Looking for awesome guides and resources for Google+, the social media network? In this Google+ topic, you will find any and all posts that mention or reference using or working with Google+ on Top Five Advisor.
Since we’ve released the Google+ Beginner’s Guide and since updated it with the latest features, we thought we’d share what we think are the top five Google+ tools that you should use to get the most out of the network.
Use these tools to discover new Google+ members to follow, to manage your circles and much more. Business users would also benefit from utilizing these tools to help their brand awareness, engagement and to find conversations they should be a part of.
Head over to Popular > Engagement and select Profiles, Pages, or Communities and find people, pages or communities worth following. If you really want to dive in, check out the Specials menu. It will show you all sorts of hot posts, profiles and so much more.
Of course, as shown on the right, the “You!” section has all sorts of tools and resources you can use. Click “Your Profile” to see statistics on your Google+ content, see what people love the most, see how many people are circling you each day, see what posts are getting the most comments, +1s and reshares.
Visit CircleCount, sign in with your profile and away you go!
For anyone that has used Google+ for longer than a month, you know that managing your circles can be a laborious task. Enter Circloscope to the rescue! Above, we created a quick animated gif from within the browser plugin that shows you all of the features available. When you click any of the items from the dashboard menu, you’ll be presented with additional options and customizations.
With Circloscope, the 5,000 circles limit that Google+ imposes will no longer be a problem. Filter out the inactive people, place highly relevant people in special circle groups, filter and sort with many options to choose from, export your circles and you can even undo accidental uncircles. Here’s a quick tutorial by Christine DeGraff that explains and shows Circloscope uses.
If you happen to enjoy Google+ so much that you use them as your primary social media network, then you’ll really love Friends+Me. This tool will allow you to share your Google+ profile and page content to your other popular social media accounts, automatically. In addition to this primary feature, you can also take advantage of their scheduling features to share your content on other social networks at optimal times.
Currently, Friends+Me supports: Google+, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, App.Net and Tumblr.
Without a doubt, Friends+Me is the best sharing tool that you can use if you use Google+ as your primary social network. There’s nothing more powerful than sharing posts and content on your Google+ profile or page and knowing that this service will share it across other major platforms for you.
Friends+Me also provides a Google Chrome extension. With this on your browser, you can take advantage of added enhancements to make sharing to your other social media as easy as possible. The extension is not required to use this service (for those that enjoy a clutter-free browsing experience).
Here’s another fun tool to play around with if you’ve ever used Google+ before. As the name suggests, this tool will show you stats all about your profile and it includes the ability to see an overview (see Scott Buehler’s stats to the left), locations, charts, popular posts, people, photos and more.
One of our favorite features of this particular tool is the “People” section because it shows you all of your biggest fans that have reshared your content. It helped identify people that we weren’t aware of who constantly shared our content.
Another fantastic tool for business users, fun G+ topical pages and many niches in-between, is Buffer, which allows you to schedule posts not only to your Gooogle+ pages but to your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and App.net.
Once you set up your Buffer with times to share content and connect all of your social media, you can then browse the Internet as your normally would but now, when you see something amazing that would be a perfect fir for your page(s), you can now click the buffer button and schedule / queue that content along with your description.
Of course, to enable these quick-sharing features with Buffer, you will need a browser add on. Unlike the other tools we mentioned here, Buffer offers apps with all of the major browsers. Just visit this page and Buffer will detect your browser and offer you a blue button to install the browser add-on. From there, you’ll be off to the races and sharing content in no time.
You can also use Google+ posting enhancements to bold and italics you content, see our Google+ Beginner’s Guide (under Google Plus Formatting Options) for how to do that.
We’re curious to hear what your favorite Google+ tools are. Leave a comment below and let us know!
For those curious, we put together this list of the top 5 social media networks as of May, 2015. Most people know that Facebook is the top social media network in existence, however, what about the remaining list?
Thanks to the Statista website, we were able to put together this list of the top five social media networks based on the total share of visitors from the United States.
Alexa: 2; Quantcast: 3; Compete Rank: 3
For those that have a business, it is strongly suggested that you create a Facebook business page. Although Facebook continues to change their algorithms to show less and less of your content to the people who “Like” your page, you can enhance your traffic and conversions by taking advantage of their Facebook Ads platform. With some optimization, you can drive cheap likes and website traffic to your website with various targeting options available at your fingertips.
Besides business usage, we find Facebook to be king for networking with others. Whether you are looking for like-minded people or those that love a particular niche, Facebook will have more of the users registered, all available with a quick private message.
