Google Plus for business?

Ain’t nobody got time for that!

I know that’s what you’re thinking, because, for a long time that’s what I was thinking.

“No one is on Google Plus! No one updates their pages! There’s no reason for me to be on there!”

Those were all the things I told myself.

If you’re not currently using Google Plus, that’s probably what is holding you back as well.

Well something incredible happened to me recently.

I’ve become a believer in using Google Plus for business.

I see the value in it and I think it’s very important for more businesses to use it.

Google Plus has some very powerful benefits that the other social networks don’t offer. The best part is that it doesn’t require nearly the time commitment of networks as Facebook and Twitter.

Of course, the more you put into it the more you get out of it, but you can still get plenty out of it without sacrificing all your time.

In this post, you will start to understand exactly why Google Plus is worth the time and effort investment.

You will also learn three extremely important ways you can benefit from using Google Plus for business.

Going from a Google Plus naysayer to a believer

Google Plus had many impressive features at launch, and the network grew to millions of members in no time, but the problem was no one was posting anything.

Another problem was that it wasn’t friends and family who were joining Google Plus. It was social media pros, marketers and technology enthusiasts.

The people who grew large followings on Google Plus were people who already had huge social media followings to begin with. If you were just a regular user it was hard to get even a few dozen people to circle you.

Before long, it felt like a ghost town.

Then Google Plus rolled out a few new updates to get people to interact more.

Google phased out Google Places and introduced Google Plus Local Pages to get people engaging at a local level.

Google Plus Authorship was introduced, which added added your G+ profile picture next to your articles in search results. It has become a lot more important than that though.

They were great additions but they may not have been enough.

It wasn’t until the addition of Google Plus Communities that the real value of the network started to become apparent.

Google Plus made traffic increase a lot, articles were getting +1′d more than ever before, and most importantly, people were able to grow their Google Plus network by connecting with hundreds of engaged users.

What Google Plus can and cannot do for your business

What G+ CAN Do:

• It can boost your website traffic.
• It can improve your search engine ranking.
• It can build authority for your brand.
• It can improve the visibility and distribution of your content.
• It can connect you with other engaged professionals and influencers in your field.

What G+ Can Not Do:

• It is still not the most ideal network for direct communication with customers.
• It is not the most ideal network for connecting with local customers.
• It is not a network where you can advertise.
• It is not a network where you can blast sales messages to people (no social network is good for that).

If these benefits sound appealing to you, keep reading to learn how you can achieve them!

The 3 things you need to do to grow your business with Google Plus

These are the most important things you need to do to grow your business, establish authority in search engines, and gain a ton of traffic with Google Plus.

These are all relatively easy to do and and won’t take up much of your time.

1. Get a Google Plus Local Page for Your Business

To get your business page on Google Maps, you used to have to register your business with Google Places.

Well, they’ve phased that out and now it’s all about Google Plus Local Pages.

Not only is it integrated with Google Maps, but it’s integrated directly within the search engine results pages (SERPS).

This is what you get on the right side of the page when you search for it in Google.

Since they have a Google Plus Local Page, you get all this information about them on the first page of search results.

You get pictures, directions, hours of operation and reviews all in one place.

This immediately grabs attention, establishes authority and pre-sells the customer before they click on the website.

Or they can click on the Google Plus page to read the reviews from other customers.

That might be even more important since customer reviews have been shown to be the most influential factor in how a customer feels about a business and ultimately whether or not they will make a purchase.

Once they’re on the Google Plus page, they can also check in and leave a review of their own after their visit.

The more check-ins and reviews you can accumulate on your G+ page the more influential it will be to other visitors.

Here’s everything you need to know about setting up your own Google Plus Local Page.

The next thing on this list has a lot to do with SEO, authority and influence as well.

2. Set Up Google Plus Authorship on Your Website

If you create your own content and publish it on your website you absolutely need to care about Google Plus Authorship.

Authorship creates a connection between the content published on your website and your Google Plus profile.

When something you’ve published shows up in search results it will have your name and photo attached to it.

That’s what one of my blog posts looks like in a Google search.

