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Google Plus Seminar Presentation by Matt Lynch – General Manager, Vorian Agency
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Google+ Training Seminar
Thursday 18th Sept, 2014 10:00am – 12:00pm
Matt Lynch• General Manager of Vorian Agency – Delivering integrated online and offline marketing solutions
to business wrestling with how to market in today’s changing environment.
• With over 22 years Online Marketing & Information Technology experience, Matt’s primary speciality is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Matt is a highly experienced senior digital marketing specialist working both within agency and in-house roles. Matt is also a certified Google Adwords and Bing Ads Professional.
• Enjoys keeping up with the 'bleeding edge' of technology advancements and social media evolvement to ensure current knowledge in an ever changing landscape, leading to early adoption and determination of opportunity for marketing enhancement.
• Local, national and international project experience particularly in the field of Travel for over 10 years with companies such as Trafalgar Tours, The Travel Corporation brand and travel properties, Stella Travel and Best Flights. Matt has earned a reputation as an online marketing expert and search evangelist for thoroughness, quality, technical knowledge and success driven results. Matt's previous role was as the Global Online Marketing Manager for Trafalgar, coordinating the online marketing efforts with international teams for this global brand.
Your Presenter: Vorian Agency General Manager
Add Matt to your circles…
Google+: https://plus.google.com/+MattLynchAUTwitter: https://twitter.com/mattrlynch
LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/in/mattlynchseo
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattrlynch
About Me: http://about.me/au.mattlynch
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Yelp: http://mattlynch.yelp.com.au FourSquare: https://foursquare.com/mattrlynch
Klout: http://klout.com/#/mattrlynch
Email: [email protected]
Connect with Vorian Agency
Google.com/+VorianAgencyWestPerthTwitter.com/VorianAgency
Facebook.com/VorianAgency
Linkedin.com/company/vorian-agency
Pinterest.com/vorianagency
Foursquare.com/v/vorian-media-group
Yelp.com.au/biz/vorian-agency-west-perth
Klout.com/vorianagency
About.me/VorianAgency
Slideshare.net/vorianagency
Instagram.com/vorianagency
Flickr.com/photos/vorianagency
Youtube.com/user/VorianAgency
Vimeo.com/vorianagency
Vine.co/u/VorianAgency
Interactive Questions?During today’s session, you are welcome to tweet
questions to our Vorian Agency Twitter Account @vorianagency using the hashtag #voriantraining
https://twitter.com/vorianagency
HousekeepingBefore we start, please note the following:
• Exits
• Toilets
• Mobile Phones on Silent
• Question & Answer session at end of the Presentation
• A link to the Presentation Slide Notes and Video will be emailed to you
• Vorian Agency info packs are provided to showcase our service offering
• Vorian staff are available to arrange an appointment or answer specific questions
• Please provide your feedback on today’s seminar on the supplied questionnaire
• Please invite others you may know to register for our free seminar series
In today’s session…• Setting up your Google+ Account
• From Google Places to Google+ (Google My Business)
• Optimal design for your Profile/Page
• Consistent Social Media Style Guides
• Why you should have a Social Media Policy
• Best Practice Google+
• How to Find People to Whom you relate
• Add in Whole Circles
• Content Marketing with Google+
• The #Hashtag
• Join Communities
• Watch Events and Make Comments
• Use Hangouts
• URL Shorteners and Campaign Marketing
• Authorship, SEO and your website
• Efficient Social Media Management and Apps
What is Google+?Google+ is a platform that allows you to connect and interact with other individuals from around the world whilst publishing and sharing digital content. It is all about connecting with people that share your same interests as opposed to people you might know in real life, which is what Facebook is all about.
Google+ is the search giant's most recent attempt to create a social network that rivals Facebook. Google launched Google+ on June 28, 2011 with a private beta. The project was led by Google's Senior Vice President of Social Vic Gundotra.
