Best Practices for Google+

[DarinPirkey]

I have a client that has a decent following on Google+ on his personal account but his business profile doesn't have many people going to it.  The law firm he owns has roughly 14 attorneys and all of them write for their blog.  Since they are all new to Google+ except for him, I'm wondering what everyone things that the best practice is to get the information shared.  When we post the information on his personal personal profile, he generally gets between 50 - 75 +1s and a dozen or so shares.  If we put it on the business profile we don't get more than 10.  The issue is when one of the attorney's that is new to G+ posts on their timeline and then we share it via the business, we then have to share it via the owners timeline to get any traction.

We need to build followers for each of the attorneys new to G+, that's obvious, but what do we do in the mean time?  Since the owner is also the brand, what is your suggestion of the best strategy?

[mark_baird]

we are in retail and we have found offering prizes etc that can only be won if you +1 or like a page has worked well for us. Rafflecopter has been a useful tool to help entice people to follow other aspects of our social campaigns.

[Aggie]

Agreed.  Content should be unique wherever you post it.  Re-sharing content occasionally might be OK, but as a social media user, I wouldn't follow two accounts that post the exact same information.  I'd stick to focusing on one page.

[DarinPirkey]

We are doing exactly what you mentioned.  We post now via G+ business page and then share it via the owner.  We've asked people to follow the page but why would someone want to follow to things that are exactly the same?  If he's just sharing what the business posts, there isn't much value in following both.  What do you think?

[GPainter]

Hello,

Simple one but have you tried asking the followers to +1 the page?

You can also post on the business page and get him to share to help slowly migrate it over. The reason its working its because your keeping the effort with that one page make the business page worth +1 and over time it will come.

Like SEO it takes time and you need to connect with people, you can also use the hangout feature which is great for connecting and finding out some stuff from your audience.

Hope that helps a bit.

[Aggie]

When I took over our G+ account, we had 50 followers, and we now have more than 353K. Here are some suggestions (pretty much standard across all social media):

1. Start by observing and interacting.  Purely pushing content and trying to gain 'numbers' isn't productive, and users don't respond well. Join communities that share your interests, and begin interacting and finding out what people look for.
2. Conduct hangouts.  If you have a valuable message to share, break it down in an accessible way through a hangout. Here are some great tips from Fraser Cain  https://plus.google.com/+FraserCain/posts/PaeeynDx34L
3. Create content. Content is king everywhere and the same goes for G+.  To quote an old editor friend, "People don't want products, they want solutions."  Find out where there's a need, and create the solution.
4. Don't just share your own content with links.  Despite the grillion articles out there today touting social as a great way to 'build links' it's completely see-through when that's all you're doing.  Share other people's stuff. Post fun stuff that doesn't include a link to your content occasionally.
5. Trending.  Find out what's trending, and how you can fit in naturally.  Don't just push a piece of content and slap a trending hashtag, but see where you can fit into the trends.

Hope this helps!

Lisa