How to Increase your Google+ Presence : Part 1 – Posting

Our blog post this week is a guest post from John Waldron at markITwrite. This will be a 2 part series giving tips and tricks to making the most of your Google+ account. Since a large part of the G+ community is comprised of techie type folks, we thought this might come in handy for many of you out there trying to share your knowledge and expand your reach to a broader audience. Enjoy!
Before we get down to the nitty gritty and look at how to achieve a greater level of engagement on G+, let’s get something out of the way.

Google Plus isn’t dying, it’s not dead, it’s not useless and the bottom line a G+ presence is essential for most businesses who are looking to enjoy a strong online presence. If you read this, ignore it and decide it’s too much like hard work and that you’re happy to stick with Twitter and Facebook, don’t complain when your competitors are reaping the fruits of G+ and you’re rushing to catch up wishing you’d got on board earlier.

Optimizing your page

Before you get started with all of the exciting stuff it’s important to ensure that your page is properly optimized. The reason for this is you’ll want to ensure that your page can be easily found and recognizable by those looking for a business within your niche, or even your geographical location.

Images

This starts with images. The last thing you want on your business page is a generic G+ image. As such use your company logo or the same image that you have on your Facebook or Twitter profile pic and background for your pic and cover photo. That way, users will know it’s you when they see your page.

Our markITwrite picture and cover photo

 

 

About section

The next area that you’ll want to address is the about section. Elegant Themes have written an excellent blog about optimizing your profile page properly, Including a paragraph on the about section.

The Early Days

As a good starting point we’ll assume you’ve just created a G+ page for your business. The chances are, if your experience is the same as most G+ users who are just starting out, you’re struggling to find connections, and of the few you do have, most aren’t visiting your page and engaging with the wonderful array of posts that you’ve started putting up.

Well, don’t panic just yet, there’s good news on that front and as long as you’re willing to put some time and effort in, you’ll be able to turn that around in no time.

Step one – Setting most posts to public

I cover this step first as I never cease to be amazed at the amount of businesses who have pages on Google who haven’t done this correctly.

Whenever you post to G+ you have the option of who you would like to see each post. If you have a business and you’re looking to promote services, products or even your blog, the likelihood is that you will want as much exposure as possible. And this, of course means setting most of your posts to public so that other users may share and promote them on your behalf.

While that may sound obvious there isn’t a day goes by where I go to reshare a post from another page and it states that the posts has been set to private.

But don’t panic, it’s quite straightforward.

Whenever you post, simply take your cursor to the box underneath and click public. Once you’ve done this your posts will be visible to all.

If you’re still unsure then check out this video which will clarify exactly how to do it.

Circles

That said, depending on your audience you may also want to create circles to sort your various connections in. The reason for this being that you may have connections that share some of your interests, or connections who are just family or friends.

As such you should consider creating circles. That way, you can share each posts with the audience you deem suitable and not bore family members with work posts or business contacts with pics of your dog.

Still confused? Then check out this video on how to create and add connections to a G+ circle.

Step Two – Volume of posting

The first thing to consider is the regularity of your content. This is not an exact science and opinions vary on the precise volume of posts but the smart money says between once and twice a day. If you’re posting several times a day it’s going to turn other users off when they see their stream flooded with your posts. If you only post once or twice per week, users will forget you are there and they won’t make the effort to visit your page to see what you’ve posted.

So, if you think you need to adjust the volume of your posts do just that as there’s research out there to suggest that it’s the right decision.

Sharing other users content

While your number one priority may be gaining as much exposure to your content as possible, it often pays to share the content of others.

There’s nothing that’s more of a turn off to social media users than those who post nothing but self-serving posts.

If you want to gain their respect and interest you need to be sharing a variety of content including informative posts from other users within your niche. Put some commentary with the posts as well. Such as

“A very informative post from Joe Bloggs discussing the advantages to using Google Plus. What do you think”?