The social network is a collection of different social products. These features include Stream (a newsfeed for content, text, images, links and video), Sparks/What's Hot (a recommendation engine), Hangouts (a video chat service, and broadcasting platform), Circles (a friend management service, filter and CRM), Communities (networking/lead generation), Events (market upcoming events), Pages (allow businesses to share thoughts, links, photos and promotions), Local (for business reviews and recommendations), Games and Photos.
Google chose to name the information-sharing platform Google+ because the service is "an extension of Google itself".
This is not Google's first attempt at dominating the social space. It has a long history in social media including social networking service Orkut, launched in 2004, and its biggest success in the social sphere, the 2006-acquired video-sharing behemoth YouTube. This history also includes big flops: Google Wave and Google Buzz.
How Many Users on Google+?• Be found not just on Google in search… (Bing, Yahoo!, local search,…)
• YouTube
• Google+
• Tumblr
September 2014
• Over 1 billion G+ users
• 300+ million monthly active users
• 63% of G+ users are men
• 1.5 billion pictures are uploaded to G+ every week
• 20 million unique mobile monthly users
• 7 minutes average monthly time spent on G+
• 3:46 minutes average duration of a G+ visit
• 22% of online adults visit G+ at least once a month
• 32.9% of total social logins on websites using G+
Your Business in the SERPs• Maximise your online footprint, or the visible screen real-estate your business results
take up within Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) with a trifecta of results; three places to secure your brand – PPC, Organic and Maps.
• Add to your company’s Rich Snippet (title+description), to include the Google Map location, Reviews and Google+ Page link.
The impact of Google+ to SEO• Google+ impacts search results through
personalisation. For example, if someone is following you on Google+, the chances that they will see your posts in Google's SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) is increased.
• When people +1 an article it is more likely to show up for them within the SERPs, but it's also more likely to show up for everyone they follow!
1. People who follow me on Google+ are more likely to see it.
2. People who follow anyone who +1's the content are more likely to see it.
• Therefore if you can build a strong audience of your own, or if major influencers in your market +1 or share your content, this can get you a lot more exposure to your target market.
The impact of Google+ to SEO• As well, this seems to extend across the Google ecosystem, and it appears that people
you exchange Gmails with can also create this type of connection that leads to the personalisation of results.
• Content originally created in Google+ such as posts, and YouTube videos from Hangouts can rank highly in the SERPs for your brand, and keywords.
• Google+ shared links do seem to also have an impact on the search results when combined with other signals. Some links in Google+ are in fact "followed" links which allow PageRank to flow.
• One of Google's more recent Search Engine algorithm updates - Hummingbird, is aimed at allowing Google to better process signals other than links, such as signals from social platforms. Social signals are important as they deliver sentiment and popularity information around a brand, which Google's algorithm can use, and replaces the emphasis on biased link building activities by SEOs in the past.
• Keep in mind that Google gets the information you supply from Google+ directly. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, there is no crawling involved in this process. Google+ also is continuing to grow, and it is strategic to Google's plans. This also means that posting new content to G+ will get it noticed and indexed faster.
Google My Business• Google Map Locations for businesses, the old ‘Google Places’ is now known as
Google My Business. But it is now more that just a management console for your business location details… The Dashboard integrates: Location, Google+, Insights for your Business, Review Management, Google Analytics for your website, YouTube, Adwords Express, and even the ability to start a Hangout video call.https://www.google.com.au/business/
Google My Business• With tight integration of Google+ for your business into the Google ecosystem,
Google is encouraging your participation in their social network.
Provide a Virtual Tour• Extend your Google My Business profile with quality photos and a 360 degree
panagraphic virtual tour of your business location.
