game developers: please take google+ seriously
DESCRIPTION
When publicising our work, more and more of us turn to social media as our first (and often only) platform for outreach. Facebook and Twitter are the flavours of choice, but being an indie you're also willing to venture out to message boards, blogs, Reddit and god knows what other thing your "demographic" might happen to hang around... There is an elephant in the room... As game developers we often under-appreciate the sheer power Google has over the discoverability of our game. Very few of us take it's social offering, Google+, seriously as a platform. But the truth is that Google+ has more monthly active users than Twitter. A Google+ presence has dramatic repercussions for a brand's appearance on search, and with the right coding and markup, can serve long term improvements in discoverability and how you're represented, as search shifts away from keywords and more into semantic details and objects. This was a quick microtalk for the IGDA Scotland Chapter at their event in Dundee on the 26th of March, 2014.TRANSCRIPT
Game Developers Please Take Google+ Seriously@Kraig_Walker
Deal With it
We’re All Using Social
It’s Not Without It’s Challenges
• Content has a varying lifespan • Competing with everyone else, including
those with £££• Most of our audience won’t even SEE our
posts• Creating content sucks. lets just make our
game for the next nine months and worry about it later. What could go wrong?
You’ve probably used these…
And Then There’s...
Facebook has the ArmyBut Google as the Hulk
Take Google+ Seriously, and Google Will Take You Seriously
Did you mean Aphelion?
Action Points
Tidy Up
Use Schema.org & Open Graph
Get Rich Snippets!
Sort Out That Wiki Page
If You Have One...
Use Authorship
Add a Link tag to Your Blogs
• For Humans:• <link rel=“author”
href=“http://plus.google.com/+KraigWalker”/>
• For Brands:• <link rel=“publisher” href=“http://plus.google.com/+CocaCola”/>
Brands Look for the “tick” People add the site as a “Contributor”
Don’t Alienate Your Audience
Leverage The Awesome
Many types of Content
Many Types of Content
Use CirclesIt Pays off In The Long Run
Leverage CommunitiesFree Discoverability!*
Lots More. No Time
Try it, you might like it