These days, social networking is an essential aspect of marketing, especially for small businesses. If your ultimate goal is to increase your brand’s visibility and grow your consumer base, then it’s important to maintain active pages across several different social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
For this article we’re going to focus on Google+ because a). it’s relatively new, b). it has solidified its place as the 2nd largest social network in the world, and finally, c). it can be a little tricky/confusing when you’re starting out.
Don’t worry though, because once you get the hang of it, you’ll join the millions of companies that use Google+ to connect with customers every single day. Your peers might even be asking you to help them set up pages of their own! So, here are four simple ways to use Google+ to grow your business!
1. Utilize Hashtags
Hashtags are the words or phrases you see on social media sites that are preceded by the “#” sign. When Google+ introduced the hashtag feature, companies everywhere were rejoicing because these tags can play a big role in content marketing. Hashtags provide you with a simple way to categorize content, and they’ll also help potential customers locate your profile via your posts. For example, if your business sells sporting goods, use the #sports tag in your posts. You can also hashtag your town or city to help locals find you!
2. Share Relevant Content
It’s crucial to post on your Google+ page every single day, but what happens when you don’t have any original content? Well, the best thing to do is to find someone else’s content that’s relevant to your company and post that. Just make sure you give the original poster credit by either sharing it directly from their page, or tagging them in the post. If you don’t do this, then it’ll look like you’re trying to pass off someone else’s content as your own, and whether it was on purpose on by mistake, it’ll damage your credibility among your followers.
3. Don’t Cross-Post The Exact Same Content
Cross-posting is a social media faux pas that refers to those who share an identical post on all of their pages. It’s bad enough when people do it on their personal profiles, but it’s even worse when you see a company post the exact same thing on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. It makes the company look lazy and it shows a genuine lack of creativity. So, when you’re creating your daily posts, make sure to mix it up a little. Even if you just change the wording a bit, you can usually get away with posting about the same topic or event, as long as your posts aren’t like carbon copies of one another.
4. Keep Track Of Your Competitors
It’s always smart to keep an eye on your competitors’ Google+ pages to see what they’re up to. By monitoring your competition you can analyze tons of information such as their marketing strategy, how they interact with customers, the type of content they’re sharing, the deals and promotions they run, and much more. All of this info is valuable for you to know because you’re trying to target the same demographic, so if you know exactly what your competition is doing, you can always stay one step ahead. It could also go toward the other end of the spectrum, and you could see some things they’re doing that you’re not, which is still valuable info because you can always learn from others’ success.
Have YOU been successful in growing your business on Google+? Let us know in the comments!
Evan Pecos is a blogger from Baltimore, MD. He specializes in writing about social media marketing tips for small business owners.
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Google Plus since Beta has been my social media platform of choice, with almost 26,000 followers it is also my largest network as well.I love the fact it is so visual and having the ability to fine-tune my circles I am able to network with a variety interests without flooding the streams of non interested members.
Cross posting is a G Plus killer, both across Pages and Communities. Publish unique content! Super tips.
Thanks Ryan :-)
I have yet to utilize hashtags but it is something that I need to get into. Great post. :-)
Thanks Elizabeth, for your comment and liking the post!
Good advice to follow, especially that posts have content and purpose.
Thanks!
This is great advise, especially the part about sharing the eact same copy on all your SM platforms… guilty as charged. It’s easy to change up the wording a bit. The challenge comes in when or if you use Buffer.