How to get started on Google+
Stephen McCance June 18, 2014
When other Google+ users share your content on the platform, they are effectively giving it their seal of approval and signaling to Google that your content is useful to users. It also goes out to all of their friends and they are more likely to look at something that has been endorsed by someone that they know, giving your content more authority with those who see it in their feeds. It is effectively a new form of word of mouth marketing with a wider scope. So how do you go about making people share your content in the first place?
Build your Google+ community
Google+ can help you find and engage with people who will act as ambassadors and evangelists for your business, which can be invaluable for online reputation and traffic. Before you start looking for people who will engage with and promote your business, you will need to put in place measures to keep track of the users who interact with your content. We recommend that you do this by setting up new circles of ‘potential evangelists’, ‘those who engage’ and ‘those who share’.
To find potential evangelists, you will need to search for people who are talking about your specific brand or company, a similar product or service, or a topic related to it. Aim to keep this pool of initial potential people as wide as possible; a couple of hundred people will be a good place to start. To build this pool, search Google+ for content using either keywords or hashtags related to the category or topic. Use the ‘More’ tab to filter your search down as far as you need to. Searching for hashtags will also indicate related hashtags that are similar to the topic or related to it in some way, these are useful to take a look at as they are often ones that you hadn’t thought of yourself.
For each person in the search results, review their engagement levels to see how much influence they have on Google+ overall and how active they are. Another way to gauge influence is by going to the ‘View Ripples’ section of their post, which shows the public shares that the user has generated. At this stage, you may want to check the pages of your competitors to see ‘Who Has Them in Circles’ as those users may also be strong influencers for your topic.
Add any relevant people to your ‘potential evangelists’ circle and begin interacting with them on the Google+ platform. Comment or even share their content that is most relevant to your topic, thank those who have already been talking about your company or brand, and send an introduction to those who haven’t yet done so.
You may also want to check out the Google+ communities page for further places to begin interacting with influencers in relevant groups.
