Without great traffic to your blog site, your posts will not be get read, regardless of the quality of your articles. Google+ has massive opportunities to promote your blog, and drive traffic to it.
For many marketers and business owners though, this social site has remained a mystery. Lots of businesses try the site out, only to get frustrated because they don’t quite get how to connect with their market on it.
The best advice I’ve heard from seasoned G+ marketers is to loose your Facebook mindset, add a bit of Twitter, sprinkle in some LinkedIn Groups, be prepared to actually network, and only then can you really start using G+.
Getting traffic to your blog site is an integral part of marketing. The more you can cross-promote your content, the more eyeballs you will get. The more eyeballs you get, the more your content will be shared.
The more your content is shared, the better your search rankings are, and so on, and so on. I recently wrote on post to give you tips on cross-promoting your blog with Twitter: 12 Formulas: How to Use Twitter to Drive Traffic to Your Blog.
Here are nine tips on using Google Plus to drive traffic to your blog posts.
How to Use Google+ to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Tip #1: Make a Google+ Business Page
This is kind of similar to making a business Page on Facebook: you need to have a personal G+ to make a business site. You can add your location, your business category, and customize your profile image, tagline and introduction section. Include your website.
When you’re setting up your page (or revising one you already have), be sure to take advantage of the large cover photos. Your image can now be as large as 2120 x 1192 pixels, as indicated in this G+ cover image:
To drive traffic to your blog:
- Include your blog URL in your introduction section, and give a good call to action (CTA) as to why a user should visit.
- Include your blog site in your Links section.
- Create a profile image with an arrow or other CTA to your blog (there’s no restrictions on G+ cover page CTA’s)
How to Use Google+ to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Tip #2: Share with your Circles
Circles provide an amazing opportunity to share your blog posts to targeted people. They are a way to segment G+ users that you follow. You can kind of segment circles a bit like you might bluntly do so for an email list. For example, create circles for customers, industry leaders, partners, and team, or any other categories that suit your business needs.
People don’t know what circle you have them in, so you’re not going to offend.
To promote your blog posts, share them with targeted audiences, and connect with them by writing specific updates for your post.
For example, say you’ve written a blog post about a new product. You can post specific updates to your segmented G+ Circles:
- If you want your customers to read it, you could share it to your ‘customer circle’ with an update written to include prices and why they need to buy it.
- If you want your industry leaders to read it, you could share it to your ‘industry leader circle’ with an update written with a requests for reviews.
Now, I can’t see what Circles Whole Foods has and how they segment their sharing, but… they could also share an update to specific partners and customers in their Circles using a different update. For example, this update to the same blog post could be targeted to a chef or restaurant- Circle:
VickiH
CJ_The@rkitekt