Content Generation

Stream
Updating your stream is pretty simple, especially if you are familiar with Facebook’s interface. On your Google+ home page, there is a simple text box labeled “Share what’s new…” To post a simple text update, just click in there and start typing.

Once clicked, the Stream box expands to facilitate content entry:

You see it also grows a Share button and the option to include Circles and people to share with. More on that in a moment.
Of course, there’s much more to posting content than just status updates. You can also use Google+ to post photos, videos and links directly into your Stream, as well as tag your updates by location. To do this, just use the icons to the right of the text entry box.

We’ll get into each of these in more depth below.
After entering your post, you can share it with the world by clicking the green Share button.

Of course, you may not want to share everything with the entire world. That’s why you have Circles, right? To share certain content only with particular people or Circles, click the blue link just above that Share button, as indicated by the red arrow above. This opens up a drop down menu, where you can choose with whom to share your post. That way, you can tailor and target your content, or keep certain content restricted to a certain group, like your Friends or Family.

That’s really all there is to posting a simple Stream update. If you have used Facebook or Twitter at all, you will have no trouble catching on to this aspect of Google+. To be thorough, let’s look at how to include other types of media when posting content in your Stream.

Photos
To post a photo, start by clicking the picture icon in the Stream update box:

This will expand the text entry box as we saw above, as well as drop down a menu. From this menu, choose how you would like to add photos. You can either upload a photo(s) for this post, create a new album (along with corresponding Stream update to announce it) or upload photos from your mobile phone.

(Note: the mobile phone feature is only available for Android devices running the Google+ app.)
After adding photos via your preferred method, simply finish up the same way as above: choose people or circles to share with (if desired) and click Share.

Videos
The process for including video content is much the same as for photos, so I won’t flog a dead horse by going over it step by step again. Instead, this section will briefly cover the various ways you can include videos. Just as with photos, start by clicking the video icon, which is the next one to the right:

Just like with photos, there are three options for adding videos: uploading them from your computer, linking from YouTube or adding them from your mobile phone. Again, the last option is only available if you are also using the Android app.


Links
Links are extremely simple to post. Just as before, click the link icon (hint: it’s the next one to the right). The entry box grows as expected, giving you a space to paste or type in your link.

Google+ will translate links you enter to include an icon, thumbnail and preview:

If this looks familiar, it is because it is the same thing Facebook does when posting a link. See: if you know Facebook and Twitter, you can learn Google+ easily. Once your link is in there, just add an optional comment, select who you want to share with (or keep it public) and click Share!

What Kinds of Content Should You Post?
Now that you have learned the how of content, let’s briefly discuss the what. Look at the question above. What do you think the answer is?
To be frank, there isn’t one. By that I mean there is no one answer, but rather many. To illustrate this, let me share something I saw on Twitter recently. Someone asked Warren Whitlock, author of several books on Twitter and social media, if he had any tips for people who wanted to improve their social marketing. Whitlock tweeted back simply, “give more.”
He went on to explain that the only way to know what to give was to pay attention to your audience, whether it be on Twitter, Google+ or right there in front of you.
So, rather than trying to decide what kind of content to post to Google+, what you should do instead is engage with the people you are trying to reach and let them tell you what content to post. The key word here is engage
– it’s essential to all marketing, whether online or off. Google+ is no exception.

Commenting and Tagging

Your Home page is your base of operations for Google+, where you will probably spend most of your time. The main portion of this page, right there in the certain frame is dedicated to your Stream. Analogous to Twitter’s Timeline and Facebook’s News Feed, the Google+ Stream is where you will see updates, links, photos and videos that have been posted by your friends, colleagues and other members of your network.
For example, you may see several posts in your stream that look something like this:

(Ordinarily, the name and picture of the poster would be at the top left of this post, but for the purposes of this tutorial, they have been redacted.)
This is a link posted by someone from my network. You see the link itself, an icon, a thumbnail and a brief preview, just as you’d expect. But what else do you see? There are several important and useful elements in this screenshot, which we will talk about individually below.
Comments & Commenting


First, let’s talk about comments. The concept is nothing new, of course. The web has been full of comments for as long as any of us can remember. Facebook, blogs, forums, bulletin boards—they all make use of comments, providing a forum for users to pass on thoughts on the topics and media posted there in.
Google+ is no different. You can leave comments on other users’ posts, simply by clicking the Comment link below that post. Likewise, others can do the same with your posts. When a post has comments, they will appear below the post, as in the following:

You can respond to other users’ comments by putting them in the “Add a comment” text box at the bottom of the comment thread. A tip: just like blogging, it is good practice to respond to comments on your posts. That way, you connect with the community, which boosts your online presence.
Keep in mind, however, that no one wants to be constantly bombarded with sales and marketing talk in their social network feed. Don’t make overt sales pitches, make sure your comments have actual value and engage in both sides of question and answer sessions. Those three simple things will keep you in good standing in the community.
What the Heck is a +1?

After spending a little time on Google+ — or anywhere in the Googleverse, for that matter – you are bound to notice little rectangular icons all around that say “+1” on them. Are you wondering what those are?
Essentially, giving something a +1 is a way of endorsing it, saying that you agree with it or like it in some way, without making a specific comment. It is very similar in concept to the Facebook “Like” button, if you are familiar with that. Simply put, when someone +1’s your post, it means he likes it. The number of +1’s a post has received is displayed right below the post, above the comment thread:

In this example, four different users have found this post worthy of a +1. If you click on that little “+4” (or whatever the number happens to be), you can see who those users are.
The +1 is a great way for Google+ users to engage with one another. It is a tool you can use to communicate with the customers, associates and others in your network, but like any tool, it can also be overused. If you sit idly on Google+, arbitrarily clicking on every post that comes up in your Stream, then it loses meaning and no one will pay attention to your +1 in the future. It becomes like spam, and no one likes that.

Blocking & Muting
Now, not every post is worthy of a comment or +1. In fact, some are irrelevant, annoying or outright offensive. If you have spent any time on social networks, you are well aware of that.
Fortunately, you have options to avoid posts like these. In Google+, you have three simple ways of combating undesirable posts. To access them, simply click the tiny downward pointing arrow in the upper right corner of any post. This drops down a menu where you can select the three options:


In order to choose the right option for a particular post, let’s look at what each of these does:
Report abuse

This option allows you to flag posts that violate some rule or guideline of the Google+ community. This option is strictly for posts that abuse the other users in some way, such as those listed in the above screenshot. It should not be used just to get a post out of your feed because you don’t like it.

Mute this post
This option will remove the individual post, as well as associated comments, from your news feed. Note that this only removes the chosen post, not all posts for that user. Use this option for one-time minor annoyances.
Block this user
This option will remove all traces of the poster from your Stream. Use this when you simply do not want to read what that person has to say anymore, ever.
Those are the basics of commenting in Google+. Using these tools and features is a good first step to getting out into the Google+ pool and splashing around. I also recommend just going out there and playing around, fiddling to see what works and what doesn’t, what you like and what you don’t. The best way to learn is by doing.

Building Targeted Circles

One of the more powerful and useful features of Google+ is its use of Circles. With Circles, you can organize your Google+ contacts into different groups based on your relationship with them. This can have several advantages. For example:
You can filter what you see in your Stream by Circle, so you can see only the user content that is relevant to you at any one time.
Likewise, you can designate your content to be visible only one or more Circles, so you can tailor it to appeal to certain audiences.
Circles serve as a reminder of how you know or are connected to someone, lest you forget.
You can keep your whole network of contacts, colleagues, customers and prospects organized easily into their corresponding Circles.
This is just a short list of the uses for Circles, and as you can probably see, there are some great marketing and promotion implications hidden in there as well. To tap into the marketing potential of Google+, let’s talk about how to build targeted Circles.


Getting Started With Circles
In order to have targeted Circles, you must have Circles to begin with. So, let’s start by creating some Circles.
First, click on the Circles tab from your Google+ home page, or any Google+ page. It is the second button from the right in the collection of tabs, as indicated in red below.

Once you are at the Circles tab, click on the “Find people” section. This where you will go to – surprise! – find people to add to your circles. You will see a large pool of suggestions from Google+ of people you may know and/or want to add. Unfortunately, I’ve had to block out faces and names in the screenshot below in order to protect the innocent, but you get the idea. Each of those little rectangles will have a picture and name in it.

As you can see, there are four pre-fabricated Circles already: Friends, Family, Acquaintances and Following. Not a bad start. Let’s make a new one.
To make a new Circle, you just need to add at least one person to it. See how that one person is highlighted in blue above? We’re going to make him the first contact in our new circle. To do this, we simply drag him down to the empty Circle on the far left, the one that says “Drag contacts here to create a new circle.”

As you do that, the empty circle will expand and become highlighted in blue to indicate being selected.
After dragging one person to that Circle, you have the option to either add more people by dragging, or go ahead and create the Circle by clicking the corresponding link. Add as many people as you like before continuing.

That brings up this brief dialog box:

Here, you can name your Circle and confirm the people you want in it before finalizing its creation. At this point, you may be wondering just what adding someone to a Circle does. Good question. I’m going to let Google answer that one for me:

So, now we can share things with the guy we just added to our new “Prospects” Circle. He will receive notification that we have added him to a Circle, but he won’t know which Circle it is. So, if you wanted to have a Circle called “Poisonous Enemies” or “Ignore at all costs,” you could do it without hurting anyone’s feelings. Although, I don’t know why you would keep a connection to people like that, but that’s up to you.

