In case you haven’t heard, Google+ pages for brands and businesses are on the way.
A Google employee told an audience at the Ad Age Digital West conference last week that the company is “
close to unveiling” the new pages. At a Social Media Week event hosted by
The Word of Mouth Marketing Association in Chicago last week, Google’s Ryan Stonehouse said the brand pages will likely roll out this fall.
At the WOMMA event, Alisa Leonard of
iCrossing joined Stonehouse to offer a variety of tips for using Google+. Here are two (plus a third tip gleaned from posts by other Google+ employees):
Boost your brand’s search ranking. Leonard explained that Google’s algorithm treats the links shared in Google+ as “highly indexable,” meaning that Google looks very favorably upon Google+ content in search. That means you should be sharing your content on Google+—just don’t spam.
Customize editorial content with Circles. You can create separate Circles, or groups, for your PR audience, marketing audience and internal communications audience. Then devise an editorial calendar that indicates when to send messages to just those segments. This way you’re not blasting a message—or worse, spamming people—who might not be interested in your company’s latest earning reports.
Tag content with hashtags. In case you hadn’t heard, hashtags have made their way to Google+. According to a number of Google+ employees, including
Yonatan Zunger, you can use hashtags as you do on Twitter to identify topics of interest or tag your posts so they’re searchable for others looking for tips on, say, #socialmedia. Yonatan also shares tips on using the search feature of Google+ to save searches and share searches
here.
Numerous other Google+ employees are sharing tips on the platform. If you’re not following any Google+ pros, you’re missing out on some great tips. Here’s a list of 10:
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