ZTG005 — Growing a Google+ Audience
(and an Unexpected Lesson)
Now, most of you are probably wondering…
What is this weirdo talking about? Google+? Is he serious?
That’s right, friends, Google+.
Back in early 2016, I briefly ran a Google+ experiment. I wanted to raise some awareness on a network I never (ever) use, thinking it would make sense to at least try to grow an audience.
It was my first stab at this network, so I went for the easiest experiment I could think of and ran with it.
I learned some interesting things back then. And now, two years later, I got an unexpected lesson.
Let’s get started.
Experiment name
ZTG005 — Awareness — Social — Gather Google+ Followers
Objective
To grow a following on my personal Google+ account. I want to see if this is an untapped opportunity for my business later down the line when I have an audience to share articles to.
Hypothesis
I predict I will gather 15 new followers using the follow-back strategy, converting at a 7.14% rate.
Experiment Design
1. Pick a community I belong to that suits my target audience
2. Navigate to the page that lists all the community members
3. Follow 30 people per day
4. Rinse and repeat for 7 days in a row
Resource Estimation and Probability
Results
Clearly, this experiment was a massive failure. I only gathered two new followers after 210 follows, converting at only 0.95%.
Learnings
1. This is, at best, an ethically ambiguous experiment
I’m going to get this one out the way quickly: this isn’t a very good way to gather followers. I know loads of people do it. I know you can capture a massive audience doing it. Still, I never used Google+ (ever) until that point and going straight for this tactic felt a bit dirty.
But, sometimes, you need to try things — and so I did.
2. Google+ is full of fake profiles
I kept a list of all the accounts I followed. At the end of my experiment, I went back and checked most of them. A vast majority were seemingly spammy accounts.
Lots of them had never shared any posts, quite a good portion of them were just spamming porn links, and the rest were pumping dubious looking products.
As per my previous point, I was obviously part of the problem. However, the lesson here is clear: do some preliminary research before going head first in a 7-day long experiment. Clicking 20–30 profiles before starting would have kept me from wasting my time.
Action Items
This experiment was such a fail and Google+ looked in such a poor state, I completely canned the idea of iterating on this test.
I’m sure some businesses have flourished on this platform for a little while but it didn’t seem like a good use of my time. Knowing when to quit and focus on something else is part of the job. It was time to quit.
Extra learning: growth channels dry up (or disappear)
It’s now November 2018, some two years after I ran this (very poor) experiment. Google+ is in the process of officially shutting down.
Google+ never really did work as a Google product. After years of trying to make it happen, it seems they have decided to simply can it. I won’t talk about this decision here. Instead, I want to focus on a key learning point from a growth point of view.
Growth channels dry up.
Platforms die.
Keywords disappear or become too expensive.
Shit hits the fan.
Imagine my experiment above had been a complete success. Imagine I had relied on a 90% follow-back rate to build a million follows. Imagine I had built a business completely based on my Google+ audience.
And then, whoosh. Gone.
The hidden lesson, two years down the line, is to diversify. Whatever drives amazing growth today will surely die tomorrow. Keep iterating, keep testing, keep growing.
I hope you found some value in this admittedly odd experiment report. Have you ever experimented with Google+? Have you experienced a channel drive insane growth and then dry up? Share your story below!
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