Partner Article

The 10 commandments of Google Plus for business

I’ll fess up. Google Plus is my favourite social media platform. Arrest me, officer, writes James Day, social media & community manager at Ingenious Britain.

It may seem an odd choice, given Google Plus’ relative impact in the social media world compared to the likes of Twitter and Facebook (even if it does boast supposedly 540 million active users per month), and given its comparatively low growth compared to something like Pinterest or Instagram. Plus, it’s flippin’ confusing when you first try to understand it. There are so many features.

But, like a complex maths puzzle or a Cryptic Crossword, when you master Google Plus the feeling is euphoric; and, unlike a complex maths puzzle or a Cryptic Crossword, there can be a positive demonstrative impact upon your business’ well-being if you get it right. The task is to ensure that you know what works on the platform, and the opportunities it offers.

So, here are 10 things you should be doing to maximise the potential Google Plus offers, and thus maximising the benefits it can offer your business (I’ll apologise in advance, because this is quite long, but I hope it’s thoroughly worth it and will inspire you to be a bit creative with the platform):

1) Thou shalt soup up your profile (personal and business)

Your first port of call should be your personal profile. If you’re affiliated with your business (which you hopefully are), the first thing people usually do is investigate who else is associated with the business and scout them out. So, ensure that you’ve filled in the below (I’ve offered some quick-fire suggestions as to what you may want to include under each section):

• Story section (Tagline = short and pithy, full of keywords; introduction = more detail, add in some more personal details, keywords; bragging rights = qualifications, achievements, bit of fun);
• Work section (Occupation, skills, employment - stick the ‘employment’ section full of keywords about your current position, what the company does, how it helps customers, examples of how it’s helped customers);
• Education (some people like to know that sort of thing - please don’t put ‘University of Life’ though);
• Places (Can be useful for Local SEO and Google Places);
• Contact information (So you’re easily contactable via phone, email or letter);
• Links (really important - include your website links, as well as some other websites you use to gain information/inspiration from; make sure you’re au fait with Google Authorship so you can include the ‘Contributor to’ section - more on that below; and include your other social profiles on there as well so others can access them - your YouTube channel should sync automatically, but ensure that it’s the right one (i.e. your personal or your business YouTube account) before you confirm it!

And, generally, for your business’ page, the same rules apply. Provide as much information to your customers as you possibly in a can, which makes you seem professional, helpful and of use to your following as possible, without being too ‘pally’. Ensure you use keywords (the Google Keywords Planner tool is useful for this), but not so that it disrupts the flow of your content - reading it aloud is always a good way to check.

However, make sure you:

• Integrate your website with Google Plus. You will have to ‘verify’ your account by inputting a small amount of code into your website, but it’s a small thing to do to have your website included at the top of your profile.
• Choose a background image which anchors your business, which is the right dimensions (keep in proportion to 480x270 pixels and you should be fine). It may be a general image which corresponds to your logo, or you could use the space creatively to promote latest offers, new events, or include testimonials. It’s your choice!
• Have the correct YouTube account linked to your profile. I’ve been victim to this - make sure your business profile isn’t connected to a personal YouTube account because you cannot change it after. So check, and double check.
• Personalise your Google+ URL. Google will provide you a suggestion based on the website you’ve attached to the account. If you think it feels ‘right’ then take it. If it’s a load of unconnected words, stay put. Google will probably expand the service in the near future.

2) Thou shalt join (or manage) communities

Forget Linkedin groups - Google+ communities are a much, much more pleasing way to contribute to, or manage, a community. I’ve found that people on Google Plus are a lot more ‘engageable’ and evangelical about the platform as on other social media platforms (possibly because spammers haven’t hit it yet) - so Ingenious Britain garner a lot more interest on our Google Plus community than our Linkedin Group (and it’s grown twice as quickly).

If you’d like some more information about the benefits of managing a community for your business, I’ve detailed the differences between ‘community’ and ‘social media’ and how you can set up a community here for your reference. But believe me, if you’re willing to put the time in, it can be a hugely positive step for your business’ marketing strategy.

However, if you’re not ready for a public community, you can create private communities which you can use as a forum for your employees to share ideas and knowledge.

