subject: Using Google+ To Market Your Business [print this page] Google+ is one of the fastest growing social networking websites in the world. From its launch in June 2011 it has accumulated 400 million users although only 25% of these are classed as active. More of these users are becoming active as they realize the potential of this social network developed by the worlds second biggest website.
The website itself has many features that you can take advantage of to expand and market your business. Google+ hangouts are a great way for you to communicate with your customers over a live web chat. With these you can broadcast to an unlimited audience with hangouts on Air. These hangouts can create a personal bridge between you and your customers and if they are watching your stream their friends may become interested. On these hangouts you can host Q&A sessions with your customers which allows you to answer any queries and this may generate sales. In addition to this you can use these hangouts as a way to launch a new product that you have developed. Many businesses are already doing this as they know that people will watch these launches and if they are good they are more likely to purchase your product.
Google pages can allow you post regular updates about what is going on with your business and this can generate more interest. When doing this you should make sure you regularly post updates but as well as this you should not update too much as this can drive people away. The updates should be more personal so people feel that they have a slight connection with your business. You should also post updates about special offers and any discounts that you have so that you can get people interested in your special offers because everybody loves low prices. With these updates of special offers you should post a link to the relevant page on your website to encourage people onto your website.
Like when you are using Facebook and twitter pages you should run competitions that increase interest on your pages. Like Facebook you can run caption competitions which seem to get everybody interested as they can be extremely funny for customers. After running the competition you should choose a winner and announce it via your page so that people have to continue to look at your page. These competitions can be linked to your website so you direct traffic onto it. Once people are on the website they are more likely to go through the rest of your website and look at the products that you have to offer. To add to this you could get people to sign up to your monthly newsletter whilst applying for the competition so that you have customers to send the newsletter to.
On your Google+ page you should regularly post pictures so people can get an insight into what the day-to-day running of the business is like. Try to make these pictures humorous as well as making sure that your employees look happy in the photos. If you upload a picture and everyone looks unhappy this will put people off.
Your display picture on the page should be something that relates to your business, most people opt for their company logo but you should try using something more fun that still relates to your business as the more fun and personal it is the more people that are probably going to use your page. Google+ have followed Facebook with the idea of a cover photo and with the one on Google you should use a graphic that is fun and exciting whilst using the company colours. Many businesses do get a graphic designer to design a photo for their page and this can be very effective.
You should make sure that you link all of your social networks so you can get all of your customers using all of your pages. You can do this by posting links to the other pages on all of the pages as this will get people looking at each page. Your Google+ page should be linked to your main website as you obviously want people to go onto your website to purchase your products. You will need to make sure that you do post the right stuff on your Google+ page otherwise you will risk losing customers if you anger or irritate them.
