Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Best Tools to Find Fans for Your Google + Brand Page


Building a following for a brand page on Google + is not easy - and building a following that is targeted, interested and engaged in your brand, product or service may seem next to impossible; however, there are tools that can help you identify and follow potential fans in your niche.

I manage several brand pages and have observed many others; I am convinced that there is a "tipping point" that you need to achieve before your page will begin growing organically. I also believe that this "tipping point" cannot be achieved (or at least would be much more difficult to achieve) by following people at random or simply by being included in shared circles. While your follower counts may increase, long term success depends upon increased engagement so that your posts will extend beyond your followers via plus ones and reshares to help attract new followers. Until that happens, you need to actively identify and follow potential fans, as well as unfollow those that are not actively engaging with your brand. The goal is to build a targeted fan base which will help your brand reach a larger audience by engaging with your content (plussing, resharing, etc.).
Getting Started - Benchmark/Track Progress & Manage Circles w/ Tools for Google +
If you plan to use your Google + data for reports and/or analysis, it is important to note that some tools will only begin to track your data from the date you set them up. I recommend setting them up now so you will have the data available when you need it.
In addition to the tools above, you can use Google+ Search, Hashtags and Ripples to find people and pages to follow.

Working Case Study: My Music Hangout
My Music Hangout was created as a "just for fun" page and community for me to share music with my friends. I recently made a decision to turn My Music Hangout into a brand when I partnered with +DENNIS N. DUCE and we began hosting live music hangouts on Google + Hangouts On Air. I launched a website (www.MyMusicHangout.com) to help promote our hangouts and the bands who participate. My ultimate goal is to have +My Music Hangout become known as promoter of independent musicians and an influencer in the music scene on Google Plus.

My strategy is to identify, follow and engage with musicians, music fans and influencers in the music industry who are active on Google Plus, measure, rinse and repeat. This can be applied to just about any Google + brand page and I have listed the Google + Tools I am using along with some screenshots and examples of how and why I am using each.
Whoa! How did you get so many followers on this page so quickly you ask? 
Good question! Although I am not certain, the quick extreme growth spurt between October and December (which has now leveled off) tells me that my page must have been included on Google's Suggest User List for a short time. It is interesting to note that although I did gain a lot of followers, it didn't really increase engagement rates that much (plusones, comments and reshares). My advice is to focus more on building a targeted audience of interested followers and find ways to interact and engage with them rather than worrying about the actual number - and that is the whole point of this post!
Before you can begin building your audience on Google Plus, you need to identify who they are and you should have a plan for creating compelling content that will give potential followers a reason to follow you. You should completely fill out your profile, engage with others by commenting on and resharing relevant posts, and you should become active in the communities in your niche or even create your own.

The point of this post is to get you started using the tools that can help identify and follow potential fans for your Google Plus brand page and then to measure your results, rinse and repeat.

Finding People and Pages to Circle on Google +

Let's start in the Search box right on Google +

This works, but is quite time consuming, and you may be following accounts that aren't even active. Unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot of info to help you decide who to follow or why without actually clicking through to visit their profile.

Let's try a hashtag and follow the sharers by viewing the ripple

Again, this works, but is still time consuming and a little difficult as well! Let's stop playing games and wasting time because there is a tool that will allow you to take the entire ripple and circle them all in one shot: Circloscope.

Circloscope
Engaging with your fans, circle management and time management are all key when it comes to success on Google Plus. Using Circloscope, you can circle people from ripples, find and uncircle inactive profiles and those that do not follow you back. While I like to add people I am engaging with one by one into a circle, for those I do not know, I do not have the time to waste adding dozens or hundreds of people one at a time into a circle. Simply grab the URL of a Google Plus post, open Circloscope and add to a circle. 

Any public post on Google+ can become a source that can be pasted into Circloscope.

It's just that simple - the harder part is finding those great posts so you can grab the URL and add it to Circloscope. Enter CircleCount & NOD3x.

Identify Fans Using CircleCount & NOD3x / Follow Using Circloscope

CircleCount 
Set up a free account to get statistics about your Google+ profile and pages at www.CircleCount.com. Be sure to set your location and add appropriate tags to your profile and for each page for maximum benefit (so your profile and pages will show up when others filter their searches by location and/or tags. I use CircleCount to track follower growth and posting statistics, to find other profiles and pages in my niche and to gather demographics about my followers and to see my progress over time.

When trying to decide who to follow (circle), it makes sense to begin by following the people who are already sharing your posts! I identified My Music Hangout's most popular posts (by +1s, reshares and comments) in CircleCount and then grabbed the URL for each and imported the ripples into Circloscope to add the profiles to a circle. This can be done for any public post (yes, even a competitors).

My Music Hangout's Most Popular Posts by Most Comments, Reshares and +1's
(via CircleCount)

Click here to sign up for your free account on Circlecount.com.

NOD3x
Set up an account and create a project at www.NOD3x.com (use a keyword or hashtag - you can add more later).

Besides following people who have engaged with your own posts, it makes sense to follow people who have shared or engaged with popular posts on topics in your niche. Using NOD3x, I identified several popular posts using relevant hashtags. I followed (circled) the people and pages who shared the original post and then grabbed the URL to import the ripples into Circloscope so I could follow the people who engaged with these posts.

Popular Posts for Hashtag #Music

Measure & Track Progress w/ Steady Demand Pro

Steady Demand Pro
For advanced analysis of your Google Plus profile, pages and competitors' pages, set up a free trial of Steady Demand Pro. (Note: Use code #CQApproved for 20% off for life.)

Several things I have learned by analyzing my page with Steady Demand Pro (in comparison to some other pages I manage:
  • Overall, my page has a very low signal to follower ratio (most likely due to the rapid growth in non-targeted followers). This should improve over time as I find and attract more relevant followers; in fact, over the past 30 days, follower growth increased 1.67% and total signals increased 3.04%.
  • Events are my most popular post type and are getting good engagement; however, I should start sharing more of all post types so I have more data to work with before determining which post types work best with my audience. 
(Note: My Music Hangout began hosting weekly music hangouts on air (post type is event) on March 11th and these have greatly contributed to the significant increase in engagement.)

Snapshot of Engagement By Type graph on Steady Demand Pro
(past 30 days)

Snapshot of Total Engagement By Day on Steady Demand Pro
(past 30 days compared to previous 30 days)

Click here to start your free trial of Steady Demand Pro.

Rinse & Repeat

What do I mean by "rinse & repeat"? I recommend spending an hour one day a week finding and following people and unfollowing inactives (people who haven't posted in 30+ days), those who do not follow back (assume they are not interested), or those who are not interacting with your posts (assume they are not interested). I want to make clear that I am not recommending a "follow-for-follow" approach (there is a 5,000 limit on Google+ anyway) or that this should even be a long term strategy; however, until you get past the tipping point, this is a valid strategy to help you grow a targeted, engaged following for your brand page on Google Plus.

What should you be doing the rest of the week? Spend an hour a day posting great content, resharing other people's great content, commenting, plussing, and engaging with others on Google Plus. Use Steady Demand Pro's post analytics to help you perfect your posts and try posting at various times of the day until you find what works best for you.

This platform does require time and patience; however, in my opinion it is well worth the effort.


Full Disclosure
I am now a member of the Circloscope Team and an affiliate for Steady Demand Pro; however, I used and recommended both tools for many months before I had an opportunity to earn money by recommending them to others.
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