Tag Archive for small business

13 Feb 2012
business growth • digital marketing • google plus • marketing • SEO • social media

How To Set Up Your Google Plus Business Page

Get Started with G+

In my last post, I discussed some of the reasons why businesses need to establish a presence on G+ as soon as possible.  This time we’re going to go through the process of setting up your profile and Google Plus business page.   If you don’t already have a personal G+ profile, you will need to set one up.  If you already have a Google account (gmail, YouTube etc) then it’s easy – otherwise just go to http://plus.google.com

google plus setup

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you would like more detailed instructions, below is one of the best G+ profile setup videos I’ve come across – the process is explained slowly and clearly. It will be easy to go ahead and setup your own profile while watching/pausing the video.

Did you get your profile set up OK?  Now for the next step!

Set Up Your G+ Business Page

In your personal profile,  look on the right hand side of the page and you will find a button to “create a google+ page”.

google+ page setup

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After clicking this, you are taken to the next screen where you need to choose the appropriate category for your page:

Create a Google+ Page

Choose a category for your page

 

As you can see, there are 5 categories:

  1.  Local Business or Place – includes any local business, e.g. restaurant, dentist, accountant, solicitor, hair salon etc.  If your business already has a Google Places listing, the details from that will be used, otherwise you’ll need to enter the business phone number and address.
  2.  Product or Brand – according to Google, this would include cars, financial services, clothing, electronics – food and drink brands would also come under this category.
  3.  Company, Institution or Organisation – also including charities and non-profit organisations
  4.  Arts, Entertainment or Sports –  pretty self-explanatory (books, films, musicians, bands, athletes etc)
  5.  Other – to be used when your business doesn’t fit into any of the above categories.

For all categories,  users will need to choose age ranges for which their page content will be appropriate, and there is a specific choice of “alcohol related” too.  Finally, you’ll need to tick the box agreeing to the G+ Page terms, before clicking the “Create” button Make sure you read these terms before creating your page – there are similar guidelines regarding competitions and promotions as there are with Facebook, so don’t fall foul of these!

Personalise Your Page

Congratulations, you have set up your Google Plus business page!  Now it’s time to personalise and customise the settings for your  page.  Firstly, you can give yourself a tagline (“10 words that describe your page best”, according to Google), and upload a profile photo. This would ideally be your business logo, but you can of course use any photo that represents your business.  Once you’ve created your tagline and uploaded a photo, click “Continue”.

You are then asked if you want to share this Google Plus business page with your G+ circles –  you probably won’t want to do this yet, as there’s no information on your page, so click “Finish”  (you can go back later and share your page)

Edit Your Profile

Click the profile icon (top of page to the left of the google search box)

g+ profile button

On the next screen, click the blue “Edit Profile” button and fill in as much information as you can –  remember to use the “Recommended Links” section to put in details of your social media profiles, and other websites/blogs you own or are associated with.  Don’t forget to use keywords throughout your profile!

Customise your Photostrip

You will see on the profile editing screen, below your page title, the words “add some photos here”.   You can add up to 5 photos and they do not change  on each page load as with Facebook.  You could even get creative and split one photo into 5……   Just to get you thinking, here are a few examples.

Start Posting!

Woohoo – your Google Plus business page is ready to share with the world!  Once you’ve posted a few updates,  use “Spread the Word” (in the right sidebar of your page) to share your page with your contacts.

Just as with your personal G+ profile, you are able to add contacts to “Circles” – the default Circles for a Google Plus business page are Following, VIPs, Customers and Team Members, but you can of course create new circles at any time. On G+ (unlike Facebook), you are able to follow your fans back, and add them to your page’s Circles.  It’s a powerful way of connecting with current and potential customers!  Your followers can +1 your posts and you can  do the same for their comments –  all of this adds to your visibility in Google search.

So what are you waiting for? I hope this has inspired you to get your business   established on Google Plus –  please share in the comments how you’re getting on, or if you’ve encountered any issues.

Need help setting up your G+ page? Take the first step! Contact me on 01777 249075
or by email at info@naomijohnsonsocialmedia.co.uk

Naomi | One comment | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
16 Dec 2011
facebook • google • online reputation monitoring • small business • social media • twitter

Your Online Reputation Matters!

Do you care about your online reputation?

