How To Get the best out of Google+

Social media marketing has always been an excellent way to drive traffic our websites and to our blogs.

As you might know, Facebook and Pinterest are the best referrers for website traffic. However, most of us ignore GOOGLE PLUS/GOOGLE +

Google + overtook LinkedIn four years ago in 2014 in terms of referral traffic. It continually revamps itself to give competition to Pinterest and the other social media Spheres. Google + has always been a favorite to marketers and influencers

Devote serious attention to your profile
As with Facebook, LinkedIn, FutureNet, Twitter and YouTube, It is important to ensure your profile section is filled up with useful information to let people know who you are and what you’re about. Spend a lot of time on this just like you would on your actual website About page.
Use a well-lit headshot
As with Facebook, LinkedIn, FutureNet, Twitter and YouTube, you should actually have a professional photo done, especially if you are using social media to promote a business.
Use keywords you want to be associated with
Use keywords in your profile page if you want to be associated with them for your blog or business. This will become increasingly more important as Google emphasises G+ material in their Google Search in the future.
Circles don't have to have anyone in them.
Create one or more empty circles so that you can share posts to for easy bookmarking. You can create ones like “ op Tips" or “ mages" for your favorite finds, "Drafts" for those Google+ posts that start to turn into more blog-length updates, or "Note" for simply sending yourself stuff.
Similarly, you can create an EverNote (evernote.com which I used to create this tutorial) or Pocket circle with just the email address those services give you to send stuff for saving—so you can easily save Google+ posts to those services
Tag People
Tag people who created or originally shared content when you can. This means they will see your post and often lead to them interacting with you as a result. When you tag someone they will get a notification (unless they have them turned notifications off) so it’s a good way to get in front of people.
Post valuable content on Community pages
This is something Google + users really do not understand. You do not get a much traffic from just posting “public” unless you already have a lot of followers. You need to do is find relevant communities and share content there. These communities are full of people interested in your topics. This will help you tap into group of people that you might otherwise never know you existed.
See a popular post on Twitter and Facebook, cross post it to G+
Ok sometimes people will get sick of seeing your content three times if they are following you on all platforms. Think you should use this one sparingly. Try to find something a little bit different to avoid making people feeling like I’m just spamming my content.
Write a long messages in G+ and then Tweet the link
Want to share a long message on Twitter? Then write the post in G+ and then share the link by posting on Twitter. This has the dual effect of giving you more room as well as showing your Twitter peeps that you are on Google + as well.
Launch a product or service with Google+ Events
This function will automatically email your circles about the launch as well as adding the event to their calendars!!!
Use saved searches
Search for your name or brand in the event that someone mentions you without using the “+” function. A page will open on the home screen and monitors what is being said about you, your business and your work.
Send feedback
Google really are interested in receiving feedback so if you have a problem just shake your iPhone and send them a message.
Treat Google + like a dedicated blog
Yes use Google Plus as if it was your own blog. There is lots of room for writing articles which means you can post quality content and images. You will find that this find this leads to more shares and interactions.
Start a Community
If you cannot find a community (Group) that does not suit you, then start your own and invite people along to it. This has the dual effect of giving your readers a place to hang as well as helping them create content that further exposes your brand product and or service
Comment on others posts
So simple but will help you get in front of the right people and that is to just comment on their posts in an engaging way. So many times people just say “nice post” or “ha ha ha” but if you engage the person, complimenting their posts and thoughts, you’ll find you often get a response or a circle.
Set proper notifications
It is very important that you set proper notifications on the Settings page. If not, your inbox will be full!!!! Just navigate to “SETTINGS” and uncheck the ones you don’t want to see in your inbox. By default, all boxes are checked. So, uncheck them as per your need.
Emphasize Google+ on your blog or website
The Google+ link is hard to find or not even present at all on peoples websites and or Bogs. It is time for blogs to put a little bit more emphasis on Google+, especially given how important it is becoming for SEO. Make sure you link to your G+ profile in a prominent place on your blog, and make sure you also do it when you mention the site in your blog posts.

Driving traffic becomes easier when you have authority. Google + helps you stay in the good books on Google, the search engine and hence more organic traffic.

When you are logged in (which most of your readers are!), Google shows you two out of the ten search results as updates from people in your circle.This is huge if you have a good following or even have a large number of people share your stuff on Google +.

Suppose “Joe Bloggs” wants to search online "Mining BitCoin" on Google. Joe Bloggs might not know you as the a BitCoin Miner but can have you in the search results because someone “Jane Doe” in her circle had read your website and shared it on their Google +.

This might not seem big but still has to do with organic traffic.

To tap further, you have to optimise your website/blog for that extra Google + love.

Steps involved:

a) Add Share buttons: Using Google Plus share button is a good way to tell your readers, where you want them to share it.

b) Add Google Plus Badges: To get more followers, you can leverage your existing website traffic by just adding your google plus profile and page badge on your site. You can also add simple social media profile buttons but adding badges make them more commanding and easy to follow you.

