It is often confusing for those just learning about the definitions and terms of our VPS hosting comparison. Below, you will find most of the terms we’ve used in our comparison table as well as our independent VPS review of each VPS host provider (see our InMotion Hosting VPS Review as an example).
Apache – A web server program. Apache is one of the world’s most popular web server programs, it was built and is maintained by a group of open source programmers and it is often used because of it’s excellent performance, security features and that it is free.
Bandwidth – The amount of data that can be transferred at a given moment to or from a server. The larger the bandwidth value the higher amount of traffic your VPS can serve without additional costs.
Data Backups – Refers to the VPS provider offering the ability to save your VPS’ data in case of catastrophe such as hard disk failure, data corruption, or other major event. This is a copy of the entire file system for a VPS that is typically stored separately that can be used to completely restore your VPS account.
Burstable RAM – Refers to the amount of memory that your virtual machine can use if you run out of your “Guaranteed Memory”. Burstable memory is available only if there is free memory available on the VPS node.
Cloud Hosting – The cloud computing article at Wikipedia defines cloud computing as follows: “Cloud computing is the use of computing resources (hardware and software) that are delivered as a service over a network (typically the Internet).”
Command Line – This resembles DOS in that it is just a blank screen with a prompt where the administrator/user would type in commands for the system to run. Most users would rather use a web base interface or a graphical interface to administer their system because there is less chance of error.
Control Panel – A web based interface, which allows users to administer their server by clicking on different icons instead of having to memorize commands. The commands would be run on the command line and if typed in incorrect they could seriously harm a system and stop it from running forcing the hosting company to have to restore the system from a backup.
Custom VPS – Some VPS hosting companies offer you the ability to completely customize your VPS experience specifying disk space, bandwidth, and installed software. The first company to introduce this was MyHosting. To learn more about MyHosting, see our MyHosting VPS review.
cPanel – CPanel is a fully featured web-based control panel that allows you to manage your domain through a web interface, provided by cPanel, Inc. The idea is to transfer as much of the control and responsibility of managing your web site to you. You have the ability to manage all aspects of e-mail, files, backup, FTP, CGI scripts, and web site statistics. Be sure to see our research on the differences between cPanel and Plesk.
Dedicated IPs – An IP, in our usage, is an Internet Protocol address. A dedicated IP address is not shared by any other website or server and is strictly for your usage only. Most VPS servers offer a limited amount of dedicated IP addresses but you may purchase more for an additional fee.
Dedicated Server – This hosting feature allows a web site to have its own server. It is more flexible than shared hosting as webmasters have full control of the server, including choice of operating system. Server administration is still taken care of by the hosting provider.
DNS – Stands for Domain Name System; An underlying internet system which provides a mapping between domain names and the IP addresses used for routing.
Disk Space – The amount of data that your VPS can hold without requiring additional fees and expenses.
Fantastico – An integrated application that allows web hosting clients to automatically install popular free scripts.
File System – A system of storing files on the hard drive and in this case the files are stored in such a way that only your account(s) have access to them. This is more secure than shared hosting where everyone is on the same file system and could go look in other areas where they should not be.
FTP – File Transfer Protocol. The protocol used on the Internet for exchanging files. FTP uses the Internet’s TCP/IP protocols to enable data transfer. FTP is most commonly used to download a file from a server using the Internet or to upload a file to a server (eg, uploading a Web page file to a server).
GB – Gigabyte or 1024 Megabytes
GUI – A Graphical User Interface that makes managing your VPS server simple. Without a user-friendly GUI, you’d be required to entire Windows or Linux command prompts to make configuration changes to your VPS.
H-Sphere – A web hosting Automation Control Panel for shared web hosting services, provided by Parallels Holdings Ltd. It is currently available for Linux, Unix and Windows environments; and works with MySQL, PostgreSQL and Microsoft SQL Server databases.
IMAP – An Internet Message Access Protocol that handles email retrieval (compare to Post Office Protocol (POP)) commonly served on port 143.
Linux VPS – A Virtual Private Server with a Linux OS such as CentOS installed.
Managed Hosting – A VPS that is supplied with a full suite of technical support, setup, maintenance and monitoring services. Managed VPS hosting differs from dedicated servers where customers are provided with their own server but still have to take care of all the administrative duties related to the server.
Network Uptime SLA – The guarantee from your VPS hosting service provider that guarantees uptime via a Service Level Agreement. Some form of compensation is provided if the VPS host doesn’t meet their stated guarantee.
Plesk – The Plesk software package is a proprietary commercial web hosting automation solution by Parallels Holdings Ltd. Developed for professional hosting service providers, Plesk is comprehensive server management software designed to install and manage all systems and applications for Web-Hosting on a single server. Be sure to see our research on the differences between cPanel and Plesk.
POP3 – In computing, the Post Office Protocol (POP) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by local e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a remote server over a TCP/IP connection.
Private Name Servers – Refers to the name servers which you are using being branded by you instead of reflecting your host’s domain name or a generic name. Usually a domain name of your choice is used or a generic one picked by the hosting company. For example instead of ns1.yourhost.com and ns2.yourhost.com your VPS hosting account would be allowed to use your ns1.yoursiteliketopfiveawards.com or a generic domain such as ns1.myhosting.com.
RAID – Stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a way of storing the same data in different places (thus, redundantly) on multiple hard disks. By placing data on multiple disks, I/O (input/output) operations can overlap in a balanced way, improving performance.
RAM – Random Access Memory. This is the memory of your VPS server. With low memory, your VPS will slow to a crawl and leave your visitors frustrated.
Root or Root Access – This is the super user, or the user with control over everything, on a computer system. This user can do anything they want on the computer system from installing software to deleting everything on a system.
SSH – Secure Shell or SSH is a network protocol that allows data to be exchanged over a secure channel between two computers. Encryption provides confidentiality and integrity of data.
Virtuozzo – Virtuozzo creates multiple isolated Virtual Private Servers (VPSs) on a single physical server. Each VPS performs and executes exactly like a stand-alone server for its users and applications as it can be rebooted independently and has its own root access, users, IP addresses, memory, processes, files, applications, system libraries, and configuration files.
VPS (Virtual Private Server) – This is one step above shared server hosting, a VPS provides the services offered by a dedicated server but on a server shared with other web hosting customers. See also: VPS Benefits.
VPS Node – The physical hardware which runs Virtualization Platform software and hosts one or more Virtual Private Servers (VPS).
Windows VPS – A Virtual Private Server with a Microsoft Windows OS such as Windows Server 2012 installed.
One thing I’ve learned through the creation of this website is that I love to learn and I love to share what I learn with others. Over the past week, I’ve been working on my YouTube skills and getting comfortable with the HD webcam I have and recording myself. Let me tell you, from an introvert like myself, this has been an interesting learning experience both about myself and video technology.
In this guide, I am going to share with you the many tips I’ve learned to help you increase the views to your YouTube channel and how to increase your subscribers. When I started playing around with the advise I’ve found online, one thing is certain, this stuff works! My channel went from 301 subscribers to 362 in just one day on my main public account. The strategies have also worked on my affiliate marketing channels extremely well and even boosted my leads from these videos!
So let’s get started. Here’s the advice I have for you on building traffic to your YouTube channel videos and also, how to build traffic to your websites and funnels.
