What we’ve learned so far from Google+ Breaking News was lucky enough to be the first general news account on Google+, and we’ve been experimenting with different approaches on the new social platform. Here are a few things we’ve learned so far:
1. People love to share. On Facebook, people tend to “like” and comment on news stories more than share them. On G+ users share most news items more times than they “plus” and comment on them (like this one). This is likely fueled by the G+ audience right now — social influencers who love to share — but I think it’s an early sign of how viral stories can rocket throughout the network. By the way, a few of our G+ posts (with 2,000 followers) are starting to challenge the engagement levels of the same post on our Facebook page (with 50,000 fans.)
2. “Editing” as a way to update a story. During the Casey Anthony verdict, we experimented with editing the post live as the verdicts were announced instead of sending subsequent posts. It worked great, except the shared versions of the post didn’t update along with it — and several versions were floating around at the same time. Ideally, G+ would allow changes to migrate everywhere with some kind of versioning system so people could step backwards through the edits. We’ve also posted updates in comments, but again, those additional comments didn’t carry over to shared versions.
3. Frequency is still a big question. We’ve been rather conservative with the number of posts (3 to 4 a day) largely because everyone is still getting the hang of the G+ stream, including Google. The stream was emphasizing posts with new comments, which meant we should focus on fewer, better stories that spark a conversation. But Google says it’s tweaking the stream algorithm, which in the end will dictate frequency. On Twitter, we post 20 to 30 a day. On Facebook 5 to 10. G+ will probably be similar to Facebook.
4. Story mix will evolve. Right now, technology stories are thriving on G+ because the initial audience, well, is a bunch of social geeks. A story we posted about Facebook yesterday attracted exponentially more engagement than a story about Britain’s phone hacking story. Meanwhile, a photo of the Phoenix dust cloud and a story about the Yellowstone grizzly bear attack were shared all over the place — as they were on Facebook and Twitter. It will be interesting to see how the G+ audience diversifies over the next few weeks.
Have any other G+ lessons to add? Please leave ‘em in comments. By the way, if you’re thinking about adding your own branded account, Google+ is now discouraging companies from creating accounts until it launches a new businesses feature.
Update: Google has removed +Breaking News, like it has other media branded accounts. But we’re still publishing breaking news on +Cory Bergman and +Stephanie Clary, so give us a follow! (By +Cory Bergman, or if you prefer, @corybe or Tumblr, too.)
