesses can encourage increased engagement is by adding a call to action, which invites people to learn more and visit a specific destination, such as a page on their website, after viewing a video.
You can also gain more control over the number of people who will view your videos by utilizing reach and frequency buying. This will predictably manage audience sizes and the number of times your ads are shown to these audiences. Traditional broadcast ad campaigns are planned and bought by focusing on the number of people you can reach and how many times you can reach them. This helps align Facebook media delivery with the reach and frequency levels that deliver business results.
Facebook is a versatile tool in that it can be used to exhibit a business’s core values, as well as enhance customer engagement and experience. Looking to learn more about Facebook for business? Call us today for a chat.
Published on 1st May 2014 by Jeanne DeWitt.