Targeted Circles
Now that you know how to create Circles, you can go about setting up ones that are targeted. For example, we just created one called “Prospects,” which you can now use to keep track of prospective sales leads. You could also create one called “Current Customers,” containing everyone who has an open account with your business. Once our guy from up above makes a purchase, we move him over to that Circle. Depending on your business, you might want to have Circles like:

• Past Customers
• Advertisers
• Freelancers
• Editors
• Subscribers
• Buyers of Product X, Buyers of Product Y, etc.
• Priority List

By having each of these groups combined like that, you can more easily tailor content that will appeal to the various markets you serve. It also facilitates communication and allows you to more readily see the needs of your customers and clients.
Making use of Google+ Circles is a powerful way to step up your customer relations and marketing campaigns.

Action Plan Day 7 – Evaluate and Refine

Backup Your Google+ Data with Data Liberation – Once a week, backup everything on your profile with Data Liberation from your settings menu. This will allow you to keep all of your photos, posts, shares, and other data on your PC for future reference. It also ensures that if you delete your profile some day or Google (magically) goes under, you can access this information.
Install a G+ Badge or Button on Your Blog – Make sure you post a G+ badge or profile link on your blog and website so people can easily add you and interact with you from there. Show how many people have you in their circles and make a quick link of what they will gain by adding you to theirs.
Create Permalinks for Your Favorite Posts – If you’ve shared anything that really kicked butt or went viral, create a permalink for it in Google+ and share that link on your blog. Consider creating an archive of your favorite shares and posts on Google+ so people can quickly access a “best of” listing of your posts.
Install Chrome Extensions to Improve Performance – Review the list of Chrome Extensions in the eBook and add any that fit your needs. There are a lot of fun ways to upgrade and enhance your Google+ experience with Chrome – make sure to use them.
Review Interactions and ROI and Make Adjustments – See what you’re getting out of your posts by reviewing your Goo.gl or Bit.ly and Analytics data to see where your conversions are coming from. Did one post do better than another? Did you get a lot of traffic at a certain time of the day? Did people bounce like crazy from one particular link? Now’s the time to brainstorm why.
Consider New Ways to Improve Performance in Google+ - Never stop looking for ways to get more out of Google+. If you can think of something you wish it would do, there’s probably someone out there working on it.
Rinse and Repeat – This is just one week. You have months to come of growing your circles, building your reputation and showing the world that you’re worth following in Google+ as an early generation adopter. Use the tools I’ve given you to do just that, constantly add people to your lists and create a larger and longer list to work with as time passes.

Action Plan Day 6 – Run Your First Campaign

Post a Link to a Free Report or Website You’ve Developed – Today is the day you run your first true campaign to see how it performs. We’ve already posted some useful content, but today we want to post something new to Google+ and see how all those new followers will respond. Choose a free report, blog post or link you’ve just created and develop a really good share for it.

Supplement Your Post with a Hangout or Huddle – Consider supplementing your post with a Hangout or Huddle to discuss it. If you think your Circle will be interested in going over these details make it easy for them to reach you and ask questions or provide feedback. If you do a Hangout, make sure to record it for later. You can offer those conversations as bonuses to your lists.

Solicit Interest from People on Your Lists –Use all of your lists, including your Google+ Circles and email lists to draw people to your new posts. Solicit reshares and +1’s and askpeople to leave comments about the actual item you’ve posted. You can even incentivize this by bumping people into exclusive circles with more free content if they interact.

Move People Who Respond into New Circles –If someone downloads your report, buys your product, comments on your share, or otherwise interacts with you and your profile, move them into a corresponding circle. Proven buyers are much more powerful leads than plain old prospects, so they need a circle of their own. The same is true for brand evangelizers and anyone who shows an interest in what you develop.

Start Posting Publically to Encourage SERP Increases – Post anything valuable publically to encourage SERP increases. On the flip side, if you post anything that needs to remain private, lock the post. This will keep anyone from reposting it on their own Stream and therefore exposing your secrets to the world.

Check Your Google +1 Button Data in Webmaster Tools – If you installed your +1 button the other day, now is the time to start using the Webmaster Tools provided by Google to review your traffic and see what you gained from the installation. See the eBook for more details on how to do this.

Action Plan Day 5 – Start Interacting in New Ways

Schedule Your First Hangout – Get that first Hangout on the calendar. Today, brainstorm what you will discuss, select YouTube videos you want to watch and develop a good strategy for showing off your content or presentation to the people you invite. It might simply be a time to say hi to your affiliates once a week or it might be a presentation for a new product you have going up soon.

Promote Your Hangout on Huddle and Your Stream – Just scheduling a Hangout isn’t enough; you need to promote it to the people who will join in as soon as possible. Create new posts on your Stream and send them to the circles you want involved. Use Huddle to contact people directly and remind people on a daily basis that the Hangout is coming up.

Gather Information and Ask Questions About Your First Hangout – Ask people to submit questions and ideas for the Hangout so they can get used to the idea of being involved in these things. It’s not a webinar – it’s an interactive forum and you want people to ask questions and be as involved as possible throughout the entire process.

Analyze Your Posts to See How they Perform –Whenever you post a link on your G+ profile, make sure to use a URL shortener like Bit.ly or Goo.gl. These allow you to track the clicks you get and analyze the traffic it produces. You can then compare the number of clicks you get on any given day with the posts you wrote on that day and see where your traffic is coming from.

Review Your Circles and Add Another 100-200 People – This will be an ongoing task for weeks and possibly even months to come. Look through your circles and add another 100-200 people. This time around, make sure to start removing anyone from your circles that didn’t follow you back. There will be a list on your Circles menu of people who don’t return your follows – allowing you to easily remove them.

Further Split Your Lists and Build on What You’ve Developed – Again, back to list splitting. Circles are powerful if you keep them clean and segmented. If they get cluttered with people you don’t want to send the same message to, you may as well use Facebook for all it’s worth.

Action Plan Day 4 – Build Relationships and Create Value in Google+

Integrate the +1 Button into Your Website – If you haven’t yet, get a +1 button on your website ASAP. If you have a WordPress blog, this is very easy. If not, you should go to Google’s Webmaster Tools service and download the code needed to add it to your site. Don’t forget to customize the text submitted with each share.

Create Value on Google+ and Send People there from Your Other Sites – Make sure you use your existing web properties to drive people to Google+. You may not be able to sell directly on the social network, but you can sure use it to provide added value and stay in touch with people. Have badges on your sites, post permalinks of your recent shares and tell people what they can gain by joining you on the site.

Refine and Revise Posts with SERPs in Mind –Don’t forget that your posts can show up in SERPs if you do them just right. Keep your really good posts public and make sure they are as interesting and engaging as possible.

Start Tweaking Your Profile Using G+ Tips –Use the tips included the eBook to tweak your profile and add new content to it. You’ll be surprised by how many cool things you can do using the Chrome browser and a little ingenuity to customize your posts.

Reach Out to Your Affiliates and JVs – If you haven’t yet, start drawing in the people you do business with. Add your affiliates, your JVs and any business partners or contractors you work with on a regular basis to your G+ profile so you can keep in touch with them through you Circles.

Create Networks You Can Rely on in the Future – Circles will be a hugely successful and useful communication tool in the future, but they need to be used wisely to be effective, so don’t let them get cluttered or overloaded with content in a way that will drown out everything else you’ve worked so carefully to develop.

Experiment with Huddle on G+ Mobile –Now’s as good a time as any to start using theMobile app and playing with Huddle. Especially if you’ve added your business contacts, start having conversations with them on Huddle. This will allow you to develop instant contacts with people in an open environment, like a forum but in your G+ mobile app.

Action Plan Day 3 – Start Posting in Google+

Add 100-200 People to Your Circles through Thought Leaders – Go to the Profiles of the Thought Leaders you’ve been adding to your Circles and look at people who have those people in their circles. Now, start adding them to your circles. A good thought leader should have between 500 and 10,000 followers you can poach, but only add 100-200 per day to avoid coming across as a spammer.

Post Something Highly Relevant and High Value in Your Niche – Immediately after you add these people each day, add something highly valuable to your stream. It can be a link to one of your best blog posts or a free download of your newest report or a webinar recording you did a few weeks ago. Whatever it is, make sure it is the first thing on your Stream after you do your adds each day. You should do this every day for a few weeks now.

Supplement with 2-3 Posts Today – Add more content directly before you do this. Whenever you’re going to start adding people each day, post a few personal things on your Stream to keep it looking natural and then post your one super high value item.

Engage in 3-5 Conversations and Ask Questions – Look for conversations and questions you can become involved in on your streams. If someone asks particularly good questions or you find yourself interacting on their stream often, put them in a separate circle so you remember they are good to follow.

Share Anything Interesting You Find – If you find anything good during your exploits today, reshare it. Don’t be afraid to reshareanything you like. The beauty of Google+ is that you can now choose who to share these things with. Don’t want to share the redbandtrailer for a new movie with your family? Then don’t.

Start Splitting Your Lists Where Possible – As you notice trends in the people you follow (and especially in the people who follow you), start splitting your lists up more carefully.You want to have people broken up in a way that your messages have the greatest impact possible. That might mean 10 circles or it might mean 50.

If Someone Follows You, Follow them Back –If someone follows you, always follow them back, because this is the only way to send targeted messages through custom circles. Without custom circles, you cannot show them messages you’ve crafted for their particular viewing.