If you have a Google Plus profile with authorship set up on my site, Google recognizes who wrote the content and attaches your name and photo to it.

See how much that stands out compared with other results that are just plain text?

Your name, photo and how many Google Plus circles you belong to helps establish authority and credibility when people find your content in the search results.

A link like this is way more likely to get clicked on.

Not only that but Google Authorship also enhances search engine optimization (SEO) with Google Author Rank.

This means if you have a history of writing content that other people like, it will show up higher in search results.

How does Google determine whether or not people like your content?

This is determined by several factors. First you need to link your Google Plus profile to the content you create.

Then your Author Rank is determined by how socially engaged other Google Plus users are with your content.

This is determined by how many +1s, shares and comments your links get from other users.

The more you build up your Author Rank the more your content will be prioritized by Google in search results.

How do you build up your Author Rank and ultimately drive more traffic to your website?

That will be covered in the next point.

3. Start Engaging With Google Plus Communities

If you’re caught up with the first two points so far, this is where you’ll start seeing the full power of Google Plus.

At first, you can start to engage with communities because they are a place to chat with cool people about subjects I was interested in.

Then share your own useful content with the community and you will see your traffic increase and then you can build up my Author Rank with +1′s and shares.

The content you share has to provide value to the community. Even better if the content you share sparks a conversation.

You can’t just drop a link and leave. That’s link spam and most communities will delete a post like that.

Here are some more best practices for engaging with Google Plus Communities:

• Read the community guidelines. Every community has their own set of rules.
• Contribute to the community beyond just sharing your own links. Engage in conversations, +1 other peoples’ content and so on.
• Share useful content. Content that is too self-promotional or something that leads to a sales page will almost always get deleted.
• Get to know the community before sharing your own links. If your first post is a link to your website it’s pretty obvious what your intentions are.

It’s called a community for a reason, don’t join a community for purely selfish reasons. A Google Plus community can be very beneficial to you and your website, but you have to give something back in return.

Here’s everything else you need to know about G+ communities, and where you can go to browse all active communities to find one that’s relevant to your business.

Wrapping It Up

As you can see from this post, using Google Plus for business can benefit you in ways that other networks can’t. It doesn’t require nearly the time commitment of other networks either.

There are some clear distinctions between what Google Plus can and can’t do.

With Local Pages you can get found by customers through better visibility in search results. With Authorship, you can establish authority and credibility with your content and improve your SEO. With Communities you can engage with great people, drive traffic to your website and get the social signals you need to build your Author Rank.

These three things combined will turn your business into a Google-dominating, traffic-generating powerhouse!

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Sharing content from others

Now, suppose I were to tell you that you don’t always have to create your own content. Sharing content from others can be just as effective and valuable to your audience as if you had written it yourself.

This is called content curation. Connecting with communities and building influence in a way that grows your business can be achieved with a strategy that balances curated and original content. In this post, I’m going to discuss the value of curated content and give you some actionable tips to easily implement this tactic as part of your social media strategy.

What is content curation?

Content curation is a form of content marketing. It involves gathering content relevant to your niche and adding value in the form of personal opinions and expertise before sending it to your target audience. As more content continually floods the web, more businesses need to take on the role of making sense of what we really should be paying attention to. Today, we are drowning in information. Filtering through it and organizing it is a valuable service for your customers and clients. Content curation is as important to social media as content creation. We need both.

Creation versus curation

There are clear benefits to both content creation and curation. There’s no correct answer to whether you should focus on one more than the other. It’s important to mix curated content with original content. Don’t rely on the curated content alone. Curated content should only be used in addition to, not instead of, original content. A mix of both helps companies achieve a number of online marketing objectives, including creating awareness, building thought leadership and attracting new business.

Here are some benefits of both content creation and curation to help you decide on a mix that’s right for your business.

Benefits of content curation

• Efficient, topically focused collection of information that appeals to customers looking for a single source on a topic.
   
• Grows awareness of your business as an authority on your topic.
   
• Collecting and sharing content from influential members of your community can help get you noticed by them, resulting in mentions, follows or even referrals.
   
