Google Plus Marketing Tips
A lot of internet marketers give less attention to Google Plus marketing; it may not be as popular as Facebook and Twitter, but it actually provides more powerful SEO value that can help boost your web traffic. Google+ has been around for quite some time now, yet many people are still quite confused on what this social media network is all about and how it works.
Google+ has been designed right from the start as a social network rich in multi-media features that allow you to post exciting photos, contents, video files, and more. It is aimed to make online sharing more like real-life sharing of your interests and thoughts with your friends. It is optimized for mobile users as well.
What is even more interesting is that Google+ has already amassed more than 400 million worldwide subscribers within just a span of less than 2 years. This makes it one of the fastest growing social media today. Consequently, it is a good reservoir of prospects, giving you greater chances of expanding the visibility of your business to your target audience.
4 Main Highlights of Google+
Google+ has many similar features with Facebook, but is also has a couple of unique components that will give you distinct social media user-experience. Three of the main highlights are as follows:
Google+ Circles
This feature allows you to get in touch with selected groups of people. You can create different circles for your various groups of friends. One circle can be your neighborhood friends, and another circle is composed of office associates. You can also create a circle for your family members, cousins, and all relatives.
Circles are normally for private discussions restricted only to the members. Sharing of interests is likewise confined within the circle, and they are not available in public. It’s no wonder that many people dubbed Google+ as a sort of a ghost town because if you don’t belong to a circle then you are aloft.
The Circles is ideal for business corporations since teams can discuss business matters that are highly confidential only to the specific team. You can create a management circle, a managers’ circle, and an employees’ circle. In fact, you can interact with all members of the circle as if you are having an online meeting discussing about important business matters.
This is also perfect for personal use. You can share your photos and videos about your family trips and activities with your relatives located in distant places, and constantly communicate with your family members situated abroad. You will feel as if you are talking and sharing right in front of your loved ones even if you are a world apart.
If you are a marketer, you can ask your customers or prospects to join your circle to get regular updates from you, or to get updated on your promotional offers and discount bargains. This works like a higher form of list building because you will not only be able to send regular ‘email’ article to your members but also interact with them live online.
This is, therefore, perfect for building branding image because you will be able to build credibility and trust among circle members as you keep on interacting with them on regular basis.
Google+ Hangout
This is one of the distinct features that are perfect for businesses. The Hangout gives you the chance to have a live video conference with the circle members. While the maximum number of people who can attend to the live video chat is 10, you can leverage on the power of the Hangout to provide a webinar to a selected people.
The Hangout is also perfect for team business presentations, especially if you have a business proposal to present to the board members or to the management team consisting of 10 members or less. You can also share your screenshots with them and show to your audience your slide presentation.
For marketers, you can take advantage of the hangout in giving live online events to your prospects by batch of 10. This will tremendously enhance your marketing campaign because your prospects will have a live presentation of your business proposal, or to your product presentation.
Google+ Events
Another exciting component is the Events. This is a perfect feature for marketers because you can invite customers and prospects to live and online events. For live events, you can promote your event here, sell the tickets, or simply ask people to join a free event for you to interact with them and present something that is of interest to your audience.
You can also post the pictures before, during, and after the event to encourage others to join your future activities. This is one of the great ways to get more people to join your circle and build your brand image.
Articles and Blog Posts
This is one of the features that marketers must take advantage of. You can share your blog posts here, and even add an article where your circle of friends can see and read. To make it more effective, make your article title very appealing and eye-catching in order to easily grab the attention of others. More importantly, set your articles to public view in order to expose it to a much bigger readership.
You can also provide a preview of your blog post and add a link to the post for the full article. Thus, you can use Google Plus through this feature as an excellent referral platform for your main website.
On top of getting direct referral from your articles posted in Google+, you can also create powerful backlinks during the process. Since this is a highly-respected social community and it is also owned by Google, therefore placing a couple of links from this source will definitely add more SEO value to your webpage. By posting some articles, you can hit two birds with one stone – direct referral and backlinks.
Google+ still has many features to explore, but the above major components are the ones that you must give due attention because they can significantly improve your promotional campaign.
Achieving Success in Google Plus
Keep in mind that Google+ is still a social media network. So achieving success is typical in most social networks, such as joining more circles and getting many followers.
Without people following you, it is going to be a lonely place inside Google Plus. So, once you are in then you must start building your follower-base and commence engaging in many discussions by commenting on the shares of other people. You must also share your interests with your circle of friends and spark a discussion with them in order to speed up the building of your brand image.
Your shares must be interesting and they should not be highly commercialized. People are put-off by advertisements. So, don’t advertise your products in your posts. The secret to success is not direct advertising but indirect marketing, which is offering your products as good solutions to the primary issues you are talking about in your posts and articles.
To monitor the progress of your campaign, it is important to track your analytics in order to see if your Google+ marketing strategies really worked well for your target niche. Split-test your strategies using the different features of Google+ and find out which of the above features are suitable in your case in capturing well targeted traffic to your website.
