Google+Page

Google+Page, a photo by firoze shakir photographerno1 on Flickr.

CREATING, USING & PROMOTING GOOGLE+ PAGES PROPERLY
(The Ultimate Tutorial - updated) by Gabriel Vasile



Ok, so I've seen a lot of articles about Google+ pages, but none seemed to be complete and I wanted a fast way of understanding, using and promoting Google+ pages. So I made a slideshow to help you out faster then ever with this new Google+ pages. At the bottom of the post you'll find some interesting articles that inspired me.

This is a very long post, so I recommend after you finish the parapraph to look at the slideshow first. After that you can look at 6 GOOGLE PLUS BUSINESS PAGE VIDEOS YOU NEED TO SEE plus.google.com/u/0/106393478695568433143/posts/M2y8H81RnnF and then you can get some deeper understanding by reading the post if you want to or if you're looking for the links in the photos. Now you can just watch the slideshow. If you like it please share it, (then continue reading) and give me some feedback on the original post: plus.google.com/106393478695568433143/posts/HrEJHUA6ECt


TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Things you need to know about Google+ Pages
2. How To Create a Google+ Page
3. Customizing a Google+ Page
4. Sharing as a Google+ Page
5. Promoting your Google+ Page
6. Targeting your audience with your Google+ Page
7. Using hangouts for your Google+ Page
8. Optimizing your Google+ page for SEO
9. Measuring statistics for your Google+ Page
10. Cool examples of Google+ pages.


I. THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT GOOGLE+ PAGES

Pages can be made for a variety of different entities whereas profiles can only be made for people.
Businesses can have multiple pages, so your product manager, for example, could run a Google+ Page just for his or her product line, while someone else runs the corporate brand. You could also do pages for particular events, though right now, there’s no event-specific type of support
For smaller companies and brands, there is no verification process that certifies your Google+ Page as yours currently. However, when you verify your email that you added in the contact info, it will show you a small verification badge in the contact info section proving that you are the owner of that email.
Pages can’t add people to circles until the page is added first or mentioned.
Google+ Pages automatically unfollow the users that unfollowed the page.
The default privacy setting for elements on your page profile is public.
Pages have the +1 button.
Pages can’t +1 other pages, nor can they +1 stuff on the Web.
Pages can’t play games.
Pages don’t have the option to share to ‘Extended circles’.
Pages don’t receive notifications via email, text, or in the Google bar.
Pages can’t hangout on a mobile device.
Local pages have special fields that help people find the business’ physical location.

II. HOW TO CREATE A GOOGLE+ PAGE

1. Choose an Accessible Gmail Account (optional)
Set up a new gmail account to make it accessible to multiple members of your marketing team (because multiple admins and ownership transfer are not supported yet, however the Google+ team said they're working on it)

2. Click Create a page or go to plus.google.com/pages/create

3. Pick a categoryur business fits into. The categories are as follows:
Local Business or Place
Suitable for: hotels, restaurants, places, stores, services. Requires the primary phone number of the local business, so it can be located on Google Places.
Local businesses get special listings, and it all starts after you choose the “Local” option by entering a phone number.

Product or Brand
Suitable for: apparel, cars, electronics, financial services

Company, Institution or Organization
Suitable for: companies, institutions, organizations, non-profits

Arts, Entertainments or Sports
Suitable for: films, TV, music, books, sports, shows

Other
Suitable if your business doesn't fit into another category

4. Add Info
Next step is entering your business name and website. After this, you have to select an additional category that suits your business. These sub-categories are dependent on the main category you choose.

For example, for "product or brand" you can choose from the likes of food and drink, arts and entertainment, fashion and beauty, home and garden, etc.

You then need to select who can view your Google+ profile. The default is any Google user, or you can restrict this to 18 and older or 21 and older.

5. Tagline and Photo
You have 10 words to summarize your business in the tagline. After you've done this, you can add an image.

6. Get the Word Out
In the next step Google offers you the ability to tell your personal Google+ circles about your new business page. However, you will not do this right now.

Customize your page even further and start sharing a few updates before you begin telling the world about it. Promoting a blank page isn't a great way to convince people that your Page is valuable enough to add to their Circles. So invest some time into optimizing your page and sharing a few links to valuable content before you start promoting it to the masses.

III. CUSTOMIZING A GOOGLE+ PAGE

To go from your personal profile to one of your page, click on the small down arrow under your name.

Edit your page profile by adding an ‘introduction’, contact info and website. To do this simply click on the blue ‘edit profile’ button.

Your bio allows you to put in your entire service offering. Make it count. It even has a full rich text editor so you can bold, underline and italicize your text, input hyperlinks, bulleting and numbers.