• Keeps prospects engaged as part of your lead-generation efforts.

Benefits of content creation

• Builds thought leadership through original ideas and insights into your industry.
   
• Communicates your business’s unique voice, opinions and personality in a way that you control.
   
• Allows you to tell compelling stories about your business’s success in serving customers.
   
• Provides material that moves prospects further through the buying cycle.
   
• Provides material for others to share, including customers, prospects, employees, journalists and industry bloggers.

Having a mix of new and curated content demonstrates thought leadership and expertise by providing useful industry news and original articles about your products and services in a way that’s helpful to customers.

How to curate content

Curating content can be as simple as clicking one of the social sharing icons on an article that you are reading. However, it can be even simpler than that. Automating part of your content curation will help you save a lot of time. Just remember that pure automation is not the answer; there’s nothing engaging about a Twitter account on auto-pilot.

Wrapping it up

These are just a few suggestions. Ultimately the best ideas for content creation and curation will come from a specific analysis of your own industry and target market. Be mindful of the usefulness of the content you share and make sure to empathize with your customers’ interests and goals. The key is to put in the effort of understanding what motivates your customers and to assemble a compelling mix of curated and original content to inspire them to engage and buy.

As always, you have the last word. Is content curation part of your social media strategy? Do you plan to do more of it after reading this post? Let me know in the comments section!

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

A typical Facebook user has hundreds of connections, including their friends and other pages they’ve “liked." If each of their connections is posting a couple of times a day, there is some pretty stiff competition for a prime spot in their newsfeed. Facebook uses an algorithm called EdgeRank to sort through these posts to determine which ones are most relevant to the individual. Updates from pages with which a person regularly interacts are considered to be the most relevant. These updates get pushed to the top.

Some good news is that if your Facebook reach is low, it’s possible to improve it by working on boosting fan engagement. How do you do that? Well, in this post, I’m going to discuss more details about the factors that go into determining EdgeRank as well as describe the types of posts that tend to generate the most engagement.

It’s all about reach

Reach is the number of people who have actually seen your content. Facebook makes it very easy to monitor reach by displaying the number at the end of each post.

It’s critical to encourage regular interaction from fans in order to increase Facebook reach.

In order for people to continue to see your updates in their newsfeed, they have to somehow express interest when they see one of your posts.

Reach is influenced by these factors:

• Liking, sharing or commenting on a post.
• Clicking on a link.
• Viewing the full size of a photo.
• Watching a video.
• Clicking the “See More” link at the end of a long post.
   

Whenever one of these actions occurs, Facebook’s algorithm reads it as a sign that you want to see more from the page that published the post. These numbers are represented in Facebook Insights by the “Engaged Users” and “Talking About This” metrics. It’s important to monitor these numbers; the higher they are, the better your future reach will be. So now that you know what goes into influencing your reach on Facebook, let’s talk about the types of posts that are effective at increasing it.

Types of posts that boost engagement

Image posts

Image posts will almost always do better than any other. Images automatically get much better placement in a user’s newsfeed. Everything being equal, adding an image to a post will increase engagement on its own. Images also take up more real estate in the newsfeed. Compared with a plain text post, images are far more visible and compelling for users to click on. If you get creative, you can find a way to add an image to just about anything.

Attention grabbing posts

Start your post strong, get to the point quickly and wrap it up in a few sentences or less. With a website, you have just ten seconds to grab your reader’s attention; on social media, you have even less time. You need to command attention with a strong opening and communicate what you need to say in as few words as possible. Be mindful of the fact that users have dozens of items in their newsfeed to go through. If you don’t capture their interest in the first few words, they’ll just move on to something else.

Posts with a strong call to action

It’s easy to boost engagement just by asking for it. Try ending your posts with a call to action that asks your fans to either leave a comment, share or like your post. Sometimes people just don’t know what to do with a post after they’ve seen it. Adding a simple call to action gives them some direction for what to do next. You’d be surprised at how well this works.

