Should I Use Google+ For My Business

Posted by David Chism | Wed, Apr 30, 2014

What Is Google+

Google+ can be described as sim­ple as a social net­work like Face­book but it does quite a bit more. It allows users to cre­ate com­mu­ni­ties with sim­i­lar users, hang­outs (online con­fer­ences / phone calls), pri­vate or pub­lic posts or shares and more. Per­haps most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Google+ pro­vides author­ship or author­i­ty to con­tent on the web. What I mean is this, you can con­nect your blog post to your Google+ account, mak­ing you the author of your con­tent across the web. Here is an exam­ple of how that con­tent might look on the web when a per­son has ver­i­fied his/​her author­ship on Google+. google-search-for-best-mobile-crm best-mobile-crm-for-small-business As you can see from the above snap­shots, I typed in best mobile crm” in a Google search. On the first page, I see a num­ber of search results includ­ing this blog I wrote a year ago with a thumb­nail of myself on it. It shows my name and how many peo­ple are in my cir­cles” (ref­er­enc­ing Google+). This is hap­pen­ing because I reg­is­tered that I was an author on my busi­ness blog in my Google+ account. You must have a per­son­al Google+ account to do this. Fol­low these instruc­tions to make your­self an author of your con­tent: Google Author­ship.

Should You Be Using Google+

Google has been push­ing Google+ hard for almost 3 years now. It boasts over 300,000 users and grow­ing. It con­tin­ues to be inte­grat­ed in the local search results of sites like YouTube and Google Maps. So yes I think it is a good idea to sign up for a Google+ account and begin to hang­out a bit on this plat­form. You may not find a lot of engage­ment just yet as a con­trac­tor on Google+, but that should not stop you from being there. I would rec­om­mend you start slow but strive to be con­sis­tent. It is a great way to help brand your com­pa­ny. Start by cre­at­ing cir­cles (sim­i­lar to Face­book friends) such as: Local Busi­ness­es, Nation­wide Pro­fes­sion­als, Ven­dors, Cus­tomers, Prospects. Spend time not only post­ing some of your blogs and pho­tos of your work but engag­ing and inter­act­ing with local busi­ness­es. Help share their con­tent! Con­sid­er start­ing a Hang­out” (video con­fer­ence) and edu­cate your audi­ence about help­ful tips and tricks in your indus­try. If you need help learn­ing more about Google+ or just want to see best prac­tices, make sure you fol­low these guys:  Recent­ly, the head of Google+ left the orga­ni­za­tion. This has caused quite a stir of news feeds around the social net­works. A num­ber of peo­ple are say­ing Google+ will die out soon. Based on what I have seen so far and read, I high­ly doubt Google+ will be shut­ting down. There might be some changes to how it all works, but I would say there is noth­ing to wor­ry about on your end. Just make sure you have a busi­ness page (for­mer­ly Google Places) and that you have a plan in place to active­ly use this plat­form. A few good links to fur­ther look into Google+ 
  1. Google+ Web­site
  2. Google+ SEO Blog Arti­cle (a long one but a good one)

About David Chism

David Chism started his business out of a passion for helping small contracting businesses grow, be more profitable and become better known to their target clients. One lifelong hobby of David is using techie gadgets. So this blog is a place where he writes about technology, marketing ideas, just for fun (humor), personal thoughts on small business and more.

     
   
       

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