If you’ve already created a personal Google+ account, Google is working on a migration tool that’s expected to come out in a few weeks. With the tool, all of your connections and circles will automatically be connected to your new App profile. Google says that you can start your Apps account now and merge the connections when the tool is released.
How To Use Google+ For Business
Project Management and Collaboration
Google+ lets you organize and group your contacts in Circles. You can organize your circles by your relationships to people and when you share things with them, it’s not shared with your other connections. Apps organizations will automatically be organized in their own circle. But businesses can also create circles for people working on different projects within a company or circles for clients, contractors and various other people that need to stay in touch while working together on a job.
In addition to circles, Hangouts are a great way to collaborate. Hangouts let you video chat and share your screen with up to 9 people. You can also share notes within a Hangout and collaborate on Google Docs. Hangouts could be extremely useful for remote business meetings and collaborating on projects long distance.
Content Marketing
The Google+ Stream is your newsfeed where you see your connections’ updates and where you can post and share information. When you set your update as Public, Google indexes it and your post becomes searchable in Google.com. You can post text, video, photos and links in your updates, which allows for more engagement than just text. Note that you can’t post a video and a photo, but you can post a video and text, for example. Chris Brogan has a helpful post on using Google+ as a storytelling platform.
To see the ROI on your content marketing on Google+, Ripples gives you a funnel visualization of public posts, showing you who has shared your post and how it gets shared by others.
Search and SEO
As mentioned above, your public Google+ posts are indexed by Google. When Google+ users are searching Google while logged in, they will start to see search results from their Google+ connections. In other words, your content will start to show up in your connections’ searches. In addition, Google puts greater weight on posts with more shares.
All of this means that businesses can improve their search rankings on Google.com by building up their Google+ connections and posting valuable content on Google+ that users share.
First, what is search engine optimization? Here’s a 3-minute video from Common Craft, in collaboration with Search Engine Land, that explains SEO:
You can use Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to improve your search engine optimization ranking:
Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools tells you how Google sees your website. If you’re not using the tool, go to Google Webmaster Tools to add and verify your site.
Keywords
To see what keywords Google associates with your website, in Google Webmaster tools go to: Your site > Keywords.
Looking at the keywords, can you do a better job at positioning your company?
In order for Google to understand who you are and what you do, you need a content strategy for your top keywords. This means that you need
to:
Use top keywords in your page titles, blog categories and blog post titles.
Have pages in your top-level navigation that explain what you do and your ideal clients.
Write blog posts that explain your processes and target the type of people that would hire you. For example, if you’re an accountant who works with small businesses, write a blog post titled “5 Bookkeeping Best Practices for Small Businesses”.
Once you have a strong content strategy, Google will start to have a better understanding of who you are and will index your site more accurately.
Duplicate Content
Under Diagnostics > HTML suggestions, you’ll see if Google is detecting duplicate content on your site. If it is, address any of the suggestions listed.
You want to avoid Google thinking you have duplicate content because it limits your website’s ranking.
Site Performance
Under Labs > Site performance you can see the performance stats for your site. If Google thinks your site is slower than more than 50% of sites, you should work on improving your website’s speed.
A significant factor for site ranking is site performance. For help on improving your site performance, check out the resources on Google’s Page Speed.
Google Analytics
In addition to telling you how traffic is behaving on your site, Google Analytics can give you useful information for SEO.
Under Traffic Sources > Keywords you can see the keywords that people are using to come to your site from search engines.
Looking at this data:
Are there keywords listed that you can use in your page titles and meta descriptions?
Are there keywords that you can incorporate into blog posts and website content?
Analytics data can be overwhelming. One way to get the most out of your data is to use analytics to monitor how your site is performing and what to optimize.
Here are 3 Google Analytics tools you can use to discover how to improve your site. (And if you don’t have Google Analytics installed on your website, install it, it’s free.)