Educational posts

One of the primary reasons why someone likes a business’s page on Facebook is because they want more information about products and services. Be a valuable resource to your Facebook fans by giving them the information that they’re looking for. You know what problems your customers are facing better than anyone else. You know what benefits they’re seeking. Use this knowledge, combined with your expertise in your field, to provide helpful solutions to customers. If you can solve their problems and teach them something new they’ll be more than happy to thank you by liking, sharing or commenting on your posts.

Humorous posts

When people go on Facebook they go there to relax, unwind and be entertained. Funny, light-hearted posts tend to go over extremely well. Knowing what you know now about the effectiveness of image posts, you can imagine the kind of engagement numbers you’ll draw with humorous graphics, comics or memes. Go try it, it’s fun.

Short questions

Questions are great for so many things, including increasing reach. I really enjoyed writing about them in a previous blog post where I talked about how you can dramatically boost engagement on Facebook by asking questions. Rather than repeating it all, I encourage you to please read "The Secret No One Told You About Increasing Social Media Engagement".

Conclusion

Facebook reach is determined by the amount of people who regularly interact with your updates. Reach can be increased through encouraging regular interaction between your Facebook fans with compelling and engaging posts. This is by no means meant to be a comprehensive list of the  types of Facebook posts that you can make, but it’s a great starting point to do your own testing and see what works for your audience. Every Facebook page is a bit different.

What do you find works best for your Facebook page? What types of posts tend to result in the most engagement? Let me know in the comments section!

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

Businesses have been getting great results and increased buzz about their products and services by tapping into influencer marketing. Simply put, influencer marketing is the concept of giving your products or services to someone who has an audience of some size and value that you'll stand to benefit from.

What you as a business stands to gain from influencer marketing is some attention from your influencer's audience and some word-of-mouth buzz from the influencer talking about your products and services.

By reaching out to influencers and getting them to talk about your products and services, you're getting around the problem of traditional marketing not working anymore. By adopting an influencer marketing strategy, you're using the power of peer reviews to sell your products and services. This post will go into detail explaining how to adopt such a strategy and why it might be beneficial for your business.

Traditional Marketing Is on the Way Out

The digital and online worlds are putting an end to traditional marketing just as quickly and decisively. Traditional marketing tactics just aren't working as well as they used to anymore, and the fundamentals are becoming outdated.

Consumers aren't paying attention to traditional marketing as much as they used to. When you look at how the buying cycle has changed, you'll see that traditional methods are simply not relevant anymore.

Buyers used to get their information from advertisements either through television, radio, newspapers, magazines, etc. Now buyers are consuming product and service information in their own way. They've turned to the Internet, peer reviews and word-of-mouth to make informed buying decisions.

Replacing the Traditional Model

Social media and digital marketing are poised to replace the old traditional marketing model. Peer-influenced marketing is on the rise and is what will continue to resonate with most consumers.

When someone is looking to make a major purchase of a new product or service, they're probably not going to make their decision based on just what a salesman or the company website tells them. The most influential people during this decision-making process are the consumer's peer network of friends and family.

What businesses need to do is develop a strategy that uses social media to create a community-oriented buying experience. Provide an extended peer network for the buyer that can provide real information and advice based on their own personal experiences with the product or service.

How to Make the Change to Influencer Marketing

Using peer influence to your advantage as part of your social media marketing strategy starts with identifying your influencers.

Who are your influencers?

An influencer is someone who is well respected. An influencer is someone who has a large peer network of people who know and trust his or her opinions. Ideally, an influencer is someone who has openly spoken out in favor of your business at some point in time.

Create a community of these influencers and give them something to talk about. How? By rewarding them through increasing their influence and reputation.

Create a Community of Influencers

Creating a community of influencers can be achieved through offering some incentive to participate. Establish a reward system among your social media community that encourages people to share feedback about your company, comment on posts, retweet messages, help others who have questions, etc.

The reason why you want to do this is because feedback and opinions from real people are more influential than anything you could say as a company. Essentially, you want to get your customers talking for you as much as possible.

