Many bloggers stop the promotion of their content on social media sites at Facebook and Twitter. While Facebook and Twitter are great ways to spread the word about new and existing content, it is by no means the only relevant social media platform available to bloggers. Google+, however, has broadcasting components that can make the promotion of content easier and can create more interactive reader experience.
Back End SEO
Simply setting up a Google+ page automatically gives bloggers a little more search engine juice. Because Google+ is a feature of Google, the platform is designed to be more easily found by the Google search engines. Through the simple stages of page set up, you can choose to incorporate title tags, meta tags, and keywords through Google+’s step by step process – no extensive knowledge of coding needed – making your blog, Google+ page, and even individual blog posts more easily found through Google searches.
Claim Ownership
One of the best features of Google+ for a blogger is the ability to claim ownership of articles on your own blog as well as other blogs and sites. Should a post of yours gain notoriety or is simply something you find important, you can claim ownership of it. By claiming ownership of a specific post, your name will be seen, along with your blog post’s title, every time the piece shows up in the Google results pages. You can claim authorship by using the rel author tag, which helps Google link an author with their piece of work and, in turn, allows users to discover quality content.
The more often your name gets seen, the more likely you will be seen as an authority, and authorities are the ones who are more likely to have trusted content that readers share.
EDITOR’S NOTE: While Google has officially ended Google Authorship, that does not mean Google is no longer paying attention to ownership. Quite the contrary. Google has publicly stated that they’re still watching this signal and may yet find a way to use it again. So don’t remove your authorship tags, and definitely implement them if you haven’t already.
Create Circles
With Google+ Circles, bloggers are able to place followers within certain groups. While this may seem cumbersome and even unnecessary for a blogger, being able to place key influencers into a Circle can actually be highly beneficial. There’s a little check mark box before you share a G+ post that says “Also send email to this circle?” While you certainly don’t want to check that box every post and spam your key influencers circle, using it sparingly can mean more key influencers will see your blog post. They will get an alert in their inboxes that you shared a post with them.
Creating specific Circles will make sure that all of your followers aren’t feeling spammed by constant information that may not interest them. You can tailor what they see in your news feed.
Join Google+ Communities
Don’t be afraid to join as many communities as you deem relevant to your blog. You can also share your individual blog post with different communities just as you can share it with different Circles.
Go Multimedia
Reading your content is great but seeing the person behind the content is even better. Don’t be afraid to also utilize Google+ Hangouts in addition to the other features the platform offers. Bloggers can host Q & A’s through Google Hangouts, attend real time video chats with followers, and post tutorials that can help further establish themselves in their specific blogging field. Because Google+ Hangouts on air stream live on YouTube and automatically record to your YouTube channel, you have multimedia content ready to go when you click ‘End Broadcast.’ Or, use the free YouTube editor to add enhancements to your video. All you need to host or join a Hangout is an internet connection and a webcam.
This new way of bloggers interacting face to face via webcam is called “Human Media.” This new living, breathing layer of social allows a writer to extend the life of their content beyond just the page, and via webcam go directly into their readers’ living rooms.
While Facebook and Twitter dominate the text based social landscape and it’s important to have a presence there, consider the face to face benefits of Google+. Its free digital tools are allowing more bloggers to become broadcasters.
Google Speaker image courtesy of Daniel Morris, Flickr.