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If you thought Google+ was solely a social networking platform, you might be mistaken. At a seminar for Google Grants recipients last week, more than 50 charities, including Amnesty International, Scope, WaterAid and the Salvation Army, heard how Google+ was, "not about broadcasting to as many people as possible but microcasting – sharing information with the right people at the right time".
Hugo Soul, Google's industry manager of large consumer goods, says Google+ is about creating connections to channel tailored information between individuals and select groups. "It's a bit of a misconception that we're trying to create a social network," he says. "It's a project to bring together all of our products and services under a single banner," which, he adds, can offer a "layer" of seamless user experience.
He also talks about segmentation and targeting messages to users in different groups or "circles", which he says could be useful for charities wanting to reach either supporters or specific donors without overlap.
However, Soul is most keen to promote hangouts, a Google+ feature where up to 10 people can take part in a free, live videoconference. Hangouts can be started from a phone, tablet or desktop/laptop, although quality may vary.
He says: "It has really valuable implications for the third sector when you think about the ability to build real, face-to-face relationships with donors or stakeholders, because it starts to build a human connection and to personally engage with people who are interested in your organisation."
A new feature, hangouts on air, he thinks is especially valuable: "You can take a live hangout between an organisation and its consumers and broadcast that on YouTube."
A hangout on air is streamed live on both the Google+ and YouTube account of the user. To take part in a hangout, users will need a YouTube channel first. These are publicly recorded and publicly saved on the user's YouTube and Google+ account, available to everybody, although Google recommends that charities promote this event to their users. If the user doesn't want it to be publicly saved, they can either delete it or edit it later.
As Google+ is relatively new, many statistics such as user demographics or time spent online do not exist yet, so the success of such features for charities cannot be ascertained.
Despite the novelty of such platforms, Emily Subden, social media manager at Oxfam, says that simply having a social media strategy, "is the best tool to get senior management buy-in". She says Oxfam started using YouTube because it was free and simple – "it's quite a collaborative channel so people from all over the world can log in and upload a video".
When the Haiti earthquake struck in the middle of the night, says Subden, ensuring a video went up on to YouTube as soon as possible – in this case within 12 hours – was of more importance than ensuring the content was top quality.
The video of one of their press officers explaining the situation and how to donate received 670,000 views – despite there being no visuals. "It was about the content but not about the quality – it was about the timing of it," she says. Speed is of the essence; getting the message out there first is now part of Oxfam's protocol.
Subden also recommends analysing YouTube use. "It's worth spending an hour trawling through YouTube analytics," she says, "because you can compare your video [statistics] with others'." Oxfam uses analytics to map audience demographics. "For instance," she says, "we want UK donors so, if most of our donors are from the United States, we want to know why or we can ask them to campaign rather than donate."
Subden says looking to see who has embedded videos is also useful, "so in future, if we're creating similar content, we can ask them to embed it".
Chris Terry, Oxfam's online marketing manager, says his organisation has plans to optimise its use of YouTube: "Our next stage with Google+ is we have lots of videos sitting in our YouTube channel, not doing much, but we'll probably use Google+ as a platform". He adds that Oxfam may ask supporters to vote for the best video in a competition or invite them to 'hangout' with a video's director.
However, both Subden and Terry are waiting for Google+ to deliver the same level of analytics that YouTube offers. Subden says: "We hope that Google+ will have this level of insight." Terry says: "We've got up to 100,000 people who have interacted with us on Google+, but where are they? Who are they? What are they doing? We're seeing interactivity but don't know who those people are."
Louise Odquier, digital producer for ActionAid, says the extent of its use of Google + is having an account on its homepage. "But we are looking at the hangouts option," she says. One idea is to enhance a project called Giriki, which enables people out in the field in other countries to post photos, blogs and videos. "I was thinking that the next phase could take it to hangouts because they're also participatory … you could show the opening of a new school," she says.
Max MacBride, social media executive at Unicef, says it has been using Google+ for about five months. "It's very user friendly, and the circles feature is really handy," he says. "Being able to group social followers confidentially, and by specific categories, opens doors in terms of content targeting and helps personalise user engagement.
"It's also a lot more easily searchable than Facebook and incorporates some of Twitter's tagging functionality," he adds.
Unicef recently tried out hangouts for the first time with the actress Keeley Hawes – who talked about her experiences in East Africa filming for Soccer Aid – with Unicef's blogger supporters.
"The hangout was streamed live via our YouTube channel and shared with our wider audience, so as well as being a great way to provide a bespoke event for some of our most engaged supporters, it was also a good source of reusable content," says MacBride.
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