Why your firm needs to be on Google+

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Sweet marketing music

Tanner Montague came to town from Seattle having never owned his own music venue before. He’s a musician himself, so he has a pretty good sense of good music, but he also wandered into a crowded music scene filled with concert venues large and small.But the owner of Green Room thinks he found a void in the market. It’s lacking, he says, in places serving between 200 and 500 people, a sweet spot he thinks could be a draw for both some national acts not quite big enough yet for arena gigs and local acts looking for a launching pad.“I felt that size would do well in the city to offer more options,” he says. “My goal was to A, bring another option for national acts but then, B, have a great spot for local bands to start.”Right or wrong, something seems to be working, he says. He’s got a full calendar of concerts booked out several months. How did he, as a newcomer to the market in an industry filled with competition, get the attention of the local concertgoer?

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by Brenda Arndt
December 2012-January 2013

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Why your firm needs to be on Google+

Why your firm needs to be on Google+

When Google dove head-first into social networking last year with the launch of Google+, pundits were quick to compare it to Facebook and declare Google+ too little, too late. “No one’s using it,” they said. “Facebook’s got too big a head start. Google+ is doomed.”

These pundits forgot one thing: Google+ is owned by Google, the most popular search engine on the planet. People search on Google.com more than a billion times a day. When they search, Google decides what they will see in their search results. And right now, Google has decided that what happens on Google+ is very, very important.

Google has said clearly that businesses that are active on Google+ will have an advantage when it comes to getting found via Google search.

Here are some reasons why your firm needs to be on Google+:

Google’s “Search, Plus Your World”:This service, which debuted in January 2012, delivers personalized search results that are influenced by users’ social connections. If you search for “Kansas City plumbers,” the first results you’ll see are those that people in your social network have connected with on Google+ or given a “+1” (Google’s equivalent of Facebook’s “like” button). Personalized search results are the default, by the way, when you do a Google search. You can toggle between “personal results” and “world results” by clicking on the globe icon at the top right of the search results page.

Google+ Hangouts: These were developed to help businesses in a variety of ways, including product or service announcements, new hire announcements and more. Google+ Hangouts help you as a business owner to connect with your audience and essentially host Town Hall events for free.

Content sharing: If you create content on your website or blog and then share links to that content on Google+, those pages will get indexed almost immediately and will start showing up in search results much more quickly than links that are not shared on Google+. This can give you a boost when you’re releasing a new product, offering a new white paper, or announcing a promotion. What’s more, sharing links on Google+ to older content on your website can freshen up that older content in the search engine’s eyes and make it easier to find via search.

“Getting found”: If you’ve got an active Google+ page and have taken the extra step of getting it verified by adding a few lines of code to your website, Google will display a snapshot of your Google+ page in the right column of the search results page when people search for your business name. This is a gift – a very visual, up to date picture of your business taking up half again as much real estate on the search results page as you’d be getting without Google+.

Increasing your reach: Google+ allows your business to easily expand its audience. Connecting with other businesses provides a venue to start conversations. By engaging with other businesses on Google+, your name will be shared with a larger group of people. In turn, this could help you expand your customer base.

So what does your business need to do to capture this Google+ advantage?

Sign up. Create your personal profile on Google+, then click “Pages” and create a business page for your company. Make sure you fill out your profiles completely, including links to your other social media channels and your website(s).

Build your circles. Google+ lets you organize the people you follow into “circles,” or categories. Start adding individuals to your personal circles and other businesses to your business page’s circles. (People can circle people without permission, but as a spam control and privacy measure, a business can only circle a person after the person has circled the business.)

Talk. Try to post something new on your Google+ profiles every day – a link to something on your website, an interesting article you’ve found, a question. A few times a week, share something from your business page on your personal Google+ profile. Be friendly, be funny, and above all, don’t sell. The community on Google+ is there to connect, learn and be entertained. Sound like a marketer and you’ll get ignored.

Make friends. Spend a few minutes each day commenting on other people’s posts and giving a “+1” to content you find interesting and provocative. Google+ is like one big cocktail party – wander around and get into as many conversations as you can. You never know whom you’ll meet and which interesting people might be in their circles. The more interesting your comments are, the more likely people will add you to their circles.

Get verified. Put a Google+ badge on your website so Google+ can make the connection between your business and your Google+ page. Once you’re verified, you’ll start to see your Google+ page snapshot showing up in search results.

Jumping into a new social network is daunting, but Google+ is well worth the effort. Google is bound and determined to see Google+ succeed, and you can reap the benefits.