Action Plan Day 2 – Start Building Your Circles

Research Top Thought Leaders in Your Niche – Start using the search engine and blog feeders to find people who are leaders in your niche. Look for entrepreneurs, Internet marketers, gurus, and experts you can draw content from (and in a little bit, followers).
Setup Saved Searches and Use Sparks –Use the G+ search function to create saved searches that will allow you to quickly and easily draw content for your future shares. Brainstorm hot topics and ideas in your niche you can draw on and save them for future reference. This is also good for finding new profiles and people to follow.
Populate Your Stream with Personal Content – The first content on your stream should be personal in nature. For every 1 post you place with a link to something you wrote or a website you built, post 5-9 other things that are personal or non-marketing related. You can even post links and articles that you find, as long as there are no CTAs to make it seem like you’re a marketing hound.
Start Drafting High Quality Messages for Later – Create a circle for notes and drafts and start working on high quality shares for later. These should be interesting, in-depth targeted shares that will attract attention from across your niche.
Transfer Your Facebook Contacts and Start Adding People You Know – Use the Yahoo! Mail exploit discussed in the eBook to move your contacts from Facebook to Google+ and start populating your circles. You should also start looking through your Hotmail, Gmail and other contact lists to add people, even if they don’t yet have G+ accounts.
Start Interacting with +1 and Reshare –Every single post, image and link on Google+ can be +1’d or reshared. Use these tools to show what you like, what you think is important and add instant value to your stream on an ongoing, daily basis. If someone does the same for you, thank them for it.

Notes:

Action Plan Day 1 – Signing Up for Google+

Create Your Google+ Profile – Visithttp://plus.google.com and signup using your existing or a new Google Account. Make sure to watch Video 1 – Creating Your Google Account for tips on building your first circles and adding contacts immediately
Create at Least 5 Circles – Delete all the default circles except for Family and Friends and create new ones to house people you want to learn from, prospects, customers, and high priority followers. Create custom circles to fit your needs as well, such as: Affiliates Notes and Drafts Contractors JV Partners Super Loyal Customers Be creative and find new ways to develop relationships with people using the Circles tool in Google+.
Choose a High Quality Profile Photo –Choose a profile picture that is at least 200×200 pixels and clearly shows you smiling or actively engaging in your work. Don’t choose something with you at a distance or dressed for Halloween, or hiding behind a tree. You want people to see and recognize your face.
Fill in Your Profile Details – Fill in the details for your profile including your Introduction, Bragging Rights, Employment, Schooling, etc. You want to be as clear and vivid as possible without overdoing it. Make sure you show what you do, why you do it and why other people should want to follow you.
Upload Pictures from Your Profile –Add at least 5-10 photos to your profile showing you in different aspects of your daily life. Your family, your work, your dog – these are all great ways to humanize your profile and really draw attention to the work you do.
Download Your Facebook Data and Move it to Google+ - Use the walkthrough included in your eBook and in the Quick Action Plan to move your data from Facebook to Google+. This should include your pictures, videos, and anything else you think is important to shift between accounts.

Creating an Account

So you have finally decided to jump on board the Google+ bandwagon. Or, maybe you were just waiting for it to be open to the public, rather than by invitation only. Either way, if you are looking to get started with Google+, you have come to the right place. The process is simple and quick, so you will be under way with Google+ in no time.
Please note that this tutorial assumes that you have a Google account already. If you use any Google products, such as Gmail, Google Docs, Google Checkout, Picasa, Feedburner or Blogger – to name a few – you already have a Google account, which you can use to create a presence on Google+. If you do not have an account with Google already, now is a great opportunity to create one. Then, you can jump right back into this tutorial.
Getting started is as simple as logging in from any Google product page. You will see a tab in the top left corner of the screen that says “+You,” as depicted below. Click that.

That will bring you to the Google+ profile creation page, which looks like the screenshot below. Fill in a few pieces of basic information to get started. Be aware that whatever name you enter for Google+ will be the same across Google products. Also note the checkbox that authorizes Google to use your information to personalize ad content on the web. Uncheck that box if you don’t want to authorize that use of your data. Once you’re done with that form, click the Join button.

Next, you have the opportunity to enter some more in-depth information, such as your school, company information and location. This is also where you can upload a profile picture. You can also update all these same bits of information later, so if you want to skip ahead and come back to it, just click the Continue button.

After that, Google+ will suggest some people to add to yourCircles. (Note: Circles are covered more in depth in another tutorial.) After suggesting your contacts and other people you may know, the next screen of the setup process will identify some celebrities and other public figures you may be interested in following.

Just like on Twitter and Facebook, adding public figures to your stream can provide some entertainment, as well as give you the opportunity to connect to important people in various industries. For example, you can add author and online guru Guy Kawasaki to your Circles. You can even add MySpace founder Tom Anderson!

Finally, you will arrive at your Google+ Home page:

Let’s spend just a moment talking about some of the features accessible from this page, which you could consider the dashboard of your Google+ experience. Each of the following features has been highlighted in red in the screenshot for easy viewing.
At the top, next to the search bar, are buttons that allow you to switch between the five tabs of Google+: Home, Photos, Profile, Circles and Games. These will appear at the top of every page in the Google+ experiences.
Along the left side of the screen, below your profile picture, is a list of the Circles in your Stream. By clicking a Circle, you filter your Stream to see only posts from the people in that circle—kind of like Twitter lists.
Using the buttons around the Home page, you can find people to connect to by searching manually or uploading your address book, invite your friends to join Google+,chat with people in your Circles or start a Hangout. We will cover Circles, Messenger and Hangouts more in other articles.
That is all it takes to get your Google+ account off the ground. It is a process that takes only a few minutes, but keep in mind that optimizing your account will take considerably longer. The goal is to connect to customers, and it takes more than slapping up a profile name and a picture to make that happen.
Before you can do all that, though, you’ve got to create the account – which you just did!

Google+ for Businesses and Beyond

This chapter is a departure from the rest of the book because I want to discuss real quick what I feel will come next in the evolution of Google+. If you haven’t already guessed, I think this is the future of social media. The setup, the tools provided and the platform being built around Google+ is too powerful to not have an impact.
I’d not only be shocked, I’d be sorely disappointed if Google+ didn’t succeed where Google’s other social endeavors failed.
But, what is next? Where is Google going with their social tool, especially since they have yet to introduce the business side of the platform.
We don’t have answers to those questions, but we can certainly guess and my guess is that this will become the best single platform available for businesses. If you own a small business or work with small businesses, start saving up that marketing budget, because having a Google+ platform, page or whatever they decide to call it for your business is going to be a must.
There a few reasons why.
Google Apps for Business – If you currently use Google Apps for business you know what I’m talking about. This is a fantastic solution for anyone who wants to keep their group domains in one place. Google+ integration with Google Docs, Gmail and personal domain operations could be revolutionary.
Import and Export Functionality – With Google Takeout, getting your personal data into and out of Google+ is easier than any other social network. It also means that businesses can more easily followup with their online prospects online, import data from their sales logs and develop long term connections with people through social media without bending to the sometimes odd rules that Facebook has.
Hangouts and Huddles – Hangouts and Huddles are built for online marketers. I mean, look at them. Now consider what you could do with a pay gate on Hangouts or a larger number of people allowed into those Hangouts. The possibilities are nearly endless.
Customer Based Circles – Creating Circles that are customized for customer interactions? That sounds great to me. Automating the whole thing with Chrome extensions? Even better. Google’s commitment to open endedness and extensions means you’ll be able to easily and seamlessly transmit data between your social and business profiles.
Google Understands Businesses – Google has long understood businesses in a way that Facebook never will. Sure, it sounds like a cheesy romance novel, but Facebook has always stumbled along with its offerings for businesses. Pages are great, but only if you customize them. It’s the idea that’s great, not the platform. Google understands what businesses need and want so you can bet their “Page” alternative will offer the things that jilted Facebook users have wanted for years.
B2B Applications – Facebook Pages were always designed for “Fans” – the result of them copying the new nearly defunct MySpace. People “followed” businesses and brands and didn’t interact with them on the same level that B2B businesses do. To be effective in the B2B industry, you need to have a better platform to sit with people, discuss things and work on equal footing. Google’s business platform will almost assuredly offer that.
That’s just getting started. The things we’re seeing out of Google and their newest social network are light years beyond what others are doing and while Facebook can copy all the features it wants, it cannot copy a built-from scratch business functionality that Google will certainly offer.
How will it all work? We have no idea, but you can bet that with the direction they’ve taken, Google is well on their way to offering the best business based social media solution on the Internet (hopefully soon).

 Conclusion

Google+ took a lot of people by surprise. I’ll admit I was one of them.
After all, Google has tried this before and for the most part, they failed. So, when I logged into Google+ for the first time and was actually a little blown away, I didn’t expect it. This wasn’t the social plan I was used to from Google.
This was something…good.
And it’s more than just good – it’s effective. If you’re just getting started with Google+, know that you’re about to revolutionize how you interact with your prospects.
This isn’t just another social network – it’s a combination of services like we’ve never seen before and it could only have been produced by Google.
I know it’s hard to imagine a world in which Facebook is not the clear and obvious choice for social marketers but I think we are coming dangerously close to that world and it’s going to be led by Google+.
Should you use Google+? Absolutely. Will it change how you do business forever? It depends on if you put the strategies and tactics in this book to good use.
But one thing remains true. This is the beginning of something special and if you’re not on board, you’re going to be playing catch up to everyone else for years, just like you are with Facebook and Twitter right now.
So, hop on board and be prepared to truly take advantage of one of the best new social tools to hit the market in half a decade.

