Google+ ripple Brenda Batttin
This is a Guest Post written by Allison Rice, Marketing Director for Amsterdam Printing and Google+ Power User. Allison regularly contributes to the Promo & Marketing Wall blog, where she provides actionable business tips.
Why does your company use social media? It's so you can be found more easily by the casual searcher looking for your type of services, right? Sure, there are the added benefits of keeping your customer base up to date on specials, bringing them in with web-only coupons and reaching their friends through shared links and posts. But, ultimately, your goal is to be found by as many potential customers as possible.
And that's why Google+ works. Unlike other social media sites, it has the power of the world's largest search engine behind it. Businesses with Google+ pages are automatically more visible than ones without, and list much more favorably in search results.
For example, a business with a Google+ page would not only appear higher in results than one without, but it would display with its profile icon or brand image, rating stars from users would appear under its name, and the number of likes as well as reviews. In fact, there's a lot that Google+ has to offer businesses of all sizes and these are just some of the reasons it's currently ranking second only to Facebook in terms of active members on a social media platform.
Target specific customers with Circles
From the second you open a business page, Google+ helps you organize your business by asking you to classify your contacts into Circles. The default categories are:
- Family
- Friends
- Acquaintances
- Following
But you can create your own types of Circles right off the bat. If you run a dentist's office, for example, you could place your customers into categories such as Kids, Cosmetic, Braces, Dentures or Annual Reminders, and you can also place them in more than one Circle. You then have the option to send posts or specials or share links with a specific Circle, several or all. A tally of each Circle shows how many customers you have in each category and can help you quickly see your strongest – and weakest – social media customer base.
Be found with Places
Even if your business doesn't have a Google+ page, it can still be reviewed and rated through Google+ Places. Functioning similar to Yelp.com in that it helps people find reviews of restaurants from friends and locals as well as popular hotspots, Places got a huge boost when Google acquired Zagat, a leading restaurant ratings and reviews provider.
Places is a great example of the overarching focus of Google and Google+: integration. Through Places:
- Searchers can find your business on Google Search, Maps and Google+.
- Your business information is listed along with your number of reviews and links to those reviews, your phone number, directions to your office and your website, as well as your Zagat rating if you're a restaurant.
- If a Google+ user looks up your reviews, recommendations from people in their circles will show up first. This also happens if someone on Google+ searches for your business.
- Respond to reviews.
- Use Google Offers to create coupons that can be highlighted on Google Maps, mobile apps, Google Wallet and the Google Offers website.
See your hard work pay off in Ripples
Ripples is one of those functions on Google+ that's not widely talked about but offers an incredible benefit to small businesses. Namely, it allows you to see in an instant the effectiveness of your social marketing.
Google Ripples is basically an analytics graph for a single post, but instead of showing you bar and line graphs with views and visitors, it displays a single dynamic circle graph with your post at the center. Radiating out from your post are other smaller circles, each of which represents a reposting of your original post.
By hovering over each circle you can see who posted it and what comment they might have made when it was posted. Smaller circles branch off from these showing other repostings, and so on. One-off postings appear in single circles and large concentrations of shares appear within a larger, encompassing circle. It's easier to understand visually, and with one click you can see if one person or hundreds have seen and shared your post. You can also identify those who help spread your word the most.
It's important to note that Ripples can only be viewed on posts that have been made public, but you can view the Ripples on any public post, not just your own. To see a Ripple:
- Log in to Google+ and click on the arrow in the upper right hand corner of a public post
- Select View Ripples
It's that easy! And once you're able to see what posts are favored more by your followers, you can start narrowing down the focus of your future posts and instantly reach more people.
This article just scratches the surface of how Google+ can be beneficial to your business. What are some ways you've found that Google+ has helped your company? What features do you wish Google+ explained more or included in their social media services?