Through consistent social media monitoring, you can determine who is most influential in your community based on who is contributing the most to your social media pages. These are the influencers whom you'll be rewarding later.

Rewarding Your Influencers

Through traditional marketing, influencers are often rewarded monetarily either through discounts, cash or free products and services. New marketing doesn't work that way.

In today's marketing world, customers want to be rewarded through recognition. They want to be rewarded in a way that helps them expand their network and increases their reputation. One way that you could go about this is to introduce a Facebook and Twitter Fan of the Month feature.

Whoever is the most influential during the month would become the Fan of the Month. This is where you could give them the recognition that they crave (and deserve). Create a write up about them and talk about all of the awesome things they do. Spotlight them in your Facebook cover photo or Twitter biography. Encourage your followers to follow them.

All of this will help them expand their network and increase their reputation. The recognition is their reward for being your greatest advocate throughout the month. You could stop there if you want, or you could take it a bit further and give them even more.

Get Your Influencers Talking

Rewarding influencers with free stuff isn't totally outdated. However, instead of rewarding them with a free product or service that anyone else could get, give them the VIP treatment. Try rewarding them by offering them the first look at a brand new product or service offering.

This is more meaningful since you're creating a sense of exclusivity. You're giving them the chance to experience something before anyone else does. Essentially, you're giving them bragging rights and a reason to talk about your products and services to others.

If they have a positive experience, they'll be raving about your brand new product or service, which will create buzz and have others excited to purchase it for themselves. Also, once it becomes known that your Fan of the Month occasionally gets exclusive free stuff it will have others trying even harder to achieve that recognition. And the influence marketing cycle continues.

Conclusion

Influence marketing is replacing traditional marketing because people are making buying decisions based on peer influence rather than corporate advertising. Social media is the ideal platform to launch an influence marketing campaign.

Identifying your influencers, rewarding them and getting them talking about your products and services is the foundation for a successful influence marketing campaign.

How do you feel about influencer marketing? Do you think it's one that could work for your business? Let us know in the comments!

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

You really can't prevent people from saying bad things about you. If they're going to say it online, chances are they're already saying it to their friends. You may think that since they're saying it on a public forum that it will reflect poorly on your company, but that's not necessarily true.

With social media, you have the opportunity to turn vocal critics into raving fans. You can also show others how attentive you are when it comes to customer service and establish yourself as a social business that truly cares about customer feedback.

Negative Feedback Is Better Than No Feedback

The worst response that you can get from your customers is indifference. The people who are going out of their way to openly say negative things about you are actually more valuable to your company than people who are sitting back and saying nothing at all. This may sound crazy but you'll soon understand why.

These people really want to like your business, there's just something about it that they're not pleased with. Most of the time, they're just customers with a simple complaint. Every business has to deal with customers like this.

If you take the time to understand their issues, respond to their complaints and satisfy their needs, they'll go from being critics to being happy customers. Instead of openly complaining about you they'll use that energy to praise your excellent service. Customers love getting personal attention. Essentially,  you can turn a critic into a brand ambassador by responding to them rather than ignoring them.

Customer Service Is A Big Part of Social Media

These days, when customers have a question or complaint, they are more likely to contact you through social media rather than e-mail, phone or a contact form on your site. By actively monitoring and responding to them you're providing great customer service and building a strong relationship with your customers.

Since social media is very public, you also have the added benefit of people seeing you providing this service. As a result, you're enhancing brand reputation and establishing your company as a social business.

Everyone likes to think that they run a perfect business, but the truth is that every business has issues. By making yourself receptive to customer concerns on social media you may be introduced to issues that you weren't even aware of.

This presents you with the opportunity to be proactive in modifying certain aspects of your business to prevent complaints in the future. There's always room for improvement; think of this as research and development!

Conclusion

Social media critics can be good for your business. As long as their complaints are reasonable, just respond to them as you would with any other customer service issue. This can be beneficial by turning critics into brand ambassadors, establishing yourself as a social business, enhancing your reputation and facilitating research and development.

What's your experience with critics on social media? What is your strategy for responding to them? Please let us know by adding a response in the comments section.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.