UK Social Media Blog

Using Pinterest to boost your SEO (even if you don’t have an obviously ‘pinnable’ business)

January 5, 2015 By Hazel Jarrett Leave a Comment

Do you use Pinterest to promote your business or have you ruled Pinterest out as a social media platform because you don’t have a business that obviously lends itself to ‘pinning’, perhaps because you don’t sell products?

You could be missing out on a valuable source of sales and website traffic.

The stats around Pinterest’s use and popularity are staggering. An article by Digital Marketing Ramblings last updated on 19^th December 2014 – By the numbers: 175 Amazing Pinterest Statistics – highlighted some of the following numbers:

70 million people use Pinterest
80-85% of those are women, who account for 92% of Pins
The typical Pinterest user spends 14.2 minutes on the site per visit and an average of 98 minutes per month
Nine million people have linked their Pinterest and Facebook accounts for easy sharing
18% of Pinterest users have an average household income of over $75,000 (approximately £47,900)
23% of registered users visit Pinterest at least once a day
49% of people browse Pinterest instead of catalogues
30% of people prefer browsing Pinterest to watching TV
64% of users try at least one Pinterest inspired activity per month
75% of traffic comes through mobile apps
Pinterest users on mobile devices are three times more likely to share a Pin than those on desktops

From these stats alone, we can see that Pinterest users tend to be actively engaged with the platform, using it when they’re looking for things to buy, plan or do. And Pinterest is growing at an impressive rate – from September 2013 to October 2013 alone, it reportedly grew by 30.6%!

Figures would also suggest that the half-life of each pin is about three and a half months, which is 1,600 longer than the life of a Facebook post! Pinterest now accounts for 10.38% of social media referrals to commerce websites, adding up to some serious web traffic. This is important for your SEO efforts as Google looks at traffic coming into your site (and staying on it) as one of the cues that determine its quality and relevance. The higher these are, the more they will impact positively on your rankings.

One stat that particularly leapt out at me is that the most popular destination of pins is blogs. This is a perfect example of how you can use Pinterest to promote your business, even if you don’t sell products. You could set up a board for your blogs and guest blogs and pin each new article to this board. People can then ‘repin’ your articles to their own boards, encouraging their followers to read them.

Also, by adding the facility to quickly and easily share your blog posts to social media, including pinning them to Pinterest, you can help your blogs to be more widely disseminated. Stats for American traffic suggest that five percent of Pinterest users who find a blog article they enjoy will pin it for others to see. Although I don’t have the UK stats, it’s still a good idea to make it as easy as possible for others to spread the word about your amazing content.

Pinterest for Business

Stats from Wishpond tell us that 70% of people on Pinterest use it to get inspiration on what to buy, compared to 17% of Facebook users who do the same.

According to Digital Marketing Ramblings, more than half a million businesses are now actively using Pinterest to reach their customers. This is what the stats show about Pinterest for business:

52% of daily Pinterest users consult Pinterest for purchasing guidance when they’re in a shop
83% of Pinterest users would rather follow a brand than a celebrity
27% of active Pinterest users do follow at least one brand on Pinterest
The average sale order value for customers that come via Pinterest is $58.95 (£37.96 approx.)
47% of online shoppers have made a purchase because of a Pinterest recommendation
Each Pin you place on Pinterest should bring two new visitors to your website and six new page views

Using Pinterest even if you don’t have an obviously visual business

But can you really use Pinterest even if you don’t have an obviously visual business? I think you can – you might just have to get more creative about how you do it!

I would always recommend approaching Pinterest with a strategic view. What do you want to achieve through the platform? More website visitors? A higher profile for your blog? Greater visibility for your brand? Developing your brand’s personality and tone of voice?

It’s also important to think about who your target customer is and what interests them, as well as how that connects to your business. Once you’ve got a good handle on this, you might want to create:

Themed boards
Inspiration boards
Boards about your blog
Boards about your services
Industry expert boards
Music boards
Company ethos boards
Portfolio boards
Testimonials boards

Pinterest provides some handy analytics that let you monitors stats such as your average daily and monthly impressions and viewers, your best performing pins, where your audience lives, what language they speak, whether they’re male or female, and how the pins from pages on your website are performing.

By keeping a close eye on this data, you can quickly build your presence on Pinterest and bring more visitors to your website who are primed to buy and spend time there. As we’ve discussed, this can only be a good thing for your SEO efforts.