I try and keep my posts and the posts of others at about 50/50 as I’ve found this blend works well. Be careful though, always make sure you share trustworthy posts. Don’t go down the route of just sharing someone’s posts because they shared yours. If the quality isn’t high enough it reflects badly on you.

Step three – Posting

This is vitally important as , if your posts aren’t engaging, would you blame anyone for not making the effort? Many users will have a lot of contacts and will often scroll down their stream looking for interesting posts to +1 or reshare, or both. If your posts doesn’t grab them in the blink of an eye they will just keep on scrolling, so you have to get this right.

Image is everything

As such, a good place to start is with the image. Make it something interesting that stands out. You can even use Gifs now if you really like them, but be careful. While Gifs can be funny, they often look cheap and tacky and those are two words you won’t want people mentally associating with your brand. So choose wisely.

A snappy headline or title

There’s plenty of research out there surrounding the correct lengthy of a headline. At markITwrite we try to stick to six words or as to close to six whenever possible. What you don’t want is a headline that reads more like the prologue to a Dickensian novel. That said, you do want a headline that makes other G+ users stop in their tracks. So, short and interesting is the way to go.

Here’s an example of a catchy headline

“5 Great Ways to Gain Twitter Followers”

Here’s another example of a not so catchy headline saying the same thing.

“5 Tried and Proven Strategies for Increasing your Number of Twitter Followers that are Proven to Work”

See what I mean?

A Teaser Sentence

Under the headline you can add another sentence with something interesting – a hook. Perhaps a question surrounding the post. Say for example your posts is “5 Great Ways to Gain Twitter Followers” you can start with the sentence “Hi guys, I’ve written a blog on increasing Twitter followers, can you think of any others that I may have missed”? Not only is this likely to increase the interest of readers, this kind of question is a great way of increasing engagement. After all, people just love being smug if they think they’ve thought of something that you haven’t.

Tagging brands

Tagging brands is easy and can be a great way to get big names engaging with you. All you have to do is start typing and begin with the @ sign followed immediately by the brand you are tagging. If your post is interesting or promotes another brand in some way you may find them engaging with you or even resharing your post. This can be invaluable as if a major player in your niche shares your post you could wake up the next day to find that a lot of relevant users have decided to connect with you.

The image beneath shows a blog that I’m about to post from our website. I’ve tagged Social Media Today in the post in that hope that they will read it and engage in some way.

Hashtagging

Hashtagging is a great way to gain your posts more exposure on G+ and here’s why. If your using G+ and you want to search posts on a particular subject all you have to do is go to the search bar at the top of the screen and type the hashtag followed by the relevant subject.

For example #SocialMedia

At this point you will be given the option to ‘explore SocialMedia’ if you click on that option you will be taken to posts that include this hashtag. Simples.

Then you’ll be able to read all of the most recent posts that contain the hashtag #SocialMedia or whichever hashtag you have entered, or explore the related hashtags on the left.

So, obviously the flip side of this is that if you use the hashtag properly, other users will be able to find your posts using the same search.

The good news is that Google automatically picks up most relevant hashtags so you may not have to do this. If this is the case, the hashtag will be shown towards the top right hand of your posts. As such, you may decide to use a hashtag that G+ hasn’t picked up to give you an extra advantage.

Trending topics

Trending topics are subjects that are trending due to being very popular at that time. And while your posts may not be directly related to a trending topic a bit of creativity on your part can go a long way.

For example, as I type this ‘Big Sean’ is one of the trending topics on social media. As such you may be able to find a way to connect the trending topic with your service or product.

Here’s one of the top of my head.

“I reckon #BigSean would love the #BigSale we’ve got on until the end of the week’

See, it’s all about being creative and jumping on the trending bandwagon.

Replying to comments

As your posts start to see engagement it’s absolutely essential to make sure that you engage right back. If other accounts +1 your posts it doesn’t do any harm to thank them and if they reshare thanking is a must.

Replying to comments is equally important as it shows you are genuinely interested in the opinions and input of others. It also shows that you aren’t just a bot scheduling posts and are a real person.