4 Tips for Using Google+ to Boost Your Marketing

Google+ marketing. That’s probably something you’re not overly familiar with. Who uses Google Plus for business? Everyone uses all of the internet giant’s other tools, but for some reason, Google+ seems to have slipped through the cracks. Or has it?

Google+ has over 150 million active monthly users, and 50% of its users sign on daily. Wow! So with that much activity, maybe Google+ is a good place for businesses after all.

Not only is marketing on Google+ a good idea, it is a great idea! There are tremendous advantages that G+ has over other social networks, like its influence on SEO, and some incredible tools that can’t be found elsewhere, like Google Hangouts and Google Plus Ripples.

Using Google Plus for your business can be an amazing way to reach a new audience, boost your SEO, and increase sales. In this post we’re going to take a look at 8 marketing tips for Google Plus.

The very first thing you’re going to want to do when you start your Google Plus business page is to personalize it for your brand. Only once your page has been personalized will you be ready to get started with your marketing.

1.Personalize Your Profile

You want your About Page to really stand out, show your business’ personality, and to direct your page viewers towards relevant pages on your website.

To achieve this you need to do three things: 1) Describe your business as clearly as possible 2) Try to include references to your company culture, or write your description in a way that shows who you are as a business 3) Hyperlink text as a call to action for people to click through to your site.

Claim a Google Plus Page Custom URL

Google recently added the option to give your Google Plus page a custom, personalized URL. This is a great way for you to brand your page by making your URL company related, rather than a random string of numbers:

2. Build a Relevant Community on Google

As with any social network, in order for your marketing to be effective you need to build a community around your page. It’s not enough to just have any community though, you want to have a community that is relevant to your niche.

There are a few great ways you can build up your Google Plus Community.

See if Anyone is Talking About Your Business

The very first thing you should do is to search through Google+ to see if anyone is mentioning your business. Obviously if your page is already established this will be a bit easier, because usually people will have tagged you in the post.

Otherwise, a good place to start is in the Google Plus search bar. By searching here you can find people who have mentioned your company name even without having tagged you in the post:

Use Google Ripples to See Who is Sharing Your Content

When people share your content, they don’t always necessarily credit you (as was just mentioned), so that means that your content could be getting shared left and right and you’d have no idea!

Thanks to Google Plus Ripples you can now locate and trace all of these shares. Here’s how it works. Let’s say you find someone who shared your content, but didn’t tag you in it. You can click on the black downward arrow in the top right corner of the post in order to get the drop down menu.

3. Post Regularly to Build an Audience and Promote Your Page

As you continue building up your community, you are going to want to start posting consistently to your page. After all, if people are going to add you to their circles you are going to want to provide them with some quality content.

If you are struggling with keeping your content flowing you should consider using an automation tool like HootSuite.

You should be sure to interact with anyone who shares your content. Leave a comment or at least give it a +1 In order to show that you appreciate the share.

There are a few ways you can increase the interaction with your posts:

Use Hashtags

Hashtags are great because they categorize your posts, meaning that anyone can discover what you write as long as they search for that hashtag. Google will usually automatically give your post one or two hashtags, but you can add as many as you want on your own.

Use the Custom Formatting Options

Unlike other social networks, Google Plus lets you customize how your text will appear! That means you can bold, italicize, or strike through text in your posts. You can use this to get your message across clearer, or to draw attention to certain parts of your post.

Here’s how you can do the formatting:

• Bold = *Word*
• Italics = _Word_
• Strike Through = -Word-

Just like that you can make your post really stand out! For example, check out how the bolded “Look” acts as a call to action on this post:

 

4. Utilize Google Plus Local for Local Businesses

Google Plus offers an amazing feature for local businesses that can help them in many different ways. This feature is very similar to having a local business page on Facebook. It enables you to set your location, business type, and more.

Ratings and Reviews

Customers can leave ratings and reviews which will be seen by other people that visit your page. These reviews act as social proof on top of social proof, because not only are they reviews, but the reviews will be shown to people who have the reviewers in their circles. Meaning they will see reviews written by people they know.

You should always encourage your fans to review your business. You can even incentivize it for them, by offering them something in exchange for a review.

Search Results

Your business can be boosted in the search results both within Google Plus and on Google itself.

On Google Plus users can search on Google Local by location for their desired business. For example, here I searched for clothing stores near NYC:

 

By ensuring your location is put in correctly, including all of your contact info, and using keywords, you can boost your business in the local results.