If you decide community management isn’t right for your business though, then you must take an active role in communities. There are communities for every conceivable interest or business sector (believe me, I’ve seen some strange ones out there), and they provide a great platform for taking part in discussions, establishing new relationships and sharing content. Find them using Google’s search bar (let’s not forget, search is their forte), join and introduce yourself. You’ll find they’re a lot less intimidating and ‘hard-sell’ than groups you may encounter in Linkedin.

If you want to start off your communities journey, then join the IB community; it’s a friendly, useful and really informative small business group which should stand you in good stead for further Google Plus activity, as well as providing some great tips on everything from SEO to filling out tax forms.

3) Thou shalt Hang Out (and make the most of the consequent video)

One of the best and most exciting features of Google Plus are Hangouts. They’re essentially video conference calls, but with a little twist.

Standard Hangouts will allow you to have a private video conversation with up to 10 people - which is great. However, what makes them great is, if you’re using Google Drive, you can collaborate on documents as you go in real time with one of the plug-ins. So, you can collaboratively work on writing the minutes for a meeting, finish a website plan together, or check the company accounts in real time. Very cool.

Hangouts on Air, however, are where it really gets exciting. Here, you can let your creative juices run wild - because Hangouts on Air make these videos public (i.e. anyone can watch in), and are saved as a YouTube video afterwards (making it doubly important that you connect the right YouTube account, as described in Commandment #1). So - have a think about:

• Public webinars. There’s a plug-in called ‘Q&A’ which will allow viewers to ask questions in real-time to whoever is presenting; you can use screenshare if you’re need visual aides or you’re not confident presenting yourself to the public; you can create Hangout ‘events’ which allow you to let your following know of the Hangout and click attending so they receive all of the updates, plus reminders to their G+ and Gmail.
• Product demos. Providing a video demonstration of how your product can be used (or can be used more effectively) will give you some great video content as well as offering something useful to your customers to make the most of what you’re offering.
• Interactive Q&A sessions with employees. For clients, customers and the general public who may want to know what goes on behind the scenes of the company, what the business offers, and what you’ve got in the pipeline for the future. You can structure these like an FAQ session to generate useful video content as well.

What makes this even more brilliant (as if you weren’t bursting out of your seat with excitement anyway) is that, rather than doing these things via traditional social media, which is very transient and has a short shelf-life, Hangouts on Air provide you with both real-time (live video) and long-term tangible content (YouTube video) you can use over and over again to refer customers to, via the video (such as the FAQs mentioned above). Which is pretty awesome.

4) Thou shalt make the most of circles

‘Circles’ are Google Plus’ version of Twitter and Facebook’s ‘following’ - but there’s more to them than just a way of collecting followers. They can be used in two really useful ways to help your marketing strategy.

First, you can target different content to specific people. Say, for example, you’re a plumber, and you wanted to offer a special deal to existing customers to keep them from going elsewhere. You can create a Circle for ‘Existing Customers’ and post the promotion privately, explaining that, because they’ve been customers before, you’re offering them this deal - so, only they see it.

If we’re using the plumbing analogy, you could have circles for affiliate marketers, builders, local businesses, estate agents, landlords, general local people, and so on - and you can then target specific posts (be them promotions, content, tips) to whomever you like.

Second, there’s a big fad out there at the moment for ‘Circle Sharing’, in which you collate a set of useful Google Plussers - they could be high engagers, sharers of useful content, or those who are experts in your field of business - put them all into a circle, and share them among your following so they can add them too.

It doesn’t sound like you get a lot of benefit there, but if you ask people for other recommendations to add to the circle, as well as offering the incentive that they’re in this ‘elite’ group, they’re likely to look upon you favourably. However, if nothing else, they’re great at garnering engagement among a diverse selection of your following - and you may get added to someone else’s circle, opening up a whole new world of useful Google Plussers (and potential leads) to you.

5) Thou shalt be a photographer

Google+ loves photos. Possibly more so than any other platform than Instagram. So if you have an important post, then ensure you’ve got an accompanying (relevant) image for it. Not only will it stand out more in people’s timelines, it’ll consequently be more ‘clickable’.

One other point on the ‘aesthetically-pleasing’ front - Google Plus allows you to bold (put text in between * *s *like this*), italicise (between _ _s, _like this_) and strike through (between - -s, -like this-) text, to add a bit of variety and emphasis into posts. These can also be used in the ‘About Me’ section on your profile, so use them to draw attention to certain parts of text. We find it really useful to bold a title for each post (including a CTA within it) and to use italics as a way to indicate emphasis or our own opinions. But the world is your oyster!

