Adding to the page and using it to start to connect with other users is the very first thing to be done after the Google+ brand page itself has been created.

1.  Creating Circles

Google+ allows users to organize contacts into circles. You can create as many circles as you need and tailor them to different interests. Circles means you can group together different types of contacts and then share different things with each group. This brings your marketing much closer to the Google+ aim of dealing with people rather than web traffic. The idea behind circles is similar to creating interest categories with advanced article marketing – you section different people off into different groups, based on their interests and their relationship with you.

With Google+ you may want to create just a single circle for clients and then add only clients that are on Google+ themselves (these can be businesses or individuals). When you post an update about new product availability for example or a seasonal discount exclusive to those who have done business with you before, you can choose to show it exclusively to the circle called ‘clients’, helping to direct your updates in a very personalized manner.

To start creating circles, simply click on the circle log at the top of the page. You’re then giving a search box and can type in places, people or other businesses. When you find someone to add, click to the right and then select which circle you want to add them to from the list that appears on the mouse over.

2.  Creating Hangouts

Hangouts are less formal and more immediate than circles and can be used to gather together other users to chat. This can be done as a scheduled appointment or impromptu. As a business, you could use this to create focus groups and speak with select clients one on one or for a customer service function to speak directly with potential customers or those with questions or complaints.

3.  Promote your Google+ Page on Your Site

You can get a Google+ button to display on your site, right alongside your Facebook and Twitter icons. It’s important this goes on every page as the more people you can get to interact with you, the better. Spreading the word can be done without too much effort – why not add to your email footer for example? Or to email newsletters?

4.  Adding Content

You can add text, photo and video updates to your Google+ page which makes it very similar to a Facebook profile. Because of this, it should be fairly easy to create an update strategy and likely won’t require much extra input in terms of content production.

Keeping those in your circles interested and coming back to your Google+ page will depend on your content. For that reason, you may want to create exclusive content specifically for Google+ in the same way that you may give exclusive access to certain parts of your site and special discounts just to Facebook or Twitter users.

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Launching the commercial side of the service, Google said that pages for Google+ represented a leap forward in building relationships between business and people. If that wasn’t incentive enough, the search engine also confirmed that Google+ factors will become ranking signals. That alone means it’s time to bite the bullet and add yet another social media presence to your online portfolio.

How to create a business page

1.  To create a business page on Google+, you first need to create a personal profile. You can use the same log in you use for other Google services such as Analytics or AdWords to keep things simple. Once you have a personal profile, you can create your business page. When updating, this will be accessible via the personal profile section but all updates will be posted in the business name rather than your own.

2.  When you have created a personal profile, you need to head to the business department to create a brand page. That can be found here: http://www.google.com/+/business/

3.  You’ll get a number of options, similar to those offered by Facebook when you click on the ‘create a page for a business’ option. Google+ allows you to choose from a number of categories:

• Local business or place: Choose this option if you’re a ‘landmark’ such as a bar, a restaurant, a museum, a store or a hotel
• Product or brand: Choose this option if you’re a manufacturer of a certain product such as line of jeans or a brand such as a computer chip, a home appliance or similar
• Company, institution or organization: Choose this option if you want to create a page for your company, school or non-profit
• Arts, entertainment or sports: Choose this if you’re an athlete, a singer or entertainer
• Other:  Choose this if your particular area of activity doesn’t fit in with any of the above

4.  Now, you’ll be asked to pick a relevant sub category and add some basic information such as page name and website address. You’ll also be prompted to decide on access levels – either suitable for all eyeballs or restricted to 18+.

5.  Much like Twitter’s ‘bio’ area, the Google+ character count is limited. You’ll be asked to enter a tagline – this is just a very brief description of your service. If you have a slogan used on other marketing, that could be copied and pasted here to help viewers more easily recognize your brand. Be sure to upload a logo at this stage too.