• https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-31.9436888,115.8449148,3a,75y,21.1h,90t/data=!3m5!1e1!3m3!1s2ImauMZ9-cUAAAQfCTnIDA!2e0!3e2!6m1!1e1
Google Adwords• Remember that you can also connect your business location (Address), and reviews,
with Google Adwords Extensions, providing additional functionality such as directions for users searching on smart phones to be able to locate and get to your business, or for those consumers looking for ‘social proof’ through reviews to see what it is like to do business with your organisation.http://google.com.au/adwords
Google Analytics• The social data hub is a free platform that social networks and other social platforms
can use to integrate their activity streams— like +1, votes, and comments—with Google Analytics.https://www.google.com/analytics
– Enable your social network to be visible to marketers, publishers and analysts using Google Analytics
– Promote a broad, comprehensive and inclusive picture of the global social media landscape
– Advance accessible measurement of all social media platforms and activities
YouTube and Google+• When you create a new YouTube channel, Google will require you to either create a
new Google+ account or associate your businesses Google+ account to YouTube. It is important that this is coordinated, as you only have a two-week window when setting up an account to be able to change the Google+ account association before it locks in. This is a common issue, and leads to the generation of additional unnecessary and uncoordinated G+ accounts for some businesses.https://www.youtube.com/
Webmaster Tools• The Search Engines are incorporating Social Signals - BWT (Bing Webmaster Tools)
continues to evolve to include information on the social media accounts associated to the business website. Have you linked your Google+ account yet? Do you have both Google and Bing Webmaster Tools set up for your business? Ask us how!
Brand Consistency• Before we delve into preparing to do business online… research and do the due
diligence, to determine a consistent brand approach (name and logo) to avoid confusion and conflict to the brand.
• NameChk: http://namechk.com/
• Knowem: http://knowem.com/
Secure Your Name• Proverb: Failing to plan is planning to fail
• You may not use them today, but secure them for tomorrow!
Style Guide• Generate a ‘Style Guide’ for your online business
• Research your target demographic to develop your ideal ‘persona’
• Determine your ‘Tone of Voice’, type of language used and how you will come across
• Consistent naming convention for account creation
• Consistent brand approach for use of logo, hero images, fonts and colours
• Prepare business descriptors for use in ‘About’ biographies
• Look to incorporate target keyword strategy throughout
Your Social Media Policy• To maintain our company's open, honest and transparent approach, and our genuine
personality, we’ve set out a few Guidelines and Policies to follow. They should be read and followed by all staff, and especially anyone who updates a Social Media profile for our company.
• Our Social Media objectives– Have fun. If you enjoy what you do, they will too!
– Respect the audience. Even if their opinions differ.
– Be timely. Social Media is about NOW.
– Know when and what to post. Right message, right time. Be mindful of situations where you need approval signoff before responding or posting.
– Leave competitors to it. They may talk about us, but the best response is no response.
– Act responsibly. Do us proud and keep it honest. Don’t post negative comments, avoid inflating feedback with other profiles and importantly never leak confidential business information
• Remember to follow these policies– Keep it quiet – never discuss company or customer details. This includes subjects like sales figures, customer
details, internal policies, complaints, staff members or incidents.
– Keep it nice – Never refer to our company or others in a way that is defamatory, harassing or indecent.
– Keep it private – Never reference any clients, customers or trade partners without obtaining their permission to do so.
– Keep it real – Never post online on behalf of the company or competitors (under your own name or anonymously) unless it’s part of your job role or you’ve been given permission to do so.
– Keep it calm – if you’re in a bad mood, or someone riles you, take a step back and come back to it later.
– And finally, remember to keep it cool – We know you love social media as much as we do, but remember your social media usage shouldn’t interfere with your job. Usage may be reviewed and monitored by your Manager.
Create a Google+ Account• Sign-up up at: https://plus.google.com/
• If you already have a Gmail account, then you will most likely already have a G+ account.
Google+ on SmartPhones • The free Google+ APP is available on iOS, Android, Windows Phone and other
devices. Download and keep engaged with your stream, whilst posting real-time content along with images from your phone’s camera, and writing reviews.
