Google+ for Business Part 8

The day I sampled was pertinent to Michael's core business. One of his key compet.i.tors threw in the towel. He stated his continued support of that same s.p.a.ce. He pointed to a.n.a.lysts' remarks to strengthen his position. But more interestingly and more telling, he also spent time in a Hangout (probably talking about this), and he stuck around to thank some people for their partic.i.p.ation in it.

Michael shares almost entirely Dell-specific information. I checked a few other days and found most of the posts related to his business. In contrast to Jennifer Cisney, I know nothing about Michael, except that he is clearly pa.s.sionate about his business (and one would hope he is) and that he is active in Google+.

Neither of these approaches is wrong, by the way. I think Michael's approach makes him seem accessible, and I see his interest in features such as the Hangout as sure signs that he intends to use this service for company communication that goes off-script, or at least enables some candid interaction. I find it encouraging and exciting

Scott Monty (Ford Motor Company).

Scott's the head of social media for Ford. He handles this primarily in a communications role, like the "people's PR," in my perspective. On the day I visited Scott's stream, he did the following: * Reshared the +Ford Motor Company account's breaking news.

* Commented on the difference between comments on Facebook and comments on Google+ in reaction to the news. (He thought Facebook had more negative opinions.) On another day, Scott did the following: * Shared a local event's news * Pointed out a compet.i.tor's bad news On other days, Scott partic.i.p.ates with the community, asking for thoughts and advice, shares information that strengthens the use of Google+, and spreads general good will. My take on Scott's use is that he does a lot to promote Ford in a positive way and discusses other industry news in addition to local Michigan news, which helps create local pride, something that certainly matters to Ford.

The majority of the information he shared were links to other articles, but he also created unique posts, especially when posting questions. Like Michael Dell, Scott goes to the community at Google+ to get its take, although Scott tends to comment back and forth with people on his posts, whereas Michael tends to do that in video only (from what I could see).

Bill Gerth (Social Media Lead at Comcast).

Bill has inherited the mantle left by Frank Eliason, who famously put Comcast on the social media map for his work on Twitter with @comcastcares. I've spoken with Bill a few times on Twitter but had not seen his Google+ profile. Because Comcast did so well (and got so much positive media attention) for its Twitter work, I thought I'd see how Bill uses Google+.

Over the course of several days, Bill shared articles about social media and an interesting photo or two. He twice pointed to Comcast in those several days, helping people by reminding them to upgrade their Xfinity TV applications. Overall, his information was interesting for social media types, but it's clear he still does most of his "work" on Twitter and not on Google+.

The Biggest Content Difference (So Far) on Google+ for Business Users.

Looking at another dozen business professionals using Google+, at this point, the biggest difference is that most people share more personal or indirectly related-to-business posts on Google+ than they do on other social networks.

On Twitter, Jennifer Cisney is @KodakCB, and her stream is quite actively sharing the Kodak story. Her Twitter avatar and background are branded Kodak, and most of the tweets relate to her business.

On Twitter, Michael Dell is @MichaelDell, and his background is branded with pictures of his company's products. He tweets nothing but Dell-specific or PC industry-specific information.

On Twitter, Scott Monty is @ScottMonty, and his avatar and background are branded Ford. He shares a lot of customer service and communications help. He talks conversationally to people answering Ford Motor Company product and service questions. He's personable but still sticks closely to Ford topics.

On Twitter, Bill Gerth is @ComcastBill (also @ComcastCares), and he is 100% customer service-driven. His entire stream reads of @replies to customers with issues he's helping to resolve. All tweets that I observed over a few days were work-related.

So then, what should you do? Should you stick to mostly personal information on Google+? Should you keep your business on Facebook and Twitter? Should you alter your content strategy for Google+?

Although everyone's mileage may vary, I have a sense of what might work to blend that personal touch with a business agenda. The following sections include some ideas for building a stream on Google+ that might help you build the relationships that can lead to business. These examples are for different types of businesses.

Restaurant Owner.

If you're in the restaurant business, you want to show that your place is the place to be. Your goal is to attract people, to show them what your restaurant is about, and to entice them to come down. Now, most restaurants stuff their social network streams with coupons and offers. Why? Because that's how they advertise in other media. Well, here's a chance to do something new. Try these ideas: * Post photos: People want to see your place and want to see happy faces and delicious dishes. (When shooting photos of people, always ask for their permission to post them on the web.) Showing off your great meals help people see what they will get when they come in.

* Share video: Interview the chef (if she is the kind of person who would sell your restaurant), your best bartender, or whoever can help you sell what makes your restaurant better. Make the video's duration under 2 minutes. Upload it to YouTube, and post it to your stream for people to get an even better flavor of the restaurant.

* Share local news (positive, mostly): You'll hear me say this a lot for businesses that have location in mind. Be the hub of your community. This shows people that you care about more than your restaurant.

* Share posts: If you know any other local Google+ users, share their posts occasionally, especially if they promote something of their own or sharing an accomplishment. The more you help them celebrate themselves, the more they'll come to interact with you when the time is right.

