Is Google + better for authors than Facebook?

Do you use Google+? If you're like most authors, probably not. Maybe you tried it out a while back and found that there weren't many people using it yet, so you kept your energy on other platforms. We tend to focus on Twitter, Facebook, and maybe Goodreads, but maybe you should give Google+ another look.

Marcy Kennedy, a fantasy author and freelance editor, wrote a great guest post for JaneFriedman.com last week about 6 reasons why Google + is better than Facebook as an author platform. I've pulled my 3 favorite reasons from her list and added my perspective here.

3 Reasons to try Google+:

1. Google+ Authorship: With this setting in Google+, authors can add information specific to them as an author, and that information will come up on Google searches when their content is part of the search results. Here is Kennedy's side by side comparison of search results without and with Google+ Authorship:

2. Higher Google Visibility: Because Google+ is a social network designed and supported by Google, the search engine naturally gives it a better deal on search result importance. Google is, afterall, going to want people using Google+. With their integration of social results into personal search results when a user is logged in, Google will display your content more prominently when people who have already said they want to see your results search for something that you have written about. If you're creating and sharing content through Google+, you have a leg up on being part of those social resutls. It's a bit like an "opt-in" option for social graph searching.

3. Google Hangouts: This is the video chat feature that Google created for people to talk to other people. It's a lot like Skype, but it's fully integrated into the Google experience. That makes it easy to start and run a video call or chat with people in your network, and gives you options to record and reshare those video chats. The main benefit over other video chat methods is that it is already integrated, which makes it easier for you to use and reinforces the network you already have within the largest seach ecosystem in the U.S.

Are you using Google+ as part of your author platform? What do you think?

Image source: jf1234 via flickr