How to Keep Google+ Manageable at 50K Followers

Back in March of 2013, with only 77 followers and nobody to talk to, it did seem to me that Google Plus was indeed a ghost town. Today, just 9 short months later and approaching the 50,000 follower mark within the next few weeks, I sometimes receive so many notifications that it seems impossible to keep up with them all due to the sheer volume. At first glance, that seems to make sense - more followers means more notifications right? I don't believe so; in fact, I do not believe that the number of followers you have has anything to do with the number of notifications you receive at all. If you compare the two charts below, you can see that while my number of followers continues to increase, my engagement level on my own posts has remained fairly consistent once I passed the 5,000/10,000 follower marks in July/August.

Screenshot of my follower history since March 27, 2013 via +CircleCount

(http://www.CircleCount.com)

 Screenshot of my total engagement by day since March 27, 2013 via +Steady Demand
(https://www.steadydemand.com/tool/)

Note: Use my code CQApproved for a 20% discount off Steady Demand Pro.

Mastering Circles: The Key to Success on Google+

Updated: August 9th, 2014

Understanding Google+ circles and how to use them to begin building an active, engaged audience continues to be the holy grail that new users, especially businesses, are trying to achieve. Here are the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about circles as well as additional resources with more information to help you learn to master Google Plus circles.

1) What are Google+ circles?
Circles are the way you group the people you follow on Google+. The default circles for profiles are "Friends, Family, Acquaintances and Following," and the default circles for pages are "Following, Customers, VIPs and Team members," but you can delete them or rename them if you prefer, and you can add additional circles and name them as you see fit. There is no right or wrong way to set up your circles, so the best way is the way that works best for you.

Example of how I have one of my pages circles set up.

Hint: Determining your main goals for your Google+ profile or page(s) is a good strategy to help you organize your circles. Ex: Create prospects, leads and customers circles for your business page.

2) What happens when you "circle" someone?
Similar to following people on Twitter, you follow people on G+ by adding them to your circles. When you add someone to your circles, you will see the content they choose to share with you. If someone adds you to their circles, they will see the content you choose to share with them. The diagrams below depict an overly simplified version of what content is seen when you follow someone that does not follow you back; when someone follows you when you don't follow back; and when you follow someone that is also following you.

"Amber" follows "Bob" but Bob doesn't follow Amber.

The posts that Bob chooses to share publicly will appear in Amber's stream.*

Bob will not see Amber's public posts unless he visits her profile page.**

Bob follows Amber but Amber doesn't follow Bob.

The posts that Amber chooses to share publicly will appear in Bob's home stream.*

Amber will not see Bob's public posts unless she visits his profile page.**

Amber and Bob both follow each other.

Amber's public posts will appear in Bob's home stream.*

Bob's public posts will appear in Amber's home stream.*

*Note that settings can be adjusted per circle to turn off posts to home stream. In that case, the way to see them is to view the circle.

**Note that if someone shares to extended circles or if someone in your circle has recommended a post by giving it a +1, you may see someone's post in your streams even if you do not have them circled.

A lot of people who are new to G+ tend to think that they need to "follow back" everyone that circles them; however, since the limit on the number of people you can circle is 5,000, you may as well forget that strategy as it can only work until you reach that limit. The best advice I can give you is to circle people that you want to follow and don't play the follow/unfollow game or you will likely end up with lots of followers, but little engagement.

3) How do I find people to circle?
There are several ways to find people to circle on Google+. You can follow people that are on the SUL (suggested users list); you can add shared public circles; you can perform searches and find people based on the results; you can click hashtags to see others who have used them; you can join communities to meet people with similar interests; you can find people through post comments; you can find people who attend events/hangouts on air, etc. You can also use +NOD3x (www.NOD3x.com) to find popular posts in your niche. There is no wrong way to find people to circle; however, if you are business, you will likely want to try to target those that are most likely to be interested in your product or service.

4) How do people find me on Google+?
While it is not hard to find people to circle, getting found by others is a little more difficult! First of all, you are likely not going to be on the SUL at first (in fact, the majority of users will never be on the SUL) so that takes away that option. You are probably not going to be included in very many shared public circles at first... another option gone. That means you are basically relying on getting found by people searching (and showing up high in the results) and getting added by people you engage with in communities and on posts - and that can take time - a LONG time!

