These days, social networks are an important aspect of marketing, especially for small businesses. If your end goal is to increase the visibility of your brand and grow your consumer base, it is important to maintain active pages across several different social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
For this article we will focus on Google+ because a). it is relatively new, b). it has established its position as the 2nd largest social network in the world, and lastly, c). this can be a little tricky/confusing when you start out.
But don’t worry, because once you get the hang of it, you’ll join the millions of companies that use Google+ to connect with customers every day. Your colleagues may even ask you to help them set up their own page! So here are four simple ways to use Google+ to grow your business!
1. Take advantage of Hashtags
Hashtags are words or phrases you see on social media sites that start with a “#” sign. When Google+ introduced the hashtag feature, companies everywhere were delighted that these tags could play a big role in content marketing. Hashtags give you a simple way to categorize content, and they will also help potential customers find your profile through your posts. For example, if your business sells sports equipment, use the #sports tag in your posts. You can also tag your city or town to help locals find you!
2. Share Relevant Content
It’s important to post on your Google+ page every day, but what happens if you don’t have original content? Well, the best thing to do is find other people’s content relevant to your company and post it. Make sure you credit the original poster by sharing it directly from their page, or tagging them in the post. If you don’t do this, it will come across as if you’re trying to pass off someone else’s content as your own, and if you do it accidentally, it will damage your credibility among your followers.
3. Don’t Cross-Post Exactly Same Content
Cross-posting is a social media faux pas that refers to those who share identical posts across all of their pages. It’s bad enough when people do it on their personal profiles, but it’s even worse when you see companies posting the exact same thing on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. It makes the company look lazy and it shows a lack of creativity. So when you create your daily posts, make sure to mix it up a bit. Even if you just change the wording a bit, you can usually post about the same topic or event, as long as your posts don’t look like they’re being copied from one another.
4. Monitor Your Competitors
It’s always smart to keep an eye on your competitors’ Google+ pages to see what they’re up to. By monitoring your competitors, you can analyze a lot of information such as their marketing strategy, how they interact with customers, the type of content they share, the offers and promotions they run, and much more. All of this info is valuable for you to know because you are trying to target the same demographic, so if you know exactly what your competitors are doing, you can always be one step ahead. It can also go to the other end of the spectrum, and you can see some things they do that you don’t, which is still valuable info because you can always learn from other people’s successes.
Have YOU successfully grown your business on Google+? Let us know in the comments!
Evan Pecos is a blogger from Baltimore, MD. She specializes in writing about social media marketing tips for small business owners.