Advanced Google+ Tools

One of the hardest parts about writing a guide for a brand new social network is that I know other people (like yourself) will develop killer ways to use the platform that blow mine out of the water. It’s part of what makes the web so spectacular.
That said, I feel these are some of the most effective, and likely profitable strategies you can put to use within the Google+ architecture. Don’t be afraid to experiment of course, but definitely make sure to try these out when you have a chance.

Google Indexing and SERPs

We know that Google+ content will show up in Google as it continues to grow in size, but obviously not everything will appear in the search engine – there’s just too much to sift through. In time, there would be billions of new posts every day. We’d drown in information (even more than normal) if Google started posting all of that.
So, you need to know what works to get your posts into the SERPs. Specifically, here are some tips to help you know what Google’s looking for:

• Public – Obviously, if a post isn’t public, it won’t be indexed.
• Unique – If Google indexed every reshare and repost on Google+ the Internet would crash. So, you need to write something unique to get it into the listings.
• Long and In-depth – Make sure you cover something in-depth and show some real value in it. A four word exclamation won’t get indexed unless it has thousands of +1’s.
• Popularity – If Google sees that people like your comments, they’ll be indexed. So, write things that are useful, interesting and engaging. The result will be higher rankings and more exposure in the SERPs

The real trick with Google+ is going to be finding a good balance between public messaging and Circle targeting. You could very quickly bury yourself in content if you’re not careful – writing hundreds of posts a day to reach across multiple demographics.
Instead, look for ways to offer real value to as many people as you can each day. Don’t feel obligated to reach #1 in Google with a new comment on Google+. Be willing to interact on a personal level more often and you’ll reap bigger rewards.

Tricks to Develop High Ranking SERPs

The thing about Google+ is that it’s very different from what we’re used to. There isn’t anything here that you haven’t already seen a hundred times before but how it’s laid out is so completely foreign that most of us are still trying to figure it out.
As a result, there are a lot of strategies that still need to be developed and indexing and SERPS are among them. But, here are some quick tricks we’ve been playing with thus far that I think you’ll be impressed with:
Note: Be careful, because there are a lot of strategies floating around out there that are now considered Black Hat by Google. Exchanging +1’s for example is not allowed, nor is it okay to sell your +1’s or crowd source the process. How Google plans on regulating this, I have no idea, but it’s probably not worth the risk of getting caught.
+1 Other Content – You should be out there putting as many +1’s on good content you like as you can. This is not only good for you to help track what you like, but it will allow you to show up more in the SERPs if any of the people in your Circles see those listings.
Encourage Organic +1’s – It may be against ToS to trade +1’s but it’s perfectly okay to ask people to do it if they like your content. Keyword = “ask” not beg.
Meta Data Matters – To encourage +1’s in the SERPs, make sure your listings are interesting and attractive. The higher your CTRs in Google, the more likely you’ll get +1’d and get a boost in the rankings. If you’re using WordPress, go for custom permalinks and make sure to use All in One SEO.
Copywriting Tactics in Your SERPs – It’s come to this, but you should think of clever, yet evocative ways to create titles, descriptions and tags for your SERPs. Don’t avoid keywords, but also make sure it’s original and interesting. You want to attract attention and draw those +1’s.
There are a few other tricks and ideas floating around out there that haven’t been proven yet, so keep a close eye on the boards and this guide – I’m excited to see what people are capable of doing as the technology Google’ using advances.

Managing Projects in Google+

I’m excited to write this chapter because I’m fairly certain I thought of it first. There are a few ideas in GPlus Domination I’m very proud of, but most of them I’ve seen in some iteration or form online. With over 30 million people using Google+ within the first 60 days, there’s bound to be some creative overlap.
But, in this case, I feel like I’ve stumbled upon a possible use for the service that will allow us to complete incredibly powerful things without spending incredible amounts of money.
The problem in question? Project management.
To date, I’ve had a heck of a problem finding the right project management solution. They either cost way too much money and have far too many features for my needs or they don’t scale properly. And then there’s the issue of getting people to actually login and use them.
Of every tool I’ve used, Basecamp is probably the most effective, but I had a hell of a time getting contractors and JVs to login to the service and post there instead of just emailing me directly. I had to update everything myself and it wasted more time than it saved.
So, the idea of a social network in which I can post to a specific list of people or call them into a Hangout to discuss a project from any computer on the planet is very attractive to me.
There is no “right” way to do this, but let me share with you some of the ideas I’ve been working on thus far.

Outsourcing Projects

I outsource a lot of projects. It’s the only way to keep up with all the content I’m trying to create. But, it’s not always easy to keep track of who is available, when they are available or even how many contractors I have on my “contact” list. Google+ is a great way to get around this problem.
By placing freelancers and contractors into circles such as “writers”, “designers” and “programmers” I can easily post a new project and send a notification to announce it to everyone on my list.
Say for example, I want to develop a new video series on Ab fitness. Instead of posting a project on Elance and manually inviting each of the people I’ve worked with in the past or worse yet, digging through my inbox and trying to find each of them, I put up a single share to my “video/audio contractors” circle, disable comments and send notifications to make sure everyone gets the message.
You can of course leave comments active if you’re comfortable letting your contractors discuss the project openly, but I personally don’t think this is a good idea. Rates tend to vary for each contractor and tempers can flare if you openly give the project to one person over another.
However, announcing the project or posting updates on a new project you’re getting ready to start this way is a fantastic way to develop and maintain relationships with your writers. You can also keep a separate circle for all of your contractors called “Contractors” and send out periodic updates on your business and upcoming projects.
This allows you to stay social with the people you hire and develop a relationship that will only benefit you in the future. If you’ve contracted more than one or two projects in your life, you know how important these relationships are. When a contractor feels like they know you and respect you, they will do a much better job and are far more willing to give you a deal and prioritize your work when necessary.

JV Partnerships

When partnering with someone on a new project, the hardest part of the whole thing is keeping up with the most recent developments or getting replies from them about something important to the project.
Google+ can help alleviate this problem by providing a central discussion platform that all parties are likely to access (and can reach via mobile technology). Create circles with specific project names and then add any of your partners to the list.
This allows you to develop more direct relationships with the people helping you to launch new products and builds on the basic idea of collaboration. On a normal social network this wouldn’t be any better than email, but with the added benefit of Huddle and Hangouts on Google+ you can communicate from anywhere, anytime.

Affiliate Support

The same goes for your affiliates. If you just launched a new product, consider developing an affiliates circle for that product. Now, you can post new tools you’ve developed, recent news, and contests related to that product to your circle and people will instantly receive the value you offer them. Again, because Google+ has so many other tools to offer, this can be fleshed out many times over. Here are some ideas you can put to use in your affiliate campaigns:
Weekly Hangouts – Setup a Hangout once a week at a set time and invite your affiliates to join you. It can be a Q&A session about your current product or a presentation about a new product you’re developing. I like to give out fresh market data and marketing strategies I’ve developed or learned from my analytics to help the affiliates reach their customers. By holding a weekly Hangout, I can ensure people show up each week and then save that Hangout for future reference in my “Affiliates” stream. I then write up a short email with all the information we discussed and send it to everyone else with a link to add me on Google+.
Huddle Invites – Make sure people can access you via the mobile app as well. Setup weekly Huddles to follow your Hangouts or possibly even hop online every evening. How many times do you crash on the couch and spend three hours sending text messages while watching TV? You can easily do the same thing with a Huddle and stay in touch with your affiliates.
Create Albums – Create albums, file sets and video playlists full of content that your affiliates can use for their campaigns. Why host all that content on your site, where your possible customers can see it when you could just as easily lock it into place in your Google+ account? It’s free storage, easily controlled for privacy and instantly accessible for people who get into the right circle.
Saved Searches – Save searches in your Google+ account for your product names and reference them every day to see if anything new or interesting came up in the last 24 hours, either on Google+ or elsewhere on the web. You might find a fantastic affiliate campaign being run by one of your contacts. Send them a shout out on Google+ so everyone can see. Imagine the response from your affiliates when they see you announcing your appreciation for one of their fellow affiliates. Talk about motivation!
Google+ is a fantastic tool because it takes everything we know and love about existing social networks and amps it up an octane, so it’s not shocking that it makes a fantastic supplement to your affiliate actions.
Right now, the only way to use this is to setup direct connections between your profile and your affiliates, but when Business accounts go live later this year, make sure you’re on top of it, because it will be a fantastic opportunity to create a central location for all of your product’s needs. And let’s not forget the SEO benefits!

Market Research 101 in Google+

One of the most frequent questions I get from other marketers is how I perform my market research. How do I decide what my next project will be or how I will develop my next interactive website?
I do it with a variety of tools. The most regular tools I use are Clickbank, Amazon and Google AdWords. After all, what better way to research what people want than to see what people are willing to pay for?
But, at the end of the day, I don’t necessarily feel like I fully understand the market I’m entering. I may have an idea of what people interested in organic eating will pay for, but I don’t know anything about them as people.
That’s where Google+ comes in.
Google+ is a fantastic tool for performing market research and learning more about your prospects, both directly (by asking them) and by lurking through public posts and search functions to see what they’re talking about.
In fact, I always like twitter for this reason – the hashtags and search functions on twitter made it possible to learn a lot about people and their interest in a topic. The problem was the lack of depth on the site. With only 140 characters, there’s only so much you can say and frankly, I wasn’t that interested in following all those bit.ly links.
Today, we can upgrade our market research.
While, I highly doubt any social network will ever replace my litany of research tools, Google+ is quickly becoming a part of my routine. Here’s how I use it:

Creating Targeted Circles

I’ve already talked a lot about how to build your circles, so I’ll skip that and just say that it’s a good idea to create more targeted circles that build on what you’ve already developed. Say you want to learn more about what fitness gurus are interested in – start posting some content about fitness to your public stream and add a few fitness gurus and devotees to a new circle.
You don’t need many to actually follow you back – maybe 10-20 at the most. The goal isn’t to start marketing to them (yet), but to get their feedback on a potential product. Ask them what they are interested in, what they aren’t interested in, and what they find attractive about a new product in their niche.
Check to see what websites they link to frequently and join them on their forums to read up on their recent trends. The goal here isn’t so much to develop prospects, but to learn from established members of a large niche.