Most people when creating video typically create longer drawn out videos with multiple topics based around the niche. Where I see this problem most prevalent is Google+ Hangouts where videos cover several topics and traditionally last an hour or more. I strongly recommend creating smaller 3-5 minute videos for each topic so you can focus your video on specific keywords in your niche.
Smaller videos target the majority of video watchers who want to find out what they are looking for in the shortest time possible. I don’t know many people willing to sit down and watch a one hour video to find out a strategy or tip that will help them in whatever your niche is. Remember, the attention span of your potential client is shrinking as technology advances, so keep it short and to the point.
One of the biggest benefits you’ll have with shorter video is video SEO. Each video you make should be based around primary or secondary words in your niche. If you do this, you’ll have a greater chance at building traffic to your videos and ultimately, your website(s).
YouTube Video File Optimization
When preparing your video for upload, name your video files with your keywords in mind.
I’ve had no problems with spaces in file names. I’ve seen other sites recommending dashes in your file names which might be necessary depending on your operating system. An example would then be top-widgets-for-wordpress.mp4.
The reason for this YouTube will give your video preference if you use topical keywords in your file name.
Optimize Your Video’s Title
Give your video an appealing title with your keywords in mind. If your video shows your kid making a giant mess with his/her spaghetti dinner, you’ll want to create some curiosity while keeping your keywords in mind. In the spaghetti example, try “Spaghetti Dinner Disaster” which should pique your viewer’s interest.
For business purposes, you’ll notice I put the primary keyword in the above example first. As with traditional SEO techniques, you’ll want to put your most important keywords at the beginning of your video title. This will help your video come up for those keywords.
With your shorter videos, you’ll have multiple video titles based around your niche primary and secondary keywords, so you’ll be able to maximize the chances for your videos appearing in search results both on Google and on YouTube.
YouTube’s Video Description – Use It!
This is obvious to many, but for many videos I see out there, it’s apparent some aren’t aware. When you are uploading your video and waiting, spend that time optimizing your video title (of course) but don’t forget to write a decent video description!
I highly recommend writing at least two paragraphs and include the video’s secondary keywords to your niche. Your video title will take care of the primary keyword you are focusing on, but don’t forget that YouTube and Google search use the video description for relevancy!
Keep the description relevant to your video while making it interesting and precise. Pretend the viewer isn’t going to watch your video until after reading the description, what would you say to get them to watch?
Pro Tip: If you’ve taken my advice and created shorter topical videos in your niche, put links to your other videos at the bottom of your video description. This will help your videos progress through your series if they are interested but not quite ready to preform your call to action.
Pro Tip 2: Below, I talk about YouTube Playlists. You can also create a playlist for your video series and link that playlist in your video descriptions!
YouTube Video Tags
Use the best tags for your video for the keywords people search for in your niche. The more relevant tags you use, the more often your video will appear when people search for those tags. Your primary and secondary keywords should go in your tags. Think about what your potential audience would search for in your niche. If you are an affiliate marketer, who created the program or tool? What’s the product called? What purpose does the tool serve?
Besides those, did you know that people occasionally search for video IDs of popular videos? Perhaps they don’t trust a link or found out about a video online and are looking for it on YouTube, they will often search for the video ID. If you have room for additional tags, find popular and relevant videos on YouTube and put those IDs in your tags so your video will appear as well. Tricky, but it works!
Transcribe Your YouTube Video
One of the obvious benefits of Closed Captions is for the hearing impaired. If you are a fast speaker or have a strong accent, many will turn on closed captions to understand you better.
One of my favorite programs for recording myself through the webcam is Camtasia. That software has a powerful speech-to-text feature that will attempt to transcribe your speech to captions for your video. You’ll then need to play back your video and edit the mistakes before saving your SRT file which YouTube supports.
Another benefit to using Closed Captions is the fact that both YouTube and Google have advanced filtering options that allows people to look for only videos that have closed captions enabled.
Lastly, there have been several tests done by SEO sites that prove that closed captions are used for your video’s relevancy score and therefore, improves the probability that your video will rank for obscure, but related, words in the niche your video focuses on.
With all of these benefits, it is worth your time to create closed captions for your video. There’s a reason that the majority of my videos I upload have the CC option available.
Tip: Name your closed caption file with your main video keyword.
Share Your Video Immediately
Now that you’ve covered all the video settings, you can publish your video to YouTube and make it available to the world to see. When you hit that publish button, don’t call it quits and walk away. You should immediately share your video to as many people as possible to drive viewers and engagement. Some suggestions include:
Embed your video on a Google+ post with a description.
Share your video on all social media including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Create a blog post around your video.
Email your video link to your website email subscribers.
Email your video to family, friends and coworkers.
Join Empire Avenue (free) and create missions for people to visit your video.
When sharing, ask engaging questions with your audience. Statements like “I can’t wait to hear what you think!” “Leave a comment in the video and let me know if you have any questions” “Tell me how I did. I’m new to this!” etc.
YouTube Playlists
YouTube allows you to create an unlimited amount of playlists. Meaning, you can create a ton of different niche-based playlists based on your interests or based around your channel’s niche. Each play list is individually indexed in Google which provides you with another chance to have your videos found and watched.
You can add a specific description to each of your videos in your YouTube Playlists for extra SEO optimization as shown in the screenshot to the left. Choose the title and description of your playlist carefully knowing that the phrasing you use will be used by Google for indexing.
Playlists allow you to rearrange your videos and sort according to your tastes. So once again, if you followed my advice about creating short videos, you’ll benefit because you can create a playlist for these videos. Before, if you created a single 2 hour video covering your topic, it would be pointless to create a playlist. Awesome right?
Tip: If you create a playlist for your video series, remember to link your playlist in your video descriptions.
Ask and You Shall Receive!
I’ve tested this in experiments before and found that if you ask people to do what you want, you’ll end up with better results almost every time. At the end of your video, tell your audience to subscribe, thumbs up and to leave a comment. Ask for questions. Ask for shares to social media.
Tell them what to do.
Tell them how to do it.
Tell them why they need to do it.
The bottom line here, if you ask people to do something in your video, you’ll increase your chances of your viewers doing what you want.
Build Your Subscribers
I know, I know, easier said than done, but the bottom line, it needs to be done. Without subscribers receiving notifications of new uploads in the main YouTube stream, what chance do you have of getting organic views to your videos? After optimizing your videos, you’ll need to start focusing on getting subscribers. Here’s some tips to help you:
Be Consistent – As with all social media, being consistent is key! You should be uploading videos as frequently as possible for the best results.
Provide Epic Value – If you aren’t providing real value to your viewers and just uploading promotional videos, you’ll struggle building your audience. Don’t be afraid to film yourself speaking and give your audience someone to identify with.
Video Annotations – Use video annotations to create a call to action to ask for subscribers. If you’ve got video editing skills, you can add a “Subscribe” image to your video and draw a “Spotlight” annotation that links to your subscribe page. The more creative you can be, the increased chance you’ll have of your viewer performing the task you want. Hint: There’s a subscribe button above. Use it. 🙂
The Popup Link Method
You guys probably saw one of my links already that causes this amazing popup screen when you use it to visit YouTube. If you are not subscribed to me, check this link out and see what happens. Note: You will not see the popup if you are already subscribed to my channel.
https://www.youtube.com/user/YOURUSERNAMEHERE?sub_confirmation=1
or https://www.youtube.com/c/YOURCHANNELHERE?sub_confirmation=1
When you use the URL above with ?sub_confirmation=1, it will cause the trigger for people to subscribe. Use this to share your channel on social media because it works extremely well!