For a restaurant, you don't need to post too many new things each day. Between two to three posts a day total (including sharing other people's news and stories) is probably enough. However, you need to pay close attention to the comments on items you post. People will interact with you, and how you approach commenting back and forth can have an impact on how people perceive you and the restaurant.

Community Manager/Developer.

A common role in companies these days has to do with embracing and engaging the community around company products and services. Different companies treat this role differently. Kodak, for instance, has Jennifer Cisney as its Chief Blogger, which is ultimately a community role. Scott Monty is Ford's head of social media, so he has a community role for at least part of his responsibilities. It's handled differently at Dell and Comcast, where many people have their hands in the community and it's a shared function. No matter how your company does it, the following are some ways you should approach creating content for your community: * Talk about your community. If you're Ford Motor Company, show people who are excited about their Focus Hybrids. If you're Kodak, show off photos your users have taken with your products. Talk about them, not you, though.

* Post information that's useful to that community. If you create project management software, share articles about better ways to manage meetings. If you're a soap company, share posts about how to make an at-home spa experience.

* Share photos of community members. If you host face-to-face events, make a point of asking permission to post photos of the event on the web, and then share photos from your big unveiling party or your customer appreciation day event. The more people who see themselves, or people just like them, the better.

* Share how-to information about your products and services. If you sell cooking supplies, offer recipes. If you sell legal services, maybe you can share best practices about how to prepare for a meeting with your team.

The number of posts for a community manager type should be more frequent than it might be for most other roles. This is because the community manager encourages community engagement. However, a caveat exists: Don't post garbage. If you have nothing interesting to post, don't waste the attention in people's streams.

Comments by community manager types are usually the bread and b.u.t.ter of experiences. If you look at Scott Monty's posts, you can see that he engages a lot of time in the comments section. On Facebook, I observed that he was equally as active. On Twitter, Bill Gerth and the @comcastcares team is quite active. They use it as a customer service channel.

Comments show your buyers that you care about their opinions. Comments give your customer a voice. They allow you to speak off-message and yet bolster the message. They also show a very human side to your business, and this is worth its weight in gold.

That's one last detail I'd like to bring up: Community management as a role is a strange mix. It's part promotional (using PR and communications), part marketing (sharing offers and deals), and a strong part of customer service (helping customers get what they need). If you do only one of these three functions, you're not likely serving your customers or users in the best way.

Online Store.

If you're the owner of an online (or online-mostly) store, using a service such as Google+ is a great way to be the "online shopkeeper" outside of your e-commerce-heavy environment. If you think of your store as a well-tuned system that helps guide people toward closing a purchase, you wouldn't want to blur that with too much social networking interaction. (Although you might consider installing the Google +1 b.u.t.ton on all your products.) Therefore, if you spend some time on social networks such as Google+, you might find people to interact with who might be seeking what you sell. The following are ideas for the type of content the online store owner might post: * Post product demos of things you sell, if that makes sense. If video would create a better demonstration, post video. If not, post photos.

* Post interesting ideas or serving suggestions for your products. If you sell pens, show interesting art made by the pens.

* Post profiles and interviews with the owners. The more people see who's behind the store, the more trust they'll feel in making purchases. You buy from people you "know," even if your mind sometimes stretches that "know" a little bit.

* It might be interesting to try live product demonstrations in Hangouts. A video I shot of my favorite carry-on bag amounted to more than 50 sales and counting via affiliate marketing. You might find similar success selling via a Hangout.

In most cases, your time on Google+ doesn't need to be long to be effective. You might post information early in your day and then again later in your day, taking time to see whether you receive any comments or reactions to the posts. You might also search Google+ (via Google: just put in site:plus.google.com and then enter your search terms, and you might find people talking about the items you sell). That could yield even better results, but be wary of seeming to spam people. A fine line exists between helping and jumping in and seeming creepy.

Professional Speaker or Thought Leader.

For those professional speakers and thought leaders who want to get potential clients via social networks such as Google+, what helps people select you is a blend of traits. People want to know that you're professional. They want to know that you're intelligent. They might want to know that you're personable, or at least what type of personality you have. They probably wouldn't mind seeing if what you share is interesting to them and their business needs.

Be willing to share more of your personality than your serious side, though. I see business consultants and professionals throw up their avatars in their best suit or dress, sharing only specific and pertinent information. It doesn't hurt to show a bit of your lighter side. Following are some guidelines: * If you're a blogger, share your best posts, maybe not all your posts. If people subscribe to your blog, they probably won't want the double-dip of you sharing it with them.

* Post YouTube videos of your speeches or seminars. Seeing you in action is a great way to lure people into wanting to hire you for work. Be sure to post a link to your contact page when posting a video, so that they don't just watch and comment.

* Share other people's posts that are pertinent to your main industry. There's an importance to this step. If you post only your own items or posts about how great you are, it comes off that way, and people don't want that. They want you to seem like a partic.i.p.ant in the conversation, not a solo act.

