Google recently announced that as of April 2, 2019, Google+ accounts will be a thing of the past, due to the social media platform’s lack of use and security issues, including a data breach last year. Furthermore, about 90 percent of Google+ user sessions last less than five seconds. For years, Google+ integrated with apps such as YouTube and Hangouts. In fact, you had to have a Google+ account to use and interact with certain apps.

However, just because Google+ is shutting down does not mean that your Google account is going away, and neither is your YouTube and/or Gmail accounts. Be rest assured that although Google+ and +1 buttons will have no impact on rankings going forward, other social platforms are still here to serve all of your social media needs. In fact, in the third quarter of 2018, there were more than 2.27 billion monthly active Facebook users, which is a 10 percent increase year over year. Instagram, as of June 2018, reached 1 billion monthly active users, up from 800 million in September 2017, whereas active U.S. Twitter users amounted to 66 million in the last reported quarter.

The NALA recommends that if your brand was active on Google+ and your content was evergreen, meaning it can be posted and used any time, you move it to other social networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and/or YouTube, if you haven’t already. You should also start updating your website and remove the Google+ icons in the header or footer of your site.

It is imperative that you not only update your website and social media, making them more memorable, but also post videos to your site. Video is a major trend in online marketing for 2019, and social media users are much more likely to share videos with their friends and family. Keep in mind that the human brain processes visual information about 60,000 times faster than text. This means that visitors to your website will learn about your products and/or services much more effectively through videos rather than text. Video is also considered “rich media,” which is more favorable to search engine algorithms so can help boost your SEO.