The Website Badge
You may have noticed on the right sidebar of this site, I have a widget that has a subscribe button. I just learned about this yesterday and guess when I added it here? If you said immediately, you’d be correct! There’s a couple ways I’ve found to add this to your website.
The iFrame Method (my favorite)
I like this method because it is customizable to fit your website needs. If you want to display a box like that under your video and you have your video set to display at a certain size, you can add this below the video at the same width and it adds an amazing call to action for subscribers and looks like it is supposed to be there. Here’s the code:
Again this is customizable. You can increase the height and width to suit your needs. I used 300px because that’s the width of my sidebar.
This method is the older way of embedding your channel on your site. I have no idea how long YouTube plans to support this method since they have the newer method below. I’m unable to find this older method mentioned on YouTube currently so use it at your own risk (if I see it quit working, I’ll update then).
YouTube Javascript Subscribe Button Method
YouTube has ways to embed your channel on your website. For my purposes, it looked out of place and ugly in my sidebar, but for you, it may be the better option. Follow this link to see your options and to build your HTML code for your website.
Note: All of these website methods are great if you have a website. Have you always wanted a website but not quite sure how? Check out my web hosting training site that teaches you how to create a website. The whole thing is in screencast video form, walking you through the entire process step by step.
Using Thumbnails on YouTube
I do not recommend sticking with the standard thumbnails that YouTube randomly grabs from your video. Instead, create an eye-catching thumbnail for your video. The first impression is often crucial and will determine whether someone will click through to your video or skip it when browsing search results.
One of my favorite things to do is just take a hand-selected frame and edit it with large block-letter text with “stroke” in the opposite color. I use Photoshop but you can use any image editor including free ones like Pixlr or LunaPic to accomplish this task. I see this particular method being used by extremely popular YouTube stars…. it works!
Tip: Name your thumbnail file with your main keyword of the video.
Engage People on YouTube
In finishing this guide, you may notice a theme. Links. This guide covers building links to your videos from within YouTube and via the web, but there’s something most people miss which could be the difference between your channel getting noticed or ignored.
YouTube comments. This is extremely obvious to me, however, I’m noticing that other people either don’t know to comment or ignore commenting out of pure laziness. When you take 20-60 minutes of your day and spend that time commenting on other people’s videos, you are effectively spreading awareness to your YouTube account name and to your account in general. Each time you comment, your name is linked and points to your main YouTube profile for other people to find out more about you.
If you don’t comment and engage with other people, then you are missing the chance for other people to stumble on your channel! Anytime you find yourself watching a video, you need to make sure you leave a comment. Not sure what to comment? Find other comments others have made and reply to their comment adding to what they have said.
As you progress in commenting, you may notice that your comments on videos ending up under “Top comments” with upvotes. Once again, here’s an opportunity for people to find out more about you.
Last Tip: Don’t be afraid to piggyback on Top comments. It works!
What Are Your Tips for YouTube?
Did you enjoy this guide? It would mean a lot to me if you shared this guide on social media and your website if you have one. Please leave a comment below and share your tips for YouTube success! I look forward to reading what you are doing to build your following and traffic. As always, join my newsletter to stay up to date with all things Scott Buehler!
Did you know that you can create a community based around your Google+ Page niche? One of the best ways to bring awareness to your Google Plus Page is to create a community and then put the work in to make that Google+ Community a success.
Let’s get started:
How to Create a Community as a Page
On the upper right of your Google Plus screen, click your profile icon and then switch to your page.
Click or mouse hover over the “Home” button on the left.
Click Communties in the drop down that occurs from following #2.
Click Create Community and follow the steps.
A Warning: If you create a Community under your Google Profile (free) and then decide to change ownership to your Google Page (free) you will have to assign your Page as a moderator, and then wait two weeks before you can make your Page the owner of your Community. Instead, following the above diagram, you can create your Community under your page and save having to wait 2 weeks to switch it.
In order to create a Google Plus Page around a Google Plus Community, you have to begin by creating your Page. After you have logged in as your Page, click on the drop-down menu to the left of the main screen and select Communities. Then click the blue button that says Create Community.
There are multiple advantages to creating a Community under a Page, some of which are listed below:
Since the name of your Page appears prominently on the upper right hand corner of the Community, the chance of people circling your Page increases. As the number of Followers increase, your visibility soars as well.
Your Page is linked to your website, which increases SEO value because – again – as more people visit your traffic, your online reputation grows.
Any community members that join will count as a +1 for your Page and social signals have the potential to positively impact your SERP rankings in the future.
The above will appear on your page (with your community details) which advertises your Google Plus Community. Therefore, you’ve got a nice cross-pollination occurring where your community advertises your page and vice-versa.
By linking your Community with your Page, any content that is posted in your Community can be collected and curated on your Page. A highly active Page will obviously be followed by more people. Finally, by making your Page the owner of your Community, you will comment and engage in other communities as your Page, which also enhances your visibility and online authority.
Truly, this creative collaboration of your Community and Page can spark many benefits and position you as a thought-leader in your industry. Take advantage of these brilliant tools to forge a strong relationship with your audience that is based on trust and sharing.
Need Hosting? Save 50% Instantly with InMotion Hosting!
In our InMotion Hosting review, we awarded this host the #1 diamond award as the best web hosting service provider. If you want to start a WordPress website, all you have to do is select WordPress during checkout and they will setup the site for you!
Want a conversion optimized website? Be sure to check out Scott Buehler's digital marketing service. He helps local business thrive with marketing packages that will fit your budget.
Click the above red banner to play this video.
Duration: 1 minute and 38 seconds.
This video shows you exactly how to +mention a foreign-letter account on Google+. The video shows you two methods you can use to effectively mention these accounts properly. This is only needed if you are trying to mention an account who has made a post to their stream or to a community that you’d like to reply to.
If the person you want to reply to has made a comment use this method shown below:
Google+ has an awesome built-in “Reply” link that you can use to reply to their account.
It’s not a bad statement to say I’m a full-blown addict of Google+. Although I don’t spend as much time as I used to on the network due to business projects, I still spend several hours a week there. In this post, I’m sharing with you all of the communities I currently maintain on Google+. These communities, paired with over 40 pages and a massive Google+ Profile with 110,000,000 views and 108,100 followers really says a ton about my accomplishments on the network.
I’m currently consulting several clients a week with strategies that fit their business needs (you can use Google+ for business or recreation and I have strategies available that will help any situation or need). Want to learn Google+ yourself? Check out my Getting Started on Google+ guide.
That being said, I do run several communities on G+ and wanted to share them with my full audience here at the Top Five Advisor website. I also needed an easy page to send others when I get asked for these links on a daily basis. So let’s get started!
This community was started in early March after I discovered there wasn’t a suitable community for my favorite state that had my vision.
After launching the community, I invited a few hundred people and they took the community and ran with it. The community has experienced massive growth in a very short time that shocked me!
