Small Business Odyssey – Page 7 – Real world advice and tips for small business marketing

January 2, 2012January 5, 2012

Share Content with your Circles Via the Google Plus Stream

The Google Plus Stream is the lifeblood of Google+. It enables sharing of information to Circles and has a lot of the characteristics of Facebook’s status updates. You can share ideas, status updates, photos, videos, links and your location (if you really want to!).

The Share box is accessible via the Google Plus homepage. You have a few icons you can click on to share specific types of information or you can just enter text in the Share box:

In line with Google+ Privacy Policy, you can specify who you share each post with. You can identify specific Circles or all Circles (public). Icons for suggested circles are shown (e.g. Acquaintances and Friends in the image above) and you can add more Circles by clicking on ‘+add more people’. You can delete a suggested Circle from your distribution by clicking on the delete button (X) in the respective Circle icon.

You can see that yet again Google Plus is deadly serious about giving you control over your privacy by allowing you to determine the desired distribution for each post.

What should you share in your Google Plus Stream?

I have discussed what types of content you can share in your Google Plus Stream, but what exactly should you share? The fundamental rule to remember is that your Stream on your personal Google Plus page should be about CONVERSATION NOT CONVERSION! If you indulge in a constant sales pitch, you will be very quickly dumped from multiple circles (…and defeat the whole purpose of using the Google+ network, which is to expand your contacts).

So think about the things that you find engaging and share something similar. Here’s a list of the kinds of posts that catch my attention and tend to encourage me to share with others:

informative
visually appealing
peaceful
intriguing
humorous
enlightening
challenging
insightful
reflective

So your purpose in posting to the Google Plus Stream is to share something of yourself, enhance your personal branding and provide content that others find useful or appealing and are inspired to share in their own Circles. In this way, your posts will have a viral effect.

The central Stream on your Google Plus Homepage is the accumulation of all the posts from people in your Circles (who included you in their distribution when sharing).

What to do with posts in your Google Plus Stream that you don’t want

You have a range of options in relation to each post that arrives in your Google Plus Stream if you don’t want to retain them or make them visible to others:

Report abuse
Mute this post (no longer visible)
Block this person

The options button is somewhat faint but you will see it beside each post as illustrated below and highlighted by the red arrow I’ve included in the screenshot:

How to ‘like’ posts in your Google Plus Stream

If you want to ‘like’ a post there are a number of ways to do this. Included in the options mentioned in the previous section of this post is an option “Link to this post” which enables you to copy the link for the post and share it with others (it is mystifying why this option is inlcuded with the other “dislike” options).

However, there are a number of other options which are more clearly displayed immediately below each post as indicated in this screenshot:

These options are explained briefly below:

+1 – indicates you really like the post and want to save it to your ‘favorites’ (this is an expansive topic and will be the subject of a separate post).
Comment – see below for further elaboration.
Share – with Circles that you specify when you click on this option.
Hang Out – Chat with the originator and others you choose to include (more on this in another post).

How to comment effectively on Posts in your Google Plus Stream

I have previously discussed at length how to comment on social media content in such a way as to build a positive online profile and brand image. The same principles apply when commenting on posts in your Google Plus stream.

You can see from the following example how a simple comment can generate a reciprocal response. Chris Brogan shared a video and a personal comment about the originator of the video, Tom Terwilliger. I watched the video and left a comment on Chris Brogan’s post. Tom responded and so we have the beginnings of a conversation:

So to reiterate, the primary principle behind your sharing through the Google Plus stream must be to focus on conversation not conversion.

January 1, 2012

Grow Your Google Plus Circles to Build Your Profile Online

Circles are a core element of Google Plus. They enable you to place people in different groupings depending on your level of association with them, e.g. friends, acquaintances, family. Circles enable the unique privacy approach of Google Plus to operate. You can specify which circles will have access to what information. As I explained in my previous post, one simple example of this is the ability to specify who has access to the links that you include in your Google Plus profile. [Image Credit: mrnilspeters]

You can access your circles by clicking on the ‘circles’ button at the top of your Google Plus page as illustrated below:

Adding “friends” into your Google Plus Circles

The first thing to be aware of is that you can add as many circles as you want and specify their names, e.g. work colleagues, Squidoo contacts, customers. If you add too many circles, your circles and privacy settings will become unmanageable. However, the circle facility enables you to effectively categorise your contacts and manage your communications with them – you don’t have to lump them all into one large group of ‘friends’.

