Google+ (or G+) has been quite overdue to join the social media marketing celebration, so quite a few small business owners still view it with suspicion – should they or ought to they now not have interaction with it? Is it worth spending more time on social media marketing using adding every other tool to manage? According to Social Media Examiner’s 2014 Report, while 54% of marketers use Google+, 65% want to examine it extra approximately it and 61% plan on increasing Google+ sports in 2014.
By February 2014, G+ has already 359 million energetic customers; it occupies 65% of enterprise/non-public search outcomes, it is linked to Gmail, which also has more than 4 Million users, it’s also linked to YouTube, which has 800 Million visitors according to month, and to Google mobile offering over 1 Million Android devices activated daily.
Google+ is included in all Google merchandise and packages: Google Search, Gmail, Google Apps, YouTube, Android, Google Play Store, Google Translate, Google Drive, Analytics, AdWords, Maps, Places, Webmaster Tools, Google News, Images, and so much more. If you use Google gear in your enterprise, in truth, it’s quite difficult to avoid creating a Google+ profile within the technique for your consumer identity.
1. Improve your Local search engine optimization outcomes
Google+ Local pages are changing the antique Google Local enterprise listings, so you will need to assert both old and new profiles for your commercial enterprise and merge them. Add all important statistics that your customers could be interested in: a way to contact you, deal with commencing hours, verify your internet site, upload other social media, add pictures to exhibit your services and products, write an outline inclusive of your key seek terms and keywords. Link from your internet site on your Local page and to your non-public profile (as a creator – see greater below).
2. Link your Google+ profile to your blog
Confirm that you are the author of your weblog within the eyes of Google and link the two collectively. This will get your image, and the G+ link seems next to search effects out of your weblog. If you’ve got a WordPress weblog, you may, without problems, link them up using one of the plugins (like search engine optimization using Yoast) or through your theme settings. More technical records on how Google Authorship works can be found here.
3. Integrate Google+ into your internet site
Ensure you have your Local and Profile listings delivered to the website and that your web page is confirmed with all Google offerings you will use (such as YouTube). Add your G+ profile badge or button to the internet site and show a +1 option on your posts and pages—this way, different Google+ customers can percentage your content material with their followers for you. More interplay on your hyperlinks = extra search engine marketing consider.
4. Use Hangouts on Air to attach and build your logo
With up-to-date and more desirable Hangouts, you can connect to your customers, sell your services and products, run webinars and team conferences – all freed from the fee. And you may then share those motion pictures robotically to YouTube, growing your reach even similarly. You can provide humans with your understanding, perception, solutions, or different get-right entries to the content. They will register for your hangouts, develop your Google+ circle, and expand your influence. An ordinary webcast schedule is a good platform for announcing product launches, reductions, promotional occasions, sales, and so forth.
5. Network efficaciously with the right fans the usage of Circles
Circles are a great device to organize your connections and followers in Google+. Circles assist you to phase your connections into interest or pipeline lists and thereafter percentage content material only relevant to this unique Circle. You can also see what simplest the ones in a specific Circle are sharing, making it less complicated to comment and interact with their content back. You would possibly find that you’ll interact with a number of your Circles extra frequently than others based totally on users in it. To discover people well worth connecting with, you can use the Google Search feature and Ripples.
As with any advertising channel, you will want to percentage content material it truly is applicable, thrilling, and well-timed in your fans. Although you can not proportion posts directly on Google+, you may use a third birthday party device like Buffer or HootSuite to agenda your updates in advance. When posting updates, you can tag other users and use hashtags (similar to Twitter again). The visual content material is normally greater appealing than the simplest text, but test exclusive alternatives to figure out what, in reality, works for your target audience. You may even publish mini-blogs there, as, in contrast to Twitter or Facebook, there isn’t always a man or woman restriction for your posts.
7. Engage and engage together with your target market
To grow your network and benefit new commercial enterprise leads, it is not enough to publish and put up content approximately your emblem. You need to connect and engage with your followers – like you would on every other social media channel. You can do that in several methods: point out others in posts (e.G. If you need to give credit or hyperlink a case observe to their commercial enterprise); reply to any feedback you acquire your posts; use Circles to phase and simplify curation of content material with the aid of your fans – remark, proportion and +1 their posts; maintain an eye on “what is trending” subjects and join in while you may; be part of relevant commercial enterprise communities and Hangouts and interact with other-centered users there.
Finally, do not forget to the degree of your fulfillment by evaluating your consequences on your marketing goals. You can track some of it with just Google Analytics. For greater superior records approximately your Google+ efforts, you can use 0.33-party sites like All My Plus Stats, Measured, Circle Count, and Google Business Insight for your enterprise web page.
My call is Tamara Baranova. I run TJConsulting, and I help small business owners grow their businesses by using handing over effective online marketing mentoring, support, and training. My customers see their enterprise be successful, develop speedily, and generate healthful earnings through an online marketing strategy that works.