This community was my first community I created on Google+ about a year ago. When I named the community, I had no idea that communities that reach over 500 members have their names locked.
This is now a Big Cat community that accepts submissions of any and all big cats including Tigers, Jaguars and Lions. As you may already know, the Tiger is my favorite animal.
I love animated GIF images, that is absolutely no secret. I created this community early March, 2014 because I noticed a horrible trend on Google+ where most GIF image communities were filled with extremely suggestive risque images.
This community was created with strict rules in place against these types of images. This is Google+’s first family-friendly GIF community and people love it. We’ll likely hit 2,000 members by the end of April, 2014.
This community is a spin off my What’s Hot Archive page where I share hot trending content from the Google+ network. I treat it as an archive so others can spot trends.
Those stats you see in the image was actually from one of the most popular posts I’ve had on Google+ with over 8,150 shares and 15,000 +1’s.
I created this community a few weeks ago to share quotes I find on Google+. I haven’t had the time to build this one out like several of the others because I’ve been working on business projects lately.
The community accepts all sorts of quotes from famous to inspirational with 11 categories to choose from.
Want to help? Join the community and click the invite button and invite others to join. That would be a huge help!
This is a web designer community with a focus on HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript in responsive designs.
Topics can include: HTML, CSS, CSS3, JS, Javascript, Web Development, Front End, Open Source, webGL, Google chrome extensions, Browsers, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, Development, Code, Coffeescript, Responsive Design, Web Tools, Web applications, w3c standards and others.
True with any successful Internet marketer online, we never stop learning. In March – April, 2014 I have been studying a ton about methods of Internet marketing and sales and discovered I have a passion for the art of establishing real meaningful relationships with people. After a ton of testing, I found the saying to be true: People buy people before they buy products.
I created this community to test interest and found there’s quite a few people out there that love relationship marketing.
This community is similar to my newer GIFs community but focuses strictly on animals, people, and landscape animations. One of my favorite GIFs to watch are landscape waterfall type animations.
This is my 2nd oldest community I have on Google+ and post to it at least weekly.
This community is built to share pages, communities, or circle shares. One unique feature of Google+ is the ability to share pages and communities anywhere you want, including to other communities.
You can use this community to give your page or community an added boost of visibility. I do plan on growing this community to thousands within the year.
Other Communities
These are my other communities that I have that are part of future projects and are waiting for me to give publicity to.
Olympics – Obviously this one is seasonal. I plan to promote the heck out of this one when the Rio Summer Games of 2016 is closer. Short URL: http://tygr.me/olympicscommunity
Time is of the issue. I do pop in to the communities at least on a weekly basis to inspect for spam and off-topic content to remove. Some communities have strict policies that, if violated, result in immediate bans. If there are communities you’d like volunteer to help moderate, please let me know. Several of these communities are niche / business focused that can position you to be an authority that other people look to for answers. This usually leads down the path of paid work.
If you have any questions or remarks, please leave a comment below. As always, consider sharing to your favorite social networks to help me spread the word about my G+ communities.
If you have a website online and it is using the most popular blogging platform, WordPress, then chances are you are wondering how people are commenting on your posts and their icon is displaying with their comments.
The answer is Gravatar. All you need to do is go to Gravatar and setup an account with your primary email address that you use to setup your websites, comment on other people’s content, etc.
Once you setup your Gravatar image on the email address you use to comment on other people’s blogs, you’ll notice that your image will suddenly appear! Now, any service that uses Gravatar to pull in avatar images will show your icon!
What is Gravatar?
A Gravatar is a Globally Recognized Avatar. You upload it and create your profile just once, and then when you participate in any Gravatar-enabled site, your image will automatically display in those locations. The Gravatar service is completely free to use. No catches, no excuses, no fluff, there is no reason not to setup your Gravatar today.
This site supports Gravatar natively, so if you look through the comments on our Google Plus Guide, you’ll see a ton of comments with images. These people were smart to setup a Gravatar because it catches the eye. You should setup yours immediately!
Insert the email address you use to comment on blogs with.
Insert a password
Verify your email address.
Click “Add one by clicking here” to the error you don’t have an image setup yet.
Click one of the options above (on their website, not here) and follow the instructions.
Select which rating your image is. For most, you’ll use the “G” rating.
Done!
Now, whenever you comment on other people’s blogs, WordPress powered websites, and on any other site that is powered by Gravatar avatar technology, your image will appear!
Are you new to Google Plus and need help getting started with the network? This page was made with you in mind! This intro course is provided FREE to everyone to show the quality of work that has been put into organizing our course material. All links from this course lead to paid course material, please click here to read more about this course and sign up.
What is Google+?
Google Plus acts as a “social layer” for Google, the world’s largest search engine company, and is integrated into its every product and service, such as Search, Android, YouTube, Chrome, Local and Drive.
At its core, Google Plus is an interest-based platform where like-minded individuals communicate, collaborate and create as a community. Unlike other social media networks, this platform gives you an unparalleled opportunity to forge meaningful, long-term relationships by consistently engaging with peers and other industry experts.
Table of Contents
Note for First Time Users: Use the following links to jump to the sections you need assistance with. This structure is used throughout all training modules. After “jumping” to the section, you can also use the bottom right arrow in your browser to jump back to the top of the page if you want.
On May 21st, 2015, Google+ removed the Google Ripples feature that visually showed post sharing activities. This guide was updated to reflect this change. See how Google Ripples looked here.
Why is Google Plus Important
Google Plus is unique because it functions as a micro-blogging, video-conferencing and community-based forum all at once. Consequently, it offers multiple ways to share your content with an interested audience. Features such as Circles and Communities enable users to take control of whom they interact with by allowing them to organize and sort their connections. Its free video-chat service, Hangouts on Air (or HOA), personalizes “virtual” relationships in a manner that is educational, entertaining and engaging. Further, a feature such as Google Plus Local allows local businesses to improve their brand visibility and interact with their customers on a social level.
The greatest advantage of being on Google Plus is perhaps that it is backed by a powerful brand like Google. While there is no proven evidence of a direct correlation between social signals on this network and search engine result page (SERP) rankings YET, the Hummingbird update has made it clear that authority and reputation play a powerful role while ranking websites.
Google Plus posts are indexed by search engines, and its Profiles and Pages are treated much like any other website and given a PageRank by Google. Hence, any inbound links that lead to your Profiles and/or Pages act as powerful social signals, having the potential to impact your search engine results page ranking. Finally, Google Authorship is a powerful tool to lend a face to an author’s name, thereby building credibility and reputation.
Overall, Google Plus offers several versatile, cost-effective and easy-to-use tools that will position you as an expert in your industry and considerably strengthen your brand.
The Time to Join Google+ is NOW
Google Plus has over 540 million active monthly subscribers across all Google services and 300 million active users to the Google Plus stream, second next to only Facebook, having overtaken Twitter in January 2013. Clearly, this social network is poised for explosive growth.
However, Google Plus is still in the “early adopter” stage. Despite the aforementioned benefits, this platform is referred to as a “ghost town,” having not been embraced with the same zeal as Facebook, Twitter or even Pinterest by the “mainstream” audience. But, like with most products and services, becoming an early adopter of Google Plus will give you the much needed edge over your competitors.