Case study

Giraffe CVs is a professional CV writing company, i.e. not a business that obviously lends itself to Pinterest as it’s all about words, not images. However, when you visit Giraffe CVs on Pinterest, you will find 46 boards and more than 1,800 pins covering topics such as Free CV Tips (presented in a visually appealing, branded style), Customer Testimonials, Graduate CVs, Unusual CVs, Career Quotes, Infographics to aid your job search, and Pins linking to The CV Confidence Coach podcast by Giraffe CVs.

In addition, Giraffe CVs uses humour a lot in its marketing and some of the boards reflect this. Check out the Spoof CVs, Celebrate your new job board or Work-related tunes boards for a bit of a giggle.

Knowing that fashion pins are incredibly popular, Giraffe CVs even has ‘Interview chic for women’ and ‘Interview chic for men’ boards.

Giraffe CVs think outside the box on Pinterest. It’s a company that understands its customers and its brand and plays to this, creating a visual feast even though it doesn’t have a single product to showcase.

What type of images can you use?

If you sell products, then it makes sense to have a board or boards on Pinterest featuring good quality images of these products. You can include a short product description and call to action to encourage people to click through to your website and buy (apparently, a call to action noticeably increases engagement).

The Digital Marketing Ramblings stats have also found that images are:

23% more likely to be repinned if they don’t include faces (less than 20% of images on Pinterest contain faces)
20% more likely to be repinned if they are light, not dark
Best pinned between 1pm and 2pm on Wednesdays (although they’re likely to get the best clickthroughs between 8pm and 10pm)

If you don’t sell products, then you may need to be more creative about the images you use. In the case study above, Giraffe CVs presents free CV tips on a branded background with a different tip number on each one – it almost looks and feels like collecting top trumps or baseball cards, which is a great way of encouraging people to pin the whole series.

If you write a regular blog, you can pin it using any of the images in the blog. It is essential that you have permission to use any images you pin commercially, otherwise you could be in breach of copyright. Look for images that are covered by a Creative Commons license with commercial use allowed if you simply want to use an image on your website or in your marketing (you may need to credit the photo and link to the license). If you want to adapt the image in any way – perhaps by adding an inspirational quote – you also need to make sure that the license allows modifications.

Quick SEO tips:

Finally, here are ten quick Pinterest tips that should help your SEO efforts:

Create a Pinterest business account, so you can access the analytics and it’s easier to get your website verified
Under your Account Settings, make sure that your privacy settings allow search engines to return your pins in search results
Include your full business name in your Pinterest URL
Include your main keywords in your ‘About’ section – you only have 200 characters, so plan what you’re going to say and make sure you include your web address where prompted
Verify your website (this will have a red tick next to it once it’s been verified)
Name your boards with keywords, instead of using Pinterest’s default board names
Use your keywords in your board descriptions
Use keywords in pin descriptions
Keep your most important boards at the top of the page
Use hashtags (up to three per post)

Do you use Pinterest for your business yet? Why not share your profile in the Comments below so that we can all have a look? Have you stayed away from Pinterest because you don’t sell products? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

How your social reputation affects your SEO

November 27, 2014 By Hazel Jarrett 1 Comment

Just how important is it for your business to be active on social media? Is it essential for SEO purposes to have a presence on all the major platforms or are there platforms that are more important than others? Can you overlook social media altogether if it doesn’t feel like the right fit for your business?

How social media signals work as ranking factors seems to divide expert opinion. Certainly, the answers are not as cut and dried as we might imagine.

Indexing social media sites poses challenges for search engines

Back in January 2014, Google’s Matt Cutts said in a video on the Google Webmasters YouTube Channel that you can have “this many followers on Twitter or this many likes on Facebook, to the best of my knowledge, we don’t currently have any signals like that in our web search ranking algorithms”.

In the video, Matt Cutts explained that Google is already attempting to crawl an imperfect web and that there would be issues with collecting data from platforms such as Twitter and Facebook because they’re fast moving and liable to change. To use Matt Cutts’ example, imagine Google indexed a Facebook page right before a wife blocked her abusive husband from viewing it and yet suddenly she found her page being returned in search engine results pages (SERPs) for him to still see. Google would have no way of knowing her data had changed until it next indexed her profile; this presents major challenges around identity.

Google would also be hesitant about adapting its algorithms to cope with the complexities of indexing a major social media site when it could potentially be blocked from crawling the site at a later date.

