Why I Deleted My Google Plus Page

Yes. I deleted my Google Plus Page.

Or rather, it’s not in use anymore.

Not my personal profile, but the page for our business, B Squared Media.

I can’t sit here and tell you that my “research” is scientific, but I can tell you that I spent a good amount of effort looking at analytics to make this decision.

And in the end, with my most precious and valuable asset being time, I decided having both a personal Google Plus account and a business page just wasn’t worth it.

Here’s why …

Before I go into things, I just want to comment on the whole Copyblogger debacle.

After deleting their Facebook Page, they got thrown into a sh!tstorm of controversy on whether what they did was “right” or “wrong.”

While I tend to agree with several of the thoughts Jon Loomer shared in his article regarding their decision, I ultimately still think it’s THEIR DECISION.

It doesn’t matter if they had sucky management, or sucky fans.

Every company and small business — and person, for that matter — has a right to choose where they want to spend their social media time.

Placing the blame on Facebook may have been the wrong way to go about announcing their departure, but at the end of the day, they’re tired of playing “all the Facebook games” … aren’t we all?!

In any case, I hope that I’m not getting myself into a sh!tstorm by sharing my story with you. ((a) not that I have anywhere near the popularity and following that Copyblogger does, and (b) not that Google should in any way be compared to Facebook).

On Guard With Google

I have to admit that from the beginning I was wary of another social platform.

In 2011, while consulting for another company, I distinctly remember saying that I wasn’t rushing out to start using the platform when clients asked how I felt about Google Plus.

Even now, after a couple of years on the platform, I admit it doesn’t get the majority of my time.

Not because it’s the evil stepchild or anything, but because I use another Google product to decide where my time should be spent (based on referral traffic): Google Analytics.

According to my August GA report, 58% of my social traffic came from Twitter.

And so, that’s where I spent my time (and spend my time – Twitter has been coming in first for quite some time now).

Facebook and Google Plus fight for position, grabbing anywhere from 10-25% of my social traffic.

In August, Google happened to provide 21% of my total social traffic …

And if you’re wondering, yes, that’s all organic traffic.

We didn’t run any ads during August.

From a referral standpoint, August looked like this:

Google beat Facebook by 51 referrals.

But(!), my assumption is that much of this traffic was actually coming from my Google Plus PROFILE, not my Google Plus Business Page.

Google Plus Profile VS Google Plus Page

My Google Plus Profile:

• As of today has 3,572 followers


• As of today has 222,621 views


• Gets pretty good engagement (I hardly ever receive “crickets” – or no interaction on a post)

Unlike Copyblogger, I’m readily admitting that I don’t spend enough time on Google Plus to see a huge return on investment.

I post M-F … and there are days I miss.

My Google Plus Business Page:

• As of today has 335 followers


• As of today has 51,781 views


• Gets okay to poor engagement

Again, with the Page there were minimal efforts; we posted M-F pretty regularly.

You can see for yourself that the past 90-days of engagement were pretty dismal:

Based on the actions for posts that had branded B Squared content, it was easy to see that much of the referral links from Google Plus were actually coming from my personal profile and not the business page.

I decided that time is my most valuable asset, and that it isn’t worth MY time to have both Pages active.

After posting several messages asking peeps to follow my personal profile, we stopped posting updates, and now only use the page as a placeholder.

What I Could Have Done Differently

There are probably a million and one things I could have done differently.

I came up with five pretty easily:

1. Posted more branded content on the biz page


2. Posted more frequently, and on the weekend


3. Posted less about marketing on my personal page, and left that to the biz page


4. Started a G+ community affliated with our biz page


5. Spent more time commenting and interacting as our biz page

But I didn’t, did I?

Nope. I did not.

I took a look a three digital friends who have both a personal and a biz page, and this is what I found:

1. Oroklini Social Media & Veronica Solorzano Athanasiou
   
   
   
   • Oroklini: 167 followers / 24,762 views
   
   
   • Veronica (Amiga!): 417 followers / 34, 839 views
   
   
   
   


2. More In Media & Dorien Morin-van Dam
   
   
   
   • More In Media: 520 followers / 70,652 views
   
   
   • Dorien: 2,898 followers / 95,549 views
   
   
   
   


3. Scalable Social Media & Alisa Meredith
   
   
   
   • Scalable Social Media: 1698 followers / 149,105 views
   
   
   • Alisa: 3991 followers / 171,711 views
   
   
   
   

Again, this is very non-scientific (I just thought of these friends randomly!).

But it seems that there is a much larger follower base for people and not logos or brands.

Each of these ladies is similar to me in that they offer social media or digital marketing services, and they post marketing and branded messages to both their personal profiles AND their biz pages on Google Plus.

Can I make an absolute conclusion that personal profiles perform better than business pages? No.

Why I Deleted My Google Plus Page

What it all boils down to is this: The analytics told a story and the lack of engagment told a story.

But ultimately it was up to me to decide where I want to spend my time.

And while I don’t want to leave Google Plus altogether, it just doesn’t make sense for me to double my efforts there.

For now, anyway.

What about you? Do you run a personal profile and a biz page on G+ successfuly? Let us know in the comments section below!

See you in the social sphere!

Why I Deleted My Google Plus Page