Google+ Finally Comes Alive With These 16 Great Social Tools

You just can’t knock Google! Yes, there are complaints about Google Panda but Google changed the world and will continue to do so. That’s what confuses so many that Google+ lagged for so long behind Facebook and even LinkedIn. Well, thanks to these tools, Google+ has become the most powerful social media and digital communications platform around. Why did we doubt Google would build a winner?

YouTube Integration

If you have a YouTube channel or have thought about it, take advantage of its easy posting to Google+. Establishing yourself on YouTube or Google+ will help you reach a wider audience when you use them in conjunction.
When you share a YouTube video to Google+, users can view the video within Google+. Any comments on that Google+ share show up as comments on your YouTube video.  Take advantage of this integration ability!

Use Hangouts

Webinars are a powerful tool for building email lists, monetization and a growing audience. Webinar software, however, can be clunky and expensive but webinars are considered one of the top ways to cement a loyal following. Google+ has an easy alternative.
Hangouts On Air provides a free video broadcasting service that lets you stream a live feed to your YouTube channel for recording. According to Stephan Hovnanian, using Hangouts On Air drastically increases your brand’s reach.
If you’re looking to build your own Hangouts On Air audience, visit HOAShows and submit your hangout to the directory. HOAShows is one of the more popular and most updated Hangouts On Air directories. From there, you can also find other great examples of Hangouts!

Share More and Monetize Easily

With Google Drive and their superior cloud-based storage, you can share an incredible amount of information with your Google+ audience, including slideshows of information and presentations, PDFs and even password-protected documents (which you can monetize for ebooks, whitepapers and other written digital information.

Forget Photo Storage Sites

If you are a Googlephile, then you should want everything at your fingertips, so dump Flickr and Photobucket and store your photos and images on Google+. Uploaded images can be highlighted, enhanced and easily shared.
Of course, being a Googlephile, you already know you can control, add, delete or anything else right from your mobile device. Another point for Google+!

Share Great Content — Extend Your Reach

Sure, you can share your blog posts to Google+ but did you know you can share Google+ posts to your blog? Yes! The embed feature will let you increase the life of your content. Once it passes too far “below the fold” of Google+ news feeds, you can extend the content on your blog. Of course, other people can embed your article on their blog as well!

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If your followers are logged into their Google+ accounts, any +1s, shares or comments will show up on both your blog and your Google+ content.

Make Animations and Slideshows

Viewers love videos. Written content is losing out, so how can Google+ help you create videos?
Google+’s Auto Awesome feature lets you create animated videos with photos, videos or both. It’s a really cool effect and has endless possibilities for video-minded marketers.
To create your video using Auto Awesome on Google+, you’ll need to download the Google+ app for your smartphone and make sure you have the correct settings enabled. Go to Settings > Camera Settings and turn on Auto Backup, Auto Awesome and Auto Enhance. After uploading your images to Google+, wait a few minutes and then check your photo album to make sure all of the photos have been successfully uploaded. Google+ will automatically make the video.
Check out this helpful tutorial…

Google+ is different from Facebook and other social sharing sites. It doesn’t auto-crop your images or require you to resize them before posting. The result is a gallery of full images, which will engage followers and is great for portfolios for freelance creatives and businesses that want to show their products in the best light.

Maximize Your Content Formatting

LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook don’t let you format your post content with eye-catching type formatting. That means you can’t draw the reader’s attention to important parts of your posts.
Google+ allows you to add simple variables such as “*” for bold and “_” for italics to grab the attention of readers who scan articles to see if it will interest them.

Hashtag Heaven

Just like Twitter and Instagram, hashtags can have a big impact on reaching a targeted audience on Google+. The Explore feature uses hashtags to help Google+ users quickly find and join hot topics, which is where your content will be. Facebook does use hashtags but if you have your privacy settings to only friend, then the general Facebook public won’t see hashtaged content.

Circles Target Your Audience

At first, some people were against the idea of anyone being able to see your content without your permission, as with Facebook but Google+ Circles allows you to place your targeted audience into one circle for targeted email marketing (although many experts say you should get followers permission first).

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To distribute permission-based, targeted traffic to your posts, just include the “circle” in the “also send email to… “ button when posting new content. Again, some people think this is bad Google+ manners unless you have an opt-in list. Instead, try posting in one of Google+’s groups.

If you want to find more targeted people to add to your circle(s) Circlecount provides Google + statistics.  You can view standard statistics provided and run various searches by user, location and/or keyword to find details of Google + users.

Share From Google+ to Other Social Media Platforms

Friends+Me has the incredible ability to automatically share content from Google+ to other social networks. By checking your Google+ business page and/or personal profile at regular interval, new posts are found and reposted to any social networks you’ve linked to Friends+Me.
Friends+Me has some excellent configuration options but you’ll need to spend some time setting them up with the learning curve. Once that’s done, Friends+Me is a great time-saver to share your Google+ updates across multiple social platforms.
Aside from the links available,  you can integrate bit.ly tracking links. You can share content using either the Friends+Me web address shortener or you can use bit.ly. Both link shorteners let you track how your audience responds to your linked content but why not just stick with the geniuses at Google and make Google+ your home base?

The most incredible advantage of Friends+Me is that you can schedule each platform to share your Google+ updates at different times. With this tool, you can post to different platforms when it’s the best time for the most share possibilities.

Check Your Posting Times

Every social media platform has optimum times for posting, so to get the maximum benefit from posting across any of the social networks you need to work out the timing to the very moment your audience is online and the most receptive.
Timing+ analyses your last 100 posts on Google Plus to identify the best time to post. Just login to your Google + account and Timing+ analyses your posts.

Easy Google+ Analytics

Steady Demand is a Google+ audit and analytics tool. The audit function is free — the analytics tool (for business pages) is a premium paid service.

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To use the Free Audit Tool,  go to Steady Demand and click on Launch Tool to reach the audit page. Enter your Google+ brand page URL and click TEST. The results will show you an complete overview of what’s working on your page… and what’s not. Remember, you can always delete and report a reworked piece of content if it’s doing poorly.

Learn Google+ Success From Others

Allmyplus allows you to search for a particular user on Google + and display detailed information on that user.  Information, such as the posts they made, when they made them, the interactions they had and much more will be available. Picking a popular Google + user in your niche will help you understand how they grow their following.
Of course, you can also get first hand information about your competitors and view their entire activity log. It’s a great way to see how your competitors post are doing in comparison to yours and adjust your content for maximum success.

Aggregating Your Google+ Into an RSS Feed

When you are on a Google + profile have a look at the web address. Copy the numbers displayed within this web address and paste into MyGplusFeed in yahoo pipes. Underneath this you will see options for adding to an RSS feed, for example Google reader.
When you open up your reader application you will see the latest posts from the Google + accounts that you added to your RSS feed.

Get Rid of Inactive Followers

Circloscope, as the name suggests, is a “circle” management tool. Circloscope helps by allowing you to remove inactive users, un-circle people who do not circle you back and a lot of other management functions. It gives you complete information and analysis of your circles, followers, people with whom you engage. Cutting out inactive followers will cut your quantity but give you better quality for your posts.

More Google+ Resources

3rd Party Management Tools for Google+ Pages
Google My Business: New Tools for Small Business Owners
Free Google+ Page Report
The Quick-Start Guide to Google+
Google Adds GIF & Collage Creation Tools to Its Google+ Android App
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