So, as things stand, it would appear that Google does not use the popularity of your profiles or individual posts on a specific social media platform as a direct ranking factor.

Pages with social media likes tend to rank higher

In the 2014 Moz local overall search ranking signals survey, participants said that social signals account for 5.8% of the overall general ranking signals that affect where a website appears in SERPs. These ranking signals included Google+ authority, Facebook likes and Twitter followers as three examples.

Similarly, in the 2013 Moz Search Ranking Factors study, which is carried out once every two years, the results suggested that website pages with Google+ likes, Facebook likes, comments and shares, and Tweets tended to rank higher in SERPs.

But are these social interactions the direct cause? Not exactly. Instead, Google looks at them as a clue that a page has good content.

Forget search engine optimisation when building social reputation

It helps to take search engine optimisation out of the equation and look at social media and social reputation from a different perspective. Ultimately, ‘social’ media is just that: social. For all its pros and cons, when used properly social media platforms are about making human connections, sharing things about which you’re passionate and that other people will want to see. Get that right and people will want to spread the news.

If you know your stuff and share that knowledge, you can raise your profile as someone who is influential, respected and an authority in their field.

When creating content, think about what would add value for your potential customers:

What do they want to know about?
What keeps them awake at night?
How can you make their lives better in some way?
What can you share?
How can you reassure or uplift them?
What do they care about?
What is their driving force and how can you support that?

If your web pages and blog articles answer these questions and people connect with them on an emotional level, the chances are they’ll tell their friends about it on social media – in the form of likes, comments, shares, pins, tweets and +1s via the social media sharing options on your page – or by linking back to a specific page from their own website.

In turn, this activity will drive more traffic to your website from a variety of sources and the search engines will notice this increase in virtual footfall. Also, if your content is good and people want to read what you have to say, they’ll spend more time on your site.

The search engines take this information and reason that you must be providing high quality content because people are staying on your site and visiting other pages while they’re there instead of bouncing away in a matter of seconds. This means that your page is likely to be featured more highly in subsequent SERPs because, as I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, the search engines are in the business of returning to most relevant and high quality results.

Links to your site act as recommendations from influencers

I mentioned briefly above that if you create content that people connect with, they’re more likely to talk about it – with a link to the appropriate page – on their own website or on one or more social media platforms.

If someone who has a popular, high authority domain and a large social media presence is prepared to share what you do with their audience, the search engines take this as a vote of confidence or recommendation from an influencer. Just as you’re more likely to secure an interview if you come with a personal recommendation from someone respected in your field, you’re more likely to be taken seriously by Google if high authority domains are shouting about your content.

This is why the quality of backlinks matter far more than the quantity.

Your presence on Google+

As Google+ and YouTube are Google products, it’s likely Google does take your presence on these platforms into account. In the 2014 Moz local overall search ranking signals survey I mentioned above, the authority of shares on Google+ is listed as factor 46 out of 50 localised ranking factors.

What the survey also shows us is that the mismanagement of your Google My Business page might have more of an impact in terms of negative ranking factors. Things such as listing a false address, the wrong business category, having multiple pages with the same business number, your account being associated with supressed listings, keyword and location stuffing the content of your page, and negative reviews are just a few of the factors that are harming SEO efforts in the US since the rollout of Google Pigeon. Experts are recommending that people in other countries, including here in the UK, get their Google My Business pages in order before they’re affected by Google Pigeon too.

Be real and authentic

My conclusion is that if you build your social media presence in a real and authentic way it can only ever help your SEO efforts.

To answer the questions at the beginning of this article, I think it is important to be active on social media in order to grow your audience and engage with potential and existing customers. Of course, if your customers aren’t using social media, then this might be less pressing.

An infographic by Search Engine Journal at the end of 2013 showed that 72% of all internet users are active on social media. More recent figures from Browser Media, Socialnomics and MacWorld in July 2014 suggest that 11% of the Earth’s population is on Facebook and that 98% of 18-24-year-olds regularly use social media. Even 43% of silver surfers aged 65+ are using social media. If you plan on finding your customers online, it seems foolhardy to ignore social media altogether.

However, I don’t think you have to be everywhere all the time. The best thing you can do is to work out where your customers are hanging out and what sort of content would appeal to them and be an active participant in their online community.