Finding New Niches

That’s all fine and good if you already know who you want to market to and are trying to develop a new product, but what about actually finding the niche in which you will next create a product?
To do this, we need to find a popular nice with a lot of interest and heavy demand. You know the basic tenets of a good product marketing campaign:

• Resolve a Pain or Provide Pleasure
• Instant Need
• Built in Social Proof and Scarcity
• Unique Angle to Provide Added Value

If you can think of a product that hits all of these high points, you can sell the heck out of it, so how do you learn about these things on a social network like Google+?
To start, set up your saved searches. Use Sparks and the Google+ search function to start tracking a handful of niches you’ve already brainstormed. Let’s say for example I decide I might want to market in any one of a number of niches. Here are some saved searches I might have:

Now, all I have to do is login to Google+ each day and click on those saved searches to see what’s popped up in the last 24 hours or so.
While the Sparks function is useful, I personally prefer to review what people are saying on their profiles. It’s not that profile posts are somehow more useful in any way. It’s just that you get the added bonus of seeing all the comments, +1’s and shares that they’ve received over the course of their lifespan on Google+.
And because you can organize the search results by “Best of” you can easily see what is the most popular in the last few days.
I’m not saying you’re going to run across a share that is instantly useful in helping you select a new product to develop, but you will get ideas and ideas are the lifeblood of this business. Better yet, you may learn that something is less useful than you expected.
Say for instance you want to create a guide for pregnant women to decide what they should eat during pregnancy. This would be a very useful guide, but if you then learn during your research that there are a dozen guides already like this, including some that are recommended by doctors like BabyCenter.com, you’ll discover that you’re rowing up the wrong creek.

Supplementing Your Research

This is why Google+ is almost always a good supplement to other research materials. I personally prefer to get my data from Amazon.com (seeing which products have the most total reviews), Clickbank (checking for high gravity) and AdWords (checking for high PPC rates). These resources show me something very important – what people are willing to spend money on, and how many people spend it.
Better yet, I can see what competition is doing in advance and know whether the market can bear another product in that niche (especially one with a unique, interesting angle).
But, all that said, Google+ should absolutely be on your research list. Too many marketers get caught up in the idea that what sells matters most, but you still need to know how to sell it.
If you hop into the fitness niche seeing that there is a huge demand for the product, but have no idea what types of products people buy or how you should present yourself in that niche, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. You can’t just coast your way to profits.
Sometimes you’ll get lucky, but most of the time, the social tools presented on Google+ will make all the difference in the world.

Huddle/Messenger Strategies

The last feature I want to discuss is Huddle – one that is actually designed for the mobile version of Google+. Huddle, at first glance is about as inspiring as Hangouts. It doesn’t provide anything hugely original or overwhelming, but for anyone who jumped on board Twitter at first glance, you know that there is much more to the story here.

Huddle essentially allows you to sit down with up to 50 people and have a text conversation. Better yet, it can be used a supplement to anything you do with the rest of the social network.
Let’s say you decide to build a campaign around your new weight loss product.
You can set a time each week to sit down and have a conversation with people who want to discuss the product or the different strategies they are using in their weight loss routine. This can be a supplement to the product you sell or it can be a freebie that you throw in on Google+ to get people interested in your product.
It also works fantastically as a supplement to your Hangouts.

Let’s say you have a Hangout every Friday to discuss hot topics in the niche.
What better way to supplement your Hangout than to have a Huddle on Saturday afternoon to discuss the topics you went over.

You can even have a strategy session – getting people together to discuss whether the ideas you gave them really panned out in their own efforts.
It can be a coaching session too. If you offer personal advice on your website, why not take it live. If you can convince people to signup for Google+ so they have access to your Huddles, you create a connection that will last into the future.

Other Uses for Huddle

Like almost every other tool on Google+, there is no “one way” to use Huddle. There are a lot of options if you know how to effectively integrate them into your marketing campaign. Here are a few of the more popular and successful ways to do this:
Brainstorming Sessions – Let’s say you’re getting ready to produce your newest product. You can certain bounce emails back and forth with your fellow marketers over the course of a couple days or you can sit down with them during a scheduled Huddle and bounce ideas back and forth in real time. A Hangout might be better if you can get everyone in front of a PC, but if not, Huddles allow multiple people in different time zones and in different parts of their daily life to chime in with ideas.
Meetups – If you’re trying to meetup with strangers or friends offline, it is often hard to find everyone and get them together. No more with Huddle. Simply send a group chat message and hash out where everyone is. This is perfect for meeting up at trade shows and conventions.
Commentary – Ever wanted to get real time feedback on a webinar or an event as it happens? Huddle makes it possible. Invite members of your webinar to join a Huddle and leave questions or comments for your review during the event. You can do this during events that aren’t yours too. For example, let’s say you sell World of Warcraft guides – why not set up a Huddle during the Blizzcon presentations and then use the thoughts and ideas you gather to craft articles or even a free report after the event? The possibilities are endless here.
Contests – Contests are great ways to provide value and drive engagement from your audience and JVs, but they are notoriously hard to organize and maintain over a multi-day or even multi-week process. To make things easier, use Huddle to request entries or to narrow entries down and then discuss the contest or its results in greater detail with people on your list.
Client Updates – If you have a big announcement or offer you want to share with people, Huddle is a great way to do it, especially if you have a lot of offline clients you want to contact at the same time. Anything that allows you to build relationships with people in real time is a great tool and one that you should add to your business.
Huddle is simple and most of you won’t use it very often if at all. However, the opportunities represented by Huddle are multiple, especially when used in conjunction with other Google+ tools like Hangouts or even Sparks.
If you’re looking for exciting new ways to engage your prospects, this is one you should have your eye on.

Content Development and Sharing in Google+

When Google developed AdWords about eight years ago they revolutionized how we advertise on the Internet. You could now decide exactly which people saw your ads and when they saw them.
Google+, while developed as a social network for casual users, offers a very similar upgrade to social networking.
Instead of sending a message to hundreds or even thousands of people whenever you want to update your list, you can customize and target your sharing using the Circles functions.
We’ve only just begun to think of ways to use this. But, I can tell you one thing. It’s going to revolutionize how people interact with their customers.
And while most of you are Internet marketer, off-line businesses, whether you own one or market to them, are going to use this tool as it grows to build relationships with their customers and new and exciting ways.

What We’re Talking About

Imagine starting a campaign in which you target individual people in different ways. So, you could have one Circle contain all of your JV partners, another contain all of your customers, and 10 others contain different prospects based on their interests.
Now, when you decide to produce a new free report, you can send the information only to those people who care. So, if your Circles look like this:

• JVs
• Buyers of Weight Loss Product
• Fitness Prospects
• Weight Loss Prospects
• Muscle Building Prospects
• Organic Eating Prospects
• Health and Wellness Prospects

When you develop a free report about losing stomach fat and developing killer abs, you can send the link to muscle building and weight loss prospects, while sending something else of equal value to your other Circles.
It’s targeting at its finest and with the way Google has set this up, it’s easy to use too.

Integrating Search and Social

The goal of Google has long been to integrate social tools into their search functions. They tried to buy other social media services, they worked with Twitter and Facebook, and they tried to develop new ways to integrate these tools directly into their searches without overriding the algorithms they spent 15 years developing.
In the end, it made more sense for Google just to create their own social network. Before you get too critical, consider the fact that Google has managed to do this and multiple other areas.
They developed their own mobile operating system, which is now the largest in the world, they developed their own Internet browser which is now used by nearly as many people as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and they may have one of the best free e-mail services on the Internet.
These are all things designed to help Google improve their search functions and provide new properties on which to sell advertisements.
So it’s not surprising that Google has already started integrating search and social with Google+. How they end up doing this will depend on a number of factors. For now, we know that you can claim your own websites and show up in search alongside them, and Google will use the +1 tool to impact search results.
This should excite you…
or terrify you.
Because, all it’s going to take is a percentage of Google’s users becoming addicted to this new tool for the entire search landscape to be affected. Imagine what happens when 50 million or 100 million people +1’ing things across the Internet are integrated into the search results.
You may have carefully groomed your website to appear in the top spot, but suddenly it falls six spots due to the social impact of Google+.
This is what we’re up against. And to be successful, we need to not only understand how Google+ works, but how to use its new tools and social services to our advantage.