Test and Track your posts

A really important habit to get into is the idea of tracking and testing the different posts that you try on these social networks. Do this by setting a goal for your posts and then researching if you can improve that goal by trying various approaches. If your goal is to drive traffic to your website you can post pictures, videos, articles, long form articles, etc. and see which one results in the most shares or new follows. It’s a good idea not to just blindly post publicly and hope that people see it.

Mix your email campaigns with your Google+ posts

Try once in a while is to mix your email campaigns with your Google+ posts. This is a great way to get new followers to your Google+ accounts. It works in that you write a nice long and helpful post on Google+ as you would on your own blog. Then send out an email to your mailing list letting them know that there’s a new post up but this time it’s over on Google+. The result is usually a lot more followers!!!

Write for search engines

Bloggers will always tell you to write for people and not for search engines!!! This is so untrue. Ok, ok ok, it’s true, but it is only half true. In actual fact, writing for search engines is extremely important and it is even more relevant on Google Plus.

Why?

Well when you are logged in to Google+ you get shown a completely different set of search results to the ones you are shown when you are logged out!!!

Do not forget to #hashtag

You might have the best-formatted posts and excellently designed images, but if no one sees it, you will fail.

Use hashtags the same way you use them in Twitter. The idea is that Google+ acts like it’s own little search engine, the idea being that one day people won’t leave it at all. Hashtagging your posts helps to get them noticed. Using Hashtags in any social network increases the lifetime and reach of your updates. Similarly, you can use relevant hashtags in Google Plus to increase the reach of your posts and hence more traffic If you don’t have any idea of what hashtags to use, you can start typing and Google Plus will autosuggest you the relevant ones. Google Plus also automatically keeps up to 3 hashtags if you don’t have any. HINT: If you want to know which hashtag is yours and what Google has automatically set for you remember, GRAY is by you and Blue is by Google+

With Hashtags, Google Plus might suggest your posts in “What’s hot” section on their platform, thereby showing your posts to way more people, even if they are not connected to you.

Format your posts

Google + is one of the few Social Media Spheres that allows you to customise your posts, makes them more appealing and thus enhance readability. With formatted posts, users can clearly see what they are expected to do.

HOW +1'S WORK
WHEN YOU'RE SURFING AROUND THE WEB, YOU'LL SEE +1 BUTTONS NEXT TO A LOT OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF CONTENT. CLICKING THESE WHEN YOU'RE NOT ON GOOGLE PLUS WILL CAUSE THE LINKS TO SHOW UP IN YOUR STREAM AS SHARED CONTENT. SO IF YOU'RE READING A GREAT BLOG POST AND WANT TO SHARE IT WITH YOUR FOLLOWERS, CLICK THE +1 BUTTON FREELY. WHEN YOU ARE ACTUALLY ON GOOGLE PLUS, HOWEVER, AND LOOKING THROUGH YOUR FRIENDS' SHARED CONTENT, CLICKING THE +1 WORKS DIFFERENTLY. IT DISPLAYS UNDERNEATH THAT POST THAT YOU HAVE +1'ED IT, AND THE PERSON WHO MADE THE POST WILL SEE IT. BUT IT DOES NOT ADD THAT POSTED ITEM TO YOUR OWN STREAM, OR SEND IT OUT TO YOUR FOLLOWERS. YOU CAN SHARE THINGS YOU FIND ON GOOGLE PLUS WITH YOUR FOLLOWERS OR INDIVIDUAL CIRCLES, BUT FOR THAT, YOU HAVE THE CLICK THE SHARE BUTTON, NOT +1
1. How to use text formatting in Google plus to your advantage?
  Google Plus allows you to bold your text highlights to make them eye-catching. You can also use italics, strikethroughs, numbered lists, bullet points or any combination of these styles to make your update resemble your blog posts.
  
  Bold a word or phrase with astericks: *bold*
  Italicize with underscores: _italics_
  Strikethrough something with hypens: -correction-
  
  Use bold headlines to mark your article headline on google plus.
  
  Use the italicized text to give a sleek preview of your post.
  
  Bullet points always help the readers to scan through your post and see what it contains (don’t use if you do not have compelling reasons to do so.)
  
  You can use the bold text again to give a clear call-to-action for your readers. This can be a simple “CTA" to direct your users to read your blog post or even to buy the product
Create a poll
Ask people to vote with a +1.
You write the options in the comments
Then choose "Disable comments" from the dropdown menu so your post is solely a poll.
There's no way to disable voting for multiple options here, this is a nice way to get feedback and encourage interactivity.
Share your circles with others
Like Facebook groups, Google Plus has highly active, close-knit communities which can give you massive exposure. Some of these groups have more than 100K members and have high chances of getting significant traffic if you post valuable posts.

There are groups on almost every niche on Google Plus. You can also create a group for you if you think yours doesn’t fit any community out there. Part of networking and joining in a community is connecting people together. Do this by sharing specific circles with others. Go to People in the left menu, Your Circles, and then click on the circle you want to share. Under the Actions menu, click "Share this circle.” It is probably best to give a heads up to people in that circle you're sharing.