Google+ on Tablets • The free Twitter APP is available on iOS, Android and many other popular tablet
platforms and is just a larger responsive design format scaled from the smart-phone user interface..
Your Profile in Google+• Before connecting with people, make sure that you have an impressive profile that can attract
people’s attention. Set up a clear headshot or company logo, and choose an attractive image as the ‘Cover Photo’. For brands it is important to consider consistency across your channels.
Circles in Google+• People
See who you have connected to, and who have you in their circles… following you back.
• Create a separate circle for people whose posts you want to follow.
• Google+ Circles are the very fabric for connecting with other users on the network. Unlike a “Facebook Friend” that forces both parties to maintain an equal relationship, a Circle works more like a one way street. By adding you to my circles, I am saying that I am interested in what you have to say. However by doing this, you will not see anything I publish, until you add me back. This gives all G+ users much more control over how they make connections.
• Add in Whole Circles. Search for hashtags and ‘circle’ together and add those. Eg. ‘#SEO Circles’. This can be a quick way to gain more followers adding you back.
• Use the Google+ search bar to access not only your content, connected content, but Communities.
Hashtags #• Use hashtags (#) to focus tweets on topical keywords, or brand name.
• Regularly post with hashtags.
• Don’t over do the amount of hashtags implemented within a post. (no more than 3)
• Keep an eye on trending topics and particular #tags, and blend these into your posts.
• http://www.hashtags.org/
• Hashtags can be used as keyword links within Google+, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
• But please, #stop #hashtagging #every #word. #It #looks #terrible #and #does #nothing #for #your #social #presence (except you may start losing followers) #stopit.
Add People in Google+• Click on the Add People icon to connect and follow others. Google+ provides recommendations
based on your interests and other connections. When you Add a person to follow, you will be able to add them to your Circles (one or more) at that time.
Your Story in Google+• Your Story… it’s about you! Fill in your Tagline, Introduction, and Bragging rights sections. Keep in
mind ‘keywords’ and location information. Sell yourself, just like a LinkedIn profile, and outline your strengths and interests.
Your Work History in Google+• Work
What is your current role and position. List your skills (keywords), and outline your Employment history.
Your Education in Google+• Education
List the schools you have attended so that you can connect with the Alumni from these institutions. Just like LinkedIn you don’t need to go back to Primary School, but focus on your tertiary participation if possible.
Basic Information in Google+• Basic Information
You can choose what you want to have displayed or visible.
Profile walk through in Google+• Places
Where you live, where you work. You can choose whether you want this information visible.
Links in Google+• Links
Discoverability!Cross-Pollination… provide the means for people to find out about you on other social media channels or online locations. They can then choose to follow your content where they want to.
• Encourage Search Engines to find your associated profiles and content.
Profile walk through in Google+• Apps with Google+ Sign-in
Control what external third-party applications have access to your Google+ account, and what information that they can gather or use.
Posts in Google+• The Google+ Wall / Feed / Stream
Posts in Google+• Long content works well in Google+. Links in your content will bring up associated images from the
website reference in question (like how Facebook handles links). Control who your post goes out to through the selection of your Circles.
• Constant and regular ongoing commitment to Google+ obtains results.
• Don't post in a single burst, but spread throughout a day.
• Key times for interactions are when people are able to be more social, particularly in evenings.
• On Google+, it is really easy to segregate who you want to share your information with.
• Being active in any social network is the key to success and Google+ is no different. You need to check your account regularly, share valuable information and comment on people’s posts.
Photos in Google+• One Picture is Worth a Thousand Words.
• Dozens of studies and experiments prove that users are more attracted by amateur pictures that look true-to-life, though they can miss a polished glamorous look.
• As James Chudley put in his guide on using photos to sell:
• Show off your product’s benefits
• Make visitors laugh
• Tell a story and show how to do something (step-by-step guides with pictures simply rock!)
• Be consistent and professional.