You can add people to your circles by using the drag-and-drop facility provided when you click on the Circles button. The avatars of people will be displayed depending on the choices you make from the menu provided (illustrated below):

For example , if you click on “people who have added you”, you will see the avatars of all the people who have added you to a circle on their Google Plus account. However, you will not be able to see what specific circle you have been placed in by these people. If you hover over the avatars you will see whether they are already in one of your circles or how many people you have in common in your respective circles. The following image shows an example of the avatars as they will be displayed. The ones with the symbol in the top right hand corner are those who you have also added to your circles. You can work your way through the others and add people to your different circles as desired.

As I mentioned in my introductory post about Google Plus, you will also receive notifications of people who have added you to their circles. If you click on the notifications button on the Google Plus toolbar (right-hand side), you will see thumbnail images of people who have added you to a Google Plus circle and you will have the facility to easily add any of these to one of your circles (click the ‘arrow’ beside the thumbnails and you will have access to a drop-down menu).

Google Plus makes it very easy to add people to your circles. As indicated in one of the above images, when you click on the circles button, one of the options displayed is “Find People’. Google Plus explains how the resultant list of avatars is generated for you:

Find People – Our best guess for people who you may want to add to a circle. Get more suggestions by importing your contacts from your email account.

As indicated, you can actually import contacts from your email accounts – Yahoo, Hotmail or by uploading your email address book (see image below):

So Google gives you multiple options for adding people to your Google Plus circles, encourages you to expand your social network and to effectively manage your communications with your circles. You can even tailor your perosnal profile information for different circles (e.g. making personal information only available to your “family” circle). On top of this, you can specify which of your circles you want to hear from. The following YouTube video from Google Plus gives you more information on how to create and use circles:

Google Plus circles gives you a very effective way to manage your contacts, increase your online exposure and develop new sets of relationships, including those with existing and potential customers.

December 30, 2011December 30, 2011

Creating Your Profile on Google Plus

Your Profile Page on Google Plus is very significant, as it is on other social networks. Here is your opportunity to brand yourself and your small business. Profiles on social networks are a core element of small business marketing but are often rushed and rarely updated.

Google will automatically import your Google Profile if you have created one before, so all you will need to do is to edit it to bring it up to date.

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, you can create or edit your profile via the Google Plus toolbar or via the icon at the top of your Google Plus page (identified in the illustration below):

Creating your Google Plus Profile

Here is an opportunity to provide a comprehensive profile that adds credibility to yourself and your small business. It is really critical that you add a photo of yourself to reinforce that you and your business are real.

The Google Plus Profile offers you the opportunity to provide a comprehensive picture of yourself in line with your focus at the time. Here are the key details you can record in your Profile:

Tagline – a brief description of yourself (related to your small business focus?) – you can see my tagline, ‘Creative entrepreneur who loves to write and help people be the best they can be’, in the above image.
Introduction – an overview of yourself
Employment – opportunity to mention your small business
Education – can reinforce your credibility and small business focus
Bragging Rights – something personal or small business related (Small Business Award?)
Occupation – relate to your small business
Places Lived – this is shown by “pegs” in a map
Relationship – share your relationship status
Looking for – disclose what you are comfortable with (use “Networking’ if you want to keep Google Plus for professional purposes)
Gender
Profile Discovery – can set this to ‘Help others find me in search’ (shown as ‘Profile visible in search’)

The right hand column provides a great opportunity to display important links. You can add URL’s and descriptions under the following three (3) headings:

Other profiles – other sites that give insight into who you are and what your interests are
Contributor to – what sites feature your work
Recommended link – add the URL and description of pages that interest you (include your small business blog or website).

These links are really important to enable you to direct people to your personal branding elsewhere and to connect them to your small business. By way of example, I have included information about my Google+ Profile links below.