If you feel like your business isn’t a good fit for a specific platform, then it probably isn’t. To be on the safe side though, just as you use Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to track your SEO efforts, I’d always recommend using the insights provided by the social media platforms. This will show you which posts are popular, what’s being shared and talked about, and what your customers can’t get enough of when it comes to your content.

Is social media an important part of your marketing strategy? Have you noticed your social media efforts improving your rankings? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences in the Comments section below.

Social Signals and Why they Matter for SEO

November 11, 2013 By Hazel Jarrett Leave a Comment

Social signals refer to the amount of engagement you, your brand and your content generate on the various social media platforms. This engagement can be measured in lots of ways including the following:

The number of @mention tweets you receive
Links to your website and content on Facebook, Twitter and other social media Platforms
The number of people who have circled you on Google+
The number of likers who like your business page
The quantity of Facebook shares and re-tweets you receive etc.

Now you might be wondering why I’m talking about social media marketing on a blog that’s focused on SEO. The reason is simple. Whilst it’s tempting to see the two as separate and unrelated, that’s no longer the case. That’s because there’s an increasing amount of evidence to suggest that search engines such as Google are actively using social signals to help them rank websites.

The noise started as far back as 2010, and in December of the same year, Matt Cutt’s admitted that Google do take social search into account. Unfortunately, there’s no definitive guide to explain exactly how they do this (although there’s a lot of speculation and discussion), BUT it’s clear to see the reasons why social search is becoming so significant to how your website scores in the organic stakes.

Social Media Marketing supports SEO — Social Media Marketing supports your SEO strategies.

Let me tell you why…

The search landscape is changing

One of the main reasons for this shift is because social search is changing the way that people find information via the internet. No longer are we solely reliant on search engines to help us find content, we’re also increasingly influenced by what’s being discussed and shared on social media. After all, how often do you discover a new blog, article or business after seeing what someone you follow has tweeted or posted on Facebook or LinkedIn?

So because we’re taking more note of the information that’s socially shared, it’s logical that Google and the other search engines would start to take this into account – especially because of the wealth of information they can glean from social behaviour.

Social signals, authority and relevancy

Social media can give powerful clues as to someone’s authority and relevancy. And when you consider that Google’s primary aim is to return useful, relevant websites in its organic listings, it’s easy to see why they’d be interested in social.

Social signals such as engagement and sharing are often a good indicator of someone’s relevance and authority. For example, if content (or a website) generates a lot of engagement, or a website owner gets a lot of mentions, this is a clear indicator that other people think they’re worth listening to. In turn, it makes logical sense that the content produced by these people is looked upon more favourably in the organic listings.

In addition, rel=”author” represents a HUGE sift in Google’s acknowledgement of the importance of authority. rel=”author” allows Google to track what authors have published across domains. So if you’re guest posting on high quality sites, Google knows it’s you and this in turn can help boost the visibility of your own website (and it’s not just because of the link back).

Content is king

Another key factor in social signals is the role of quality content. The old reasons for keeping your website fresh and constantly updated remain. Google still loves fresh content and a regularly updated blog for example can be a powerful way to attract new visitors to your website. In addition, it’s great for tapping into those long tail keywords. BUT blogging also provides material which you can share via your social media platforms and encourage people to talk about and engage with your brand. What’s more, if people like what they read, it’s possible they will link back to you – and these sort of natural links are good news for your page rank and domain authority.

Finally, when it comes down to whether your competitor scores higher than you, the amount of social engagement could be the differentiator.

SEO is changing

In the past it was relatively easy to get found on Google. Create keyword rich content and nurture links and your organic rankings would soar. However, as I’m sure a lot of you have experienced first-hand, Google moves swiftly and the recent Panda and Penguin algorithm changes stung a lot of business owners who were reliant on Google for their traffic.

In short, so called “black-hat” tactics no longer work and business owners (and SEO professionals) need to explore new ways to prove to the search engines that their website is useful and relevant.

So whilst there are still fundamental on-site SEO tactics that you need to get right and securing high quality, natural links are still relevant, it’s important that you embrace the power of social to support your SEO strategies.

Here’s how…

Get Google Authorship

Embrace the growing power of rel=”author” and ensure all your content is linked up and attributed to you. Then wield the power of guest blogging and content marketing to increase your profile and reach out to a new audience.

Explore Google+

Whilst many people say it’s a graveyard, there’s no denying that Google+ is a force to be reckoned with – not least because it’s from Google! And with the recent launch of vanity urls, it looks as though steps are being made to make it even more attractive to non-converts.