6.  You’ll now see a screen called ‘Get The Word Out’. This is confusing for those who have just created a personal profile in order to create a business page as the promotion at this stage is just a quick message to all of those in your personal circles. You won’t have any if you’ve just opened the account so you can skip this step and create more tailored promotional activities later.

Congratulations – you’re now the proud owner of a Google+ brand page. But of course, the work doesn’t stop here, you’ll now need to add to your presence. In the next article, we’ll focus on developing your profile and promoting your Google+ page to really make it work for you.

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In her article, “Gaining The Edge In Facebook: News Feed Optimization,” Linda Bustos analyzes Facebook’s news feed algorithm and the three factors that we know play into it. Then she follow up with 13 tactics that you can use to maximize the impact of your presence on Facebook to increase engagement and boost ROI. Complete with some graphic examples of the principles she discusses, Linda’s baker’s dozen of tips will help ensure that you are doing all you can to maximize your investment of time and resources into this most important of social media resources.

The complete article follows …

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The survey asked executives from more than 200 North American businesses operating primarily in the B2B sector, who had annual revenues of more than $1 billion, a number of questions about their attitudes toward social media. Almost one-third (30%) stated that they felt social media was “extremely important” and “could not be ignored” in today’s business world, and an additional 35% said it was “important.” So what’s been holding them back, such that only 8% are heavily leveraging it and just over one-fourth (26%) are either slightly or not leveraging social media at all? According to additional questions in the survey, it appears as if a lack of confidence may be to blame. When asked about barriers to adoption of social media tactics, half cited the need for investments in new tools and technologies, increased skills in management (40%), and improved measurement (35%). Interestingly enough, the need for improved collaboration with other groups within the business (38% for marketing, sales, and service and 30% for improved collaboration with IT) was cited by significant percentages of respondents to the survey.

One thing that players in the B2B world need to consider in regard to social media is the potentially wider playing field that they have, as compared to many B2C businesses. While a coffee shop may only find it can connect with its customers on matters related to coffee in the social media environment, a B2B venture can engage its clients not only on the matter of the product or service they have in common, but also other aspects of business in general. For example, a coffee shop may use social media to connect to its B2C customers in relationship to their purchase and enjoyment of coffee, but think of how many other options for social engagement the company that sells paper products to that coffee store (in a B2B relationship) has? The paper products business has similar concerns as the coffee shop in terms of business setup and operations, customer service, sales, etc. If you start thinking about the various ways a B2B operation can connect with its clients on a social networking level that doesn’t simply involve the product/service provided, there are a lot more possibilities apparent.

What do you think? Is the relationship between B2B operations and social media a whole different kettle of fish from that faced by B2C?

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1.       Recent Industry or Company News

What industry sites or email newsletters do you read? Chances are that if you find an article especially interesting / thought provoking / funny your followers will as well. Don’t be afraid to promote other great content online (your followers will thank you for helping to sift through all the noise). Promoting recent company news is fine too; just make sure you don’t let your Facebook or Twitter profile become all self-promotion all the time. A good rule of thumb for both Facebook and Twitter is to have 1 in 10 posts be self-promotional.

2.       Seasonal Hooks 

Make sure to keep your social media profiles sound like they are coming from real people, not a corporate PR department. One of the easiest ways to be authentic is to hook your posts into upcoming holidays (Halloween, Christmas, etc.) or seasonal changes (summer to fall for example). These holidays or seasonal changes are on everyone’s mind, will make your posts or tweets more relevant to your followers, and keep them from thinking that you are simply posting content in a vacuum.

3.       Long-Term Resources

Ideally this strategy requires a blog or some other place on your main site you can host permanent content, but you can make it work with Facebook alone if absolutely necessary. Do you wish there was a list of resources for your industry but can’t find one online? Then create one on your blog, and promote it on Facebook and Twitter. This content will last long after the initial post, and will have the added benefit of helping to drive organic search traffic to your site well into the future.