Under ‘other profiles’, I have linked people to the following sites:

profile on my small business site – Merit Solutions Australia
autobiography on Squidoo
my e-portfolio

Under ‘Contributor to’, I have created the following links:

Squidoo – Giant Squid100
Wizzley – Co-Founder and Author
EzineArticles.com – Platinum Level Expert Author

Under ‘Recommended links’, I have listed the following:

this small business marketing blog
my human resources consultancy business
Wizzley – a community for online authors
Web Design and Hosting Services

The list of links above highlight the fact that the more you create online content, the more you have to share through your small business marketing online. Google Plus gives you the option of deciding who will have access to these links as part of its privacy options. These options are displayed as a drop-down menu under each of the categories of links mentioned above.

The discussion in this blog post highlights how your Google Plus Profile can build your personal brand on line and increase the penetration of your small business marketing.

December 29, 2011December 29, 2011

Google+: Why Small Business Must Get Involved with Google Plus

Google Plus is Google’s new social network launched in June 2011. Google+ will be an integral element in small business marketing into the future. It will not only enable you to build your personal profile but also build your business brand online. Google Plus membership has already reached 62 Million and is growing at the rate of 625, 000 new users per day.

Why bother with Google Plus?

Google views Google Plus as extending its capability (and value) beyond its traditional search engine focus to social networking. However, these two major arenas of Google’s activity should not be seen as separate. Google has already made it clear by its own words and actions that the Google + social network will feed search engine results. It has also shown the intention to rapidly integrate other Google applications into Google Plus, its new social network.

Google has already integrated Google+ into its toolbar as shown in the images below:

This icon. ‘+Ron’ , provides a direct link to my Google+ account. In the following toolbar image, you can see how Google integrates ‘notifications’, ‘sharing’, ‘profile” (thumbnail photo) and ‘settings/help’ icons for ease of access:

As we progress through my blog posts about Google Plus, you will see that Google is deadly serious about this new social network – it is not just a new ‘plaything’. Wherever you go on Google, including the search results, you will see increasing integration of Google+. Google played around with its early social network, Google Buzz, but has since canned it to build Google Plus – all the time using Buzz as a learning laboratory. If you have any doubts about Google’s long-term commitment to Google Plus, just check out Google’s own announcements re its ongoing Google + updates.

Integrating Google Plus into your small business marketing will no longer be a nice option (initially, Google+ was invitation-only), it will be an essential element. Otherwise, you will see your online marketing progressively vanish into the background as Google takes over the foreground with its Google Plus social network.

As mentioned in my earlier post on the major changes for small business marketing in 2011, Google+ is one of Google’s strategies designed to wrest back the Number One web traffic position from Facebook. The similarities between Facebook and Google Plus will hit you immediately, so this new social network represents head-on competition with Facebook. As a small business owner, you can stand on the sidelines and watch the battle or you can engage with both these giant networks and ensure that you have a sound footing online – this is where the action is and where the people (your customers) are.

What is significant about Google Plus?

Google Plus has already been lauded for its ease of use and flexible privacy settings (addressing one of the key problem areas of Facebook). As Google+ is in its early stages, it is also possible to get access to people you would not normally be able to link to.

So here is a list of key things you can do (explained in detail in later posts):

create a comprehensive personal profile
build ‘circles’ (add people to different circles/groupings and control the access and distribution of your information via your circles)
share photos and videos
develop your ‘stream’ (similar to Facebook’s ‘News Feed’ – integrating ‘status updates’ and content such as photos or videos)
private message other people in your circles
create a hangout (an evolving facility to engage others in live conversation via video and text chat – considered by many to be the real technological breakthrough for Google Plus)
create ‘sparks’ – recommendations
build business pages (sound familiar?).

Some commentators are suggesting that with these features and the growing integration with Google’s own applications, Google Plus represents a combination of Facebook, Twitter and Flickr rolled up into one state-of-the art social network.

How to Join Google Plus

You can join Google+ via a link on the blog/website of a Google+ member. You will see the image displayed at the top of this post and the sign-up box as shown in the following screenshot:

Alternatively, you can go directly to Google Plus and click on the following image and this will take you to the signup page indicated in the above image:

Note: You will need a Google account to join Google Plus (with either sign-up option).

