If you’ve sat in a marketing meeting lately you may have heard the ever evolving question of online marketing today, “How can we add social networking to our site?” Google may have mastered a way to do this, and it’s a very simple process.
It’s a new program my Google rep emailed us today called, ‘Google Friend Connect’ that’s currently available for preview only. Release date yet to be known. Google defines the new program as,
“A service that helps website owners add social features to their sites. Visitors will be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends (and even with existing friends) from other social networking sites such as Facebook.”
According to the Google Friend Connect landing page, you can:
Attract more visitors. Visitors bring along friends from social networks like Facebook, orkut, and others to interact on your site.
Enrich your site with social features. Choose engaging social features from a catalog of gadgets provided by Google and the OpenSocial developer community.
No programming whatsoever. Just copy and paste snippets of code into your site, and Google Friend Connect does the rest.
How does this relate to PPC you may ask? Every PPC’ier works to optimize their landing pages and websites to help increase conversions. This is a great addition you can suggest to your client or simply add to your own site that can help increase customer retention and eventually grow traffic and potentially sales.
Everyone wants to be a part of a community. If you’re a trendy site offering cool t-shirts or the new Jordan shoes, this could be a great way to get your customers involved and talking about your products. Members can invite their friends and talk with new members. Before you know it, your bounce rates will decrease and time spent on site will increase – and hopefully lead to more signups, leads and sales.
I must say, this isn’t for everyone. I think that if you have a trendy site, or a site that could involve a community talking about your service offerings or products, this is definitely for you. However, if you’re selling hydraulic pumps or requesting customers to sign up for a whitepaper download, this is not for you.
Currently Google Friend Connect is for preview only and is only being made available to a limited number of site owners. If you are interested in the preview release, you can fill out this form. You will be notified if you’re approved. To learn more about the service visit their landing page where you can read or watch a video. They also offer example sites so you can gain a clear perspective of how and what it will look like. I’ve included 2 of their examples below:
I’d LOVE to hear your thoughts on this and how you think it could help your site. Are you interested in using this service?