Of course there are many strategies to keep your social media content calendar full, but these are three easy ones to get started with. The bottom line is this: if you don’t find the content you are posting interesting / thought provoking / funny, why would your followers? Only post content you would want to read, watch, or listen to as well.

What are your favorite strategies to keep you social media content fresh?

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In her article, “Impressions Of Google +1: Functionality And Effect,” Zanthe Ferris delves into this topic, providing information on how to implement the Google +1 for your site. She then moves into a discussion of the implications of Google +1 in comparison to Facebook’s “like” button, and continues with an analysis of how Google +1 will affect the future of search.

If you’ve been looking for a succinct introduction to Google +1 and some thoughtful musings on its implications vis-a-vis Facebook, Zanthe’s article will fit that bill!

The complete article follows …

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In her article, “Speak Your Customer’s Language On Social Networks With SEM Keyword Strategy,” Hallie Janssen discusses why social media campaigns need keyword research in a social-media-directed re-hash of the major reasons businesses use keyword research for other reasons. She then outlines how you can use some of the tried-and-true metrics that are central to keyword research in the social media setting to optimize your efforts there, with an example from a typical SEM campaign and its counterpart in social media.

If you’ve never really considered using keyword research for social media efforts, it’s time to do so. Hallie’s article will get you kick-started, as well as help established marketers ensure they are hitting all cylinders in this all-important strategy.

The complete article follows …

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Here are four ways to make it happen:

 Blog

Blogging is a great way to build up your online real estate.  Each blog post that you write is a new web page that you own that will get indexed and can rank in the search engines for certain keywords.  Blogging is no easy task, though.  To do it right, you need to post quality articles on a regular basis.  Too often, businesses give up because they claim to have nothing to write about or because they just don’t have the time.

Blog Comment

Blog commenting is a great way to improve your visibility because it gets your name, and a link to your website, blog, social profile, etc., in front of an audience that may have otherwise never heard of you.  The key to blog commenting is that it should be done on blogs that are relevant to the products or services that you provide.  Leave a thoughtful comment (none of this “Great post!” stuff) to continue the conversation.  If other readers, or the blog owner themselves, like what you have to say, they may click over to your site for more information.

Guest Blog

Sharing great content on your own blog is important, but in order to really “get out there” you want to try and submit content to other blogs as well.  In order to get an “in” with other industry bloggers, plant the seed as early as possible.  Comment on their blog posts and connect with them in social media.  Once they trust you, they’ll be more likely to allow you to post on their blog.  Doing so will expand your network.

Be Active In Social Media

You can’t just join social networking sites and expect for that to do you any good.  You need to actually be active on every site that you join and build up a core group of loyal followers.  This certainly won’t happen overnight.  For many, social media can be very overwhelming.  There’s lots of noise and distraction and it’s sometimes hard to even know if your message is being heard (or seen).  Your best bet is to make the most of your social media marketing time.  It’s not necessary to join every social networking site out there.  It’s impossible to devise and implement a good strategy for more than 5 sites.  Find out where your target audience is most likely to “hangout”, and join them there.

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Now that Google +1 has officially moved from beta to open access, advice about using Google +1 to drive higher volumes of traffic to sites is springing up and many pages are sporting a colored +1 button alongside their pre-existing Twitter and Facebook icons.

Going from invitation only usage to open access last week was a significant step for Google but one that appears to already be bearing fruit – stats from industry monitors point to a 1269% increase in traffic since the public launch and a milestone 15 million US accounts achieved. Google +1 is now also the eight most visited social media network on the planet, a way behind Facebook perhaps but undeniably catching up fast. Some analysts suggest the site is acquiring new users at the rate of two million per day, putting it much closer to challenging both Twitter and Facebook in the near future.

So, how can you use this new tool to improve your search standings?

1.  The very first thing to do is to get the Google +1 button added to your website. The groundswell of interest in +1 is peaking and those lacking the button at this crucial stage may find it hard to catch up with competitors.