YouTube commands a massive lead in video viewing and they attract over 17% of all social media traffic to the videos published there. YouTube is great for finding guides, training, how to help, entertainment and so much more. If you have an interest, YouTube will have thousands of videos available to view and enjoy. Here’s their current stats:
Alexa: 3; Quantcast: 2; Compete Rank: 2
For business users, you can publish videos about your website, business topics and much more. Additionally, you can take advantage of their free video hosting and embed your uploaded videos directly on your website. For those wanting to advertise, you can take advantage of Google AdWords to promote your videos within the network or via the Google search and partner networks.
For personal users, YouTube can be a massive time trap. Chances are, you’ll find YouTube videos on a topic you are searching for on Google and you’ll be suckered in to watching many more videos. With the related videos feature, it’s very easy to go down the rabbit hole and come out hours later wondering where all the time went.
Google+ is a social media network most similar to Facebook in that you can “circle” people of interest. Although similar, you’ll find many of their popular members fall into the anti-Facebook crowd. Google+ features a customizable stream that you can sort by your circle groups. Therefore, when starting out, it is in your best interest to create circle groups that make sense for your needs. That way, you can sort the stream circles to find the exact content you are looking for at any given moment.
Be sure to check out our Beginner’s Guide to Google+ to learn the complete ins and outs of this social network.
We highly recommend creating a Google+ page for topics that interest you and also for any website that you own or manage. Since Google search will occasionally display content from the Google+ network, it’s a network that you simply cannot ignore.
Twitter is a network for people that love to communicate in short messages. Your “tweets” are limited to 140 characters but you can take advantage of hashtags and website links to expand the conversation. Twitter allows mobile and desktop users to upload images to extend the conversation as well.
Alexa: 9; Quantcast: 9; Compete Rank: 8
For business users, you can create Twitter profiles on every website you own and you can take advantage of several Twitter services that allow you to schedule tweets such as Buffer or HootSuite. Additionally, it’s a great place to share when you add new content to your website or when something important like a major milestone is reached.
What? Reddit? Surprised us too! Reddit commands 1.81% of social media traffic with LinkedIn only 0.03% behind it. Reddit is an entertainment and news-based social networking website where their users can submit links and text-based content to topical “subreddits.” The users can then vote up or down the content which will determine placement in the subreddit’s “Top” page for the day.
Alexa: 25; Quantcast: 129; Compete Rank: 61
Reddit has an ever-growing list of subreddits that you can browse, interact and use for finding up-to-the-minute news and trends in any niche/topic that you can think of. We currently use Reddit to find trends or to research what is being talked about in niches that interest us.
What social media networks do you consider your top five? How many of you use Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, WhatsApp or SnapChat? Leave a comment below and join us in the conversation!
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:
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:
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.
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!
Utah CommunityCurrent Members: 2,667
Official Community Link: Utah Community.
A Shorted Link for Sharing: http://tygr.me/utahcommunity
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!
Tiger of the Day CommunityCurrent Members: 4,829
Official Community Link: Tiger of the Day
A Shortened Link for Sharing: http://tygr.me/tigercommunity
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.
GIFs CommunityCurrent Members: 5,085
Official Community Link: GIFs Community
Shortened Link: http://tygr.me/gplusGIFs
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.
Viral Hot Trending CommunityCurrent Members: 2,191
Official Community Link: Viral Hot Trending Community
Shortened Link: http://tygr.me/viralhot
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.
Quotes CommunityCurrent Members: 3,718
Official Community Link: Quotes Community
Shortened Link: http://tygr.me/gplusquotes
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!
HTML5 CSS3 JavaScript CommunityCurrent Members: 7,033
Official Community Link: HTML5 CSS3 JavaScript Community
Shortened Link: http://tygr.me/html5css3js
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.
Relationship Internet MarketingCurrent Members: 2,623
Official Community Link: Relationship Internet Marketing
Shortened Link: http://tygr.me/relationsmarketing
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.
Animal and Landscape Animations CommunityCurrent Members: 4,966
Official Community Link: Animal and Landscape Animations
Shortened Link: http://tygr.me/animalanimations
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.
Share Your Page Community or Circles CommunityCurrent Members: 2,196
Official Community Link: Share Your Page Community Circles
Shortened Link: http://tygr.me/shareiton
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.
These are my other communities that I have that are part of future projects and are waiting for me to give publicity to.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Begin managing your circles on Google+ – Click here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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:
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.
As you can see in the screenshot above, there are three ways to format text for your Google Plus posts.
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.
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!
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:
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.
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:
Gives you an immediate insight into your Circle counts
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.
Filling out your contact information thoroughly makes it easy for others to find you.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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:
If you click the Report option, you will receive the screen above to select the options you want to use to block the person.
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.
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.
#10 – Parenting – Shares: 618; Plusses: 3,537: Total Engagement: 4,155
“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
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.
Average Response Per Post
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.