I wrote a series of post about the benefits of Google+, so if you want to learn more about how this platform could benefit your business, you can take a read here.

Build your authority

Google loves authority and relevancy. It means you need to get out there and embrace the power of social to spread your word and build your reputation. For example:

Consider who you’re connected to
Identify prime opportunities to guest post and extend your reach
Take a stand for something and aim to make an impact in a niche

The more people who see and engage with your content via social, the better this will be for your rankings.

Embed social share buttons on your site

Make it super easy for people to share your stuff by embedding social share buttons onto your website. And actively encourage your readers to hit the tweet or like button if they’ve enjoyed your stuff – in fact, get into the habit of asking people to share as one of your call to actions.

Get social

There are lots of reasons why social media is good for business. But be aware that you can’t just rush up a profile and expect to see a big impact on your organic rankings. Instead you need to work on your strategy and ensure it’s designed to encouragement engagement, boost the amount of shares and raise your profile.

But what do you think? Have you been seeing an impact on your organic listings as a result of your social media activity? Please let me know in the comments below.

And if you’ve enjoyed this post, please share. You know what to do!

Google+ Pages – what your small business needs to know

October 29, 2013 By Hazel Jarrett Leave a Comment

In this third post on Google+ I’m going to:

Reveal the benefits of a Google+ page for your small business
Explain how this links with Google+ Local and local search
Provide you with a five-step guide for getting started.

Here goes…

The benefits of a Google+ page

At first glance, it may feel that setting up a Google+ page means more work and more content. And whilst that’s true, the benefits could make the effort worthwhile for your business. Here are three reasons why:

Engage with your customers and audience:

Google+ pages have inbuilt social features (just like your personal Google+ profile). It means you can create and share content to engage your customers in conversation around your business.

To learn how to write great Google+ posts – CLICK HERE.

Build your brand profile:

Unlike a Google+ profile, which is all about you, a Google+ page allows you to talk through your business as a separate entity. In addition, if your business page is a Google+ Local page, customers will be able to post reviews and rate you on a scale of one to five – perfect for collecting highly visible testimonials for your business.

Earn SEO benefits:

Lots of business owners don’t realise their Google+ page listing is a search result. And just like your Google+ profile, smart on-site SEO optimisation means your Google+ page can be quickly indexed and found – ideal if you want to score well in the organic rankings.

SEO title: This is derived from your page name followed by Google+
Metadescription: This is taken from your page name PLUS tagline PLUS the initial part of your profile
Dofollow links: Your introduction and other links section are dofollow links that can attract link equity (although your official linked website is set as nofollow).

Do I really need a Google+ profile AND a Google+ Page?

Great question. In my opinion the answer depends on the nature of your business and your online strategy.

Google+ profiles are for people. You can’t collect reviews BUT its link with Google authorship will help build your authority. Therefore if you and your business are indistinguishable, (and you lack the time and energy to create content for both) you could argue you have no need for a separate business page.

BUT…

If you want to promote your business as separate entity OR you’re keen to collect reviews or benefit from local search, you’ll want to set up a Google+ page too.

How can my Google+ page help with local search?

(And how’s this different from Google Places and Google+ Local?)

This is where it gets interesting (and more confusing!) The launch of Google+ just last year, and the ongoing process of integrating Google services into one dashboard, means existing services still have relevance – one of those being Google places.

Google defines Google Places as “a central location where you can review, edit and add business listings”. In essence it’s your business listing. Prior to Google+ being rolled out, Google Places was the method by which businesses could get a listing on Google Maps – an invaluable tool to help you feature on page one for local search terms.

Google Places has gone all social

The arrival of Google+ has allowed businesses to set up Google+ Local pages. These are simply Google+ pages that have been classified under the category of Local Business or Place. These pages integrate the listing functionality of Google Places with the social functionality of Google+. It means that businesses with a specific geographical location can create a page that’s optimised for local search, appears on Google Maps, collects reviews AND shares content to encourage customer engagement

Google+ Local has replaced Google Places.

New users can just create a Google+ Local page, whilst businesses who have an unverified Google Places profile can verify, it to automatically add Google+ social features (simply enter a pin contained on a verification postcode that Google send to you). It means you’ll spot two types of Google+ local listings for now:

Google+ Local pages and verified Places listings have four tabs
Unverified listings have just two tabs

And whilst both can collect customer reviews, only the Google+ Page contains the social features.