With its abundance of free tools and connection opportunities, Google Plus is the ideal platform to become known as a thought leader for your industry. Getting in early will allow you to establish authority and trust with other pioneers. In today’s customer-centric, socially-driven world, creating transparent, trust-based relationships is one of the most powerful assets for any business. This way, you will always be a step ahead of the late entrants who wouldn’t have fully comprehended the tremendous potential of Google Plus as a social media marketing network for businesses.
Now is the right time for you to join this fun, friendly and favorable community. Jump onto the Google Plus bandwagon today and experience the immense reach, visibility and connectivity benefits of Google’s social media layer.
Registering Your Google+ Account
The process is rather simple. If you don’t have a Google account, get one. Otherwise, click here to be taken to a screen like this:
The boxes should be filled out for you already, you just need to click that blue “Upgrade” button and you’re account will go live. From there, Google will ask you to add people from your address book and show you how to get started.
Don’t Be a Bluehead!
The absolute worst thing you can do is leave your profile photo the default bluehead. I highly recommend an actual clear face photo, either professionally photographed or you performing or doing one of your favorite hobbies and/or family-friendly activities.
Updating your cover photo will increase interest in you, interest in your profile and interest in your content. In social media, interest, which leads to networking, is everything!
Later on, I’ll be teaching you about circle sharing and for me and several of my circle sharing buddies, we actually make it a point to remove blueheads! This means that people I have gathered and were going to make my hot circle share got removed just because they didn’t update their profile photo!
What are circles? Why do I need them?
Think of Google Circles as categories. You likely have many interests in life and finding people to fit those interests on Google Plus is easy and fun with a quick Google Plus search. With Circles, you can categorize people by your interests.
Create many circle groups around your interests, business(es), and more. There’s no limit to the amount of circle groups you can create, so go nuts. Trust me, as you grow your Google Plus, you’ll want to be able to take advantage of other advanced features we will be going over in this mastermind course.
Using the animated GIF I created for you on the left, you will need to find the small arrow icon on the bottom of the post you’d like to share, then click the share button to share this post.
In my example here, I chose to share it to Public but you can share a post to a community or share the post privately to whatever circle groups you have.
If you choose “Your Circles” as your share option, then the post would be available for viewing by anyone that you have in any circle group.
If you choose “Extended Circles” then your post would be available for viewing from all of your circles and all of their circles as well. Your extended circles include people in your circles’ circles. Content shared with your extended circles will be visible on your posts tab to people who have access.
Getting back to communities, it is a little trickier, but if you know the community you’d like to share a post to, just click the share icon, remove whatever Google has in the “To” box and begin typing your community that you’d like to share to. Some communities have categories within them that you would need to select from before you can share to that community.
How to Increase Engagement
Google Plus is a social networking platform and, because of that, engagement is your key to success. This platform was founded on the principles of learning, sharing, caring and growing as a community. The most successful Plussers generously share other people’s content and take pleasure in watching others strengthen their brand.
In other words, knowledge-hoarding has no place on Google Plus.
To this end, the social signals addressed in this section allow you to endorse someone else’s work in public. They act as wonderful networking tools because appreciating the content of others will get more people to check out YOUR profile and posts. Relationship-building is very important to succeed in today’s social world, and the following signals will allow you to create the ‘right’ relationships the ‘right’ way. As a side note, when social signals gain more prominence in search engine ranking, these features will become even more crucial to improve your online visibility and build authority.
The +1 Button Explained
Plus One (+1) is a ‘virtual recommendation’ and the Google Plus way of saying, “I like this post” or “I agree with this post.” The author of the post will then be sent a notification that their post was ‘+1’d’ by you. When you share a useful post from a website outside Google Plus, say from a blog, by clicking on the “G+” social media icon, you are automatically +1’ing’ that post. Higher number of +1s indicates that the post resonates with more people.
Plus One also acts like a bookmark because Google Plus stores all the pages that you have +1ed from around the web in your Profile. You can choose to display your selections to others by modifying your Google Settings.
The Share Button Explained
By sharing content, you are going one step ahead of the +1. Instead of just ‘liking’ a post, you are now ‘recommending’ a post to your Followers, thereby improving the visibility of that post. A notification will be sent to the person whose post you are sharing. As mentioned above, the basis of Google Plus is ‘sharing’. The more you share, the more people will notice you. It is, therefore, one of the most effective techniques to build connections in this community.
In fact, it is strongly recommended that newcomers on Google Plus spend the first month or two just sharing other people’s content. While sharing a post, don’t just click on the share button and make your post. Instead, add your own comments and thoughts to the original post (while sharing), so you will be looked upon as an independent thinker.
As your reputation grows and you build a network of interested followers, you can then start posting your own content along with sharing other content that interests you. With appropriate content and connections, your posts will soon start getting engaged with, including shares, plusses, and comments. This unique give-and-take relationship on Google Plus is one of its strongest differentiating qualities and cannot be found on any other social media platform.
What is a Mention?
“Mentioning” or tagging someone is arguably the strongest social signal of Google Plus, and is used when you want to acknowledge someone’s contribution (in public or private). It acts like an alarm by grabbing the attention of the person being mentioned.
In order to ‘mention’ someone, just type ‘+’ followed by that person’s name. A notification is immediately sent to that person who will then, hopefully, return the favor by acknowledging you. If you are mentioning people who don’t have you in their circles yet, this action might sufficiently interest them to check out your profile and follow you back. That is, a simple plus sign has the potential to result in another beautiful and beneficial connection!
Tagging someone is also a way of expressing gratitude on this platform, and is particularly powerful while sharing a post. When you tag original authors while sharing posts, you will not only arouse their interest, it is also your way of sending them a ‘personal Thank You note’ for some fantastic content. If you are re-sharing a shared post, mention the original author and the person who shared that original post. If a post has been shared multiple times, mention the original author and one or two other people who shared that post.
To sum up, +1, mention and share are highly useful engagement tools on Google Plus for creating mutually beneficial, long-term relationships with a relevant and rapt audience that is willing to soak up more of your content.
Google Plus Reshare Etiquette
One of the strange ways Google Plus works is if you reshare a share, the middle-man will not be credited or shown in your post. Huh? Let me explain:
Lets say you came across this post on the left in Google Plus. You find it valuable and want to share it on to your audience in Google Plus.
Obviously, you’d hit the share button, type a great description like I did, and share it on. But what happens to “Scott Buehler” in this case? His post was a share of Jason T. Wiser’s original post.
What would happen is Jason’s post would appear under your comment and leave me completely out of the equation. That’s where reshare etiquette comes in to play. When you come across a post you want to share and it was already shared by someone else (Scott Buehler in this case), you should:
Click the share button and type your description.
In the description, you should include: H/T +ScottBuehler
Then share the post.
H/T means Hat Tip. This is telling your audience that you found this original post from a share that Scott Buehler posted on his stream and you are thanking Scott for helping you discover the content.
What this will do is cause me to get a notification that I was mentioned which I will likely return a comment thanking you for the H/T.
Google Plus Formatting Options
As you can see in the screenshot above, there are three ways to format text for your Google Plus posts.
*Bold* – Using asterisks will bold the text.
_Italics_ – Using underscores will make the text have italics.
-Strikethrough- – Using dash with cause a strike-through effect.