1. Annotations
Anytime you undertake a marketing activity you should annotate it to see what effect it has on your website. Understanding what impact certain marketing activities have on traffic and traffic behaviours on your site gives you an opportunity to optimize and improve.
If blog posts that offer customer support cause a spike in traffic, for example, you know to optimize your blog with these types of posts.
Goals funnels monitor tasks on your site that require traffic to go through a specific path—such as email newsletter signup or ecommerce through a shopping cart. Monitoring these paths gives you insight into what’s working and what’s not working.
For example, you can monitor where on a path people are stopping. If people are dropping off at your newsletter signup form, is it because the form is too long? Is it confusing?
Figuring out why people don’t complete a goal allows you to go back and optimize that goal path.
Advanced Segments are useful for comparing what different audience groups do on your site and how to optimize for these audiences.
For example, you can compare how referral traffic from different sources behave on your site.
If Twitter traffic is more likely to sign up for your newsletter than Facebook traffic, figure out how you can optimize for Facebook. Is the newsletter signup clear on the pages that Facebook traffic lands on? Is the language similar to the language used on Facebook?
Understanding why traffic is behaving in a certain way allows you to go back and optimize for that traffic.
Twitter is a great tool for public relations because it can be used for finding conversations and engaging with influencers who are chatting about specific topics.
Stacey Acevero, social media manager for PRWeb, has provided her tips for the best ways to use Twitter for PR:
As a listening tool. Before you just dive in, take the time to listen to your target audience. What are they saying? What are trending topics? What makes them happy? What makes them sad? Is there is a need for a product or service this is unfulfilled in their lives? How about an improvement on an existing product or service? Listening allows you to get to know your audience and find out their needs.
As an educational tool. Don’t use Twitter (or any other social media platforms, for that matter) as a hardcore marketing or promotional tool. Being sale-sy will drive your target audience away and being sold to isn’t why people are on Twitter—consumers are on Twitter to engage in conversation, to learn about new things and to share information. Be helpful and share resources that aren’t always your own, and always aim to please others before you ever ask for a favor back.
As an engagement tool. After you’ve established yourself as someone knowledgeable and helpful in your industry, take the time to get to know people by actually talking to them. People don’t want to be talked AT on Twitter, they want to be talked WITH. Be human, be personal and stay away from auto tweets or replies—the robot thing is really a turn-off.
As a customer service tool. Monitor mentions of your brand in social media using TweetDeck (free service, basic) or Vocus (paid, advanced analytics). Respond positively to mentions of your brand and diffuse negative comments that may arise. It’s a great way to build a positive rapport with your audience.
Creating your own LinkedIn Group increases your profile and gives you control over the group’s content and reach. The goal with a group is to engage your audience and leverage your company’s thought leadership.
From our experience, it’s best to have a more wide-ranging group for sharing ideas and making connections with people from a variety of backgrounds. If needed, you can create a subgroup later on that is more specific to your company or niche.
Consider taking advantage of LinkedIn’s new Open Groups. With Open Groups, all discussions can be viewed by anyone on the web and be found in search engines. They can also be shared on other social networks like Facebook and Twitter. All of these features increase the potential reach of your group.
1. Choosing a Group Name
When choosing a name for your group, you want to make sure not to limit your audience. Again, you want your group to appeal to a wide variety of people, so use a title that reflects that. Think of keywords people searching for similar groups would use.
2. Inviting Members to Your Group
Start by inviting people who are your contacts already and would be interested in the group. Next, search LinkedIn for prospects who have similar interests and would find your group helpful.
When you send invitations try to make a connection rather than just pitching your group. Have you noticed anything interesting this person’s been doing on LinkedIn? Do you have any commonalities? State clearly why the group will be of benefit to them.
3. Welcome Message
We recommend creating a custom Welcome Message template and setting it to automatically send to new members. The message should include what the group hopes to achieve, some guidelines, and should link to something of benefit to your new members - like a whitepaper or interesting post online.
