Google+ for Businesses – How to Use It Effectively

While it remains to be seen how Google+ for business will develop, right now Google + already offers some useful marketing application that can help your company or brand expand its audience and visibility. Google + is available for individuals as well as for businesses.

One thing that makes Google + for businesses appealing is that Google + content has made it into Google’s search results. (see screen shot below). Using Google+ effectively will give you the opportunity to be seen again and again by your prospects and clients as they are using Google’s search engine.

For example, I see the following search results when I search for “SEO” on Google.com:

The areas in red are Google + results. Since both Aaron Wall, Rand Fishkin and Danny Sullivan are in my circles, I see content they have shared on Google +.

Increased visibility of your brand on Google

To add people to your circles click the “cirlce” icon on top of the screen.

As you can see adding your prospects and clients to your circles can be a great way to give your company additional visibility on Google. It reminds your prospects of your existence and might just entice them to contact you regarding your products or services as they are searching on Google.

Use Circles to Establish Ties with Your Customers
Using Google+ Circles intelligently allows you to put your connections into various categories. For example, you can create circles for existing customers, prospective customers and team members.

Using Google’s Hangouts
The Hangouts feature is not what you may call a professional business tool – it’s much too casual for that. Nevertheless, if you use it creatively, you may turn it into a promising business tool. You can use it to stage a live Q&A session held by someone within your company, or perhaps to announce the release of a hot new service.

What You Can Do with Google+ for Business Right Now
It’s clear that Google+ for business can be used as an additional means to reach customers in addition to Twitter and Facebook. Whether Google+ will come to be just as important as the latter two for business is hard to say. The best thing to do with your Google+ business page right now is to improve it and then build your audience using the tools referred to above.

More business tools are rumored to be implemented in Google+ for business, including a whiteboard, document sharing, calendar integration, and a meeting function. But until these are implemented, businesses have to make the most of the existing tools.

Typically the terms virus in relation to computers is not a good thing. But when it comes to using social media and search engine optimization, having content on your site go viral can be a fantastic thing. Viral content, that is information on your site that causes others to become interested enough to share it with their friends can produce several links back to your site and improve your ranking on search engines. In addition to building links, these articles can help establish you as an expert.
Be mindful as to what type of content you post on your website. Information about your services generally doesn’t incite others to share your articles and won’t go viral. But sharing something that is of real value or provokes thought or controversy will.
You can attract comments and shares by producing thought-provoking information that is well-written or even something that is funny or controversial, provided it relates to your audience. It should inspire others to share with their friends.
Consider some of the recent comments made by Warren Buffet who stated that the rich should be taxed more than they are. Surprising articles like these have the potential to go viral and would be a good topic for a tax firm trying to develop content that is sharable.. His viewpoint goes against the traditional thinking that all millionaires are notoriously stingy and the idea that they would be willing to spend more on income taxes goes against common thinking. This type of information provokes others to share on a “you won’t believe this” thought plane.
Another important aspect is to make sure that it is easy for your visitors to share your content on Facebook, Twitter, StubleUpon and so on. Make sure you are adding media buttons on your articles. You can accomplish this by adding plugins such as www.addthis.com to your blog or website.
Lastly, here are some interesting stats to give you ideas and help you maximize the chances your content will be shared on the web:
• People tend to share the most around 9:30 Eastern Time
• 75% of clicks on a shares will happen within the first day that the content is shared
• Most users click within 2 minutes of a share
• Most shared content on Facebook in 2011: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=283221585046671
• Most shared video ads in 2011: http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/1108534/campaign-viral-video-chart/
• Most shared stories on LinkedIn in 2011: http://blog.linkedin.com/2011/12/22/linkedin-today-2011/

Google+ for Businesses and the Freshness Update

Google introduced Google+ Pages for Business, which presents yet another opportunity for businesses with an online presence to market themselves through social media. Around the same time the Internet giant revealed more about the important algorithm update now known as the Freshness Update, which was also introduced at around the same time with Google+ for Business.

What is the Freshness Update?

Google’s freshness update is an attempt from Google to show more up to date content on its first page search result. While the full extent the update’s impact remains uncertain, it’s obvious that it already affects searches centered on current hot topics, current release dates, and significant recent events.

According to Google this change will affect 35% of queries that fall in to that category.

The update is not likely to change the SERP visibility of websites that provide useful content. It should actually help them, provided that they also update their content regularly.

It appears that Google is likely grabbing fresh content from RSS feeds. So, having an RSS feed on your site is obviously a must have. Another metric that Google is definitely considering is the “last modified date” in the xml sitemap. So, keep your xml sitemap up to date.

Another relevant aspect for Google to evaluate the importance of the article is the level of social media sharing on Facebook, Twitter and now of course Google +.

What Marketers Should Do

The Freshness Update encourages us not only to publish updated content more often, but also to share it.

Use the update to your advantage by:

• Creating a blog if you don’t have one, and frequently write content
• Implementing a XML sitemap and adding RSS feeds.
• Devising a sharing strategy. Publishing content alone is not enough. You must share it. The most basic thing to do here is to add essential social media sharing buttons on your website. These buttons will encourage your readers to share your material.

• Expand your social media presence. Chances are you’re already on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. But that’s not enough. Google+ Pages for Businesses have become just as important.

Back in 2009, Google launched a service coined “Google Social Search”.  Those Google Social Search results appeared on the bottom of Google’s first page. Google has recently updated this feature to show “Google Social Search” results mixed with organic search results. In other words, we will start seeing first page search results not just based on website relevancy but also based on postings from people in our own network of online friends – assuming you are logged in to your Google account. In addition to that, Google might also show you if a person in your network has publicly shared a link related to your search query.

Below is an example of a mixed search result showing a person in your network that has blogged about a related topic:

Below is an example of a mixed search result showing a person in your network who has shared a related article on Twitter:

How to take advantage of these recent Google updates?

Using Facebook and Twitter
This recent development goes to show us that Social Media Marketing is increasingly gaining importance. To take advantage of these recent developments, get in to the game of soliciting online social media interaction by setting up Facebook and Twitter accounts, attracting followers with a strong presence on those profiles and actively pushing relevant informative and interesting content to your followers.

Adding a blog to your website
Unlike static website pages, blogs are part of the social media environment and as such can help you take advantage of the ever increasing importance of Social Media Marketing. Blogs offer an easy and informal method of regularly communicating and interacting with your customers.  Your blog post can now appear on “Google’s Social Search” results if the person who is searching is in your social media network.

Adding Social Media Sharing Buttons

Another great way to increase the likelihood that your products and services appear on “Google Social Search” is to set up Media Sharing Buttons like www.addthis.com on your website. Social Sharing Buttons make it easy for your visitors to share your content or products. With the event of “Google Social Search”, this sharing activity can now be seen on Google’s search results and help drive more traffic to your website.

More info on how Google Social Search works: