7 Clever Ways To Gain Followers On Your Google Business Page

Google business pages are fast becoming the must-use social networking tool for savvy business owners wanting to grow their company online. Use this platform to build your social presence and connect with customers, gain new followers and actively market your brand, whilst improving your network of contacts at the same time.

If you're making the most of your social network then it shouldn't be too difficult to attract new followers to your business page. To maximise the potential of your Google Plus presence, use these seven proven practices to gain a healthy following and generate positive results.

1. Create a captivating headline

Make posts SEO-friendly and start with a dynamic headline. Capture the imagination of the reader with a punchy opening statement.  Make it informative, catchy and hard to resist and you’ll attract attention from the off.

Amazing headlines are enticing, informative and speak directly to the reader. Optimise them with keywords and outline the reader’s expectations from the beginning. Give them a reason to want to want to read your post and follow you online.

Headlines fall into a number of categories. Examples of these are:

• Lists... ‘10 ways to enhance you Google presence’
• How to’s... ‘How to add images to Google My Business in easy steps’
• Calls to action – ‘Do this to improve your social networking skills’
• Informative – ‘Try these suggestions and grow your business online’

Use power words to drive attention to your headline. ‘Mind-blowing’, ‘Amazing’, ‘Jaw-dropping’ or ‘Surprising’ are just a few examples you might want to try.

2. Grab attention with quality imagery

Badly taken photographs have a negative impact online. Blurry, out-of-focus shots taken with a low resolution camera or smartphone are unlikely to do your products and services any favours.

Google provides you with the perfect medium to share pictures, and it has a very useful editing tool too. Use this to your full advantage, pick good quality images to grab attention and make full use of Google’s ‘Auto Awesome’ and ‘Auto Enhance’ functions, they’ll magically create captivating images ready for you to share with followers online.

Make the experience visually appealing for your followers to generate a loyal fan base.

3. Format the text

Carefully configure the text on your business page. It’s worth spending a little time optimising this area before you start posting content to readers. Populate your page with quality content and carefully format the text using the full array of tools at your disposal.

Tips to help you format text include using bold, italics or strike-through for posts. Hints to help you achieve this include:

• Use two asterisks around text to create a bold impression: *bold*
• Place two underscores either side of text to turn it into italic: _italic_
• Place text between two hyphens to add a strike-through: -
strikethrough-

You could create numerical lists or bullet points for posts making them easy to read for interested parties. Like the one above! Or get text noticed using hashtags.

4. Make the experience engaging using ‘poll' features on posts

Get people involved with your page. Use polls, surveys or simply post a few questions to generate comments and expand the amount of interest shown in your page. The more user-interaction you create on your page the greater chance you have of building a healthy following.

Polls are good devices to gain opinion. You can use them to get feedback from your friends about the latest Broadchurch episode or create a debate about a hot topic within your industry. Start a poll, get followers involved and this could spread to their wider circles creating a host of new followers for your page.

5. Follow relevant people/businesses to encourage followers back

Spend time searching for movers and shakers within your industry. Start to follow people that are relevant to your business or simply look for people that seem to be on the same wavelength as you. When you find articles of interest use the +1 function, share posts and add positive comments to actively engage with the wider community.

Add people or businesses to your circles to gain a healthier exposure. Start following as many people as you can and a high proportion of them should follow you back.

6. Give something away for free

Regularly keep your Google page updated with offers and promotions from your business. You could encourage followers to share your page and make the community aware of your freebies, driving interest to your site with the promise of great giveaways.

GMB is a great place to advertise future offers. Post comments with links to your site and use regular promotions to attract a new following.

7. Check for trending topics using the ‘explore’ feature

Keep up to date with hot topics within your target industry. See what’s trending at the moment and use this as a basis for future posts.

Do a little digging, read current posts from the wider community to establish useful subjects and themes, whether they are related to your industry or not. It’s okay to post something that’s a little off-the-wall from time to time to encourage a new following. Use trending topics to link and connect with other people.

What tips will you be using to gain new followers on Google in 2015? Tell us at Add People, we’d love to hear your comments!

A Basic Guide to Setting Up a Google 'My Business' Page

 

The Google 'My Business' (GMB) platform is a brilliant point of introduction if you want to get your business noticed in the digital community. Use this service wisely and it really will put your business on the map.

The first thing you need to know is Google My Business doesn’t cost you anything to set up. It’s free, totally gratis; the guys at Google give it to you on the house, and the best thing about it is anyone can use this service.

GMB compliments your existing website, gives you a fresh identity and most importantly, it boosts your presence on Google which is essential for a small enterprise.

If you’re not set up with Google My Business and fully utilising all of its features and functions you are missing out on a vital resource that helps you connect with local customers.

Understanding Google My Business

So what is GMB and how will it improve your business?

Those new to GMB need to know a few details. Break it down and GMB is basically a simple but highly effective solution that enables business owners to connect and share information with customers over the web. Think of this as your business platform buddy. It provides you with an easy-to-use dashboard, and from this control panel you are able to control a wide range of features and functions.

GMB cleverly combines all the best bits of Google+, Google Maps and search functions into one resource. It empowers you with analytical data, instant access to reviews and performance figures that show you how many people are visiting and interacting with your page. You are also able to optimise the page to get you further up search listings which can help your business to achieve a positive return within a short space of time.

Setting up Google My Business

So how do you get going with GMB as a newbie then? To begin, don’t be frightened of the GMB platform, embrace it.