So what profiles do you need for your business?

In this post I’ve talked about Google+ profiles and pages as well as Google+ Local and Google Places.

So what do you really need to benefit your small business? Here are my conclusions.

Google+ Profile: Perfect if you are your business and you want to grow your individual authority through Google authorship.

Google+ Page: Essential if you want to promote your business as a separate entity (although you’ll need to commit to a content strategy as an empty page looks unloved and will undermine your brand). In addition, if your business operates from a physical location, you’ll want a Google+ Local page (you’ll get one if you categorise your Google+ page as a Local Business or Place).

Google Places: Not necessary if you’ve set-up your Google+ Page in the Local Business & Place category as this will automatically connect up with local search and create a Google+ Local Page. But if you’ve got an old Places account that you haven’t yet verified, it’s probably worth doing this – especially because Google is starting to upgrade Places listings to add the social functionality associated with Google+ pages.

Google+ Local page: Google+ local is Google’s local search initiative that’s designed to help users discover and share places. For geographically based businesses it’s really important to have a presence here. To do that you need a Google Places listing OR set-up a Google+ page that’s categorised as a Local Business or Place.

So now we’ve discussed the various options, here’s how to get started with a Google+ page.

How to set up your Google+ page in five easy steps

First ensure you have a Google+ profile, as your page will link to this.

Create a page: This starts by selecting from one of the following categories:
1. Local business or place (becomes a Google+ Local page)
2. Product or brand
3. Company, institution or organisation
4. Arts, entertainment or sport
5. Other (for everything else)

You’ll want to give your choice some thought, as the subsequent options for customisation will vary depending on your category. Most importantly, if your page is for a business with a physical location, it’s really important you select the “local business or place” option as this will allow you to claim a physical space, get found on Google Maps and appear in local search.

Add the basics: Now you can start to claim for page your public profile. Choose a name for your page and link it to your website. Next consider if your page has any age appropriate content and finally read and confirm you’ve agreed to Google’s T&Cs.

Customise: Now move onto customise your page. You can introduce your page and add a ten-word tagline. These fields are important, as they will form the meta-description for your page in the SERPs. You can also change your cover picture (which is HUGE) and add a profile image. You can also add in contact information so customers can get in touch as well as adding links to pages that interest you as well as your other social networks.

Add content: This is the fun bit! Just as with a Google+ profile you need to have a think about your content strategy to build your audience and initiate conversation and engagement. You can share thoughts, photos and videos as well as sharing links to other interesting content you’ve discovered. You can also determine who to share content with (remember Google’s circles allow you to segment your audience) meaning you could make your posts highly targeted to specific sections of your audience.

How will you use the Google+ page functionality for your business?

What features have you signed up for and benefiting from? What questions do you have about Google+ pages? Please let me know in the comments below…

And do join me on Google+. You can find my personal musings here, or view my business page and write a review here.

Google+: Five Steps To More Shares, Visibility and Authority

September 24, 2013 By Hazel Jarrett Leave a Comment

Building a presence on Google+ is likely to be a wise investment for your small business. But to get the best results you need to be posting the right content.

In this post I’ll explain some simple tips for ensuring your profile, posts and Google+ interaction are working hard to help increase your online visibility and your authority.

Create a strong profile:

Your Google+ profile has the potential to rank highly for your name. This means it’s well worth investing the time and effort to ensure your profile is compelling, interesting and most importantly COMPLETE!

Be sure to fill out the “story” section. It will help people connect with you, the person behind your brand. In addition, you’ll want to populate the link opportunities. Here you can connect up to your other social media profiles as well as noting down the places you’ve contributed to – both currently and in the past (this is essential for Google Authorship). Finally, input your work and contact information and your Google+ profile will instantly become a comprehensive overview of you, your business and the content you’ve created across the web.

Engage in 2-way conversations and post useful, interesting content:

It sounds obvious but it’s simply not enough to rush up a profile and leave it at that. To truly benefit from Google+ you need to be an active participant with a great reputation. And that reputation will grow inline with your followers, number of re-shares and +1s as well as the frequency and regularity of your posting.

Here are some ways you can engage for business success:

Join existing conversations:

Follow: The quickest way to benefit from the rich conversations happening on Google+ right now is to follow people. Choose the influencers in your field, your competitors, customers and anyone else you’re keen to stay in touch with.