Videos in Google+• More user engagement is achieved in posts through video. Upload via your smart-phone, a
Google+ Hangout, YouTube, or edited video content from your desktop.
Notifications in Google+• See how users are interacting with you via your Notifications in Google+, that provides a quick
summary of actions performed. You can also mark all as read via the icon in the top right.
+1 content on Google+• See what content you have liked (+1) using Google+ from the web, blog, EDMS, or within the
Google+ channel. Use it like your ‘favourites’ to refer back later on, and get ideas from others about their content recommendations.
• This is the ‘Engagement’ factor of Google+, so not only +1 content you like, but share it and add your own commentary and views about the content that they have posted.
• Performing a +1 is the equivalent of liking something on Facebook. Keep an eye out for the little red ‘+1’ button around the web, particularly on blog posts and other shareable content. If you’re signed in to your Google+ account while you’re browsing the web you can +1 content you like.
Reviews on Google+• See all the places/businesses that you have reviewed, and where you have been. Provides a
source of information for others as recommendations to try.
Local in Google+• Search for local businesses, find reviews of businesses, see what your connections recommend,
and leave your own reviews of where you have been. Ties into Google Maps on smart-phones.
Events in Google+• Broadcast your event invitation, date, time, location, and information to select circles.
• Events are often great social and networking opportunities to meet new people and engage particular through the live comments.
Events in Google+• Let others know you are coming and register to attend events, and as well as Hangouts on Air.
• You can even invite people to your Event via an email address, aside from just their Google+ user name. With the Google Calendar integrating with Google+, any event you agree to go to will automatically show up in your calendar and even send you notifications about the event.
Hangouts in Google+• Hangouts provides you with the means to connect with people on Google+, and also work
collaboratively in teams. A Google+ Hangout is a video conference for up to 10 people in total (including yourself) that can be from anywhere in the world. While in a Hangout you can share your screen, collaborate on a document or spreadsheet or even watch YouTube movies together as a group.
• Google’s “On Air” feature, allows you to broadcast your hangout live to anyone on Google+ while it records the Hangout for you. After it is completed, the recording can be automatically sent to your YouTube channel.
Hangouts in Google+• Hangouts have lots of cool features. You can adjust audio, mute the microphone, adjust bandwidth
settings, and engage with your audience with screen share facilities, chat, screen capture, and even a draw facility.
Efficient Social Media Management - HootSuite• Did you know you can use HootSuite with many of the popular Social Media channels to connect
with consumers, broadcast, amplify, and monitor conversations?
• Repurpose content across multiple social media channels and coordinate your social media campaign management from HootSuite.
• Schedule your posts in HootSuite in advance (day and time) upload from a spread sheet.
• Great for monitoring and listening
• Google Analytics connection
• Canned responses & Shortened URL
Keep Your Site Sticky!And once you have got the user to your website... Stickiness will keep them there!
• Newsletter subscription feature
• Follow on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest...
• Add to Favorites
• Community Section (If suitable)
• Encourage them to engage, and re-engage… give them a reason to do so.
• As with ANY Social Media account and your contact information, you want it to be seen so that others can discover, follow you and connect.
• Also add the Social Media logos and links to your company profile in your email.
• On your website, “Our Staff” section, have profiles for your team members and include links to their LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ accounts and other Social Media.
• In your EDMs (Electronic Distribution Marketing – Emails) include both links to your Google+ company/personal page, as well as Social Share options within the content to encourage viral distribution opportunities.
• Add Social Media news feed plugins to your website to share the content.
Encourage Discovery• Include your important Social Media channel addresses on your print marketing
collateral in your store, on fliers, business cards, receipts, shopping bags and everywhere else you do offline advertising for your business. Make it easy for consumers and new business relationships to discovery and connect with you.