4. Content
You want to have control over the types of content and quality of discussions within your group. Set the tone by posting content related to significant news in your industry. Be a resource to members of your group by providing quality content and information that is helpful to them.
If you are a resource, it doesn’t matter that you are also a sales person. Research shows that people choose to buy from companies and sales people that have not only been a resource but who have also developed an ongoing relationship with them.
The objective is to ensure a level of trust and credibility that will set the standard and tone for your company overall.
5. Engagement
Tips for Increasing Group Engagement in your LinkedIn Group:
Find relevant blogs and add their RSS feeds to the group’s news feed. This will ensure that fresh content is being posted to your group and it will also send an email to group members (depending on how members have set their notifications) which will encourage them to visit the group page.
Post some of your blog articles as news articles.
Post a message encouraging group members to post their own articles.
LinkedIn users tend to self-promote. To prevent self-promotion from overwhelming your group conversations, consider setting up a subgroup where people can promote themselves, what they do, and their blog URL, or just invite members to share their blogs and Twitter handles.
Ask for feedback on the group. You can do this using the Poll app.
Wow the end of the year is quickly approaching. Are you panicked or well planned?
If you have been meaning to organize your thoughts for the upcoming year, here are some guiding questions to ask yourself.
Would you say your company is becoming more effective at meeting customer needs?
Have you recently implemented a large-scale innovative campaign or several small-scale innovative pilot projects?
Are you collaborating more with others outside your firm?
If you want annual revenue growth next year, then work out how to answer yes to these questions.
1. Customer Relationships
Selling stuff is about creating a value-based relationship that benefits your customers and keeps them coming back. Focus obsessively on their needs and in turn your needs will be fulfilled.
2. Innovation
What are you selling? Is it worth the price, time, attention? Sooner or later, all businesses run out of room to grow. The ability to reinvent is no small feat, but it is what separates the high performers from the one-time wonders.
3. Collaboration
Forest, trees. Trees, forest. Sometimes the most obvious areas of innovation and growth are right in front of you, but you are too close to see it. Gathering ideas from outside your company is one way to source new ideas. Plus forging joint ventures and licensing arrangements can help you bring ideas to market faster and cheaper than slogging through it alone.
Contests are a great way to spread the word and spark excitement about a campaign. They can increase your audience reach, reward your fans and get people talking about you.
But contests don’t run themselves; they need to be well planned and well executed. When running contests, we recommend using the SPHERE approach.
So what? What’s special about your contest and why should someone care? Are there any great entries? What’s important for your audience to know about in regards to the scope of the contest or the breadth of people entering? Determine this at the outset and integrate your So What statement into all of your marketing materials. If you don’t know why people should be excited about the contest, they won’t be.
Personality driven. Your contest shouldn’t be just a faceless organization; it should have a personality behind it. Who are the spokespeople? Have them bring personality to the contest. Also, who are the active people on the contest page, what personalities do they have?
Hook. What’s your story angle, catchy contest title, hashtag? You need to use phrases that are easy to remember. Your Hook helps to spread your contest via word of mouth.
Ego. Who does your contest need to engage with? Who looks clever or in the know if they share the contest and promote it amongst their fans? The worst thing you could do is encourage entrants to spam their friends to get votes. Instead, find the people who can benefit from promoting your contest. Also, why do people want to enter? Prize money? Join community and share ideas? What else?
Relevance. Why is the contest relevant to the audience you’re pitching it to? If you want people to enter, what’s in it for them? If you want them to promote the contest, how can they benefit?
Effort. Don’t underestimate the time commitment that is required to run a successful contest and create an effective community. Contests are never about giving away the prize, they are about interacting in the community and establishing long-term ties. What effort do you need to put into this in order to keep people engaged after the contest? Proper outreach takes time. Setting up a media resource page to direct bloggers to takes time. Writing a good social media release takes time.
And remember, you’re aiming for Results, not Effort. Ensure your goals are specific and measurable so that your marketing efforts are always driving towards your goals.
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