Logged on to your Google + page lately? If so you might have noticed something different – nothing at all. Though the shuttering of this once highly promising social media platform wasn’t a total surprise you might have been anticipating more time together – and you’re not alone.

When Google first announced the shutdown we were told we would have until August 2019 to say goodbye. But security bugs coupled with reported, “low usage” forced Google’s hand. Earlier this year they revised that date to April 2^nd.

And close it down they did. But what now? If Google + has been a component of your SEO and social media marketing plan you may be looking for a new way to get in front of your target audience.

Here’s how localized social marketing strategies are picking up where Google + left off and helping businesses move onward and upward.

How will the Google + Shutdown impact your SEO + Social?

Google and search marketing are one and the same, so it stands to reason that a social networking product under this all-seeing search engine would make SEO soar, right? Wrong.

The good news is that you haven’t just been doing it wrong this whole time. Poor user adoption across the board meant that posts didn’t really amount to much in the way of increased traffic or SEO benefits. That paired with a security breach that compromised the accounts of more than 500k businesses left the writing on the wall.

More good news – even if you were active on the low-performing social site, posts from your other social media profiles have been and will continue to (literally) pull rank. In other words, you really shouldn’t see much of a dip in your search rankings.

Remember that social signals have always had minimal impact on SEO while things like successful website development and backlinks from other credible sites to it count for a lot!

In the wake of this atypical Google blunder, be sure to go back through your site and other profiles to remove the G+ link and icon. Staying goodbye to G+ shouldn’t sink your SEO ranking, but dead links still can.

Google My Business (GMB) and Adwords pages will also not be impacted but hit those heavily for a nice counterbalancing effect.

Localized Social Marketing

Fear not. Especially if you have more than one location or run a multi-store brand platform like Facebook makes it easier than ever to communicate with your local audience in the wake of the Google + shutdown.

SOCi, a social media and reputation management platform, defines localized social marketing as, “marketing efforts that focus on building a local presence for a business, leveraging locally-driven communication channels to reach the specific local communities it serves.” The idea is to turn things like social reviews and ads into “two-way engagement channels.”

According to findings published in a recent SOCi report, “more than 70 percent of brand engagement on social is happening on location Pages.”

Setting up local Facebook Pages for your various locations makes capturing reviews a breeze and gives local leaders a chance to answer questions in more personal and thorough ways than your corporate team can.

In the end, it may not be as tearful a Google+ goodbye as you’d envisioned, but that’s ok. Where Google has closed a door, social media has opened a window.

Want help improving your SEO or setting up a localized social marketing strategy? Let us take your brand beyond.