Setting up a new account is fairly straightforward. Just follow these steps.

1. Find the 'Get your business on Google' page here: http://www.google.com/business/
2. Click the 'Get on Google' blue button in the middle
3. You now have the option to set up a Gmail account if you don't already have one
4. List your business
5. Verify the listing
6. Get creative with your new business page
7. Promote the page
8. Keeping monitoring your new business page

Of course, as a small business owner it’s not always easy or practical to start setting up social media profiles online. Setting up a Google My Business page, optimising the profile and using the page effectively to gain the maximum benefit takes time and patience, don’t worry though, there is another option available to you.

Let us set the profile page up for you!

If you need a little assistance getting started with a GMB page Add People can help in this area, our Google My Business service is perfect for giving local businesses visibility online. We’ll optimise your page to make it look professional and authoritative, offer guidance and support, plus we provide tutorials to help you use your page and get the most from it in the future.

With our help, Googling your business is simple!

For expert advice about Google My Business speak to one of our friendly advisors by calling 08450 30 44 44 or email the team at: marketing@addpeople.co.uk         

Gaining Reviews on Your Google Business Page

Did you know that customers can leave reviews on your Google business page? These reviews and star ratings will be visible to people visiting your business page or viewing your business' details in search results.

With this in mind, it’s important that you promote your business page to your customers and encourage them to leave you a review when they’ve had a positive experience.  There are a few different paths that customers can follow to leave a review.

In this blog we’ll show you two of the simplest ways to leave a review so that you can share the knowledge with your customers.

First, make sure you’re logged in to Google.  Now search for the business that you’d like to review on Google

If the business that you’re searching for has a Google My Business page then you should see their business information in search results. On the right you will see information about the business’ Google My Business page, this is called the knowledge card. You should be able to see a link asking you to leave a review on the knowledge card.  

Simply click the link to bring up the review window.  Then give the business a star rating out of five and add any comments that you wish about the service that you received before hitting the ‘publish’ button. Encourage your customers to talk about your products and services in their review.

From your Google My Business page 

Once you're on your business page click the pencil icon under the business logo to bring up the review window.

You could always email a direct link to your page to your customers to make the process as easy as possible for them.

Gaining positive customer reviews online is very important as they give your business more credibility.  Positive customer reviews could mean the difference between customers choosing you or your competitor, so don’t forget to ask customers to review your business online!

We’ll cover responding to reviews at a later date.

For more help and advice with your digital marketing please visit our website www.addpeople.co.uk.

Posting to your Google 'My Business' page

Once your business page is all set up and looking the part it's important not to fall into the trap of leaving it dormant.  Your Google My Business page is a social tool so make sure you're posting interesting content and engaging with your audience on a regular basis.

In this post we will show you how to make a simple post.  

Watch our short video walk-through below and then use the screenshots and text below for reference. 

First of all make sure you've logged in and navigated to your business page’s dashboard just like we showed you in video 1.

Once you’re on your dashboard you’ll see a box that says ‘share what’s new’ or 'share an update'.  You can create a post here, or alternatively you can do it directly from your business page.  

To get to your business page hover over where it says ‘My Business’, and click ‘Google+ Page’.

From here you can create posts in a variety of formats including links, videos, images, events and polls.  Simply select what it is you’d like to share with your audience and follow the instructions on screen.

For example. If you’d like to share a link to a blog or any webpage that you feel is relevant and of interest then just click where it says ‘link’.

Copy and paste or type the URL of the webpage that you’re sharing here and it will show you how your link will appear.  

Now write a message to introduce or say something brief about the link that you’re sharing.

Once you’re happy with your post, specify who you’d like to share it with. In this case we’ll simply share it publicly so that anyone can see it.  Now click ‘share’ and you’re finished! 

Your post will now be shared on your business profile and in search results.

Should you make a mistake or wish to delete your post hover your mouse over the top right-hand corner of the post and a little arrow will appear.  Click the arrow to view editing options.

At Add People we encourage our clients to think carefully about the content that they're posting to their business page.  Before you hit 'share' make sure that the content is either going to be of interest or value to your audience and is relevant to your business.

We'll explore posting in more detail later in this blog so look out for more information on how to create effective posts.



For expert advice about Google My Business speak to one of our friendly advisors by calling 08450 30 44 44 or email the team at: marketing@addpeople.co.uk

Accessing your Google 'My Business' page

Hello and welcome to Add People's Google 'My Business' tutorials.  

In these tutorials  we will show you the basics of how to use your business page so that you can get the most out of this valuable social platform.

In this first tutorial we'll take you right back to basics by showing you how to log-in to your business page. 

The first thing you need to do is type www.google.com into your browser.  Once you’re on Google click the ‘sign in’ button in the top right-hand of the screen.

Now enter your login details and click sign in.

Once you’re logged in the icons on the top right of the page will change.  

Click on the Apps link in the top right hand corner of the page

This is the area where you can quickly and easily access your Gmail, YouTube, Blogger, Adwords express and more the address in the browser.

Click on the Google My Business icon from the drop down. 

Note: you may have to select more to see the icon.

This takes you to the dashboard for your Google My-Business page; it’s as simple as that!

From here you can manage and edit all the information on your page, create posts, view statistics relating to your GMB page and manage reviews. 

Once you're logged in you can use our next tutorial to create your very first post on your business page.

For more help or advice with your digital marketing please visit our website www.addpeople.co.uk.