6) Thou shalt integrate Google Plus with the ’Google Family’

The Google family is a veritable cavalcade of integrated systems. YouTube comments have recently integrated with Google Plus, for example which are combining both video and social elements. Google is all about integration. And this is why it’s so a) useful and b) vital that you get to grips with it; because with how much power Google has on the web, you need to start playing ball with him to boost your search rankings and so on.

Whilst Google’s treatment of Google Plus is a bit reminiscent of a father unwilling to let his child fail, you need to take a look at each of these and think about how you can use them to bolster your marketing strategy (for which Google Plus is the ‘mothership’):

• Google Maps (Local SEO; ideal for services/consumer businesses with physical premises; allows online reviews).
• Google+ Local (same as above - but don’t get the two mixed up!)
• Google Authorship (enhances ‘clickability’ in search rankings, (debatable) SEO benefits for content) - there’s a guide to implementing Google Authorship here.
• Google Drive - fantastic for collaborative work. It’s also integrated with Hangouts, so your employees can have a video conference and work on a document at the same time.
• Gmail - If you have someone in your Google Plus circles, you can now send them an email without knowing their email address; which can be really useful. More information here.
• YouTube - I’ve already extolled the virtues of video content and Hangouts for small businesses in 2014 - Google Plus should be a primary outlet for the sharing of this content. Comments now are integrated too, so you get a notification every time there’s a comment or a new subscriber to your channel.
• Blogger - Google’s blog service. It’s not as good as something like Wordpress (particularly for plug-ins), but it can be a useful place to post content and then promote with ease to G+.
• Google Search - ensure you use Google+ for what is, at the end of the day, considered its forte - search. You can find great communities, people who work for a specific business, or people with similar interests by using search.
• Google Helpouts - something new and exciting for 2014. I’ve written a blog about them here if you’d like some more information.

Google Plus Business pages have a useful little feature called ‘Dashboard’, which is effectively the control room for your account. On there, you can download sharing buttons for your website, check your notifications, and download some useful mobile features too - so you can integrate cross-platform as well.

7) Thou shalt pay attention to what works (and what doesn’t)

This goes for any marketing activity, but make a note of what kind of content garners engagement and click-throughs to your site and landing pages (use Google Analytics - what else? - to check) and after a while, you’ll have a ‘formula’ you can use for most posts.

Think about using video, images, external content, as well as sharing other people’s content as well, and find out what does and doesn’t work. And then feed that back into your future posts. The best marketing strategies are dynamic, ever-changing and adaptable to changing situations, and you want to ensure yours is no different when it comes to Google Plus.

8) Thou shalt play the long game

Google Plus has been ridiculed for a while now as a ‘flash in the pan’ and a social network which doesn’t really specialise in anything.

But let me ask you this question: Would Google put so much time and effort into something it was going to let fail?

So, it may be a bit slow-going to begin with; it may take you a while to build up a following; you may not see results as quickly as other networks - but stick with it. I promise you, it’ll be worth it in the long-run (think SEO implications, evangelical followings, all these brilliant features allowing you to market creatively).

9) Thou shalt always pay attention to updates and new features

As I mentioned in the introduction (that seems a long time ago, eh?), Google+ can be a bit of a disorientating platform. Part of that is due to the seemingly-constant streams of updates being rolled out - to both features and interface. So it’s always worth following Google Plus on Google Plus to find out the latest updates, as well as scheduling alerts to tell you if any news or blogs come in about the platform.

The earlier you find out about them, the earlier you can try them out and work out how you can best leverage them for your business.

10) Thou shalt be creative

Google Plus is an absolute hive of creative potential. I hope I’ve given you some ideas here, but I’m sure this list is not even scraping the surface. But people on Google love something a little bit different, and to try out new things. At IB, we made the decision to use Hangouts to provide workshops for small businesses - and the feedback, social kudos and video content has been invaluable to our marketing going forward. You can look at our library of videos here and here.

So, if you’re in two minds about giving something a go, just do it. Even if it’s not 100% as successful as it could have been, people on the platform will appreciate the attempt to do something a little bit different.

…and 11) Thou shalt be smug when everyone else jumps on the bandwagon and you’ve got a head-start. Because it will happen.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ingenious Britain .