Using Google+ As A Marketing Channel

Understanding
Google+ and how it
can be used as a
marketing channel.

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http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog

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Google+ is the social network and the
power behind it is the people. I’ve learned
success on the network is all about building
relationships which requires engaging your
audience and establishing trust and
authority.

66
The ultimate goal with social media is to
give more than you get – Eric Enge

Why Should We Invest In
Google+ As A Social Network
And Marketing Channel?

© 2014 SEER Interactive | All Rights Reserved page 8
Why Google+?

Why Google+?
• It’s a Google property
• Google is using our likes,
interests, connections and
search history to personalize
our experience and to better
understand and resolve our
search queries. I believe
Google is fully committed to
utilizing this personalized
search data for more targeted
ads – it’s not going anywhere
• Frequent and consistent
integrations with other Google
products and services
• Opportunity for community
building, brand awareness,
and authority
• Content amplification and
discovery
• Events/HOAs
• Hashtag Search
• Semantic Search
• Increased SERP real estate
both in and out of personalized
search

Google+ is a Social Layer
In addition to being a social
network, Google+ is the
social layer for many of it’s
other products and
services.

Google+: The Rise of a Social Network
What started as an invitation only “field test” has grown to be the world’s
second largest social networking site behind Facebook. Google+ now
claims over 500 million user accounts worldwide. In October 2013,
Google’s former Senior Vice President of Engineering, Vic Gundotra,
announced that Google+ had 300 million monthly active users.

Future of Google+?
• “We’re superexcited about it because it’s a big service,
growing continuously, since we launched it, at a high rate,
and we’re making it better and better every day.”

Not Provided
With the introduction of not provided in 2011,
online marketers saw the rise of logged-in
searches continue to grow.

What Does That Have To Do With Google+?

More people searching
logged in = more
personalized search
results

2012 Search Plus Your World
• In January 2012, Google introduced Search plus your
World which deepened and expanded personalized
search results by introducing Google+ people, pages,
and profiles into the search results of logged-in users.
Who thinks an
endorsement from
someone you know
might impact CTR?

New Element of SERP Visibility
These new results added a new element to SERP visibility that was
no longer dependent on the algorithms Google traditionally relied
upon to rank and display search results.

Quality vs. Quantity
While Pinterest and Facebook were responsible for driving the most
referral traffic to websites, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn drove the
most engaged visitors even though they were responsible for the
smallest number of referral visits.

An Active Presence On
Google+ =
Increased visibility in Google
Search, Google Hashtag
Search, Google+ Search,
YouTube & Gmail

Visibility in Google+ Search
Optimizing your Google+ page and profile will increase the chances it
will appear for related search queries in Google+ and Google Search

Additional Real Estate in SERPs
Verifying a Google+ brand page through a meta tag or Google WMT can provide
additional visibility for branded queries.

Google+ Posts Are Getting Indexed

Personalized Results - Additional Branding
Indexed brand posts can now display a branded
thumbnail in personalized search for users that have
them in circles and engage with the brand.

Author Stats: Google+ Posts

Events Are Getting Indexed

Gmail Integration
Google is pushing for a brand’s Google+ page to become a destination
for visitors. This is FREE adverting space Google is giving brands which
reinforces Google’s commitment to Google+.

Gmail – Google+ Integration

YouTube Google+ Comment Integration
YouTube comments appear on Google+ streams, and Google+ video shares and
comments appear as YouTube comments. This integration is allowing Google to
stream huge amounts of traffic to Google+ from the world’s 2nd largest search
engine.

© 2013 SEER Interactive | All Rights Reserved page 31!
Google Search Integration: Hashtag Search
Use relevant, searched for, hashtags in posts for additional discovery and visibility in Google’s
hashtag search. This feature is one more way Google is integrating Google+ into Google
Search.

© 2013 SEER Interactive | All Rights Reserved page 32!
Google+ Embedded Posts
Embedding Google+ posts is a great way to provide context to a topic and
additionally allows readers to join an already active conversation.
Google+ provides an easy
way for users and brands
to embed Google+ posts
into your articles with just a
few lines of HTML code.
This feature allows users
to +1 and comment, or
follow the author or brand
directly from the post.

Google Brand Badges
The Google+ badge allows visitors to engage with your brand directly from
the badge itself.

Google+: Get Crawled Fast

The Indirect Ranking Power of Google+
Create
Publish
Discovery
Share
Earn
While there is currently no evidence that Google+ post engagement leads
to rankings improvement for a webpage, when used correctly, Google+ can
be an effective content amplification tool.

