Rand Fishkin, Founder of Moz, dazzled the Problogger audience on day two with his address on the power of Google+. Given that Google’s removal of authorship came only the day before Fishkin’s speech, it was one of the more interesting presentations of the conference.
Why Google+?
What it is that makes Google+ special? According to Fishkin, there are four main reasons that make Google+ pretty damn amazing:
Its reach: The real answer is that despite all the other social networks (that do have enormous power), in terms of reach, Google+ is phenomenal. According to Rand, this reach is not derived from just the network itself. It is much bigger than that. It is an identity network that connects with everyone that has an android phone, a gmail account. Google has effectively mixed all of its services into one identity service to form Goolge+. Because of this, and because of how it all distils into Google search results, you can reach a dramatically greater number of people.
Its ability to cheat SEO: The power of being followed on g+ is essentially cheating SEO. If users are logged into Google+, the results displayed by Google will be biased depending on who they follow on G+.
Access to influencers: Google+ gives users a remarkable level of access to influencers. By using Google+, you can reach out to people that normally wouldn’t have access to.
Added features: The additional features that are integrated into Google+ make it worth using. This particular Google product allows users to back-up and share photos automatically, along with a vast array of other bonus extras.
According to Fishkin, this nifty little social media network is akin to batman, superman, and spiderman, all rolled into one. It’s super powers are immense and include, among others:
Circles: These give you the ability to share stuff with just certain groups of people. You can share updates with the general public, or with specific networks that you create yourself. It’s targeted sharing on steroids.
Ripples: This little feature lets you see who has shared their shares. This can come in handy in a myriad of ways. You can target specific content at specific users, based on their history of content sharing. It should be noted that if you share content privately, then Ripples are not available.
Authorship: While Google has killed the majority of authorship features, it is still available, and visible, if you are logged into your Google+ account. In fact, it stands out even more now that it is appears for only logged in searches. However, with all the recent changes, Fishkin seemed unconvinced at exactly how long this feature might last.
Local: Google+ is nearly unavoidable for local businesses. It is basically a requirement. Having a complete, high-quality Google+ page is the reason why local businesses are able to rank in Google search results. So, Fishkin recommends that everyone at least create a Google+ page and connect it to your web page.
Visuals: When it comes to visuals, Google+ does some great stuff, like auto-awesome images. This feature allows a user to take a few photos, which can then be turned into an animated gif. Google+ will do photo stories: where photos taken at the same location can be bound together, and then tweeted, or shared. The ease of photo sharing and video integration make Google+ worth using.
HangOuts: These are a bit superior to Skype in terms of quality, and Hangouts on Air are great for marketing – you can conduct an interview, or a chat and then share it automatically to you tube. It is a really easy way to make video content out of conversation, and to simultaneously broadcast live.
Fishkin’s 12 Top Tips for Google+ Amplification
Tip 1: measure progress – reach, +1’s, shares, etc. and determine which perform best.
Tip 2: be visual. If sharing a link, then optimize the image. Choose the image that will work best.
Tip 3: share to, and with, the right people. Add individual people in your updates (just use email notifications sparingly!).
Tip 4: use ripples to find potential amplifiers.
Tip 4.5: Buzzsumo can help identify the right type of content to share – it will show the most shared content on the web for particular keywords within the last six months.
Tip 5: share your Google+ updates on other social networks – tweet the G+ URL, put it on LinkedIn, on Facebook. Grow your Google+ network by leveraging other social media networks.
Tip 6: share at the right time – when your target audience is online. The half life of a tweet is 18 minutes. On Goggle+ this extends to two and half hours.
Tip 7: reciprocation – share and you shall be shared.
Tip 8: join and leverage communities. If you contribute to communities, you can get lots of followers
Tip 9: employ hashtags and keywords. Search for hastags to see what is trending.
Tip 10: format your posts. Use bold, stars, italics, emoticons.
Tip 11: create direct notification circles.
Tip 12: consider Google+ comment integration with your blog.