Add Scrapbook Photos. To add images to create a ‘photostrip’ effect, click on the blue ‘edit profile’ button and then click ‘Add some photos here’. See how to make the photostrip effect here: www.siliconbeachtraining.co.uk/blog/how-to-customise-your...

If you want to show geo location information in newly uploaded albums and photos, be sure to check the box under the ‘Photo’s’ tab when editing your page.

Set up a short URL or redirect of some kind that’s memorable. For example for my +Creative Web Design page, I will create www.creativewebdesign.ro/+. That will be easier for everybody to share.

IV. SHARING AS A GOOGLE+ PAGE

Make sure you pre-populate your page with content before announcing it to your fans on other networks. That way, they’re more likely to add you to their Google+ Circles when they get to your page.

You can do many of the same things that a personal account can do, including: share photos, share videos, share links, conduct hangouts.

There are currently 2 calls to action for your potential followers, have them ‘circle’ you (or add your brand page to their circles) and +1 your page.

It doesn’t appear that there’s any support for automatically posting to a page. That’s likely to come as part of a future Google+ API release. Google gave no further update on when this is coming.

Unlike Facebook, Google+ Pages is a little more forgiving if you make a typo in a post or suddenly decide you don’t want people to leave comments or share with others – you can edit the post or change that setting AFTER you’ve posted.

Regularly share fresh content, react and respond to your fans, be engaging, and optimize for lead generation. Then measure, adapt your strategy, and optimize your presence based on your own individual results and goals.

You can disable comments on posts you share via your Brand page. When you disable comments on a post, other people will no longer be able to leave comments (but they can still +1 and reshare it). You can also delete a post or disable resharing if that's what you want.

What NOT to do. Don’t spam. Don’t leave comments in other people’s posts asking them to follow your page. Don’t share to often. You will get your page deleted. And probably your personal account as well. I warned you.

V. PROMOTING YOUR GOOGLE+ PAGE

Link up your Google+ Pages on your website using the Badge Maker so that you get the benefit of the rel=publisher tag and make yourself eligible for Google Direct Connect. To get the custom code, click on the ‘Get started’ link on your brand page profile and then go to the ‘Connect your website’ section.

Cross promote on all your other networks. Post a link to your new Google+ page on your other social media, email newsletters, and on your site, inviting followers there to add your page to their circles on Google+.

Post interesting, relevant content; ask questions that get people to comment and engage; and don’t be shy about asking followers to share your posts with their friends.

Post a variety of content. Make use of Google+’s rich display of photos and videos. Google+ displays media in follower’s streams more prominently and pleasingly than Facebook, so it’s a big “plus” here to call attention to your posts.

Engage with followers. Encourage and participate in conversations about your posts.

Ask your employee base to promote your Google+ Page to their networks. This is doubly easy if your employees are using Google+ for Apps, since you can just send an all-system email. If they’re already on Google+, they should circle the company page first.

Display the +1 button everywhere.

Use your mailing list

Make sure that you promote your page off of Google+ with links, drive users to add you to circles and post regularly on your Google+ page and you may have a better chance of accessing Google+ Direct Connect.

VI. TARGETING YOUR AUDIENCE WITH YOUR GOOGLE+ PAGE

Google Plus makes it pretty easy to sort followers into groups (they call them Circles) and send targeted, relevant messages to these smaller audiences. Brands can create robust content calendars with posts intended just for certain cities, ages, gender and languages.

You get to separate your VIPs, Customers, Following, and Team Members into circles. Meaning you can market to just your VIP customers, just your Team members (think “collaboration” or team updates), your Customers, and then anyone you are Following (think prospect customers).

These are just the default circles, but you can target your audience the way you want it. Just ask your followers where they’re from, what they like and so on. The opportunities are limitless. And free of charge.

VII. USING HANGOUTS FOR YOUR GOOGLE+ PAGE

As previously suspected, they’ve recently integrated Google Docs for brand pages (Hangouts with extras)

As a brand page you have the ability to create Hangouts which can be huge to create that community and collaborate with your partners. It’s also a great way, especially for celebrities, to make that connection to their fans.

The “Hangouts with extras” feature has integrated Google Docs, allows you to name your Hangout, share notes and sketchpad, and allows screen sharing for total collaboration.

VIII. OPTIMIZING YOUR GOOGLE+ PAGE FOR SEO

1. Page name, tagline, introduction, keywords
If you are branding your business, put that as your page name. Then add your tagline and about info using keywords you normally use. Your page name will be the title (see the name in the browser tab).Your page name + tagline will be the META description of the page which are important ranking factors

That means you should use keyword rich descriptions. That doesn’t mean you should use keyword stuffing, just name the page so it matches your site/business and write the tagline and introduction as you would write a description for your site – use keywords but write for people telling them what your page is about.

