Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Vine, YouTube…with so many online social media platforms, some businesses are finding it a challenge to engage across all audience-grabbing tools. Companies want to direct their marketing resources for the most benefit, which often comes down to which app has the largest amount of users. This focus, however, often leaves one of the most important social media platforms off this list, which is a mistake.

Being active on Google+ is more than just about sharing on social media. A well-rounded Google+ presence could be your company’s biggest payoff for online marketing, especially with the platform’s focus on businesses serving a specific market or community. To prove the ease and benefits of utilizing Google+, Mopdog increased our engagement on the tool from mid September to mid October.

By diligently posting original content and sharing information from other Mopdog followers, our total views on Google+ not only elevated to more extreme peaks, but our feed also saw more constant traffic. Out of the 17 new followers we added in the last 90 days, 13 of them came from our engagement push over the past month.

Still, the most important insight is the 158 search views that our Google+ dashboard tracked for Mopdog. This metric represents the number of people who saw our Google+ page after searching for Mopdog or related words through Google’s search engine. That search results connection is key. Google+ is designed to increase an organization’s online visibility—ultimately placing your company’s information above competitors at the top of a search list.

Google is literally offering private companies a free social network to raise a business’ ranking online. Even if a customer only searches by keywords and not a specific business name, your company has a better chance of appearing in front of that searcher if those keywords are found on your Google+ page. This tactic is called “optimizing your brand.”

 

Put the “Pro” in your Google+ Profile

To get started making the most of your Google+ resources, you must fully complete a Google+ Business Page. Use google.com/+Mopdog as an example of how to use taglines, logos and banner imagery, a description, contact information, a link to your website and a specific physical location that will be displayed on Google maps.

After you have planted your Google+ business profile flag, it is time to attract an audience to your feed with relevant posts. Use buzzwords and themes in the industry to participate in a greater discussion about your company’s services. But remember, these posts are really a tactic to get clients looking at the profile and clicking on your company’s specific website.

One great feature Google+ offers to spur a larger discussion is auto-selecting hashtags about trending topics that relate to the post you are crafting. By approving these suggested hashtags, your post will feed to a related audience who is interested in that “hot topic.”

Even further tying together your business to clients, Google+ makes it extremely easy for customers to add a review of your business. Google+ offers other user-friendly tools, like quickly creating a poll question to communicate with followers and sharing a YouTube video with just a few clicks.

The +1 button works similarly to a “Like” on Facebook. Google+ takes this sign of approval by followers as an automatic indication the post is credible. This metric then further promotes your business getting higher search results overall.