You can find the code to add Google +1 to your site here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/ and learn how to customize it here: https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/+1button/

2.  The Google+1 button can be added to all of your internet properties so make sure you perform a full audit of your online tools and presence points to be sure you’re allowing your buttons to gain as much traction as possible. Add to a blog page for example or your Squidoo lens, as well as your main website.

3.  More than anything, Google +1 is a social tool and while it’s still in its infancy, Google has been quite strict thus far about its business use. With its link to Google circles and emphasis on sharing what interests you rather than what you can promote as a business, developing a sustainable, social-centric presence is crucial. Take a leaf out of Mashable’s book and have a figure head from your company create an account, sharing things that genuinely interest them rather than simply adding a +1 click every time you upload a piece of news or new product.

4.  One of the common misconceptions about SEO is that it’s worth spending time writing and rewriting meta descriptions in the hope of securing better rankings– it’s amazing how many companies taking on an SEO expert always point to this activity as proof that they have been working on their marketing in-house, unaware of the fact that the description tag is no longer a Google search signal. Having said that, now may be the time to go back to basics and put a little extra effort in the description tag.

While it’s always worthwhile formulating an engaging meta description as a call to action for users seeing the page in the search results, a high quality meta description is now a must with Google +1 buttons sitting at the side of every search result. Where a token description may have cut it in the past, an inviting, original and memorable meta description can be the nudge viewers need to +1 your page in the search results – helping to cast a wider net of visibility amongst their circle.

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Yet I’ve come to know Twitter quite well myself over the last few months and after countless Tweets, retweets and @s, my conclusion is that unless you’re a mega-corporation or a celebrity, it’s not quite all it’s cracked up to be.

You see, most of my loyal followers are fellow businesses — not the consumers I want to be interacting with.

What’s more, the reason they’re following is not because they care what my clients are up to. It’s because like me, they’re trying to increase their followers. All quite shallow really, isn’t it?

As I work for a social media agency, you might believe that I should be praising and thanking Twitter for opening the doors to text type communication on a worldwide scale. That I should, in essence, never say a bad word about it. But why not? If I can’t look at the site objectively, how can I learn how to make the most of what it offers?

And yes, that’s another of my gripes with Twitter. I have a lot to say and if you limit me to 160 characters, I struggle. Fair enough, my work with social media agencies has meant that I can now formulate the perfect bite-size news piece, idea or opinion; but it doesn’t mean I like it.

When it comes to social media marketing, I’m a much bigger fan of Facebook. Facebook doesn’t limit my words, has a broader consumer reach and offers a much simpler platform for encouraging group discussions. It’s also much more feature-friendly, whereas with Twitter it’s pretty much “what you see is what you get.”

So is there anything I do like about Twitter?

The way I see it is, that while I may prefer Facebook, Twitter is geared towards a certain type of person and Facebook another.

Some people like the short and sweet style of messages that Twitter offers. It makes it easier to scan through what’s being said and weed out the interesting insights and links. For this reason, I think it more than deserves a place in the social media hall of fame.

I also believe it’s great for building relationships with other businesses. Not every other company is competition; rather contact with a company in a similar industry offers an opportunity to build bonds – bonds that could result in valuable and relevant reciprocal links, and even joint promotions.

But I still don’t have much hope for the future of Twitter…

Despite the positives that I honestly do believe Twitter offers, I’m also of the opinion that it won’t last. Facebook is constantly evolving, and despite an inevitable negative reaction from the public initially, Facebook’s history has shown that regardless of the changes it makes, it will continue to gather more members.

Twitter is competition for Facebook; thus Facebook is always looking to emulate what Twitter has and it does not.

Not to mention, the still somewhat preliminary potential of what Google Plus may come to be.

Please don’t get me wrong – I love my work and I’m fascinated with the potential of social media. I’m employed by a fantastic social media agency and together we do a brilliant job. I’m just a little bit of a sceptic at heart and can’t help but analyze the good and the possibly not-so-good in every marketing opportunity I cross.

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