Content Marketing Tips for Google+

It’s no Facebook, but with over 170 million users, Google+ is hardly a nonentity in the social media world or the “virtual ghost town” it was accused of being. In fact, there is a growing user base of students, particularly males, and businesses, making it a good platform for marketing to specific segments of the population. Here are some tips for effective content marketing for Google+ that won’t cost a fortune but could yield great results.

• Take a page from Twitter. Google+ also offers some handy tools to facilitate social sharing. You would use +Mention in situations where you would @, basically, when you want to tag someone. The idea is that you draw this person’s attention to the fact that you’ve mentioned them – and maybe, they’ll share your content in return. Just put the “+” in front of the person’s name to tag.
• Another familiar symbol is #. Hashtags in Google allow Google to link that item to the search results for the query. You simply write your update and, when relevant, add a hashtag for a high traffic query for greater visibility.
• Use your Circles. This feature allows you to segment your community, and then you can deliver targeted content to different demographics. You can have content for people in your “Thought Leader” circle, your “potential customer” circle, your “vendor or supplier” circle, and so on.
• Add images! As with the rest of the web, + is very visual. Not only are visuals eye-catching, they are incredibly sharable.
• Get content ideas from your community. You can take polls, interact regularly, ask focused questions, and gather important insight from your community. This allows you to develop and share content that aligns with their needs and interests.
• Recycle content. If you’re new to + but not new to the web, use archived items. Oldies but goodies. Do you have thought leadership articles? Great infographics? Tips and tricks pieces? How-tos and tutorials that are still relevant and exciting? Or can you update this content to make it more fresh and appealing?
• Format for success. A few simple formatting tricks can help you make your point more effectively. For instance, say we want to make the “content marketing” bold. We’d simply write *content marketing* and it is done. For italics, it would be _content marketing_ , and for a strikethrough, you enter –content marketing-. You can also combine these as well.  *_content marketing_* will be both bold and italicised.

You don’t – and probably shouldn’t – concentrate your content marketing and SEO efforts on Google +. However, using these tips will not add much to your expense line and can help you make the most of this “layer.” We don’t know yet how Google+ will grow up, but if you start now, you can be on the inside when we find out.