Internet Marketing Tips: Take advantage of Google+ opportunities for engagement, sharing, collaboration, lead generation, reviews and recommendations.
There are so many ways to use Google+ for your business… here are just a few:
Engagement. Your main website is built with a specific purpose – to serve as your marketing hub where you provide information giving you the opportunity to build trust with your clients and prospects. Oftentimes a website doesn’t encourage two-way conversations, and it is certainly not the place to have a social conversation. However, if you share something personal at Google+, your audience has a better opportunity to get to know you… and people do business with people they know and trust. You can talk off-topic and not only can your audience learn more about you, you can learn more about prospective buyers and build relationships outside of the sales funnel.
Sharing. The most powerful opportunity on Google+ is sharing…. sharing personal content, sharing other people’s relevant content – blogs, videos, pictures, favorite quotations, etc. If you are lucky the people in your circles will interact with your posts and share them with their circles.
Team Collaboration. You can make a circle of co-workers, clients and/or colleagues and easily share information with them. This would be a professional circle… not a place to get too personal. And, if your circle is for business associates, you wouldn’t share sensitive data in this type of public setting (even if there are privacy settings to protect you). The tools for collaboration include; written info for your team, create links to relevant content, share photos and videos, and most important of all – use the Hangout feature to have live conversations with your team.
Community Building. Similar to Facebook Groups, but much more powerful if you take the time to actively participate in the community and engage customers and prospects in 2-way interactions. Community pages allow you to share upcoming events and written content, and give your community members a chance to get in involved in the conversations. If your community is made up of customers, they can interact with each other kind of like a conference call where everyone has a chance to put in their two cents.
Contests and Promotions. This type of old school marketing is still very effective and all kinds of opportunities to engage take place. What if you sponsored a contest, asking for help with creating a tag line… or a photo caption contest. Make sure the prize is worth your audiences effort – a $100.00 gift card, a mini iPad, even a recently published book on a hot topic.
Lead Generation. Sharing articles from your website will help your audience to discover your marketing hub, and once they are there, hopefully they will sign up for on of your Offers, generating a new lead. Results may vary, however, a strong circle base at Google+ will certainly drive people to your website.
Reviews/Recommendations. Create a business page and people have the opportunity to write reviews and recommendations.Google+ is a great place to not only ask for referrals, but also to get your clients involved… beyond a written recommendation, you could ask your clients to post a short video on what they love about your service or product.