I posted the above rich text demo to a private post to show the outcome of the above post. As you can see to the left, once posted to Google Plus, the text has the intended bold, italics, and strike-through effects we wanted.
Use formatting as much as possible to create attention-grabbing headlines and to make the text flow better for the average reader.
Google Plus Pages for Beginners
While Google Plus Profiles represent individuals, Google Plus Pages represent ‘entities’. An entity could include a brand, product, organization, local business, cause or other categories. However, much like Google Profiles, Pages too are ideal to position you as a thought leader. These are excellent opportunities for entities to showcase themselves in a manner that is unique, fun and memorable. You can manage up to 50 business pages using a single Google account, and each page can have up to 50 managers.
With the prevalence of Internet in our lives, it has almost become a norm to search for businesses online before deciding whether to connect with them. Google Pages makes it easy for customers to find your business on different channels, such as Search, Mobile, Google Plus or Maps, using any device. Take care to fill the About section of your Page completely because this will enable current and potential clients to get in touch with you at the right time and right place.
In addition, the world has gone social and ‘talking’ to your customers has become a necessity. Google Plus Pages allow you to engage in an interactive dialogue with your audience and build a loyal following. For instance, features such as Reviews help you immediately understand how the world perceives you. A well-maintained Google Plus Page will be responsive and proactively address any issues. By consistently keeping in touch with customers, a business can give rise to brand advocates who will happily recommend and share your content across the web.
Bottom line, customers want to feel like they matter and Google Plus Pages guide entities towards achieving this goal!
Introduction to Creating Google Pages
Google Plus Pages allow entities, such as brands, organizations and causes, to have an engaging public presence online and especially on Google Plus. With similar interactivity and privacy features as a Google Plus Profile, Google Plus Pages has the potential to strengthen your brand considerably.
Creating a Google Plus page is a simple and FREE process that only requires a Gmail ID. The various types of pages allowed are:
Local business or Place Page
Product or Brand Page
Company, Institution, or Organization Page
Arts, Entertainment, or Sports Page
Other (Use if your page doesn’t fit in another category)
As mentioned in the Why Is Google Plus Important section, Google Plus Local is a powerful tool for local businesses because it allows you to gain valuable real estate on Google and communicate in a personalized and proactive way with your current and potential customers. But before creating a Local Business or Place page, it has to first be verified by Google. They do this by sending a verification pin – either via phone or mail. It should be noted that this pin is valid only for 30 days. Once you verify your page using the pin, you are allowed to create a Local Business or Place page.
Apart from the additional verification step for the Local Business or Place page, most of the remaining steps are the same for the rest of the pages. You will be asked to select a Category (this step is not there for the Others page), select a Page name, provide a link to an external website, select the appropriate audience and accept the terms and conditions. Voila – you have created a page!
By default, the Google Plus Pages settings are public. But you can control the visibility for many profile features and posts, adjust notification settings and choose your audience.
Google Plus provides you with an effective, feature-rich platform and a user-friendly interface to vitalize the online presence of entities. Take advantage of this opportunity to create an enviable brand perception and reputation in the minds of your audience.
Fill in the About Section of a Google Plus Page
The About section is the ‘soul’ of your Google Plus Page, and gives entities an opportunity to create a strong brand perception in the minds of their audience. This is your chance to communicate your personality, values and accomplishments by striking a balance between brevity and detail.
As depicted in the following screenshot, there are four sub-sections in the About tab: People, Story, Contact Information and Links.
Let us look at each separately:
People
Gives you an immediate insight into your Circle counts
Story
This is the most important sub-section because it allows you to convey the essence of your entity. Use a clear and concise tagline – with the appropriate keywords – that quickly tells your audience who you are. This tagline is displayed in your hovercard, which is like your Google Plus business card and comes up every time somebody hovers the mouse over your Profile Picture. Hence, extra care must be taken to depict your company in the best possible way.
On the other hand, the Description section is the place to get imaginative! One of the best features of Google Plus is that it offers unlimited space for the Description. Hence, utilize this opportunity to position your entity as imaginative, innovative and interactive. Again, sprinkle the most important keywords without coming off as spammy.
Contact Information
Filling out your contact information thoroughly makes it easy for others to find you.
Links
Make sure you enter the link to your website. You could also add links to other pages that appeal to you in order to give a more complete picture of your entity’s interests.
To sum up, filling in the About section completely is key to improving the reach and connectivity of an entity. So be creative, honest and comprehensive.
Sharing a page to your main profile for exposure
There are multiple ways to increase the visibility and exposure of a Google Plus Page, one of which is to share it to your Google Plus Profile. This is especially beneficial if your Profile is followed by a large number of people.
Most Plussers tend to look at your Profile before deciding whether to circle you. Hence, specifying the link to your Page on your Profile might encourage visitors to check out your Page too.
We tend to shy away from Google Plus Pages because they represent ‘entities’ or ‘brands’. There is a natural level of distrust associated with them. On the contrary, Profiles represent people, and therefore seem more ‘human’, which automatically draws more visitors.
Hence, it makes sense to utilize the power Google Plus Profiles to promote Google Plus Pages.
Google Plus Hashtags Explained
Hashtags are useful inside Google Plus because they help you find posts that use them and also help you organize your own posts that use them. As an example, I’ve started my Hyperball shared circle to reward people who are active in my posts as well as a way to help people populate their Google Plus feeds. In my posts, I use the hashtag #hyperball so that people can find my circle shares easily.
How to create a hashtag? Simply use “pound” in front of the word. Using #extremenetworker in your post, when published, will create the link #extremenetworker.
How can I use hashtags? You can click them from other posts to see topics posted with the hashtag or use the Google Plus search to see them in action. Try a search on your interests and you’ll likely see many posts using hashtags.
When you do a search on Google Plus, you’ll see a grey search bar below the search field that allows you to filter your results. If you’d like to see what your circled friends are posting with that hashtag, click the More option then “From your circles” as shown in the screenshot above.
There are many ways you can use hashtags in Google Plus. You can create your own, use them privately, categorize all of your posts, and however else you feel they might be of value to you.
In the interest of most exposure to your posts, the first 3 hashtags are the most important because they are given priority in the actual post as shown above (on the upper right). Personally, I rarely exceed using more than 3 hashtags per posting, however, my circle shares I do use a lot more. Depending on how many words you use in your post, even if you use no hashtags at all, Google Plus will automatically add their own most relevant hashtags to your post (unless you specifically say not to in preferences).
Google Plus Communities Explained
You can think of Google Plus Communities like Facebook Groups. In that sense, the community on Google Plus is the “forum” and Internet discussion section based around thousands of topics. You can find communities that discuss art, science, literature, social media, amusing memes, animations, music and many more.
All you need to do is search Google Plus for a topic that interests you, and then click on the Communities link in the navigation bar to find communities on that topic. Or, you can browse all communities on Google Plus and find ones that interest you as well. In the example above, I’ve searched for “tigers” to bring up a listing of communities that have “tiger” in their name. After finding a community that you want to join, click on the community to be taken to its page and click the “Join Community” button to be added.
Once you find some awesome communities based around your interests, I highly recommend circling people that provide excellent content. This way, you can follow their posts on your main feed and engage their content. The more you engage with them, the more you become part of the community and the more popular you’ll become (often, they will circle you back if you post great content too).