The Official G+ LogoIn a fast evolving internet, brands evolve and refine their logos with an alarming frequency to ‘stay fresh’. Google+ is no different. So if you are using their logo on your website, blog, EDM or other marketing remember to update to the current version so that you also look currrent:
Google+ Button or BadgeGet a customised Google+ button, or badge for your website to link to your G+ accounthttps://developers.google.com/+/web/badge/
Google Authorship no-more• Authorship markup is no longer supported in web search. So Author images are no
longer displayed in the SERPs.
• After three years, Google has just stopped its Google Authorship program in August 2014, and now focuses webmasters to use rich snippets and schema data.
• Setting up a Google Authorship reference within WordPress.
1. Log into Wordpressa. Go to your WordPress Menu and add the “author” relationship to your about page.
b. Link to your Google Profile account using rel=”me” and the rel=”author” tag on your about page where you put the “author” tag on. Use this link <a rel="me" href="HTTP://ENTERGOOGLEPROFILEURLHERE?rel=author">+GOOGLENAME</a>
2. Test to see if Google recognizes your authorship:http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
3. Verify your Authorship with Google. You need to add a link from your Google+ profile to your website in this specific way.
a. Go to your Google+ profile and go to edit the “Contributor To” section.
b. In the dialog that appears, click Add custom link, and then enter the website URL.
c. Click Save.
4. Connect your Google+ Page Direct Connect.
Website Social Sign-In• Secure Authentication to streamline user
registration.
• Cross-device sign-on, automatically sign in users across devices.
• Incremental Authorisation, ask users for the right permission scopes at the right time.
Google+ Tools – Circle Count• http://www.circlecount.com/
CircleCount is a good tool if you want to measure Google+. It features raw analytics of your account and pages. It contains a lot of social data that you can use to improve your engagement, outreach, profiling and research.
Google+ Tools – Circloscope• http://circloscope.com/
CircloScope allows you to work on your Google+ circles like a pro. Bulk adding (and removing) of engagers and Google plus users on a massive scale, thousands if you would like to. Priced from USD$47 p/a for 1 G+ personal and 3 business pages.
Google+ Tools – Timing+• http://timing.minimali.se/
Timing+ helps you decide when it is the best time to post. By analyzing your historical post data, we can show you when you have had the most impact with your posts. This in turn will hopefully give you better access to your audience.
Google+ Tools – DoShare• https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/do-share
Free Google Chrome plugin for writing and scheduling your posts on Google+
Google URL Shortener & Campaign Tracking
• To assist your marketing campaign reporting and tracking of the efforts of links you post and measure the effectiveness of your activities, consider using a consistent URL shortener such as Google’s goo.gl
• Google Analytics Campaign Link Tagging Tool is also very useful to create tagged URLs with campaign and source information that you can then shorten. The results are then measured within Google Analytics to show the effectiveness of different mediums.
Follow-up Questions?After today’s session, you are welcome to tweet questions
to our Vorian Agency Twitter Account @vorianagencyusing the hashtag #voriantraining
https://twitter.com/vorianagency
Keep Connected
After today’s session, please feel free to connect with me if you have additional questions:
Google+: https://plus.google.com/+MattLynchAU
Don’t forget to follow Vorian Agency on Google+:
google.com/+VorianAgencyWestPerth
All of my other Social Media links are available on About.Me:
About.Me: http://about.me/au.mattlynch
Email: [email protected]
Please… invite othersWe would like to thank you for your attendance
to today’s seminar on Google+.
• A link to the Presentation Slide Notes and Video will be emailed to you
• Vorian Agency info packs are provided to showcase our key business areas
• Vorian staff are available to arrange an appointment to assist your specific needs:– Set up a Google+ account for your business
– Create a content strategy for Google+
– Integrate Google+ into your website, blog, EDM, email stationery
– Manage, respond and report on your Google+ account for your business
• Please provide your feedback and hand-in the supplied questionnaire
• Please invite others you may know to register for our free seminar series and forward them a copy of today’s seminar email.