There is another option to grow your following and that is to proactively add people to your circles that are likely to add you back. You can do this by adding people one at a time on a case-by-case basis; by adding shared public circles on a regular basis; or by adding people in bulk using +Circloscope. Remember that whenever you add people to your circles, you will want to take the time to "vet" your circles to decide who to move into more permanent circles and who to remove. Vetting a circle basically means viewing the stream to look for people you might be interested in getting to know (read their about us, look over their posts, etc.) and then moving them to one of your "keep" circles and eventually deleting the rest. The key is that not only does this help you find people, it will allow people to "discover" you because (see #2) - many people will follow you back.

You will also help people find you by engaging on other people's posts, being active in communities, displaying your Google+ badge or link on your blog, website, etc. AND of course by posting good quality content. That all goes without saying; however, it is not the focus of this post.

5) Isn't what you just described, adding circles, keeping a few and then deleting the rest the same thing as the follow/unfollow game - like on Twitter?
No, I don't think it is. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to decide who to follow without viewing someone's stream, which may or may not be shown to the public (and there aren't any "circle viewers" at the current moment - hint hint +CircleCount - we need to talk) so the only way to really decide whose content interests you when you add a shared circle is to view the stream. I recommend giving it a few days or even a week before you delete the circle to give people a chance - just because someone posts a #caturday post once a week (or #goaturday - shout out to +Michael Chase) doesn't mean that they don't share anything that might interest you the rest of the week.

6) What can I do to make myself more likely to get followed?
Here are just a few suggestions to make yourself more likely to get circled by others on Google+.

• Upload a profile photo - people do not like to circle "blueheads." I will not even consider following someone who does not have a profile photo and would never put them in a shared circle... with one exception... 
• Complete and optimize your "about" section; using keywords can help you get found in searches and many people do read your bio before adding you to their circles. Hovering over someone's name will bring up their "hovercard" and although there is very limited information available, it is important that you have a cover photo and have set your location. In fact, +Stephan Hovnanian has an awesome post showing 19 (and counting) places that display your hovercard across Google - go ahead, hover over him and then circle him!
• Create a free profile (or update yours if it is already indexed) on www.circlecount.com and add some tags (keywords) as well. +CircleCount is free and provides stats to help you better understand Google+. This is also where you can see whether or not you have been included in any shared circles.

7) What are "shared" circles?
A shared circle is simply a circle that is shared. If you share the circle publicly to your stream, anyone who comes across it can add it. Anyone can share a circle on Google+; however, if no one adds these circles, they won't do the people included much good - and the way to reach more people to add the circles is by encouraging those included to share it.

In my opinion, there are "levels" of shared circles and I think it is important to understand the difference:

1. The first is a small, curated ("cherry picked") circle share - a very desirable circle to be included in; although it may not get many shares, it will likely be added by many of the person's followers and can bring those included some very targeted connections. Being included in a circle like this is basically being recommended as someone to follow. These circles can usually be added without much "vetting" as they have already been selected and are people known to the person sharing.
2. The second is a niche circle that is likely larger and less carefully curated that could be shared by anyone, but would likely be shared by someone in the niche. Doing a search for "real estate circle" or "lawyers circle" for example might bring up a few of these types of circles. When you add these circles, you would expect that many of the posts in the stream will be ones that someone in the niche would be interested in reading.
3. The third is an interest based circle - such as a photography circle. These circles are usually larger and get more shares. You would generally want to "vet" these by adding them to a "sort" circle and looking through the stream.
4. The fourth is what +Dustin W. Stout has coined a "chain letter" circle. Basically, it is a circle that strongly encourages sharing or even requires it. While these circles usually get the most shares and lots of adds, they are frowned upon (hated) by many here on Google+. They are usually "all types of people" rather than niche or interest based. One thing I would like to point out is that one of the reasons that circle curators use the "you must share" requirement is because many who build these circles use +Circloscope to help build them and the only way someone will be detected if building a circle of sharers is if they have shared the circle. 

The bottom line is that whether the person creating a large shared circle tried to create a "good" circle or not, these circles really contain all kinds of people and need to be vetted. If you add these by creating new circles and naming them with the name of the person who created the circle, you will soon figure out which ones made the effort and which ones did not. I have added dozens of these circles by people that I consider "good" circle creators - the only ones that you will see me share - and I have met tons of great people and get incredible engagement.