With Communities, you can create Private Communities or Public Communities.
Private Communities – These communities are geared to be an exclusive group of permitted people. As a creator, you can mark these to not be searchable within Google Plus or you can allow them to be searchable but members must ask to join to be a part of the community. An example of this use: A company wants a central location for all of their employees to discuss topics, rant, suggest, and more, but hide the topics from the general public and Google Plus users.
Public Communities – As it sounds, these communities are open to the public. The communities are searchable within Google Plus search and as a creator, you can leave the community open for anyone to join or you can set it so that users must request to join and be approved before they can contribute to the community.
The Basics of Google Hangouts
Google Hangouts are a way for you to video-chat with one or more people directly with other Google account owners. Besides video chats, you can also engage other members in group conversations, chat, and so much more. Take a look at Google’s Hangout video:
Hangout operators can also do “Hangouts on Air” and record the entire session directly to YouTube to share and view later which is an amazing feature. The Hangout possibilities are endless. Strike up a conversation with a group of people you find interesting, have weekend gatherings, heck, play a few games together in a hangout session. The best part about hangout is, once you have a decent following, you can start your own hangouts and make yourself an authority on a topic that interests you. If you know a topic extremely well and want to share your knowledge, starting hangout sessions might be your ticket to fame on Google Plus.
Muting or Blocking a Person on Google Plus
Once you get a decent following, it is inevitable that you will start receiving SPAM or unwanted content from people on Google Plus.
Using the diagram above, you will need to browse to the person’s main profile then click the down arrow and select either:
Mute <person>
Report / block <person>
If you click the Report option, you will receive the screen above to select the options you want to use to block the person.
Hey guys, today I thought I’d share with you the epiphany that I’ve had over the past month working my new businesses and helping others with their Internet and Social Marketing.
The fact of the matter is, the biggest secret out there is action.
Action?!? That’s it?
Yes! Over 90% of the people that I talk to always give me a line of excuses and reasons for their failures. In fact, the absolute number one reason they are failing is failure to act.
See, these guys and gals are in a vicious cycle of constantly learning. Learning itself is fine, however, if all you do is buy books, courses, seminars, and pay for consulting from guys like me, well, you are still going to fail. They think that all of the research is absolutely required before they can even dream of starting a website or business. They are paralyzed by the fear of failure or negative perceptions.
Please do me a huge favor over the new 2-4 weeks. Come up with a plan of action of things you will set out to accomplish. I don’t care if it is launching your first website, or setting up your first email campaign, or establishing your business self on social media, just set out, and do it. Now.
Here’s the excuses. But Scott, I can’t design a professional looking site like you have. Scott, I have no clue how to write email marketing campaigns. Scott, I don’t know what to promote. Scott, I’m not sure what to sell on eBay. Scott, I need a logo first. Scott, I don’t know how to create a landing page. Please STTTTTOOPPPP!
I hear this over and over again. To tell you the truth, it is quite frustrating. You know what the issue is? Your desire for perfection. When I got my start online 16 years ago, I spent my first year perfecting a site before I launched it. It failed. If I had the ability to go back in time, I would have thrown that perfection mantra right out of the window and started producing sites left and right, ugly as they may be.
Here’s the deal. You probably come from a world of working for other people at a 9-5 job. Your boss fed you tasks for the day and you completed them to the best of your ability. Over time, your boss criticized you because “we don’t pay you to think” so you went out of your way to follow orders and became a robot.
In the business of Internet marketing, you need to completely change your mentality to be a forward thinker, a person willing to throw a site online without it being perfect, and a person willing to learn by failing.
You see, there has been no course, or guru lecture that has helped me more than the lessons I learned by failing. I’m telling you, right here, right now, start taking action and put down all the courses, books, and website materials and set out to create your first website.
Once you have a site online, then you start creating the original content that ties you to your business. You start creating a fan base who wants to know more about you, your history, and your knowledge. From there, then you can start worrying about cleaning up the site design, perfecting your email campaigns, and testing various landing pages, color schemes, etc.
The successful people I have coached over the years in business marketing are the ones who hung up the phone, removed all of their distractions, and got to work building their first sites. By following their course of action, their first sites were ugly as heck, but they continued making content, continued marketing their website to others, and then after a short time, they started making money, with some of the ugliest websites I’ve ever seen. Now? Well, they took their money earned, reinvested it into a professional design, reinvested it into further education, and now they are Internet marketing rock stars.
You need to stop focusing on being perfect and start a massive action plan, immediately. You’ll thank me later, trust me.
Words on failing. Guys, you need to remove the negative from the word failure and realize that your failures are quite simply moments to learn from. Think of it this way, say you are married and you want to see that awesome blockbuster in the movie theater. You ask your wife or husband “Hey hun, can we go see XYZ, it looks good!” and they return with “Not today dear, I’ve got a headache and it would just make it worse.” That’s a simple exchange right? You’ll probably shrug it off and move on. Right? Well, in business, it is the same way. If you are trying to get someone in your business or to order your shiny do-hickey, and they tell you no? Treat that rejection the same way! “Well, they said no, it isn’t the right fit for them, I wonder if Sally would be interested (to go to the movies with me or, in business, enter my business/buy my product)?”
Take your failures, bounce it off of you, and move on. Whatever you do, don’t take failure personally. Everyone in business experiences failures, however, it is the ones who pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and continue forward that succeed.
Anyway, I hope this post inspired some of you out there to stop the learning cycle and start taking action. By taking action, congratulations, you’ve stumbled on the secrets to your future success.
On May 21st, 2015, Google+ removed the Google Ripples feature from their network. This guide includes screenshots of this Google Ripples which will be left for archival historic purposes.
It was absolutely incredible when I focused the majority of my time on Google+ in 2013. I had posts that went viral beyond any expectations and they were the cause of all the swarm around my account with hundreds of people asking me what I was doing to cause it all to happen. All of this opened my eyes widely to the power of Google+ and social media in general. I was hooked.
After evaluating human behavior in social media, I came up with a plan of attack for Google+ that I worked on for a few months to test what would happen. I spent between 1-3 hours a day working the plan and at the climax, I was bringing in between 500-1,000 circles a day and all of my posts were getting shared by hundreds immediately after posting new “fun” content.
My entire strategy was a methodical process of promoting my posts on major social networks, using circle shares, using tools like Circloscope and CircleCount, and a ton of other smaller things like sharing my posts in popular communities, to my viral-content pages, and more.
It was an absolute blast. I was like a kid in a candy store. Every time a post would go viral, I’d run upstairs from my home office and tell my wife:
WOOHOO, another post of mine just got 500 shares! Google+ is fricken awesome!
Of course, I had no real plans to do anything with my methods at the beginning, it was just a way for me to dabble in the study of human behavior. There was a point when I had a new post in Google+’s “What’s Hot” section every. single. day. That’s when it happened, a constant flood of people emailing me from the contact form here at ScottBuehler.com and hundreds of hangout messages asking me what the heck I was doing. Afterall, they were sharing the same content I was but I was getting hundreds of shares and they couldn’t get more than 10. What was my secret? What the heck are you doing Scott?