Targeted Messaging

One of the things that has long plagued Google’s social media attempts is that they try to do too much. They have a bunch of ridiculously smart guys and gals coming up with crazy ideas that no one has ever heard of.
The result though has been software that either looks a lot like everyone else’s (*cough* Buzz *cough*) or they make something so convoluted and strange that people go cross eyed trying to figure it out (I’m looking at you Wave).
That’s part of what makes Google+ such a game changer. Google has managed to create a social network (and much more!) that conforms to the expectations people have of social networks without being complicated.
In fact, I’d say Google+ is easier and more intuitive to start using than Facebook and its ever evolving, ever infuriating interface.
But, and this is the coolest part, Google+ has so much more going on under the hood.
After all, this is Google we’re talking about. They have tools that will make Google+ more valuable simply through their existence. Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, Picasa – the list goes on and on and already it’s forcing Facebook to stumble around and pick up the pieces.
But, by far the most powerful thing Google has going for it is the ability to perform market research and target content development in the search engines.
Because Google happens to run the world’s largest search engine (and advertising network, but more on this in a bit), they can offer features that would take decades for other social networks to duplicate.
Just look at Facebook. They have a lucrative deal with Bing, but have they been able to take advantage of it yet? Of course not – Bing is too new and too sparse to provide the kind of coverage needed to offer what Google+ does out of the box.
Let’s take a look at what we can do here:

Targeted SERPs with Google+ Sharing

I have seen this a few other places, so I’m not telling you anything new, but it’s such an exciting opportunity and I’ve already seen so many people doing it wrong that I want to devote a short section to it, just to give you my take on the process.
As you know, Google is already integrating some of their content into the search results. Here’s an example from when I searched for “Google+ invites” while preparing materials for this book:

It’s a normal SERP, except it’s not. There on the bottom left is a picture of Steve Kovach and his name is attached to the article. This was shared by Steve on his Google+ profile and because it was reread multiple times and shared across the network by multiple users, it became quite popular.
As a result, Google indexed the page that Steven linked to (at number 5 for this keyword, BTW). This is huge for a LOT of reasons. Think about it for a moment.
You can get content indexed in Google by sharing it in Google+. Not only that, but that content can skyrocket up the SERPs based solely on the interest shown by your fellow members.
It may seem like this isn’t something we can take advantage of, but let’s not forget who we are. We’re Internet marketers and we can take advantage of anything if we put our minds to it.

Step 1 – Targeted Content

Develop targeted content that is interesting to a specific subset of your friends. You already have a huge advantage here because you created Circles that target a specific niche. Let’s say you are selling weight loss eBooks.
You probably already have a Circle filled with prospects that are interested in information about weight loss. These are people who have followed you, bought your products, shown interest in your comments or simply asked you questions.
Now, by looking through their profiles, reviewing their comments and seeing what terms they search for (using some good old fashioned keyword research), you can develop content that they are more likely to be interested in.

Step 2 – Writing Content Based on Google+ Connections

Gone are the days when you would write any old article or free report and market it to everyone. You can now use social media to target a specific demographic and boost your rankings in the SERPs dramatically as a result.
So, for my Circle filled with weight loss prospects, I might write a 2,000 word blog post reviewing the most popular diets right now and why they are too risky to attempt. Not only is the post loaded with timely keywords related to the people in my Circle; it has a chance of going viral on Google+, thereby drawing many more people to the article.

Step 3 – Sharing My Content

When the article is done, I post it to my blog and then share it with my Circle of weight loss prospects. That’s 400 or 500 people who I know for a fact will either read or consider reading that article. Some of them will follow the link; others will +1 the content. Either way, I have instant readership and probably some of them will share it with their fellow users.
In a matter of minutes, I’ve just gotten this article indexed and bumped up in the SERPs significantly. If I throw in a few old school methods of backlinking and comment generation, I might soon have a Page 1 article on my hands, and it took almost no time.

Knowing How to Use Your Research

The goal is to use the data you’ve gathered from Google+ effectively. There is a little bit of guessing here; you’ll need to determine which keywords your target prospects are searching for and when they search for them, but even so, the results will be well worth the extra effort put into the process. You’ll get a tremendous volume of readership and a bump in the SERPs almost overnight.

Market Research

Google has a huge network of data to draw from which means you can access it for use on any aspect of your Google+ account. In this case, I want to do some market research and possibly get some of our content listed in the indices that Google draws from for its Sparks search function.
At first glance, Sparks may look like every other search engine that Google offers for its properties, but it’s so much more. Google Sparks allows you to find topically related content, add it to your stream and discuss it in real time with people if you so choose.
We have no idea what gets things into Sparks, but we do know that it’s targeted for relevancy. That means, unlike Google’s major algorithms, the content does better if it’s newer. Old content isn’t relevant so it drops out of the listings.
You can use this to your advantage to not only get your content in front of people when they want to see it, but to learn more about your niche and stay up to date on hot topics in that niche.
After all, you’re supposed to be an expert and that requires a lot of data on your doorstep which you can then share with other people. Sparks makes that much easier.

Learning What People Want to Know

You probably have already done a lot of keyword research on the niche in which you are marketing your products. That’s a great thing because we can now use that research to target specific terms that we know our prospects are looking for in Sparks.
Better yet, learn what’s showing up in Sparks and copy their strategies so your content will show up in Sparks as well. Don’t forget that Sparks is a search engine that people will use to keep themselves up to date on interesting information in their niche.
If you can target that information as well as you target content in the standard search engines, you’ll be able to go viral.
Yes, folks, Google has made it possible to do SEO for viral content. Don’t believe me that you can get your content in Sparks for top keywords. Check out what I found when I did a search for “copywriting”:

Notice that product image for Barbara Ling’s post about Copywriting? That’s a marketing website and she just showed up number two in Sparks for her post – plus it was written three days before my search. That could be you.
How So?
The big question is how to show up in the top spots in Sparks for things that you know your targeted prospects will search for.
What I want to show you is how I have used this strategy successfully to generate content that will sell in my niche as well.
Here’s how I do it.
First, there’s SEO. Yes, you need to do the normal SEO stuff. Optimize your content for keywords that you’re targeting, submit the content to plenty of locations immediately to start getting backlinks and start building traffic, and make sure you develop a long term strategy to generate ongoing traffic to your content.
But, Sparks isn’t about long term – it’s about getting people to your content right now and keeping them interested in that content in the short term.
So, to do that, we need to boost our profile and make sure people see the content, read the content and most importantly, +1 the content because you know Google is taking these into account.
So, share your content on Google+ and get people to check it out. If you want to really drive sales, you need that exposure. Next, make sure people are interested enough to actually read and then share your content.
Do this by promoting it in your Huddles and Hangouts, putting a +1 button on your blog and developing content that is interesting for a number of reasons for a variety of different groups.
Finally follow-up. Tag people in your shares so specific people have an opportunity to read what you have to offer and always be willing to provide updates or direct links if someone wants to learn more about something you’ve shared.
The goal is to make it as easy as possible for someone to find what you’ve posted and learn more about what you’re writing.
And of course, be quick. Sparks is a very time-sensitive search engine. Anything older than three or four days simply won’t show up at the top. You’re already at a disadvantage by not being a major news portal like BoingBoing or Huffington Post.
If you want to overcome that you need to get a LOT of +1’s very fast and get your content into the Sparks database. Do that and it will go viral. And while nothing stays in the Sparks listings for long, regardless of how many +1’s you get, you can take advantage of your growing popularity for long term search.
Think of Sparks as a sort of dry run for SEO. Get something in Sparks and move it up in the listings on the traditional organic search engine.

Targeted Notifications

Here’s a simple trick that you can use if you have done everything else I’ve recommended thus far with your Circles.
Google+ has integrated a number of interesting new features into the Google canon of products. The most obvious is the development of the Google Home Bar – the login bar at the top of the screen whenever you use a Google product.

This shows up when someone logs into Gmail, Google Docs, Google+ or anything else that the search engine company owns.
Huge advantage for you.
As you can see, the Google Home Bar has a simple box at the top right with notifications – colored and styled in a familiar way for anyone who has used Facebook or an iPhone before.
So, when you receive a notification, you know it.
Our goal then is to send notifications whenever we want someone to see something we’ve posted. This is huge because as you know, it’s very easy to miss a LOT of the messages posted by people on your lists in Facebook and Twitter.
Even with Circles breaking down these lists into bite sized chunks, it’s easy to miss hundreds of messages a day, especially if you don’t have time to read them all.
So, if something is particularly important, you want to make sure everyone in your target Circles see it.
Here’s how you do it.
When you create a new post and are getting ready to share it with people in a Circle, put your mouse over the Circle you’ve selected and hover for about 2 seconds:

The above options will appear, allowing you to send them a notification that you’ve just posted something for them to read.
There are limits of course. Circles with more than 100 people cannot be notified, so you need to segment your Circles into small chunks if you want to use this tool. Secondly, you cannot send notifications to your Public Circle or multiple Circles unless they are small and you manually add them all to a single custom made Circle.
This is a powerful tool, especially if someone happens to be in Gmail checking their messages and a notification pops up. If they’re bored or procrastinating at work especially this is a perfect way to get them to your website where they can review what you just posted.
While most people operate on different schedules from each other, there are a few specific times of day that play to the numbers best. Right before work (pre-9am), at lunch time (12-1pm) and right before the end of the day (pre-5/6pm) are all great because people are getting ready to work or leave work and therefore are less likely to actually be doing work.
Don’t forget mobiles either – if you plan on using this strategy, remember that a lot of people now check their email remotely on a mobile phone, so make sure your links are mobile friendly. If you have a blog you link to frequently or you post videos, use mobile friendly layouts. WordPress and YouTube are your best options for this because they work very well on most mobile platforms.

Tagging

Along the same lines as notifications is tagging. Tagging isn’t new to social media – both Facebook and twitter offer similar functions, but the way Google+ implements it is light years beyond what we’ve seen in the past.
Since posts are not limited in length, you can tag as many people as you want. But, because Google+ is informed by Twitter, you can use the +USERNAME prefix to tag people and send them a direct message that they’ve been tagged.
It’s intuitive to anyone who’s used Twitter (250+ million!) and it’s fast and simple. Don’t spam the function though or people will ignore you when you do tag them, but feel free to tag certain people, especially if you have anyone in your hot prospects list – these people are most interested in your offers and will respond better if you basically send them a specific message saying ‘check this out!’

