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Are you struggling to figure out how to use Google+ to market your business?
Looking for some tips and ideas? You’ve come to the right place.
We asked 5 experienced social media professionals to share their best tips on Google+ for business with you.
Here are 5 ways you can use Google+ to promote and market your business.
#1: Close Off Google+ Comments to Increase Engagement
Here is one of my favorite tips for people who are more intermediate to advanced users on Google+.
Knowing the system:
When someone has comments on a post, they will receive a notification each time someone comments on that post after them. As such, comments are a powerful way of punctuating people’s attention.
Application:
Knowing this, you can use this to have ‘the last word’ on your comment threads, and get engagement from the right people. That is one of the great things about Google+, you really have a lot of control as to who and how people engage with you.
How to close off comments on your threads:
Simply click on the upper right of one of your posts and choose ‘disable comments’.
What to say once you close off comments:
Now you know how to close off comments, you need to decide how you would like to use them.
As you can see in the example below, I am letting people know the next steps for the campaign I am running at that point in time.
How to see who has plussed the comment, and why!
If you click on the plus ones for a comment you can see who has plussed.
But here is the great thing: you can then look to add them people into circles as you may well find they are some of your best engagers. From there you can build the relationship further.
An extra tip…
If you re-enable the comments, you can add an additional message and notify the people on that thread another time. A great way to market a new idea to people who related to the old one.
Martin Shervington is a Google+ marketing expert, consultant and executive coach. He manages two communities on Google+, Plus Your Life! and Plus Your Business! and has authored numerous books including Developmental Coaching.
#2: Leverage Google+ Hovercards to Grow Your Audience
Every marketer wants to grow their audience on Google+. A larger Google+ audience leads to more reach inside the network and ultimately more traffic and potential customers to your business.
Unfortunately, many marketers are getting overwhelmed trying to keep their Google+ stream filled with fresh content in the hopes this will attract +1’s, reshares and new connections.
These marketers are making one critical mistake. The most effective way to grow your audience on Google+ doesn’t involve creating your own posts. Instead focus on commenting.
Google+ users can scroll over any other users name, anywhere inside of Google+ and a hover card will appear.
The existence of hovercards removes the necessity to create original content (at least as often as on other social networks). This is why I highly recommend a Google+ commenting strategy (similar to the old-school blog commenting strategy) for building new relationships and driving traffic to your site.
Enter terms relevant to your business in the search bar at the top of every Google+ page. The results will return Google+ users, public posts, communities and Hangouts on Air which match your interests.
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Next start engaging. Add valuable comments to the public posts. Join and engage in the community discussions. Attend and participate in the Hangouts on Air. From your comments in these locations over Google+ users can simply hover over you name and add you to their circles (which they’ll happily do if you’re adding value to the conversation).
Ryan Hanley, founder of Hanley Media Lab.
#3: Schedule Your Google+ Posts for Maximum Impact
When you find great content you want to share on your Google+ personal profile it doesn’t make sense to share it all at the same time. Instead it’s better to add it to a queue and share at an appropriate time.
The Chrome DoShare plugin is a free plugin which allows you to share content at a time that suits your audience.
When you come across a piece of content on the web you can click on the DoShare button in your browser and add it to a queue.
You can also add content you find in Google+ to your queue by clicking on the DoShare button.
Due to limitations on Google+ for posting on personal profiles, you need to have your Chrome browser open at the time you have scheduled the content to be delivered.
This is not a bad thing, as I’d advise you to only post content at a time you are available to respond to it. But you can queue up your scheduled content or just add content without a schedule and send it when it suits.
Ian Cleary, founder of Razorsocial.
#4: Use Your Google+ Profile to Claim Authorship of Your Content
If you write content for various online blogs and publications, be sure to use your Google+ profile to claim authorship of each piece of content you write. Also, regardless of whether you own a website or not, sign up for Google Webmaster Tools using the same Google account as your Google+ profile.
This will allow you to see analytics data for the posts linked to your Google+ profile, including impressions in search, click through rates, and more. Just look under the Labs menu for Author Stats!
Since you generally can’t get analytics data for the content you write on sites other than your own, this can give you a little insight on the popularity of your content in search.
Kristi Hines is a freelance writer and author of Kikolani.
#5: Make Sure Your Images Take Up Significant Real Estate
One of the secrets for success on Google Plus is not just sharing images that capture attention, it’s also making images that are tall and skinny so they take up significant real estate.
Don’t make the mistake that many newbies make, and allow Google Plus to grab an image from the link you’re sharing. Go the extra step and take a couple of extra minutes to create gorgeous, visually appealing, tall and skinny images for your content shares.
Looking at the images below, which would capture your attention?
Yes, the tall and skinny one, with images of people and attractive colors, would definitely win.
Experiment with different image sizes and colors to see what performs best. If you find images that aren’t the right size, use a tool like Canva or PicMonkey to resize your images and to make them more visually appealing.
And here’s a final tip: get great charting software, make great charts, and share regularly. Everyone shares memes, animated gifs, inspirational quotes, etc..but few people are turning statistics into images that are easy to digest. Be the first in your niche and watch your +1’s grow!
Marcela De Vivo is CEO of Gryffin.com, blogs at The Alchemy, and specializes in Google Penalty Recovery and Link Building.
What’s your experience with Google+? What other Google+ marketing tips do you have to share? Please share your questions and comments in the box below.
