Is #Google Going Offline?

Businesses forging new marketing plans to keep up with emerging trends have bench-marked their successes by how well they perform on Google for years. Though could Google’s failure to outdo Facebook be the end of the Internet giant?
Not likely. Novices may like to post blog comments making fun of Google’s inability to beat Facebook’s user numbers when it comes to social media, though it is unlikely any of them are worth anywhere near what Google’s founders are today.
The thing is Google doesn’t have to beat Facebook in the social race, at least not in terms of Google+ alone. Google’s business and social efforts are far more diverse than Facebook’s. However, what the critics fail to remember is that even those marketing themselves on Facebook need to be honing in and targeting niche segments anyway.
This is why Google+ has been surging in popularity in 2012 and why business owners, entrepreneurs and other professionals love it. As popular as Facebook is, it doesn’t mean it is liked. Many people dislike Facebook, don’t get it and many are only using it because they are told they have to. On the other hand professionals see the tangible benefits of G+ for their businesses.
Google has also been breaking character and unleashing a barrage of new materials sharing with businesses and entrepreneurs exactly what they need to do to win on Google, from social to SEO to mobile.
Perhaps most notable are the tips for running political campaigns and its new “Mobile Playbook” which highlights the importance for all businesses to at least begin engaging in cross over campaigns to bring offline marketing prospects online as well as reaching the ever growing base of tablet and smartphone users.
Maybe developing your own mobile app isn’t right for you right now. However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be using QR codes, growing your social connections and optimizing your Google+ profile, creating tablet presentations, streamlining your operations with Google docs and using more location based marketing like foursquare and building citations for enhanced SEO.
Perhaps most significantly, this demonstrates that no matter how incredibly large and popular Facebook or Google is, they understand that not everyone loves doing business 100% over the web, making well selected vanity numbers just as crucial for winning today, if not more so.