HOW TO USE GOOGLE PLUS TO MARKET YOUR BUSINESS

Google Plus is among one of the most ignored social media platforms despite being among the best in terms of the value it gives its users. This may probably be due to the fact that most social media users have settled in the old social media platforms they are familiar with i.e. (Facebook and Twitter) and feel too lazy to start a new account on a new platform case and point Google Plus and build a following from scratch again. This however doesn’t need to be the case and even businesses that ignore this platform with the excuse that their audience is on the other popular platforms have been missing out on the “goodies” that Google Plus has to offer.

Here are a few basic features that are on G+

a)         Ability to post photos & status updates.

b)         Group different types of relationships.

c)         Multi-person instant messaging (text & video chat) called hangouts. (Also available as a smartphone app)

d)         Events, location tagging and ability to edit and upload photos to private, cloud based album.

e)         Ability to connect your Google+ business page to Google maps listings.

These are just some of the useful features that on can find and this is just a tip of this huge social-media iceberg. Another major feature of G+ is Circles.
While most social media platforms generalize and assume that everyone you add is either your friend/follower, which makes no sense at all, G+ does something similar to what happens in real life. It has these groupings called Circles and when you add someone, you put them in a particular circle depending on your relationship with them. This could be family, friends, classmates, colleagues, workmates and so on. You can even create more circles and add people to them.

This feature comes in handy particularly when you want to share content since you can share to people in a specific circle information that is relevant only to them. This helps avoid clogging people’s news feeds with information that they are not interested in or is not relevant to them.

Another excellent feature of G+ is Communities. These are groups of people that come together to exchange ideas on their topic of interest. This also helps in ensuring your newsfeed isn’t clogged up with irrelevant information as you only join the communities of topics you are interested in. This can also be used as a platform for learning new skills if a user chooses to use it in that manner.

Probably the most important advantage of using G+ is Search Engine Optimization (SEO), courtesy of Google. When you post content on G+, this content automatically appears on Google search index. The more people interact with your content, like and comment, the higher your ranking becomes on the Google search index meaning more people can see you thus… more potential customers.

With just the proper use of Circles, Communities and SEO businesses can significantly make their presence felt on Social Media and turn this into sales.
By adding people to their circles, businesses can create relationships with other similar businesses and market "influencers" and may even gain their followers, not forgetting also the new helpful allies they may get to grow their business.

By joining communities related to the business, members of that community get to see the business as well and what it is about. They may also create their own community and get people to join and interact with them.

All these awesome features can boost businesses’ growth and all they have to do is post meaningful, relevant content to their followers and be consistent.