+1: The equivalent to Facebook likes, a +1 indicates you found a post interesting, useful or entertaining. It’s an easy way to show someone you like and appreciate their content.

Comment: Sharing your response to a post is a powerful way to engage in relevant conversations and reveal your thoughts and opinions. Done well, it can also become an effective way to get on the radar of influencers or potential customers.

Share other people’s content: Actively share quality content that other people have produced, remembering to add your own commentary and thoughts to the head of the link.

Start your own conversations:

Post your own, unique content: This is key.If you want to boost your own profile and establish your authority, you need to post quality content. So create a strategy and vary what you post. Try photos, links, videos and even plain, text-based posts. The secret is not to stick up a link and leave it at that. Instead personalise the content you share with your own spin. By this I mean writing some commentary to support or frame what you’ve posted. For example, you could share your opinion, explain why it’s a good read, ask a question etc. The key is to initiate discussion and interaction.

Use images: Browse through your Google+ timeline and before long you’ll come across large images that span the entire screen. As you know, images grab attention, and images of this size will certainly attract your audience’s eye. This means it’s well worth incorporating pictures into your posts (although do ensure you have permission or a licence to use the photo).

Write mini posts: Google+ allows you to write lengthy posts, should you choose. What’s more, you can incorporate links into the body of these posts (although they’ll be no-follow links). Evidence suggests longer posts are getting strong levels of engagement – good news for your authority building and online reputation. In addition, Google+ has more formatting options than Facebook and Twitter allowing you to increase readability by mixing up the appearance of your words. For example, you can create headlines or *bold* words and phrases by putting asterisks (*) around them. You can also _italicize_ text in the same way using underscores (incidentally, these same formatting options exist in word).

Avoid verbal diarrhoea: If you start to view Google+ as an addition and alternative to your blog, you’ll understand the need to share well thought out stuff. So do consider the quality and content of your posts – ideally you want your Google+ efforts to help increase your know, like, trust factor, not undermine your professionalism.

Add a headline to your post: It’s easy to do this. Simply put asterisks around the words you’d like to highlight (as an example, this post would say *Google+: Five Steps To More Shares, Visibility and Authority*). As with all marketing collateral, aim to make your headline eye-catching. You want it to hook your audience and get them reading. Best practice is to keep you headline under 60 characters. Any longer and it will become a two-liner. And whilst this looks OK, it’s worth remembering your first sentence forms the title tag that will appear in a standard Google search so incorporate keywords and keep it snappy.

Tag other people and brands (where appropriate): Simply type + and the person’s name / business page and you’ll be able to link to them in your posts. This can help you catch the attention of the influencers in your field, but be careful. You don’t want to appear as a crazed stalker.

Use #hashtags: Write search friendly posts by incorporating relevant hashtags to signal keywords and main themes. Google will make suggestions based on the content of your posts, but you can override these and add your own if they’re more relevant. And the benefit is significant. Just like on Twitter and Facebook, hashtags are an effective way to increase the likelihood of your content being viewed outside your circle of influence.

Make content public: For sure there will be times when you’ll want to restrict the visibility of your content. If that’s the case imply select the Circles and individuals you wish to reach. But for wider web visibility and greater reach, always make your content public.

Create circles to segment your audience:

One of the cool things about Google+ that differentiates it from other social networks is your ability to segment your audience with Circles. You can search content by Circles as well as post by Circle. As you can choose who you want to see your posts, this provides you with a fantastic opportunity to connect with different people on different levels. And because you have the opportunity to tightly hone what you talk about depending on your audience, you’ll find you appear more relevant and interesting to the people who do follow you. And if you’re just starting out, the easiest thing is to add everyone to the same list and then segment later.

Hangout:

More and more people are working from home and rely on smart technology to enable them to interact with their customers and suppliers. Google+ Hangouts offer a free way to talk face-to-face. In addition, since the launch of Hangouts On Air, you’re now able to broadcast live to the public. Again this is a fantastic example of how you can embrace the power of multi-media to reach your customers and audience, wherever they are in the world.

Just get started!

A lot of people are procrastinating over getting stuck into Google+. Time is a big factor as is the uncertainty as to whether it’s worthwhile investing that time. In my opinion it is.

So, if you want to start seeing results from being active on Google+, the quickest way is to just get posting. So why not CLICK HERE to head over to my Google+ profile and leave a comment about this post. It’s an easy way to join the Google+ conversation and start increasing your authority and presence.

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