Google+ & Semantic Search
• Google, and other search engines, have begun to
incorporate Schema markup in conjunction with machine
learning, predictive analysis, and certain elements of
semantic search to help it understand the contextual
meaning behind webpages and the intent behind user’s
search queries.
• Google will utilize information from Google+ to analyze
connections, interactions, and search history to quickly
and accurately evaluate, personalize, and resolve user’s
search queries.

Google+ & Schema.org
Google+ automatically adds the schema type of a person using schema.org/person markup and defines
the properties of name, description, image and URL. For business pages, Google+ automatically adds
the schema type of webpage and defines the properties of name, description, image and URL.

Google+ Hangouts on Air (HOAs)
Hangouts on Air allow you to broadcast
live conversations through your Google+
home page and YouTube channel.
All verified accounts on Google+ can
create a Hangout on Air
Your HOA will be automatically uploaded
to a linked YouTube account making it an
effective way to build your Google+ and
YouTube channel following.
• Discuss industry trends
• Discuss upcoming events or
conferences
• Review a product
• Discuss a new solution
• Resolve a question for your audience
• Who are your client’s SMEs?
• Who are your client’s partners?
• Who does your client sponsor?
• Who are the influencers in your
client’s industry?

Link Google+ YouTube Channels
A quick way to see if your Google+ and YouTube channel are connected, is the
YouTube navigation link that will appear on the page once the properties are linked.
Resource: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2897336?hl=en

Creative Ways Brands Are
Using HOAs

HOA: Toms

HOA: Cadbury Egg
Cadbury was the official treat provider for the London 2012
Olympic & Paralympic Games and held an HOA with
Olympian Rebecca Adlington

HOA: Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola held a Racing Member Family Hangout that gave
fans an opportunity to ask Nascar drivers questions.

HOA: Dell
StorageIO is an vendor independent information technology (IT) advisory
consultancy firm providing services to the IT industry and acts as a
consultant for Dell. Dell invited Greg Schulz to have a HOA to discuss
Backup. U Data Protection

HOA: Al Jazeera America
Al Jazeera promoted the hashtag #OpenEditorial, to encourage their
audience to post thoughts on stories that weren’t receiving adequate
coverage by the national news media. The best commenters were then
invited into a Hangout On Air to discuss the story.

HOA: The Process
HOAs are an effective way to engage your community, increase
visibility for your brand, and simultaneously create an asset to be
shared on all shared/owned properties.
G+ YouTube Blog

Google+ Communities
Engage Authority Destination

Google+ Communities
Google+ communities provide brands with a unique opportunity for
thought leadership and community building. Having an established,
active, community could also increase relevance for topics and
keywords related to your brand which could lead to visibility in
Google+ AND Google search.

Recruit Moderators
• SMEs
• Industry or topic experts
• Users who are passionate about your community
• You don’t have to do all the heavy lifting

Good communities are…
• Moderated
• Moderators engaging with community members
• Community members engaging with other community
members
• Is considered a resource/destination for questions
regarding a product, topic or solution

Posts That Get Flagged Get Rejected

Don’t Spam!!
• Google+ has an aggressive spam filter in place. If you
share, be selective on where you share.
• Do share a unique post with a community that is properly
categorized and encourages meaningful discussion
• Don’t share the same post to multiple communities or to
your profile + a community.
• If there are multiple communities that could benefit from
the same information, I'd recommend spreading it out
over a period of days and creating a new message
unique to each community that encourages engagement.

Google+: Engagement
• Don’t build your own ghost town!

Give people a reason. Little effort = little engagement

Follow Posting Best Practices

5959
Great Content Matters
View counts for business pages have replaced the +1 button and the
aggregate count for all +1s on a brand page. A view is counted as a view
of your profile or page, and all of your images and posts that you share.

The story of Jon

Brands Supporting Their Community
I Share BuzzStream
Shares
Moz Shares

Inbound links increase the
authority of profiles, pages
and communities

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http://searchengineland.com/how-google-plus-profiles-pages-gain-search-authority-176828

Google+ Communities

Google+ Communities
• Communities can gain
authority and visibility.
• Both inside and
outside personalized
search!!!!!
While the query matches the title of the community, it’s important to note that
its outranking other articles that are also optimized for the query.

How is this happening?
1. They are providing a great user experience
2. Because they are providing a great user experience they are
earning links

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Building a Community on Google+ = Building
Relationships With Your Audience

7171
Build the authority of your
community and page by
providing a great user
experience

How To Succeed on Google+

7777
I’ve Only Scratched The
Surface

Using Google+ As A Marketing Channel

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