A professional in this category might post three to five times a day, and paying attention to the comments is also important. Getting people back to your main site or blog is equally important. Having all the conversation on the social network robs your blog of potential social proof, meaning that comments that normally would show up on your blog posts will live on Google+, and that's not your real estate.

One last thought to professionals seeking to drum up connections on Google+: As you consider your sharing and posting strategy, be sure to keep that mix of off-topic material in there. The moment you seem like a "stuffed shirt," you'll find more resistance to what you do choose to share. It just happens that way.

Writer, Photographer, and Artist.

Many "tribes" of creatives use Google+ to the fullest. Photographers share many of their works because the platform has nice aesthetics for sharing and a simple commenting system. Writers share bits of upcoming projects and also seek advice or pointers to research information. Artists connect with all kinds of new people who appreciate their work. In all cases, I'd recommend posting items in the following categories: * Share what you can of upcoming projects. Even if you're sworn to secrecy, showing a few photos or a quick video clip of you at the drawing board can excite. You might not think it's exciting because you're used to sitting there working for hours and hours, but others might get a thrill.

* Post quick video interviews talking about whatever you can about your methods, your styles, your influences, and so on.

* Start a Hangout and invite people in to ask you questions. (At the time I was writing this part of the book, I noticed that comics and film writer Greg Pak was taking questions in a simple text post. I thought of just how much more fun it would be to do as a video Hangout.) * Post questions for research, and maybe even invite people to contribute to projects, if it makes sense. Collaborations via this medium are quite easy and potentially full of exciting new possibilities because of the scale of the active audience, plus the diversity of locations of people.

Writers, photographers, artists, and other creatives have a lot of potential with Google+. It's not necessarily as deep a niche as several other sites that cater to a group. Flickr, for instance, has millions more pa.s.sionate photography users. deviantART has a huge art community. There are many writing communities. And yet, people explore Google+ as an interesting crossroads between those more single-serving communities and the more general public. (Not that I consider Google+ a decent representation of the general public yet, but I think it is more general than niche sites.)

Posting to Build Connections.

One point not covered is the notion of posting and sharing simply to build connections. For instance, perhaps you use Google+ as a way to meet with interesting people because those types of people drive your own creativity or fuel your own vision. People can fall into this category in many different ways: investors, artists, a.n.a.lysts, writers, journalists, and so on. In all cases, my advice is the same: * Share interesting posts from outside of Google+ and from sources that aren't as typically sourced. For instance, if you're into technology, sharing something originally posted on Mashable or TechCrunch won't likely get you noticed on Google+. However, pointing out an interesting gadget you saw on uncrate.com might get you some interesting new followers.

* Post original content that takes a completely different view than the norm. For instance, on the day I wrote this sentence, people were giving their thanks and praise to Steve Jobs upon hearing his announcement that he was stepping down as CEO of Apple. If your post wrote up a dissenting view, it would no doubt receive a lot of traffic. (Perhaps all of it angry, but you'd certainly get attention.) * Find off-topic posts of interest. Curiosities are most definitely what help someone connect. Perhaps you have a knowledge of interesting cover songs, so you share Karen Souza's rendition of Radiohead's "Creep" via a YouTube video. It's a heck of a lot more interesting than sharing the Richard Cheese version and might lead to a new connection-or ten.

And why would you want all kinds of connections? Some people find value in a lot of eclectic connections because they lead those people to a more diverse network. Others like more connections because they seek to do something with the value of the volume. (That's how advertising works, for instance.) Still others just like to find connections for all the varied interests. If you're into bird-watching, yodeling, and mixed martial arts fights, it's going to take a little work to find and create those circles, so you might as well post eclectic and varied content to try and connect with those who share your interests.

Value Your Audience's Attention.

Above all else, value your audience's attention. The more "junk" you throw at them, the less they will pay attention. Cherish their interaction. Comment back when they comment. (Not necessarily for every comment you get, but be the #1 commenter in your own stream.) The more you value your audience, the more value they can bring you. It's as simple as that.

8. The "Warm" Sell.

All along, the secret of this book has been this: It's not about the technology. Lance Armstrong said it first: It's not about the bike. What he meant was that his determination, practice, focus, and preparation drove him. What I mean is simpler still: Using Google+ for business is about understanding how to build human relationships; it is not about this specific technology.

In this case, you can "paint" in this medium called Google+ because it gives you access to millions of potential new clients, has benefits for how people can find you using Google's search functions, and affords you a way to create interactions that can (hopefully) lead to sustainable business.

This requires something called the "warm" sell. If you've picked up this book with the intention to learn a few magic formulas that you can automate, set, and forget, and then sit back while the money flows into your bank account, you might be disappointed. However, you learn how Google+ can help you build connections and how you might sell to them.

To that end, let's start with some of the philosophy and mindset behind how Google+ can best help you sell, and then see some tangible examples of what you can do with this information. Some might not fit your particular business model, but see what you can do to adapt them. Most are reasonably universal, but tuned for a Google+ world.

Attention Is a Gift.