Fill out the “About” section completely. Be sure to mention your keywords in this section when you can. Like other SEO initiatives, be sure to focus on creating useful, engaging content first, then gently inserting keywords when appropriate as a secondary priority.

Be sure to add a link to your website (and other online assets) in your Recommended Links section. Because you can customize the anchor text, you can make these links extra SEO-friendly by including a keyword in the anchor text when appropriate.

Fill out as many of the fields as you can, and be sure to include various types of media (text, photos, video, etc.) so that search engines see a rich experience when they crawl your page.

2. Tag images
You can tag images you add to your page, so for example, if you have a photo with some famous person in your industry, you can tag that person in your page’s photo.

3. Cross promoting. Link to all of the social networks your brand has a presence. You can customize the name of the link as well.

Include a link to your Google+ Page from your corporate website and other assets such as your LinkedIn profile, your blog, and any other websites you have. Building links to your Google+ Page will help it rank on the first page for your brand name and possibly other keywords as well.

Additionally, your website itself should have +1 buttons. Make sure it is easy for people to “+1″ content and share it with their Circles on Google+.

4. Consider creating multiple pages. You can create a page for each individual stores/franchises or line of products, as appropriate.

5. Once your Page is ready to share, start building an audience. Search engines will recognize your popularity as a sign of authority. That authority will translate in to better rankings as well.

6. When sharing photos. Upload photos, and include descriptions for each photo. Where feasible, add a link to a page on your website with more information on the product or item featured in the photo.

7. When sharing videos. You can do the same for videos: upload videos and include transcripts or summaries of the video content for SEO purposes. Link back to your website for more information where you can.

8. When sharing content. Unlike Twitter or Facebook, Google+ gives you the possibility to write very long messages if you want to. Publish content that your fans will find useful and engaging. When a long-form message is appropriate, try to optimize this content like you might optimize a blog post. Individual posts do get their own URL. So if a post goes viral, it is entirely possible that the post itself ranks well in the search engines.

IX. MEASURING STATISTICS FOR YOUR GOOGLE+ PAGE

1. Using Ripples

Ripples show you:
* Number of public and total reshares
* Names of each follower that reshared your post
* Number of direct public reshares from each follower
* Names with links, comments and relative time of most recent followers with reshares
* A timeline to show the progression of the shares

Things to look for:
* Time of day that most reshares occur
* Time of day that your biggest resharers repost. For example, if we were to look at several ripples and see that +Someone to post or repost around the same time each day, we could almost figure out the best times to get him to reshare stuff he likes (assuming he's following you).
* How influential is your topic?
- to which followers?
- at what time of day?
- to how many people?
* Do resharers comments make a difference? Take a look at the right side and see if they added their own comments to the reshare or did the post stand on its own.
* Were most of your reshares a result of a direct share from you or from reshares from other people?

2. Using third-party websites

CircleCount.com allows you to list your Google+ Business Page in the CircleCount directory. They will show you a nice chart, track the number of new followers you get every day and show you the average numbers for your latest postings (comments, +1es, reshares per posting).

They will also show your CircleRank, a nice follower growth simulation on your profile and the most followed Google+ Pages at www.circlecount.com/pages/

Adding yourself to the SocialStatistics.com directory allows you to track your own Google+ profile or page, giving you follower’s statistics and chart. You can see the most followed Google+ Pages at socialstatistics.com/top/pages

10. COOL EXAMPLES OF GOOGLE PLUS PAGES

+adidas Originals
+Google Chrome
+Pepsi
+Mashable
+Android
+TOYOTA
+Fox News
+HootSuite
+Angry Birds

ARTICLES THAT INSPIRED ME:

How to Set Up a Google+ Brand Page
mashable.com/2011/11/08/how-to-google-plus-brand-page/

How to Get Started With Google+ Pages for Business
www.christopherspenn.com/2011/11/how-to-get-started-with-...

How to Create a Google+ Business Page in 5 Simple Steps
blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/28624/How-to-Create-...

Google+ Pages, 11 Tips To Get You Started
socialfresh.com/google-pages-11-tips-to-get-you-started/

HOW TO MAKE YOUR GOOGLE+ BRAND PAGE MORE VISIBLE
greatfinds.icrossing.com/how-to-make-your-google-brand-pa...

Complete Guide to Optimizing Your Google+ Brand Page
www.virante.com/blog/2011/11/09/complete-guide-to-optimiz...

Digging Into Ripples by +Dan Soto
plus.google.com/u/0/114122960748905067938/posts/CWpuKNuDQ1g

13 Cool Examples of Google+ Brand Pages
www.dreamgrow.com/13-cool-examples-of-google-brand-pages/

Link to original post:https://plus.google.com/106393478695568433143/posts/HrEJHUA6ECt
Other useful posts: #gvgpUseful