Using Google+ To Improve Brand's Image

To use or not to use Google+? That is the question.

Many people are still on the fence about whether or not to incorporate Google+ into their social media marketing strategy. Are you a little overwhelmed with where to start and how it works? You’re not alone. This is a very simple breakdown of how you can get your business up and running on Google+ and start raising brand awareness and generating leads. 

Why use Google+?

There are two main factors that make Google+ a worthwhile tool to use:

• According to a Global Web Index study, Google+ has 359 million monthly active users. That’s a market with huge potential to tap into! Furthermore, this makes the social network the second largest of all the social platforms.
• Google+ activity directly affects SEO. While the latest Google algorithm update did reference the importance of all social network activity as a factor in determining your Google search ranking, Google treats your Google+ content like another website page. Basically, when it comes to SEO and social media, Google+ content trumps content on any other social platform. 

Who is on Google+?

While these two factors may be reason enough to get on the social network, it is essential to have an objective for joining any social media platform i.e. getting your target market to visit your website and become leads.

Personally, here at the ad agency, where I manage our social media strategy, we’ve seen a significant increase in traffic to our website from Google+ since the platform received a major facelift back in May.

To offer some specific demographic statistics, Google+ users are:

• Predominantly male (63%) 
• Primarily in the United States 
• A tech savvy audience

If you’re a B2B company in the United States, the importance of the tech savvy audience becomes a key factor to consider. Is your target market tech savvy? For many B2B companies, like our ad agency, the answer is yes.

How do you start?

Now that you’ve decided whether or not it would be worthwhile for your business to be on Google+ here are some starting guidelines:

• Complete your profile. All the way. The more information you fill out in your profile the more transparent you become. Make sure you correctly fill out all the contact information, hours, address, etc. of your business. Also, make good use of the description section. Here is a good place to utilize some keywords, describe the products and/or services your business offers and highlight what makes your businesses unique. The photo space allowed on Google+ is also quite expansive compared to other platforms. Try to capitalize on that retail space.
• Take a look around. When Google+ updated their platform they put user accessibility and content sharing at its core. Find some similar industry experts to follow and add them to your circles. Explore the different ways in which you can share and review content so you become familiar with the way the platform is mapped out. If you have something very unique and specific you are writing about, Google+ is the perfect place to share it as there are many ways for people looking for niche content to find it.
• Immediately start segmenting your circles. Put those industry professionals you are following in one circle. Put individual influencers in another and put clients in yet another. However it makes the most sense for you to categorize your circles, do so. Think as specifically as possible to determine who you could share the same content with and who you need to have in a different group. You can send content to multiple circles at a time if the content is appealing to more than one circle.
• Join some communities. Along with the circles feature, there are groups dedicated to very niche topics on Google+. Look for some. Check them out. Do they have a lot of followers? Has content been posted in the community recently? Are there good levels of engagement on content that’s been shared? If the answer to all three of these is yes, then that’s generally a good community to join.

What do you share?

Once you are familiar with the ways in which Google+ operates, you are now ready to share content. There are two ways in which you can do this: with your circles and the relevant communities you have joined.

Before sharing any piece of content, ask yourself will this add value, help or entertain the group I’m sharing it with? Whether they are in your circles or an industry community group, make sure the answer to that question is in someway, yes.

Posting Best Practices:

• Remember to delete the link in the copy. 
• Add relevant hashtags. (Google+ will even remind you if you forget this step!) 
• Always post with a comment or question encouraging further engagement. 
• Respond! When people do further engage with your post make sure you engage back. 
• Avoid sharing the same piece of content with the same context in a community and with your circles. What you post in communities will show up on your Google+ company profile page already.

These are the basic guidelines you need to understand to get your business up and running on Google+.

As mentioned earlier, make sure you have an objective for the platform in mind. What do you want to gain? Create a strategy and make sure you are measuring whether or not you are reaching it! The Google+ dashboard provides great analytics to assist in this effort.