Using Messenger On G+

(Note: as of September 20, 2011, the mobile instant messaging feature of Google+ has been renamed from “Huddle” to “Messenger.” So, if you are looking for help with Huddle, congratulations: you are in the right place.)
Google has long provided its user with myriad avenues by which to communicate. First there was Gmail, then Gchat – now Google Talk – then video chat within Talk, then Google Voice, and now the tradition continues with Google+.
Even within Google+, there are several avenues of communication. You can leave comments on friends’ posts, chat with them instantly from your computer or start a Hangout with a bunch of friends, where you can chat and video conference as a group. That’s a pretty comprehensive set of options…but it wouldn’t be complete without a mobile solution, would it?
That’s exactly where the Messenger app for iOS and Android comes in.
(Note: all the screenshots in this tutorial are from the Google Mobile Blog, at googlemobile.blogspot.com.)

This the home screen of the Google+ mobile app. You can access Messenger by tapping the icon within this app, but as part of the installation process, Google+ also places a standalone icon for Messenger in the app tray. Either launch method will work just fine.
As IM apps go, Messenger is pretty straightforward. What sets it apart, however, is its group chat feature.

You can use Messenger to chat with not just one person from your Google+ network, but with an entire circle. Everyone can see each other’s chats, so it’s like one big group conversation, just as if you were all meeting up for drinks after work. You can even take and share photos with your friends from within Messenger.
For the most part, the two mobile apps are the same, regardless of platform. One newer feature that is only available on Android (version 2.3 and up) is the availability of mobile Hangouts. As of this writing, this feature is not yet available for iOS, but a compatible version is in the works.
You can either start your own Hangout in Messenger, or join an existing one by pressing the button in your Stream:

Remember from the separate article on the subject that Hangouts are designated spaces for Google+ friends to video chat with one another as a group. When you join a Hangout from your Mobile phone, you will see a launch screen – dubbed the “Green Room” by Google — first, just like when hanging out on your computer.

Click the green “Hang out” button to join the Hangout.

What you see is essentially a condensed version of the Hangouts you know and love. Participants are depicted at the top of the screen, settings and mute controls on the bottom and a little display of your camera feed on the lower right. You know, so you can make sure you don’t have anything hanging off your nose.
The Messenger mobile app is straightforward and intuitive to use, hence the simplicity of this tutorial. This ease of use is great, as it means you can spend less time learning about Messenger and more time tapping it to its powerful communication features.

Google+ Ownage Cheat Sheet

Google+ Cheat Sheet: A Fast Track Approach to Effectively Building Your G+ Network

With Google+ now out of field testing mode and open to the public to join, the user base is set to take a huge leap forward. Those who have been holding off on joining because they wanted to see if it would survive or because they didn’t have an invite will now start to join the G+ ranks.
This has a few implications. First, it means a new platform upon which to branch out and network, to make new connections and get your message heard by an audience. Social media had already made these audiences accessible like never before, and now Google+ brings yet another channel to that ever-flowing waterway. That’s the exciting part, the good news.
Unfortunately, it also means having to establish yourself on a whole new network all over again. You have already spent hours and days and weeks and probably even years building up your reputation and contacts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Now you have to start all over – what a drag.
True, that would be a drag, if done the wrong way. You’re not going to do it the wrong way, though, because you were smart enough to obtain this report. Once you’re done reading through this Cheat Sheet, you will be well armed to build an extensive, effective network of your own on Google+.
You will have learned strategies to add new contacts to your network, import and maintain your existing contacts from other networks, effectively organize your Google+ network and build solid relationships with your fellow “Plussers.”
The goal is to provide you with a fast track to making connections, starting with finding people of interest, then building Circles for your connections and finally enticing people to connect to you.
Before we begin, just allow me to make a couple quick notes:
The report is intended to give you a brief overview of how to get a leg up on building your Google+ network. It is not an all-encompassing guide to using Google+, and it assumes a certain level of baseline knowledge of the network.

Google has designed it social network for individuals, not businesses per se. These strategies will work just fine whether your goal is to find more clients for your business or just build a bigger network of acquaintances, but keep in mind that however you use Google+, you should do so as an individual. You may represent your business as the individual you are, but Google+ does not currently support “business pages.”
OK, that takes care of all the dry stuff. Now it’s time to take this new tool out of its case and see what it can do. Let’s start at the beginning and start making some connections.
Making Connections
The Google+ relationship dynamic is a little more like Twitter than Facebook or LinkedIn, because connections are asymmetrical by default. By that I mean that you can add a Google+ member to one of your Circles without them having to do the same, like following someone on Twitter. Of course, they can also add you to one of their Circles, thereby making the relationship symmetrical.
What this means is that finding people to connect to is relatively easy. Google+ is over the ten million user mark and counting, so there is no shortage of people for you to connect to at the moment. You might say this is the easy part.
The best way to start is to re-establish on Google+ the connections that you have already built on other platforms—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, your email address book, etc. There are two obstacles on this path:
There’s no singular way to scan all your various contact lists and import them at once, so the process is largely piecemeal.
Not everyone has adopted Google+ yet.
However, these are just obstacles, and here in the Internet, virtually no obstacle is so big that we can’t work around it or at least game plan for it.
Google Suggestions

It should come as no surprise to anyone who uses Google products that G+ is designed to integrate with your accounts for other Google services, including mining your Gmail contact list for suggestions. This manifests itself in a few different ways.
First, when you create your Google+ account, one of the first screens you encounter will be one suggesting people for you to add to your Circles. This group of 50 or so people comes from your Gmail contact list and includes your contact themselves, contacts of your contacts and people whom your contacts have added to their circles. The result is a big hodgepodge of people whom you may or may not know, so be selective when combing through them.

Also, when you are logged into Google+, you will usually see some suggestions of people to add along the right side of your home page:
These again are mined from your Gmail contacts. Also, when you go to the Circles tab to search for people and create your own Circles – which we’ll get into in more depth in a moment – Google+ will offer even more suggestions based on your Google contact data.
So, if there are people among your Google contacts with whom you would like to connect on G+, it will not be difficult to do. In fact, I would be rather difficult to avoid. That means it’s as good a place as any to start building your network.
(Note: just because someone has a Google account does not necessarily mean they have joined Google+. In the screenshot above, for example, the suggested accounts have generic icons up instead of profile pictures. More often than not, that means they are Gmail contacts who have not yet joined Google+. You can still add them to a Circle and send them an invitation to join G+, but you will not be able to interact with the directly on G+ until they join.)
Import from Facebook
If you are like many people – about 750 million and counting, in fact – you probably have huge chunk of your contact information stored on Facebook. You will want to move these connections into Google+, no doubt, because you have already worked hard to build those relationships.
Unfortunately, because Facebook protects its data, there is no direct way to import your contacts into Google+. There is, however, a way to work around that using Yahoo! mail.

• Open a Yahoo! Mail account, or log into an existing one.
• In the Yahoo! account, go to the Contacts tab. Click “Import Contacts” and choose to import contacts via Facebook.
• Back in Google+, go to the Circles tab.
• Once there, make sure you are in the “Find people” section and click the link to find friends from Yahoo!

Enter your Yahoo! account information and follow a few on-screen prompts to finish the migration process.

Adding Other Contacts
Now that you have your Gmail and Facebook contacts added to your circles, it’s time to start adding more manually. Here’s a sample checklist of platforms where you may have existing relationships that you want to continue on Google+:

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email address books (other than Gmail)
• Existing client lists
• Email or RSS subscribers to your blog
• Your phone contact list

Those examples can go on and on. Be creative in deciding where to branch out. Each new connection can become a valuable commodity for you down the road.
Experts, Gurus and Thought Leaders

Just like other social networking and marketing platforms, one of the best ways to start branching your network outward is to find and embrace prominent leaders in your field, as well as related fields.
Google+ makes this pretty easy out of the box when it suggest public figures you might be interested in during the account creation process. For example, in the figure above, Google+ has recommended adding such prominent online gurus and thought leaders as Guy Kawasaki, Steven Levy and Larry Page.
Chances are that if you have been using other social networks for any length of time, you have already found and connected to at least some thought gurus in your niche. If you haven’t, for whatever reason, let me give you one recommendation: do it!
There are lots of ways to research who the top thought leaders in a given field are, but one of my favorite is to see who is the most active and popular on Twitter. Online directories such as TweetTop.com and WeFollow.com have categorized, searchable and comprehensive lists of the top Tweeters among myriad industries and fields of interest. For example, here’s a shot of TweetTop’s “Blogging” section:

So, if you’re a blogger, you can see right away who the major players are in the blogosphere.
“Wait a minute,” you’re saying. “This is a Twitter directory. I thought we were talking about Google+.” Of course we are, but I understand your confusion. Let me show you how you can make use of this information within Google+. To do that, take a glimpse at this screenshot of who WeFollow thinks are the top “Entrepreneur” Tweeters:

Right away you recognize some names here, like chronic Tweeter Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) and rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs (@iamdiddy). Feel free to look these guys up on G+ if you want, but they’re not our target for the moment.
Look at #5. It’s Guy Kawasaki. Remember how we saw him pop up earlier on Google+? Here’s a reminder:

See? Not surprisingly, there is some overlap between the two networks. What does that mean for us as budding G+ networkers and marketers?
It means that by cross-referencing directories like WeFollow or TweetTop, we can do two things:
Find prominent gurus and thought leaders on Twitter, then see if they are also on Google+ to add to our own Circles.
See if someone we already know is on Google+, but whom we may not be familiar with, is worth connecting to—like we just did with Mr. Kawasaki.
Whichever method you choose to familiarize yourself with the leaders in your field or niche, you can’t really go wrong by finding them and connecting with them. This helps you tap into a network of like-minded individuals, which can become part of your network in time.
Next, let’s talk about how you can make some of these direct connections.
Swiping New Connections
Now that you have connected to some of these leaders and popular public figures, guess what: you’re not the only one who has added them to Circles. What’s more, the others who have added these characters to their circles will likely have similar interests as you do, which therefore makes them potential clients or customers in the future. At the least, it makes them a good audience to have.
So, one way to build an audience and grow your Google+ network is to use those crowds as a resource. Let me show you how this works, again using Guy Kawasaki as our example.

