Google+ Business Page Best Practices

1) Post interesting things on your Google+ profile page.

Interact with customers, share links from your blog and ask your customers for their views, and offer discounts on all the social websites you are linked with. You can also hold competitions and encourage customers to participate.

2) Encourage Customers to Write Reviews.

These reviews for local businesses are a great way to attract new customers and to show up easily in organic search results. Getting customers to write reviews for you is one of the top Google Plus best practices for businesses. Experiences of fellow customers greatly affect the choices of new customers. They show up on local listings and search results. Ask customers to review your business in an email along with a thank you after a visit or transaction. It is the modern day equivalent of the “Thank You” note that your grandmother always told you to send. And it pays in repeat business! Reviews are like gold when you're trying to bring in new business online. Always include a link to your G+ page and ask them outright to click the link and review. NEVER assume someone will click anything or know what to do when they get there. Don't be afraid to just lay it out flat for them.

3) Use #hashtags appropriately.

Hashtags are becoming more important every day. Twitter started it, and since then Facebook and Google+ have followed suit. Hashtags help customers find exactly what they are looking for or something relevant to that, since they have hashtags. Don’t overdo it of course. Use when necessary. Hashtags on Google Plus are specifically important because Google indexes G+ hashtags for search results. Hashtags can be done by simply adding # in front of a keyword that you want associated with the post. I suggest always adding them on the end of your Post.

4) Use these tricks to add formatting to your posts.

*text* = text (bold)
_text_= text (Italic)
-text- = text (Strikethrough)

5) Always share events and content on your personal page.

6) Mention Influential or Relevant Friends in your circles.

+Mention your community (this is done by adding a + to the front of their name for example +JasonWydro). This sends an email to Jason and lets him know that he’s been mentioned so they feel the love and share your posts with more people.

7) Share any new content from your website on Google+

Google crawls its own platform more regularly than your website.
Sharing information on G+ can get it indexed by Google faster.

8) Don’t always share any photos – share exclusive photos.

You can edit your photos directly in Google+ and post animated GIF photos – it’s a great way to draw attention to your page.

9) Always preview your Page as a Customer would

To see how your Google+ Page appears to the public, toggle your view using the “View profile as” feature in the top navigation of your page. You can also type in a specific user’s name to see how your page appears for that user.

10) Post your content in the morning 9 AM to 10 AM, Monday thru Friday

Google+ users are early birds. Studies have shown that the most engagement comes from content that is posted first thing in the morning. One consideration worth noting when scheduling your content is how different time zones could play into your timing. It might be worthwhile to base your post timing decisions on what time zone your largest demographic falls into.

Google+ Business Page Best Practices

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