Scott, you just posted about your kids in Halloween costumes, on Halloween day, when everyone else is doing the same thing, and got more shares and plusses than a much more entertaining Gif I just shared! You are doing the impossible here. Teach me! Reference
Everyone was asking similar questions on a daily basis. It was around this time I met Billy Funk and decided to put a course together called Plus Mastermind to help those that wanted to learn my methods. Working on the course is how I closed out the fourth quarter of 2013.
That’s a brief summary of how my 2013 went. During the entire process, I had a ton of unexpected things happen including establishing business relationships, new friends, and an overwhelming number of people interested in my projects. Why? Well, between all my “happy” posts on Google+, I spent hours coaching businesses, helping friends, and answering questions on a daily basis. With that said, let’s move on to why you are here.
My Most Viral Posts on Google Plus
These posts are ranked by Total Engagement which includes +1’s and reshares. The big circles thing you see above each viral post is what is called “Ripples” which shows you public shares and shares within those shares from everyone. The bigger bubbles reflect G+ influential people who caused addition reshares from their audience. I knew I’d be making a post like this in the future, so I frequently reshared my own posts to show larger ripples within the ripples, you know, to make things visually interesting for everyone.
So here they are, Scott’s top 10 most popular posts on Google Plus.
“As a parent, one must have patience.” Link to Post 618 Shares; 3,537 Plusses; Total Engagement: 4,155
#9
“Albino Alligator. I didn’t know these existed!” 849 Shares; 3,621 Plusses; Total Engagement: 4,470
#8
“Floating cube illusion.” 1,185 Shares; 2,517 Plusses; Total Engagement: 4,702
#7
“Smooth move dude.” 1,441 Shares; 3,543 Plusses; Total Engagement: 4,984
#6
“Incredibly adorable picture of a grown dog and a fawn.” 831 Shares; 5,082 Plusses; Total Engagement: 5,913
#5
“Wow. A perfect loop gif.” 2,000 Shares; 3,941 Plusses; Total Engagement: 5,941
#4
“I learned to give not because I have many, but because I know exactly how it feels to have nothing.” 1,172 Shares; 5,652 Plusses; Total Engagement: 6,824
#3
“Malachite stone.” 900 Shares; 7,237 Plusses; Total Engagement: 8,137
#2
“The Grand Canyon as seen from space.” 1,846 Shares; 8,525 Plusses; Total Engagement: 10,374
The #1 most viral post I’ve had is:
“Don’t look down!” 4,109 Shares; 9,525 Plusses; Total Engagement: 13,634
Some Google Plus Statistics
There’s so many other posts I could share, such as my “most plussed” or “most shared” which has a mixture of the posts above and other posts as well. Here’s some more interesting facts about my Scott Buehler Google+ account.
I’ve made 2,750+ posts on Google+ most of which came in 2013.
I’ve received 442,000+ plus ones in total.
I’ve received 141,500+ reshares of my posts in total.
I’ve received 58,300+ comments on my posts in total.
I’ve reshared 1,000+ posts from others on my stream and pages.
Average Response Per Post
Other Google Plus Statistics
You currently need more than 5,039 shares of a post to make the top 50 most reshared posts on G+. My most successful post is 930 shares short of that number.
You currently need 7,339 plus one’s in order to make the top 50 most plusoned posts on G+ list (link above).
4 – That’s the amount of times my browser crashed collecting all of the data required to put this post together (even with 8GB system RAM).
In Summary
Wow, 2013 certainly was fun! Of course, in 2014, I transitioned to helping others achieve my results through my Plus Mastermind course so my own engagement and statistics have fallen as I focus on my career (most of which is this site and my course). I’ve found it to be much more rewarding to guide others through the web of Google+ and the positive reviews keep me motivated and pushing forward.
If you’ve read this far, I want to reward you with a powerful tip that will help you get started building your engagement. Download the free Chrome Plugin Circloscope, go here to pay $47 to buy the premium version, and start searching Google Plus for content related to your niche. If you find posts with high engagement (shares, plusses, and comments), load the post into Circloscope Data > Ripple and then add these people to your circles in mass. If you continue to do this daily, you’ll find people circling you back because you are effectively circling people who engage on the content you provide.
If you are on Google Plus for fun and entertainment value, you will want to share a few fun and entertaining posts every day and follow other people who engage this type of content on Google+ from the Google+ What’s Hot page (which is now buried, but found under the “Explore” link in the top navigation bar of G+). Just import the ripples from a post in Circloscope, add some filters, and add to circles. If you make this a daily habit, you’ll easily replicate my results from last year. Believe me, you’ll return to this post in a month or two and thank me. 😉
For business users, it shouldn’t take you long to figure out how to use this tool to find laser-targeted G+ users to market your products or services towards.
A special thanks to CircleCount. Without your free service, this post would have taken me 50x longer to put together.
This is obvious to many, but for many videos I see out there, it’s apparent some aren’t aware. When you are uploading your video and waiting, spend that time optimizing your video title (of course) but don’t forget to write a decent video description!
One of the obvious benefits of Closed Captions is for the hearing impaired. If you are a fast speaker or have a strong accent, many will turn on closed captions to understand you better.
Another benefit to using Closed Captions is the fact that both YouTube and Google have advanced filtering options that allows people to look for only videos that have closed captions enabled.
YouTube allows you to create an unlimited amount of playlists. Meaning, you can create a ton of different niche-based playlists based on your interests or based around your channel’s niche. Each play list is individually indexed in Google which provides you with another chance to have your videos found and watched.
This video shows you exactly how to +mention a foreign-letter account on Google+. The video shows you two methods you can use to effectively mention these accounts properly. This is only needed if you are trying to mention an account who has made a post to their stream or to a community that you’d like to reply to.
The absolute worst thing you can do is leave your profile photo the default bluehead. I highly recommend an actual clear face photo, either professionally photographed or you performing or doing one of your favorite hobbies and/or family-friendly activities.
Using the animated GIF I created for you on the left, you will need to find the small arrow icon on the bottom of the post you’d like to share, then click the share button to share this post.
Plus One (+1) is a ‘virtual recommendation’ and the Google Plus way of saying, “I like this post” or “I agree with this post.” The author of the post will then be sent a notification that their post was ‘+1’d’ by you. When you share a useful post from a website outside Google Plus, say from a blog, by clicking on the “G+” social media icon, you are automatically +1’ing’ that post. Higher number of +1s indicates that the post resonates with more people.
By sharing content, you are going one step ahead of the +1. Instead of just ‘liking’ a post, you are now ‘recommending’ a post to your Followers, thereby improving the visibility of that post. A notification will be sent to the person whose post you are sharing. As mentioned above, the basis of Google Plus is ‘sharing’. The more you share, the more people will notice you. It is, therefore, one of the most effective techniques to build connections in this community.
Lets say you came across this post on the left in Google Plus. You find it valuable and want to share it on to your audience in Google Plus.
I posted the above rich text demo to a private post to show the outcome of the above post. As you can see to the left, once posted to Google Plus, the text has the intended bold, italics, and strike-through effects we wanted.
Hey guys, today I thought I’d share with you the epiphany that I’ve had over the past month working my new businesses and helping others with their Internet and Social Marketing.
If you’ve read this far, I want to reward you with a powerful tip that will help you get started building your engagement. Download the