With each advancing day as we move into 2012, Google Plus will become more critical to small business marketing and this will be progressively explained in succeeding blog posts (which symbolically will take us into the New Year).

December 26, 2011

Google Local Places: Critical for Small Business Marketing

Google has created over 49 Million websites for businesses around the world in the form of Google Places. These Google-generated websites contain basic information such as business name and address and a Google location map. They contain Google’s “best guess” about relevant company information and location.

However, the latest stats show that only 2% of these websites (Local Places) have been claimed and verified by business owners.

Local listings (Google Places) are increasingly valued in Google results. More recently, some local listings appeared ahead of other organic searches on Page 1 of Google results for relevant keyword terms. The resurgence of Google Places is one of the 7 major changes that impacted small business marketing in 2011.

Another key consideration about Google Places is that they are optimized for mobile to facilitate mobile search. There is a considerable fusion between local and mobile marketing occurring now, so creating mobile compatible sites is becoming increasingly important.

If you have an offline business, now is the time to claim your Google Places website using the guidelines provided below.

Creating your Google Places and Google Map

The process of creating your Google Places website takes three basic steps, as simple as A, B, C.

A. Setting up Google Places

If you have not yet created a Google Gmail account, now is the time to do so. If you are working on behalf of a client, then you can create an account with their business name in the email address.
Log into the Google account via http://maps.google.com and check if a company listing exists by searching for the company name (with location) in the box provided.
If a Google Places listing exists for your business (or that of your client) click the “edit this place” button and proceed to edit. If a listing does not exist, click “My Account” and choose “Google Places” to set up your listing.

B. Updating/editing your Google Places listing

1. Business Name

Google recommends you use the actual business name, not a keyword rich made-up name. This is to assist verification purposes. If Google cannot verify the business and your association with it (or that of your client), you will not be able to edit your Google Places.

2. Physical Address

It is vital that you give the physical address of the business (or if working from home, your home address). The physical address is necessary for Google to employ its Google Map technology as part of your listing. If you do not want the physical address disclosed, there is an option to suppress it later (along with the specific map location). The address is critical because Google Places is designed as a local business locator and Google needs this information to verify the listing.

3. Phone Number

This should be the direct local number so that clients and customers can contact the business directly. The last thing you want to do is send a customer on a “wild goose chase” trying to find someone to talk to on the phone.

4. Email address

Google has expressed a preference for you to use the email address that incorporates the company domain, This is preferred to a Gmail account or other derived address, as it aids the verification process.

5. Website address

This has to be the URL for your company (not a specific product or service). Google uses this for validation of your listing. If you have no website you can leave this blank.

6. Business description

You can make this description keyword-rich, provided you explain to potential customers exactly what the business is about (otherwise you are wasting your listing).

7. Business category

Google provides a drop-down list of suggested categories. You can type in the business category you think should cover your business (or that of your client). Google will suggest something close to this, if it does not exist. Unfortunately at the top level, you have to accept one of the Google suggested categories. You then have the option of adding four more customized sub-categories.

8. Optional Information

What you complete here will depend on the nature of your business. Possible information includes hours of opening, service area and payment options. Hours of operation can be critical for some businesses, e.g. there is nothing more frustrating than trying to locate the hours of operation of a retail store when in a hurry.

9. Photos

You can upload up to 10 photos provided they are associated with your business or products/services.

10. Videos

You can upload up to 5 videos (via their YouTube addresses) that are associated with your business. This is a great opportunity to add multi-media marketing on a page created by Google itself (that it wants to give priority to).

11. Coupons

Google Places also provides the facility to offer coupons and other special offers.

C. Activation of your Google Places

Once you submit your listing to Google, you will be given the option to receive an activation code by phone or by postcard (2 -3 weeks). When you receive this code, you need to use the PIN code provided to activate your Google Places Listing (access via the link provided or via “Dashboard”). If you don’t activate your listing, your (edited) Google Places will not be published.

Google Places is an important component of small business marketing and offers the opportunity to have your website listed high in Google search results with an attractive display.