Understanding Google+ as a marketing tool

Follow your profile links

Google+ allows you to embed anchor text do follow links directly in your bio.  You can also add unlimited links to your other profiles across the web

Embed post links

Like your profile links you can also add as many anchor text links in your posts.  The value of these links will increase significantly if your post goes viral or it is shared, liked or +1ed 

Optimize your G+ title tags

The first sentence of your Google+ post becomes part of the title tag, which is highly correlated with rankings and influences click-through rates. Choose your keywords carefully and consider that the first sentence will be the first thing most people see.

Use as your indexing tool

When you share new content on Google+, chances are that Google will index the page very quickly.

Rumour has it that new URLs are crawled almost instantly. This makes complete sense as part of the purpose of Google+ was to replace Twitter and create a real time search.

In the good old days, if you wanted a website indexed you filled out a web form and waited several weeks. Today, it’s as simple as pressing a +1 button.

Share your new content on Google+, as well as your other social networks, for quick indexation.

Connect with Influencers

Google+ lists 17 different notification triggers that can help you connect with influencers in your industry.

Depending on your account settings these notifications can be in the form of email, phone, SMS or the frightening red tool bar warning.

17 actions that trigger notifications:

This is almost a “best practice” guide to engagement at its best and should be followed daily if possible

  1. Mention them in a post
  2. Share a post with them directly
  3. Share a post and you’re in a circle they subscribe to
  4. Comment on a post they created
  5. Comment on a post after they comment on it
  6. Add them to a circle
  7. Suggest new people to add to their circles
  8. Tag them in a photo
  9. Tag one of their photos
  10. Suggest a profile photo for them
  11. Comment on a photo after they comment on it
  12. Comment on a photo they are tagged in
  13. Comment on a photo they tagged
  14. Start a conversation with them
  15. Send them an invitation or update an event
  16. Remind them about events
  17. Any activity on events they created

Several people have introduced themselves to me on Google+ by “gently” using the methods above.

Be warned: Never use the above methods to spam the hell out of someone, nobody likes it and nobody responds to it!

You can still be a pioneer

Even with its explosive growth, only 1 in 4 people use Google + once per month which is quite an amazing stat when you think about it and the rest log in less than that  although this number is growing fast so please take action and get set up if you are not already doing so.

None of these tips matter unless you actually use Google+. Out of the 1300 people I’ve circled in my Google+, only about 300 actively participate. No surprise, these tend to be the more savvy SEO and media types.

The good news is there is still time to be in almost on the ground floor.

Imagine getting in to Facebook or Twitter when there were only 1 in 4 people logging in once every month, where would you be now?

Answer: Very very rich and successful sat on your island somewhere hot most likely!

Strategy for Establishing Authority

Identify the industry leaders

This is the first step to setting up your authority hub of major influencers.  Our aim here is to go out and find the top 50 websites or blogs in your niche.

Do a search in Google using your niche keyword + blogs to identify the top 50 and visit each one. 

Look for the RSS feed link and click it copy the URL and click “subscribe to feed” in Google reader. Paste the URL of the feed into this field and click enter.

You now have a feed set up to automatically send you all of this particular websites latest content they publish.

You will need to do this with as many of the major authority websites and blogs within your niche as you can find to ensure you have almost instant access to all of their breaking news and updates.

(Google reader normally works with a 20 – 30 minute delay from a story being published to you getting the feed)

Check in here at least a couple of times a day and do a quick scan of the latest content.

If you see anything you find interesting simply copy the URL and share it in your Google+ feed.

Always leave a personal view on the content and try to add value to each post.

Identify the individual influencers in your niche

In every niche you have the major movers and shakers.

These are the people who seem to be everywhere, they pop up on forums, guest posts and are mentioned several time per day in various content.

Follow these individuals and set up an RSS feed for them individually.

Make sure you spend as much time as possible to comment on all of their content.

Create your own posts and refer back to them as reference points for further information and generally be very active around all of their content.

Here is a screen shot of one of my email feeds I have set up to target the SEO niche.

Generally you can actually see what the post or share is about without clicking in so you can quickly scan the results and add a comment or share for any relevant information in seconds directly from your Gmail account

Once you begin to build this activity up you will be amazed at how quickly some of these industry leaders identify you and add you in to their own networks.

Grow your following daily

 

Once you have connected with the major influencers within your niche you can identify any other people you may want to engage with within your niche by viewing all of the people who have your influencer in their circles.

You have the ability to click into each person’s profile to check them out but a lot of the time you can see from the list they are in your niche simply by the tagline they use.

When you see anyone in your niche simply add them to your circles.

There is no guarantee this person will add you back to their circles and it is not like Twitter where almost half of the people you follow automatically follow you back but it ensures you get their feeds and have the ability to share or G+ their content.  This provides you with an opportunity to get noticed and hopefully added to their circles.

We are all trying to achieve the same goal.

It makes perfect sense for them to want to follow you because you are demonstrating to them you quite clearly are an authority within your own niche because of all of your activity and high quality content.  Once you achieve this you can develop really a really good base of people who will all syndicate your content.

Trending topics

Very important part of the overall strategy is to be ahead of the game and up on the latest news as much as possible.

Create feeds for trending topics within your niche.  The easiest way to get loads of traffic is to jump on a trending topic in your niche and start to share the content.

Create your own take on this content and generally be very visible.

The search engines need visitors and page views to sell their advertising.

They love current relevant topical news and are more than happy to rank fresh content very highly even for a new web site.

Becoming consistent in breaking this type of news story in your niche before many others will provide a massive boost to the perceived authority of your new site to both Google and your followers in your circles.

Please focus on this strategy; it is the most important single function that provides the most value to your ranking prospects.

Content Curation

I have included a great plug in that lets you set up automated content curation for up to 2 keywords absolutely free of charge.

The content it pulls in is put in to a training area you create in your blog ready to be published if you wish.

If you want to set up more keywords there is a monthly charge starting at $10 but the free option works perfectly well for me.

You can also add a couple of clever tools to your toolbar from this plug-in that allows you to “get it” and “source it”.

This enables you to curate any interesting content you come across and create a page on your blog with this content featured.

It ensures the link is in place back to the original source and you can simply add your own take and upload it to your Google + feed.