I’d consider it pretty strange if you’re in business and you don’t!  OK,  it’s not that easy to monitor your offline reputation (unless you’re into eavesdropping, or wish to employ a private detective).  But it’s not at all difficult to keep track of what’s being said about you online.

Online reputation monitoring is one aspect of social media activity that people don’t automatically consider when the subject is mentioned.   From my experience with networking events and chatting with a variety of business people,  many of them dismiss social media because “it’s about what you had for breakfast”.  They haven’t looked beyond the noise to discover the real power of social media.  This is a pity.

So, let’s look at a few methods for tracking your online reputation.

Here’s an example of what might happen,

and British Gas’s timely Twitter response (including typos!)

British Gas on Twitter

What if the company hadn’t had a presence on Twitter?  That complaint was seen by the followers of the original poster and of British Gas,  in other words several thousand Twitter users…….if just a few re-tweeted, you could multiply that by several thousand more.  See why it’s essential to  keep an eye on things?

Google Alerts.

You may already have come across this free tool.  You can set alerts for absolutely any keyword or phrase, including your business name, your own name, or a brand.

Google Alerts

The drop-downs are “everything; news; blogs; video; discussions; books”, “as-it-happens”; once a day; once a week” and “only the best results; all results”.  So you have a good choice in setting up your alerts.  If you use quotation marks around your specified search term, you’ll get only exact matches – so this would be useful for monitoring your company name, for example.   I’ve used Google Alerts myself for several years – it’s well worth a try.

Social Mention.

SocialMention

Quoting directly from SocialMention:

“Social Mention is a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information. It allows you to easily track and measure what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the web’s social media landscape in real-time. Social Mention monitors 100+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc.”

Basically, SocialMention is Google Alerts for social media – and is also free.

TweetBeep.

TweetBeep

TweetBeep is another “alert” application and as the name suggests,  restricts its searches to Twitter.  So you could search for any mentions of your own name, your brand,  your company, or your competitors :)

Finally,  there are the social media management tools such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck (each with a loyal following). These allow monitoring of online reputation,  and also pre-scheduling of tweets and Facebook updates.

Now what’s your excuse for not knowing who’s talking about you online?!

Do you have other monitoring tools you’d recommend?  Share your thoughts in the comments.

Need help with monitoring your online reputation? Take the first step! Contact me on 01777 249075
or by email at info@naomijohnsonsocialmedia.co.uk

Naomi | 4 comments | Tags: , , , , , , ,
20 Nov 2011
business growth • facebook • linkedin • small business • social media • twitter

Social Media for Small Business

Social Media For Small Business – Some Statistics

I came across this infographic the other day via Socialnomics. I found it quite eye-opening,  yet very consistent with my own experience.  I go to a lot of networking events and naturally, am asked what my business is. This usually leads into a discussion around social media and its uses for business – 9 times out of 10 the other person says that they’ve set up social media accounts but don’t have any idea what to do next……

Small Business Social Media Infographic

Social media for small business – takeaways from the infographic:

A massive 88% of owners believe that social media does, or will, impact on their small business – so it’s clear that they see the potential.

A somewhat lower proportion (63%) have established social media accounts, the majority spread across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Another survey found that 31% of small businesses were not using social media at all,  and the reason given for this was that they “don’t know where to start”………  this is sounding very familiar!

Apart from “don’t know where to start”, other reasons for not using social media were “don’t have the staff”, “costs too much”, “information overload”, “too many sites to manage”  and astonishingly, “doesn’t help me or my business”.

Confusion over who should manage social media for a business is also widespread, responses varying from “business owner” (18%) down to 1% for HR, customer service, corporate, administrator etc.   All a bit vague, isn’t it?

Social media seems to have become a huge mystery, a black art,  something only to be attempted by those of strong constitution. This is borne out by the fact that 67% of small businesses do not plan to increase their investment in social media for 2012.

In light of this, it’s rather strange that virtually none of the small business owners surveyed had plans to hire anyone to help them with social media.

How about you?  Do you find yourself mystified by social media?  Would you consider hiring someone to help with social media for your small business?   I’d love to hear your comments.

Need help with social media? Start by contacting me on 01777 249075
or by email at info@naomijohnsonsocialmedia.co.uk

you can also TEXT

INF SOCIALMEDIA or INF SOCIALMEDIA + your email address to 60777

to receive your free copy of my booklet “10 Reasons Why You Need to Get Up To Speed With Social Media”.

Naomi | No comments | Tags: , , , , , , ,
 

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