Google Plus will them show you all the collections (we’ll come to this in the next point), communities and direct profile shares. You can always click to view more on Google Plus to see more communities.

You can also become a moderator of a huge group, just ask!

Don’t waste time creating your communities, leverage existing communities to get instant traffic.
Interact with other members, view their shares and build lasting relationships.
Abide by the rules because communities moderators are very strict with spam dealings.
Create a photo slideshow for your profile
Your profile page photo links to an entire photo album—not just your profile photo. This album, you could showcase your creative work, a series of images, whatever you want everyone to see. Click on the left menu and select Profile. Then under the Photos menu, scroll down to Profile Photos, and in the dropdown menu, select "Add photos.”
Use an aminated GIF as your profile pic or cover photo
At the moment as I understand it Google+ is the only social network to let you use animated GIFs in your updates as well as your profile.
Auto backup photos from Android or iPhone
Google+'s automatic backups of your mobile photos is by no means a secret feature, but it is one of the most useful and perhaps under utilised features. Google gives you unlimited storage for standard size photos (up to a tablet-friendly 2048px resolution) you upload, with full resolution photos counting towards your Google Drive's storage space (which comes with a default of 15GB). Turn on the auto upload feature in your Google+ mobile app, where you can set the photo size for the backups.
Search animated photos
Google+'s photos and mobies creation. If you want so see all of the animated photos Google made for you and people in your circles, head to https://plus.google.com/photos/search/… (or search for "motion" in the Photos tab).
Import your FaceBook Friends
Import your facebook friends to Google+ using Facebook Friend Exporter – an extension used for Google Chrome. It is recommended that you disable the other chrome extensions working with Facebook before using this one for perfect results – said by the extension developers.
Connect with Influencers
You can also use Google Plus to connect with influencers, brands and other big names that can give your blog a boost and help you gain some awesome traffic.

Tagging influencers (mentioned in your posts) on Google Plus updates can bring you under their radar and if you manage to impress them with your content they can bring you good traffic.

This is the easiest method of influencer outreach since you do not have to hunt for email addresses or wait for days to get a reply from emails. It's either boom or forget this and set another.
PIN SPECIAL POST TO THE TOP OF YOUR PROFILE
To get the attention of the people for your special post, pin it to the top of your profile. For this go along with the points below:
Visit Google+
Go to your profile
Go to the post you want to pin
You’ll see 3 verticle dots (menu button) in the top right corner of the post, tap it.
A list will be scroll down
You’ll see certain options in the list, tap “pin to profile” option. And you’re all done.
Now the pinned post will get the first capture of the people who’ll visit your profile.
DISABLE A COMMENT AND RESHARES ON POST
This option is very useful to avoid bad comments or reshares when you share any family occasion or personal picture. To enable this feature, follow the steps below:
Go to your profile
Go to the picture or post for which you want to disable the comment
Tap the 3 verticle dots (options menu) in the top right corner of the post.
A list will be appear
Tap “Disable comments” or “Disable reshares” option.
Now the people can see the particular picture and Give the +1 but can’t be left a comment on picture or post and can’t share with further to more people.
MENTION “PEOPLE NOT IN YOUR CIRCLES ” USING “+”
If you want to mention any person beyond your circle, then get the Google+ Id of that particular person. For this navigate to their profile and look at the URL in your address bar which should be something like the one below.
Now, use this number with a + symbol to mention them in your post. For example, +1106933477267354513988 and write your content to share with him/her.
HOW TO MUTE THE POST?
If you wish to stop notifications on any post where you have added comments then go with the steps described below:

Go to the picture or post where you’ve dropped the comment
Tap the 3 verticle dots (options menu) in the top right corner of the particular post.
A drop down list will be appear
Click the “Mute this Post” option in the post menu.

SCROLL UP AND DOWN SHORT KEYS
Google+ allowes you to use the keyboard shortcut for various purpose. One of the another best thing about Google+ is that you never need to remember its useful keyboard shortcuts because you can view its keyboard shortcuts anytime while using Google Plus.
To view the keyboard shortcuts of Google Plus, Press question mark key with shift button as Shift+?
. This command will open the pop-up box containing all of the keyboard shortcuts of Google Plus. Space = Scroll down

Shift and Space = Scroll up

J = scroll down one post

K = scroll up one post

Q = jump directly to chat

Return = Start Comment

Tab and Return = End Comment
When reading any post, just hit Enter to automatically open up the comment box. That ought to save you a few seconds!

CREATE A BUSINESS PAGE ON GOOGLE PLUS

This is the most important point of our Google plus tips. You would be aware of the business or fan pages on Facebook, but do you know you can easily create a business page on Google+ platform. Yes, Google plus allows to their users to do that. For this, see the steps below:

To create a Google+ business page, log in to your account

Navigating to the link – Business Page

A page will be open to asking you about your business, select a category for your page.

Now fill the required field in the form

Finally, link to your website if you’ve done and it’s all!

Everyday Essential Services Strategist | Social Media Sphere Strategist