10
Jan 2013
Why Should You Be Using Google Communities?
By Janette Speyer and Katrina McNeill
If you have heard about Google+ Communities at all, you know that much like any other online community, it allows you to collaborate with others on topics that interest you. However, without understanding the unique features of Google+ Communities, you likely won’t be convinced to join yet another online community – so we are going to dig deeper into the benefits to help you understand why we should be taking advantage of Google Communities.
Look! I’m in a Google search result!
I can’t think of many other forms of online marketing better than being a search result. When you post in a community that post will actually be found in a Google search! Simply being active on Google+ alone will help improve your search ranking. Being active in a community brings you to the next level.
I can use this at work
For the business users, these communities allow you to easily create groups to communicate more easily with specific individuals. The best example of someone using this tool at work was in the recent election year; President Obama held a town hall meeting using Google Hangouts. Not limited to your circle, the groups also allow you to also communicate with people outside your organization and send messages to them which is ideal for your customer service, support, and sales teams.
A great opportunity to make new connections
One very unique feature of the Google+ Communities is that you can create a hangout with select members in that community. This hangout gives you an opportunity to discuss your business interests with your clients or potential customers, but most importantly, you can hold meetings to talk about specific topics with a group of select people. Offering this group dynamic enables people to approach others with a topic and is a lot less awkward than simply approaching other members with an email asking to connect socially.
Check out your competition
Google doesn’t mind if you want to search within a community and learn what’s going on with your competitors, this is also how the postings are able to appear in search. If you want to stop your competition from viewing your posts (but also stop your posts from being searchable and getting some free marketing) simply lock the posts that you don’t want shared outside of the group or start a private community instead of a public one.
Get really specific with sub-topics
Once you have a community you are able to then go make edits and add some sub-topics. This feature will allow your members to organize their posts and shares to make it easier for others users to find the most relevant content available. Using this feature will help keep your community neat and organized, which is always a good thing and essential for marketing online!
Google + growing up
It’s taken a lot of money and time but Google’s big social investment is finally picking up speed. If you aren’t on, you will be; the reason being is that companies are always trying to improve their SEO, and being on Google+ does that for you. If you have questions or are interested in what communities we are involved in, seek us out on Google+.
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January 11th, 2013 11:00 /
Great post, thanks for sharing! I agree with all of this. After joining the Google+ communities, I have noticed that my numbers in everything have drastically increased!