You can also use +Circloscope to combine shared circles and filter them to remove those that are inactive (haven't posted in awhile), that do not have profile photos, that are already following you, etc. Watch the video below to learn more.

8) You have over 80,000 people in your circles - how do you manage that many followers?
Actually, I have less than 5,000 IN my circle, just like everyone else; 80,000 people have me in their circles. There is a big difference though between having 500 people in your circles and 5000, so be sure to understand how to control your notifications and "adjust the volume" before adding too many or you will be in notification hell. I am still tweaking mine. As far as managing circles, such as un-following people that I have not engaged with or that become inactive, I use +Circloscope.

If you are new to Google+, come visit me and say hi at http://gplus.to/chrisdegraff. Don't be afraid to leave comments on my posts - and let me know that you are "new" to Google Plus so I can help point you in the right direction!

To truly master the art and science of circles on Google+, I highly recommend that you circle +martin shervington and watch his video tutorials. You can learn more on his website www.martinshervington.com.

Disclaimer: I am now one of the co-founders at +Circloscope. 

Stop the Tweet! 'Going Dark' during times of tragedy.

I believe that most marketers and businesses agree that during times of natural disaster, terrorist attacks or other tragic events that cause everyone to stop in their tracks, we do not want to conduct "social business as usual." +Debra Donston-Miller wrote a commentary for +InformationWeek shortly after the April bombings at the Boston Marathon about the importance of knowing when to react quickly - and when tragic events occur, the consensus seems to be that automatic updates should be postponed.

While it may seem like a relatively simply solution to postpone scheduled posts until a later date, in reality this is becoming more and more complicated with every new app that we allow access to our social media accounts. I did not think that I personally used very many scheduling apps; however, when I began to list all of the accounts that I would need to login to in order to "stop" my Twitter account from posting, a different story soon emerged.

1) Triberr - Each day, I go through the feeds and choose posts written by my tribe mates to post to Twitter. I generally choose about 10 per day and they automatically post at one hour intervals.

2) RoundTeam - I have rules set up to automatically trigger a retweet based on specific keywords used by people I have on a list.

3) Buffer - Using my Chrome extension, I add posts to my buffer throughout the day as I browse the web to keep it topped off. These are scheduled to post to Twitter at optimal times.

4) ManageFlitter - I have a few of my own tweets scheduled to post at optimal times throughout the day.

5) Paper.li - Tweets are automatically sent out when the paper is published, also automatically since I am using the free version.

6) SponsoredTweets - These are tweets I have written and approved and they are scheduled to be tweeted automatically once the sponsor has approved them.

I also use a few others and my Google+ account is set to automatically post to Twitter, although I usually post directly rather than schedule my Google+ Tweets, so that is not a problem.

I suppose the options available to "Stop the Tweet" are to:

A) login to each account and manually delete or reschedule each post (time-consuming, likely to forget an account or two, may not be able to reschedule);

B) login to Twitter and disable access to all apps and grant access at a later time (not a bad solution, but likely would need to go in to each account and reschedule the Tweets that were not sent); or

C) deactivate the Twitter account and reactivate it within 30 days before it is permanently deleted (probably not good for business, can take 48 hours for everything to appear normally again, would still probably need to go in and reschedule all missed posts).

None of these seem to be an "ideal" solution, and what I think could likely happen is businesses would eventually just let the posts go ahead and post as scheduled rather than take any of these steps. Not because they are insensitive; rather because they simply do not have the time, the money, the man-power or the fortitude to spend time undoing what has already been done and then redoing it again.

So, what is the solution? 

I believe that Twitter could easily provide the perfect solution that would work both quickly and effectively and allow businesses and profiles to "go dark" during times of crisis - by using drafts. Twitter's mobile app currently saves posts as drafts if a connection to Twitter is not available; once the connection becomes available, the draft can be sent. I think the perfect solution would be for Twitter to provide users with the ability to enable a "set to draft mode" option. Once triggered, all incoming posts that had been previously scheduled would go to draft status and could later be tweeted or deleted by the user when they are ready to start posting again.

In the meantime, I choose option B. Of course, this only takes care of Twitter....

