5 Reasons You Should Be on Google Plus

With Google+ you can easily interact with your community and really get involved. It’s a bit like a clean cut version of Facebook with more control over who sees what with the use of circles to sort your connections. Once you’ve built up an audience for your Google+ Page or a community to interact with, you can target your information so that it works most effectively for you and your business.

Here are 5 of the best features that Google+ offers for building an audience or community and some of the people who are already utilising them:

Circles

Organise your audience into various circles based on their interests, different teams or any other way that you are connected to them. This will allow you to share the right information with the right people as they’ll all be in one place ready for you. Only the circles that you choose to share posts with are able to see them, allowing you to communicate with your internal team whilst also connecting with the outside world. You can create your own private communities or join other Page’s public communities.

Example: The Financial Times created a shared circle for viewers to add other news sources’ Pages on Google+.

Hangouts

Hangouts allow you to host group video chats with up to 10 people at a time. This way you can have face-to-face conversations with people no matter their location and without having to leave your office, giving Google+ a more personal and interactive feel.

Example: KOMU in Missouri has been using Hangouts to get viewer feedback and do on-air interviews, whilst Fox News’ ‘Special Report with Bret Baier’ used Hangouts for viewer interviews with Governor Mitt Romney.

Sharing content

Google+ is a content-centred platform and has no limits to the length of your posts. You can +mention other people in your posts so that they can then share it with their communities, creating an opportunity for you to gain a bigger audience and therefore create growing communities. You can share photos and videos along with your written posts and there’s the option of editing your photos directly in Google+. You can even share animated GIF photos so you can branch out from posting the usual content that you would on your other social media platforms. Threads resurface at the top of people’s streams as others add comments so your content doesn’t just get pushed further and further down your Page and get forgotten about.

Example: Pete Cashmore of Mashable regularly gets feedback on his posts and Cory Bergman at Breaking News regularly breaks news stories on Google+.

Author tags

Claim authorship across the web by adding author tags to content you’ve created. Your photo and name will appear next to search results for your content, getting you noticed and recognised on Google+. This will allow you to connect your media brand with your content from other places. Check out Google’s tutorial on how to do add author tags.

Communities

Google+ is all about communities and people coming together with a common passion, whether it’s something that you’re interested in personally or the area that your business is geared towards. Communities are there for you to get involved with and join in the conversation. They’re a ready made hub of like-minded people who you can go to without having to search too hard for them — they’re ready and waiting for you.

The more you use Google+ and get people interested in the content you are creating on it, the more your audience and your communities will continue to grow. This community spirit isn’t something you find on Facebook or Twitter so make the most of it. Get involved with the conversations that are happening and start initiating your own.
Collin Key via photopin cc