How to use Google Plus

In our last blog post, we wrote a little about the social media platform, Google+ (also known as Google Plus), and its recent changes including rumours as to whether its demise is imminent. But as we said in that blog post, until we hear otherwise, we are recommending
that all businesses continue (or start) to use Google+ to promote themselves.

So following on from that blog post, we thought we’d bring you a few useful tips and best practices on how to promote your business using Google+.

Complete your profile

First things first, to use Google+, you have to set up an account. If you don’t currently have a business page, click here and follow the steps to create your account.

Once you have your page, it’s important to complete as much of your profile as you can. At the end of the day, people who are on your page want to know as much about your business as possible. So be sure to:

• Add a profile picture (often the company logo is used here)
• Add a cover photo; some businesses use this as an opportunity to showcase some of their products or services. Alternatively, you could add a photo of your team; people like to see friendly faces smiling back at them and it’s a quick way of showing that you’re a real business and your potential customers will be dealing with real people
• Add your contact details; including your full business name, address, telephone number, email address, website address, addresses to your other social media platforms (if applicable)
• Add opening hours (where applicable), particularly if you work from a shop or in an office
• Add your business’ categories, or the keywords people would use to describe what your business does
• Add a keyword optimised description of what you do. As with any content describing your business’ services, you need to ensure it’s informative, unique and contains your important keywords. Don’t overuse (or keyword stuff) these terms; make sure you’re writing your description for the people who are going to visit your page, not for search engines

Google Plus circles

This feature of Google+ can sometimes be made to sound much more complicated than it actually is. But basically, circles are another way of keeping track of who is following you and who you are following. However, to take it one step further, Google allows you to group the people you are following and this is where the circles feature comes in. The groups, or circles, can include friends, family, acquaintances etc, but you can also customise a few of your own, such as colleagues, brands, or competitors (particularly handy if you want to keep an eye on what the competition is doing).

Content

The type of content you can post to Google+ is very similar to that of Facebook; you can post regular status updates, photos and even videos. You can contribute to other people’s content by commenting on it, sharing it to your own page or +1’ing it (similar to liking something on Facebook). Similarly to Twitter, you can keep an eye on what’s trending and also use the hashtag feature to follow a particular subject matter.

There are communities on Google+ where people discuss pretty much any topic you can think of. You know your business better than anyone, so if you can contribute something towards a discussion on your business’ topic, do it! The ramifications could be massive and you could find yourself gaining followers left, right and centre, all of whom would be highly interested in your business and the information you have to offer.

However you choose to use Google+, we would highly recommend posting at least once a day. This way people will continue to return to your page and you are also showing Google that you’re using their platform to promote your business.

Reinforce the relationship

We mentioned above about adding a link to your website from your Google+ page, but now it’s important to do the same in reverse. In order to cement the relationship between your website and your Google+ business page, it’s important that they both contain a link to each other. Not only does this provide good user experience for people who want to visit your website from your Google+ page or vice versa, but it also helps Google to identify and verify that these two are both part of the same entity.

And just to reinforce this further, you should also add a small piece of mark-up to your website known as rel=“publisher”. You can ask your web developer to add this for you. It’s a simple piece of mark-up that essentially tells Google and other search engines that you are the publisher of that specific Google+ page.

Get the word out

Once you’re happy that your Google+ business page is looking its best and you’ve started uploading regular content, it’s time to start telling people about it. You can do this in a number of ways:

• Encourage people over from your other platforms; if you’re using any other social media channels, such as Facebook or Twitter, post a status to these platforms telling people that you’ve recently joined the Google+ network and encouraging them to pop over and add you to their circles so they can keep up to date on your latest news on this platform too. But remember, you need to give these people a reason to want to follow you on here so offer them content that’s different to what they’re already seeing from you on Facebook or Twitter
• Add a coloured social link button to the top of your website
• Mention it at the bottom of your email signature
• If your business involves sending deliveries to customers, insert a small card into the delivery box with information about your new page, the URL address and a call-to-action asking people to follow you
• Collect reviews. One other great thing about Google+ is that other users can leave reviews about your business. So start asking past and present customers and clients, if they were happy with the service or product you provided, whether they would be kind enough to leave you a positive review. Again, this is something you could ask for at the bottom of your email signature or on a small card inside delivery boxes

If used correctly, Google+ can be an effective way to promote your business to a brand new audience and could even support your website’s SEO efforts. Of course, we appreciate you may not necessarily have the time it takes to dedicate yourself to a new social media channel. That’s where we are happy to step in. We run regular social media marketing campaigns tailored to our clients’ individual requirements that are designed to boost brand awareness, encourage people to visit our clients’ websites and attract new business.

To hear more about the social media services we have to offer, please feel free to give us a call and we’ll be happy to have a chat about how we can help you promote your business on Google+ or any other social network.