Google Analytics Best Practices: Plan Ahead

Editor’s Note: This is a guest blog post I wrote for Michael Q Todd's The 7 Pillars Book on June 27, 2013. Officially out of beta, Google’s new Universal Analytics should be used instead of the old tracking code. All old analytics tracking code should be removed and the new code should be placed just above the tag in your site’s HTML code. For WordPress, you should uninstall analytics plugins, remove old code if it was inserted manually, and place the new code in the header.php file of your WordPress theme, just above the tag.

Google Analytics

For many business owners, bloggers and social media marketers, analytics and other measurement tools are almost an afterthought and often forgotten entirely until they are faced with a situation in which they need to produce tangible results – and in order to do that, you need tangible data.

When setup correctly, Google's new Universal Analytics can not only provide you with metrics such as the number of visits and page views, it can help you identify conversion problems on your website, assign dollar values to various social platforms, and allow you measure the impact of your brand’s social relationships over time. The most exciting feature is the ability to identify and track visitors across browsers, networks, devices, and believe it or not offline activity from systems such as call centers systems and loyalty cards.

Analytics Intelligence

Google Analytics' Intelligence Reports and Custom Alerts can help you become aware of variations in your website's traffic or other anomalies that you might otherwise have missed. These can be set up and aggregated by day, week and month and can be customized to send you an alert when traffic patterns reach a specific threshold that you specify.

Annotations

Annotations let you leave a shared note right on the graph of your reports. These are extremely valuable to explain spikes in traffic and can act as a logbook for your marketing efforts and website changes. A launch of a new product, a website redesign, an email campaign and offline marketing are all examples of business activities that should be annotated so can later understand events that caused an increase or decrease in visits or conversions.

Webmaster Tools

Each of your properties should have a corresponding verified website in Webmaster Tools and be connected with your Google Analytics account so additional data can be available in your reports and can help with your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts. The queries report is especially useful as it shows you the number of impressions your site showed in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for a given query, the number of clicks it received, the average position, and the Click Thru Rate (CTR).

Webmaster Tools will also allow you to check the "health" of your site by viewing crawl errors, index status and will help you optimize your site for search.

Custom Reporting

Custom Dashboards allow you to get a quick, organized, specific view of your data by grouping together info that is most relevant to your goals as well as providing each of your business groups with reports that are most useful for their needs. For example, a sales and marketing team may want reports showing leads, sales and conversion activity; a content marketing team may want to see content reports, SEO and social activity reports; while a tech team may be most interested in site performance and real-time reports.

Thank you to Marketworks Media for sharing seven custom dashboards that are easily customizable to meet most business needs.

Conclusion

By implementing Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools correctly and by determining your reporting needs in advance, you can define your business goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) in order to ensure that you have the reports you need, when you need them.

I recommend subscribing to the Google Analytics YouTube Channel as well as watch their June 7, 2013 webinar (below) "Measuring Success in a Multi-Device World" that discusses strategies and best practices.

Extend the Shelf Life of Your Content

Avoid "dating" your marketing materials 

A few years ago, I joined the fall festival committee in my town and was charged with developing a website and handling online marketing for the event. The fall festival is an annual event and highly anticipated by the townies and tourists alike and I was honored to have been given the opportunity. 

I didn't notice at first, but after a year or two, I realized that the committee needed to order new banners each year in order to change the date. After the first year, I stopped using the date on the website and Facebook page in favor of the "Last Saturday in September" (since that does not change and as a coder, I am rather lazy when it comes to things like that) and suggested that they use that as well. This saves both time and money as our banners and other materials do not need to be repurchased each year and our website and Facebook covers are always up-to-date.

Another local group needed lawn signs to promote their regularly occurring breakfast fundraiser. Since they always plan it for a Sunday, but not on the same month or date necessarily, I advised them to purchase a sign that reads "Breakfast This Sunday" to put up at the beginning of the week and "Breakfast Today" to put up on the day of the event. This has allowed them to use the same signs for the past 4 years.

One of my clients uses videos to promote their annual summer "sport vacations". I watched the video and the voice at the end said "2012 teams are forming now." They are still using the video to advertise this summer, but for future reference, just saying "teams are forming now" or "summer teams are forming now" would have been just as good and kept the video fresh.

While websites generally can be changed quickly and at a relatively low or no cost, printed materials, videos and other marketing materials generally have to be ordered, reprinted, re-shot or repurchased and can be quite expensive. With a little creative thinking and planning ahead, you can save money and time by maximizing the "shelf life" of your marketing materials.