This is a shot of Guy’s G+ profile. It looks just like yours: profile picture in the top left corner, scrapbook photos along the top, stream down the middle and so on.
Now, see the little area labeled “Have Guy in circles” with some thumbnails? That section is link to all the people who have added Guy to one of their circles. Those are the people we want to connect with. Click the “View all” link to see more. That brings up a dialog box, the top of which looks like this:

You now have access to everyone who has an interest in what Guy Kawasaki has to say – all 150,000+ of them! Guy is an expert on start-ups, so a lot of the people who follow him are entrepreneurs or have an interest in entrepreneurship. So, if for example you have written an eBook guide to starting your own business, some of these people are going to be right in your target audience. And you just found them in only a few minutes!
To begin adding them to your Circles, click the “Add to circles” button next to each profile picture:

A word of caution: don’t add more than 100 or so new people to your Circles per day, lest you appear to be some sort of bot. Having access to this many potential contacts in an instant is great, but remember it’s about making connections, not just mindlessly adding people to your network like a machine.
That’s a quick overview to help you get started building your network, but how do you keep track of all the various connections you make as your network grows? That’s where Circles come in.
Organize Your Circles

One of the most powerful features of Google+ is the ability to organize your contacts in Circles, or groups of contacts categorized however you choose. If you’re familiar with Twitter lists, think those, but on steroids.
By default, G+ creates Circles called Friends, Family, Acquaintances and Following. (The last is for adding people you may not know, but whose content you are interested in, like public figures.) You can make as many Circles as your wish, however, and label them by whatever convention you like. For example, you’ll notice that in the screen shot above, I’ve made a circle called “Prospects,” where I can keep track of potential clients. Some examples of Circles you may want to create include:

• Thought Leaders – For those gurus and other influential people we talked about above, like Guy Kawasaki.
• Audience – People possibly interested in your products or services, whom you are working on forging a connection with. You could drop the new connections you scrape into this Circle initially, for example.
• Customers – Speaks for itself.
• Conversationalists – People with whom you interact on a regular basis. You may know them personally or just bounce ideas off each other online.
• Etc., etc., etc.

The sky is the limit with circles. The cool thing about them is they not only organize all your connections for you, but also gave you a way to control who sees your content. When posting any sort of content to your Stream, you can choose whether to make it Public or visible only to certain Circles. More on that in a minute.
That covers how to find people to follow and how to keep those contacts organized, but the real goal is to get people to connect to you. Well, the first two sections have been leading up to that. After all, you can’t expect people to just flock to you, you’ve got to go find them—hence why we went over that first.
Now, though, it’s time to get some followers of your own.


Getting Followers


Like any other endeavor seeking an audience, the key to social networking is to spark an interest. People have to want to hear what you have to say, and in order for that to happen, you need to say something interesting. There’s no magic bullet to social media, but that’s about as close as any idea comes to one.
Posting Content
It shouldn’t surprise you that people want to see content from the folks they follow on Google+. More importantly, they want to see good content. Anyone can fill up a Stream with post after post of gobbledygook, but that’s just obnoxious. So what constitutes good content?
Honestly, that just means things that people are interested in. Link to your own blog posts as well as others. Add in links to relevant sources of information, like videos and classes. In short, say something useful and people will listen.
Who’s Listening?
Remember earlier when I talked about how cool Circles are? Now we’re going to see them in action a little bit.

One of the reasons we built Circles was to target our content to specific audiences. You will find that not every Circle needs to say all your posts. For example, when you post that you are offering a 20% discount on your eBook to all new customers, that won’t be of much interest or use to the people in your Current Customers Circle. The people in your Prospects or Target Audience Circle, however, might find it irresistible.
Likewise, there are some times you will want to broadcast a message to a broader audience. If you have a marketing message intended to reach out and lure in new business, then you will want it out there for the community at large to see. For those posts, you can choose to make the post Public, meaning that everyone is able to see it.
Report Your Whereabouts
This may seem obvious, but one of the simplest ways to get followers on a new network is also one that is frequently overlooked.
Just tell your followers on other networks. Fire off a Tweet. Put a post up on LinkedIn. Write a short blog post about it. Link to your Google+ profile in your Facebook status, along with a friendly note:

(I used Guy’s Google+ profile again here, but you get the idea. You can just as easily substitute a link to your own.)
With Google+ now open to the public, lots of people are beginning to adopt it, but you can’t just wait one everyone to assume you made the transition and come looking for you. You’re a marketer, remember? That means sending a message, so hop on those other networks and send it!
I never cease to be amazed by the people who miss this step in the process of building a social network. While we’re on the subject, let’s talk about some other “obvious” strategies to facilitate connections and foster relationships.

The “Obvious” Stuff
Complete Your Profile.Take a look at the following profile:




Aside from the fact that you can’t read the name (it’s been obliterated to protect the innocent), what do you notice about it? There’s nothing there! No posts, no scrapbook photos, not even a profile picture. I have no idea who this person is or what they are about. Would you bother connecting to this person?
Because I sure wouldn’t. Fill your profile out as completely as possible. Put up a professional, pleasant profile picture. Add some photos to your scrapbook. The idea is to convey an image of a real person who people will actually want to connect to.
Frequent Posts
I’ve already told you about the importance of content, but it bears repeating. Post content early and often, so that people know you have a pulse. Putting up some sort of update – a link, a blog post, even just a text status update – at least once a day keeps your Stream active and your followers interested.(Beware posting too often, however.
There’s nothing like a Stream clogged with too-frequent updates to turn people off in a hurry.)
Interact
This is rule #1 of social media. People join social networks because the like the sense of community and the communication that takes place there. It’s a reciprocal, give-and-take process. That means that you are expected to engage within the community in an interactive fashion. Don’t just toss some posts up and be done with it; interact with the other members. Google+ is great for this because it provides several different avenues by which to interact:
+1 Button

Giving a post a +1 means that you like or endorse what it is about. In general, give +1’s to get them, but don’t offer to sell or exchange them. That’s a big no-no.
Commenting

Like what someone had to say in a post? Tell them!
Also, make it a point to respond to comments on your posts. It’s polite and reinforcing. SharingSharing is a way to add something that someone has already posted to your stream. If you share something someone has posted, it will become visible to your Circles as well as theirs.
Tagging
In Facebook and Twitter, you can tag someone in a post by preceding their name or handle with the “@” symbol. Similarly, in Google+ you can tag someone by typing “+NAME.” Give it a try. People like shout outs. By using some of these simple tips and tricks, you will attract more followers and develop stronger relationships with the ones you already have.
Quick Tips & Tricks
What’s a cheat sheet without some little tips and tricks thrown in? Here are some that will help you get around in Google+:
Easy Sharing
The “Share what’s new…” box contains several icons for adding media to your Stream posts. To simplify the process, you can also drag links and pictures directly into the box. It works with most things on the Web – although not everything – so experiment. It’s kind of cool and a fun little time saver.

The Other “Circular File”
You know how sometimes you find stuff online that you want to keep for later reading or sharing, or just for reference, but you don’t know where to put it?
Try this trick.
Create a new Circle, but don’t add anybody to it. You can call the circle “Save for Later” or “Storage” or anything else that will be easy to remember. When you run into a post you like on G+, share it, but only with that circle. That way you can refer back to it later.(I’m sure this isn’t the only creative use for Circles. Try some other techniques too!)
Emphasize!
Avid users of GChat will be familiar with this one. When you post stuff on Google+, there’s no option to format the text. However, you can add emphasis with a few extra characters. For italics, add an underscore (_) to each end of the text you want to emphasize: _like this_. Use asterisks (*) for bold text, and dashes (-) to strikethrough.
Permalinks
You can link to G+ posts on other sites by using the permalink for that post, which – like on Facebook – is not necessarily intuitively found. To link directly to a post, click on the date that it was posted, located to the right of the poster’s name. This will take to the specific page for that post. Copy and paste the URL from the address bar to share the post on other sites.

In Closing
As an Internet marketer, you comprise your own brand. The best way to build, grow and develop your brand image is to form meaningful, lasting connections in a network. It has been my goal throughout this report to help you do that, at least from a Google+ standpoint. The approach we went over is a quick and effective way to build your Google+ network. As a brief reminder, a summary of this fast track approach goes like this: Make connections, by both finding old contacts and reaching out to new ones. Organize your Circles. Close the loop by attracting followers of your own.
If you do these things, you will find your network growing ever wider over time. It won’t happen overnight, but it will be much quicker than you probably expected. Now get out there and start connecting.